Christmas routines....

I used to go crazy and start putting up my Christmas stuff Thanksgiving weekend. My mom gave me all kinds of hand made ornaments that I hung all over the walls, decked out any flat surface and went nuts on just one tree. As the kids got older some of the hand made ones stayed in the box and we didn't have nearly as many flat surfaces...the tree however has always been the high point. When we acquired Tootsie, the flat surfaces were kept clear of anything low enough we thought she might like to take down and play with. My mom gave us a set of musical lights a year or two before Ethan was born. We have put them and at least one other strand on our tree, depending on the size, every year since.. Ethan will be 19 in April and the music and lights still work. Don't know if we have ever replace a light either...it just keeps working year after year. Of course I'm really careful to put them back in the box each year too.


This year we didn't get as big of a tree, maybe reaches 6 ft but it's not as big around as usual. They will put the lights on today and then we'll decorate to night. With a fireplace the house stays pretty warm and the tree dries out quickly so we don't put it up the beginning of the month anymore. I'm not quite as nuts as my mom though. When she decorated the tree everything had to be in the right place plus she put the tinsel on one strand at a time so it didn't look shoddy.. to top it off, she took all the tinsel off one strand at a time and saved it year after year...even though the box was probably only about 15cents.. I remember buying them as Cassie was growing up for a quarter. I think I bought two last year for 79 cents each....they are harder to find each year. If Cassie is over when we decorate I let her and Ethan put the balls on and then I put the tinsel..usually a few strands at a time.. by the time it looks like all is good, I start tossing the rest, a few at a time, towards the top.. this year I think it's short enough to do it all the same..no tossing.. the last few trees have been close to 7 feet tall and I'm only 5'2".

I'm off the 22nd through the 28th for vacation. Not going anywhere just resting. I'm hoping I can get the presents wrapped Thursday or Friday and not be scrambling Christmas eve afternoon. I can't put them under the tree if we are going to be gone because I'm afraid of what the girls will do.. Chase loves wrapping paper. We open our gifts Christmas Eve after going out Christmas light looking..dogs too. Then we come home put on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while we open the presents. Of course Santa brings a couple things the next morning. Since Cassie has a kitty she won't be staying the night this year.. She doesn't want to leave Gus alone and screw up his routine. I was thinking of having a Christmas breakfast...ya know eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast. Something we don't normally do but getting everyone up and here would be interesting. 

This year we are having a Pork Roast for Christmas dinner. They wanted something different this year besides the usual Ham.  We will still have mashed potatoes, roasted carrots (Cassie fixes these),  Ambrosia fruit salad with marshmallows, cinnamon applesauce, rolls of some kind.  Cassie is going to make her Pumpkin Cake, very good.  Thought I'd make Ben his mincemeat pie too. He's the only one who likes it so I just make a small one for him.

As the kids have gotten older the Christmas traditions have changed and will probably change a little more with Ethan in College. Right now he is going to the University of Oregon in the Architecture program.  He has loved this experience of living in the dorm.  He did get really lucky and get into a freshman dorm with a great group of kids. He's made a lot of friends.  Cassie has her own place across town and loves it. With Ethan and Cassie not home, enjoying their new grown-up lives, it is just Ben, the girls and me, I don't have the desire to go crazy with my decorations anymore.  We still decorate the outside but even that has changed. We didn't put up the icicles and have only put up my moose, candy canes and the ropes. It still looks nice and you can see it coming down the hill towards home. Life does go on and changes all the time.

If You Want....

If you want someone who will eat whatever you put in front of him and never say it's not quite as good as his mother's… adopt a dog.


If you want someone always willing to go out, at any hour, for as long and wherever you want... adopt a dog.

If you want someone who will never touch the remote, doesn't care about football, and can sit next to you as you watch romantic movies... adopt a dog.

If you want someone who is content to get on your bed just to warm your feet and whom you can push off if he snores... adopt a dog.

If you want someone who never criticizes what you do, doesn't care if you are pretty or ugly, fat or thin, young or old, who acts as if every word you say is especially worthy of listening to, and loves you unconditionally, perpetually… adopt a dog.

BUT, on the other hand, if you want someone who will never come when you call, ignores you totally when you come home, leaves hair all over the place, walks all over you, runs around all night and only comes home to eat and sleep, and acts as if your entire existence is solely to ensure their happiness .......then adopt a cat!

In Memory of Cleo

 This is Cleo. She was almost 13 years old when she passed away.  She used to go rafting with her family and loved it. she was a really pretty Lab.

As it happened, I had a lot of the Lab fabric left so it went perfect.

the back is red fleece with black paw prints. The poem was a favorite so I included it in the label..

Linda's finished quilt

I know it's been a while since I last posted but the finishing took a while. It ended up 97 by 115. It was to big to pin at home so I had to take it in to my office and use two of the big tables to lay it out. Ethan showed up after I got it all laid out and started pinning. We pinned for about 3 hours...that's a lot of pins.

Because it's so huge, I wasn't able to do all the machine quilting but I did do all the straight stitching to hold everything down, plus the binding. Linda will have to do the rest of the cross stitch in the center.

the quilt has 30, 16 1/2 inch blocks. It was so big that Ben and Ethan couldn't hold the whole thing up, so we folded it in half and I took the picture of them holding it up in front of the garage. It was hugh. It should fit my sisters queen bed with no problem. She didn't know what it looked like except from the couple pictures already posted or what other colors I was using.

She was really happy with the final results.

Progress has been made.

Well it's been a while since I last made an entry. I've been busy and lazy, no access to my laptop and lazy. Our office is moving next month. Our lease runs out the end of June and we had to find a new place. Our new place is a 45000 sq ft warehouse with a small office. We have had to build several offices for the few of us who are moving in, not suppose to be done before the 10Th. Our HR, Clinical, Housing, Development and Volunteer Coordinator are all at other of our locations. there just wasn't enough offices for us all yet.

Anyway I've had my sisters quilt top finished for a while now but it's so big it would have taken me forever to pin it for quilting. We have two 6' tables at work that would be perfect so I figured I needed to get it pinned before they started moving the excess furniture. So I took the 20Th off to put the back together, pick up the batting and press it one more time...plus get all the pins & clamps ready. So last Saturday I was up, showered and in at work by a little before 9.

I managed to get the back down and clamped, stood back and said "holy s--t". There was no way I was going to get this pinned in one day by myself so I called home to see about Ben bringing Ethan down. He had said he'd help but thought I'd do it alone.. By the time he gets there I've got the top all clamped and have started to pin.

Here's an up close shot of one block with all it's pins. This was one of 30 blocks, 29 more to go plus the border. We worked on the top until about 1:30, we'd already turned it for the 3rd time and decided that the last 4 blocks could wait for home. So we finished pinning the last set and were on our way home by about 2:30/2:45. it was a long day.



I use the same big black clamps for my quilts as we use at work. they work pretty good. The other two boxes were full of safety pins when I started. as you can see one box empty and the other pretty darn close. I still need to set my table up and pin the last four blocks and I think I'll have to dig into my 3rd box to have enough.


the move date for the admin office is the 21st. They are going to move our office first so they can move the phones at the same time. Then Tony and I can answer the phones the rest of the day while they are moving everyone else. I'm taking the next week off, Wed and coming back to work the next Wed. Just in time to finish to do the end of month, end of quarter and end of year.. Our Audit starts the beginning of July.

Nothing planned for the mini vacation but I'm hoping to do a lot of machine quilting on my sisters quilt. I've also got my Moose pined and started the machine quilting on it too...so I should have plenty to do.

enjoy the Memorial day weekend..

Beautiful day

Friday's I'm off at noon. This week I took my camera with me. We had an extremely warm day. It was just gorgeous, 70 degrees. I decided to stop my Cassandra's office and the clouds were so neat so I took a couple pictures.

I don't usually have my camera with me when I see clouds like this so I had fun. Of course I only kept a couple.

We have such large flocks of Canadian Geese in our area and I've always wanted to take pictures. So today I decided it was the day. I ended up driving to a couple different spots and nothing. Then I decide to head off towards Ethan's school to sit and read until time for him to come out but as I was driving the sky to the right of me just got black with them. Of course there was no place to park so I had to drive past, turn around and come back. I took several pictures and if you click on the picture to make it larger you will be able to see the geese just

hovering over the wet lands..we have a large area set aside for that. After a while they just got up and flew off again.I just sat there watching then hover then settle.

I decided to drive up a little further and found a place to park at the bottom of walking path that goes through the wet lands. This was the view I had..just gorgeous.

I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I can hear them but I can't see them anywhere. Then out of no where they start showing up...but in long lines. It was tough to get pictures but I was able to get a few that really turned out pretty nice.

I even got one where I was looking straight ahead then folllowed them over head and snapped the picture.

I was so tickled that I got some good shots on my first time out shooting pictures.

Again if you click on the pictures you can see the geese a lot better. I'm hoping I can get out and get a few pictures this summer instead of sitting on my duff every weekend. Not that I'm quitting quilting but in between projects I need to be a little more active.

Hope you all enjoy my new hobby...

Happy Easter

Well another month has passed and so quickly. Can you believe it's Spring and soon Easter will be upon us. It's time to put up another wall hanging. This is my second applique made in 1994 and I think so far one of my favorites. It's my Bunny Angel. The lady I took this class from won so many awards from Keepsake quilting she stopped competeing. She was fantastic. I really love to applique but sometimes it takes a little to long from start to finish. Most of the time I have a small project that I can work on inbetween my machine projects. I have this one hanging up behind my desk at work.. Mid month I'll take it down and put up my Log Cabin Bunny. I really like that I have some place at work that I can make new ones and change them regularly. It's nice to show off my handy work.

Happy St Patrick's Day

Well, it's St. Patrick's Day once again.. This is my latest creation. I had a pattern from an old quilting magazine for the Shamrock in a multiple block table runner. I try to hang something seasonal behind my desk at work so I thought only one shamrock and the Irish blessing would work best.

I appliqued the top shamrock and just sewed the blocks together with an inch green frame. Would you believe it if I told you I did it over a weekend. Well really I started it on a afternoon of the 5th after a drive up to Portland and back and finished the binding on Monday night to have it at work for March 7th.

Since I have my April one all done, a flying Easter Bunny... will post next month...


Happy St Patrick's Day

Latest Memory Quilts

Well it's been a little over 2 months since my last post. I haven't been just sitting around either, well not all the time. If you have been reading my blog, you'll remember my telling you about making a memory quilt for Lucy and a memory Pillow for Gretchen. On Ben's birthday, Jan 5th we found out another Fur baby had passed and an others cancer had come back. So in a rush to get them done I started two more quilts.

Amber was 5 years old when she passed from something as silly as swallowing a rock from the back yard. This caused a problem with her bowels bad enough to need surgery. Poor thing didn't come out of the anesthesia. She was such a pretty silly girl, I just felt I needed to do another. So I started selecting pictures and deciding which pattern to use.

At the same time we also found out another fur baby who had whipped his cancer for a couple years, had it come back. He was not expected to make it to another Christmas. So I was busy picking two sets of pictures. There was no real deadline but at the same time I was making my gift one of the other ladies who does mosaics was making her gift. I thought if I could get mine done in time, I could send it to her and she could send them together. What's amazing about her is that she is the one who lost Gretchen not all that long ago, so in still getting over her grief, she is helping someone else get over theirs. The hardest part of making these quilts is to figure out when you have enough pictures and the right sizes to make them. I was almost finished with all the pictures and had the black frames done when she posted a tribute to Amber and the picture just had to be in the quilt too.. I pulled out my flannel wall, put the pictures all up and after sitting back and looking at several layouts, finally worked out the rows.

Well, I worked like crazy getting Amber's quilt done and shipped it off to North Carolina. Amber's quilt and mosaic were sent to Germany. Veronika received her gift on Friday and was so touched. She knew the mosaic was coming but not the quilt so she was doubly surprised when she opened the box.

As soon as I shipped Amber's quilt off, I started on Zooies.

For some reason this one held a special place in my heart. I think because this time the fur baby was fighting to stay alive. Because they had gone though so much in the past with his cancer, I wanted to get it to her before he passed. With each update from his mom, getting it done quickly was important.

I was wanting to get my quilt to them so they would have memory of Zooie wrapped up in it after he was gone.

My gift was received the middle of February. Here is a picture taken by Karla of Zooie wrapped in his gift. Zooie passed away on March 3rd having lost his battle with cancer. Karla said she has wrapped up in Zooie's quilt whenever she misses him.

I'm so glad I was able to get his quilt to them before he pass. They were able to wrap him up and now have Zooie smell to comfort them too.

I have enjoyed making my memory quits and will continue to make them when needed. The funny thing about them is, is that I haven't met any of these families and since they are spread all over the states and now in Germany, I probably never will. But the out pouring of love and support the Flickr site has will do me just fine. I've made some terrific friends on the Flickr site.

Happy New Year

Well another year has come and gone. A year older, a little grayer and a few pounds lighter..more to loose.

I'm going to try and write a little more this year and not just when quilting. After all it does say "Emma's World".

We, Ethan and I brought in the new year last night. Cassie crapped out about 10:30 or so and Ben went to a midnight run to bring in the new year. Ethan and I watched Chances Are, then the only thing we could find was the Back to the Future trilogy they have been showing all week. We both like the western one which started at 11. We switched to the ball and watched it drop then because we didn't want to listen to any of the music went back to the movie.

I think Ethan made it about a half hour into the movie and fell asleep. I finished watching the movie and was into the 1st one again when Ben pulled up at 1:50am.. He came in 8th overall and 1st in his age group. He said it started sleeting about 15 minutes before the run so keeping from sliding on frozen ground was an extra bonus... It was about 27 when he left the house at 10:30.

What's really silly is he got up a little before 8 and was off to the day run that started at 10. He should be home about noon...probably frozen. Lucky for him it doesn't seem to have done any raining this morning so at least he didn't get wet while running.

I'm fixing spaghetti and meatballs for dinner but will set out the usual cheese, meat (hickory farms beef stick) and crackers. We put out cheese spreads to have with the crackers too. But this year I'm fixing my bosses Artichoke & cheese dip. She brought it for a second year to our company holiday party and everyone just loved it. Decided to make it for Christmas eve and they all loved it and asked for it again. It is so easy to make...just throw it all into a slow cooker, cook on high for an hour then serve with bread for dipping..

Well, I have the rest of today and Sunday to rest up before going back to slave away. The next day off is the 17th then the 19th when Ben and I drive up to Portland, weather & roads permitting, to go to a dog show. Dawn is suppose to have Ticket at the show and several of Paris' pups from her summer litter. If all goes well, we should have a Dobie puppy by the end of June.
I'm really excited about that.

With Ethan off to college next fall the house will be so empty. Chase & Tootsie don't need me except to let them out to potty and feed them. Ben still works late most nights so a new puppy will be just the thing and I've wanted another Dobie for years.

Well I think that's about it for today. Hope everyone brought in the new year with friends and family and have set goals for the new year.. later