Chase isn't a real outside dog. She does like to lay on the deck in the sun once in a while but is happy to be in the house. However she also doesn't like cats, never has. At our old house we had cats pooping in our front yard. We'd tell Chase there was a cat and open the door... Okay don't yell at me, she never caught one or even got close. All she did was run out the door barking which made the cats run to the next yard. Chase would stop at our border and give little barks, like she's saying "take that"... I could go out yelling at them to leave and they'd just stand there.. Chase was so quick and I never had to worry. I really haded going out to clean the weeds and grab a handful of cat poop and at that house we had a lot of flowers to weed. Anyway the neighbors behind us have a cat that likes to crawl under the fence now and then and it just ticks me off. It kept poking it's nose and paw under the fence so I just opened the sliding door and quietly told Chase there was a cat out back. she was at the back door sniffing the air... a couple seconds later she was across the yard barking at the fence, than meandered back to the house and her bed. My tough girl.

Spring is here...

This is a patch of Daffodils in my back yard. Funny thing is it's under a tree where the grass doesn't grow, mainly because when it's full the sun can't get too it. So we have the flowers for a little while. Pretty neat. With all the snow and other bad weather that's been happening in the East, we have had daffodils blooming all over Eugene the last month or so. It sort of lifts the gloomygus' around here who are tired of all the gray skys. Me it only means that the heat is coming and I can wait for that.

Busy time off

Well, this was suppose to be my vacation and I was going to clean out the garage but I decided to catch a cold instead so that sort of put a stop to being out in the cold garage. It's funny the left side of my nose and throat is running and sore. I'm fine then all of a sudden I get this tingling in my nose and it starts running. So instead of the garage, I worked on my quilt room.

I had a large cabinet in the corner but couldn't get to the fabric so decided to take it out and put in shelves. Plus I needed to go through the fabric again and get rid of the stuff I really wouldn't use. Still holding on to some of the stuff a friend gave me.

this is the before shot. The other stand under the moose had craft cabinet that held my rulers. Think it's on the sewing table for now. I was using it for a catch all so it was time to get rid of it too. I guess I'm in one of those purging moods. I just want things to look clean and neat and easy to get too.

this is the after shot. I put shelves up again; put my Halloween fabric on one shelf and Fall stuff on another; moved a small stand in to put my quilt books; moved the set of drawers from beside the TV to the stand for a better access. I also moved the little love seat we bought from a co-worker last summer from Ethan's room to here. Figured it would give me something a little more comfortable to sit on in the evenings when I was done sewing, plus a more comfortable place to sit when I'm doing hand work like bindings. It gets a little uncomfortable sitting in my office chair all the time. Of course, now I have company with the dogs and they are both jealous when I'm sitting with one beside me...not room for two dogs and me.. They do both get up there while I'm at the sewing table. The cabinet under the window has stuff one shelf for stuff like tape and fusible stuff. I also have my solids and then a bunch of misc. stuff.

This corner had a book shelf that had my quilt books, notebooks and all kinds of stuff but not quite wide enough shelves for fabric. So I decided to put shelves for the fabric. It's a couple feet off the floor for the plastic boxes to sit underneath. I went through all my fabric again and tried to place the different piles that I would use as often. I still need to go through the cabinet under the window and pull out other stuff so I'll have easy access to it too. My sewing table is still full of the extra little things that I'm still going through.

this is the TV corner. I put the little shelf next to the TV to hold stuff like the remotes, and movies I bring in to watch. It also holds whatever... I put the Christmas fabric up on the shelves since I won't be using any of it for a while. When I want either the Christmas or the Halloween or Fall stuff from the other shelves, I'll call Ben or Ethan to get it down. I'll have them down while working with them, then move them back.

I think I'll like this new arrangement a lot. I figure if I can see it more, I'll maybe use it more. I've also wanted the love seat up there since we got it but hadn't figured out how to do it. It will be a little tight when I put up my cutting table to pin quilts but I'll make do . We'll see how it all goes once I get another project going. Can't wait....

Another No-Quilting Week

It's been a long drawn out week that I thought would never end. Nothing extraordinary happening at work but just seemed like when Thursday rolled around, it should have been into the next week. I wanted to take a personal day on Friday but the receptionist was going to be off at noon and it was the last day of the month, so not possible.

I am going to see about next Friday. Ben, Ethan and Cassie are all driving to Redding on Friday for a run on Saturday. It will be a nice weekend for the girls and I...very quiet and completely free to do as I please...except feeding the girls, the rest is all up in the air.

It's funny...the East coast is getting dumped with tons of snow and we are having a weird winter/spring. Days up into the high 50's and off & on rain. Which could only mean new buds..
I'll have to take some pictures of the pretty pink budding trees. And the Daffodils are outrageous. They almost grow wild around town and are blooming in stages.

I've been finishing up on my recipes and have almost all my favorites in the computer and printed out for my cookbook. I still have a few on cards that I want to get on the computer and then printed out but no hurry for those. At least I don't have all the pages laying around loosely anymore and that was my main goal.

The guys are out at the movie and library, so I'm doing laundry. folding cloths has never been a favorite past time of mine but it needs to be done.

There probably won't be a lot of quilting over the next couple weeks. Since I took the week of spring vacation off, I'm trying to go through a little at a time in the garage to get ready. I don't want to be working in the garage the whole week. Since I won't have but a day or two off again until Christmas I do want to enjoy a few day of rest.

Until next time...

No quilting weekend

Well, this weekend was very productive but not quilting of any kind. Since it was too cold to work in the garage cleaning and I had my card table up I decided to do something else I'd been working on for a while and that's organizing my recipes. I have my recipe box with cards but things just aren't fitting anymore. We have been making copies of recipes off the Internet to try and the ones that have been good, keeping but they don't fit and i don't want to fold them up. So a new book was in need.

The kids wanted to go to Barns & Noble this Saturday morning. We go, find two tables then sit and look through magazines...have a morning coffee and pastry. This is good for me because it keeps my quilt magazine buying to a couple instead of several subscriptions and big purchases. If I like several of the patterns then I pick it up but it is safer this way. Most of the time I see several I really like but know I'll never do them so it saves me dollars.

What's also good is that I can sit back and read my book in sort of a quiet atmosphere and chat with the kids. This week I looked at my magazines and went in search of a recipe book and found one on the discounted shelves. It's from Betty Crocker, had dividers and a little heavier set of pages you can put into your printer and print your recipes with cute borders. I know I could have gone to Staples and bought a notebook but it wouldn't have been as cute, plus with the discount we get and a coupon and the already low price, it only cost me about $6.00 and it already had all the stuff with it. Oh, it also had a pad to make my grocery list on.

So while the cloths were washing and Ethan was busy doing whatever, I proceeded to put all my pages to work. I was able to go back on-line and print out a bunch we had on the nice paper. A lot of the recipes are wrinkled and spotted. Oh, the other thing the book had was two clear plastic sheet you could put your recipe between and still be able to point and not get it dirty. Just wipe it off.

This got me to thinking about my other recipes on cards. They are on the small print side and typing them up and reprinting them in larger font (old age creeping up) would be more beneficial for later. So now I have a dozen or so on the laptop ready to thumb-drive and print.
This is something I've been meaning to do for ages so it's working out pretty good. I've also been making a recipe book to give to Cassie of those I've collected from family and ones we've used as she's grown up. I might do this for Ethan too but it will probably be a while before I give him his. He does like to cook too, just not sure how much yet.

This will be a work in progress too but I think I'll work on it in the evenings and again this weekend to see if I can at least get what I have done. If I stop now it will stay in the box and collect dust and I'm really trying to consolidate stuff...

Another, Almost Finished Project

Well, as you can see I finished my moose today. I had it all put together last night but then discovered two missing pieces for the antlers but since it was so late decided to wait until morning to finish. It is now hanging up on my design wall. The only thing left now is to sandwich it together and quilt.

I do like the looks of him but I'm sort of disappointed the fabric was not quite the same as the original pictures. The area around his nose and eye was a little lighter so they stood out a little more but Ben says he looks great. I guess I'm just so used to looking at the picture while putting it together I see the difference more. Overall I think it turned out pretty good. Not sure where I will put it in the house but it will definitely go up somewhere.

I've sort of neglected my room for a while just bringing stuff up and setting it around so I'm going to try and clean it up a little. Figured I could clean this week and sandwich it together and quilt it next weekend. The binding will be the same as the outside border so it won't look much different.

Once I get it quilted I'll have to think of something else to do that isn't quite as intense. Once I began tracing the pieces I started having second thoughts but he's great.

Happy Valentine's Day

Well, with the 3-day weekend came a lot of busy work. I'm wanting to clean out the garage and get rid of a lot of unwanted stuff. I had been checking into a drop box to be able to junk it all at once but it was so expensive. When I talked to the Maintenance Manager at work I found out they were given permission to work for employees. So I found out if I get it all together they will bring the big truck and haul it all to the dump for less than $75. Almost a quarter of what it would have cost me to have something dropped. It's hard for me to do it alone so on Sunday Ben and I went through several boxes and took a load to a friends dumpster (not something we can do all the time). This gave us a bunch of big empty boxes that I can use when going through other stuff. I have spring vacation week off so if I get my act together I can have it ready for them to pick up one of those days or even sooner if lucky.


Because Ben was so good to help, I made meatloaf and real mashed potatoes for dinner. When they came in to dish up their dinner they both thought I was crazy because the meatloaf was in the shape of a heart. Well, it is Valentine's day.

Then for dessert I made a small devils food cake...also in the shape of a heart. It turned out really good.