Monday, November 30, 2009

yes, I did....

I was at Walmart at 5am on Friday.... how crazy was that? It was ridiculous.. #2D and the rock star went with me....

Then because we could, we went to Target...

I already have one Christmas present to take back.

I just finished cyberMonday shopping... it was much more comfortable...

Want to see something funny? Click here

Go HERE and you can do one for your pet or grandchild or anyone... check out the whole page...lots of news....

And because we can't be pictureless here are two of my grandkids that came to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us...



Nancy

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Happy Cleaning/Cooking Day....


Cause really, isn't that what everyone is doing today? If you are hosting Thanksgiving you are running around stuffing shit into drawers, mopping the floors and trying to figure out how to get the dog to stop barking at every leaf that blows by the back door. If you are going to be a guest, you are probably cooking or baking items to take with you...then Friday you will have to clean your kitchen...right after you get home from shopping...

I think I like hosting better. I have leftovers to serve on Friday and Saturday and Sunday if I can disguise them enough...and my shit is already shoved into drawers so the house looks clean.

Today my list contains -
Make fried corn
make hot rolls (really...cause no one really cares if the rolls are hot, they just want to soak up the gravy or slather butter on them)
vacuum
shove shit into drawers (or sewing room if it won't fit into the drawers)
wash windows
wash big roaster (which stays in the garage) to put potatoes in to bake
set table (I printed some Thanksgiving place cards for the grandkids to color)


I know my list will get longer as the day goes on.

Have a great day!! Mine starts NOW!!!!

Nancy

ps to Margi -The recipe for the fried corn is at the bottom of this post. It is a staple at all family dinners...

Monday, November 23, 2009

design wall monday 11-23-09

My design wall this morning shows my current BOM from a local quilt shop, the center panel for a quilt from this book. I know it doesn't look much different, but all the blanket stitching is now finished. Then there is my quilt guilds BOM (which I am so not finishing out the year so I guess these will be orphan blocks now) and a hand stitchery that just needs some more stitching....




This will be a busy week. Here in the states Thursday is Thanksgiving. Like many of you, I have company coming so I have today to clean, tomorrow to get my haircut, grocery shopping and start cooking on Wednesday..

Our menu -

Turkey Breast
Prime Rib
Baked Potatoes (sweet potato for me)
fried corn
some kind of green veggie (any ideas?)
Rolls
and dessert is coming with company...

And here is an updated photo of hubby's design wall. He is finishing up the drawers, he made the mirror frame yesterday and we bought all the hardware.



Nancy

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

cow....truck....rain.... The End

Remember this???

Today we visited here....




To pick up this....




Here I am following hubby to take the rental truck back...



Now all is right in hubbys world..

Hey, there's my town! It starts at Walgreen's and goes all the way up the hill to Walmart..

Nancy

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

3 machines, 2 friends and 1 weekend.....

Last Thursday afternoon, 2 friends and I drove out to a not-to-far-away resort for a weekend of sewing....

We got lots done, but sadly I only have one photo of a finished project and it's not even my project and really it's not even done... lol

Here's a little peak at our weekend...

our view....


not our condo, but one just like it....



Veronica at the ironing table. Yes we took a 6ft table with us for ironing and cutting....



the almost finished quilt...



Beverly at the table....



Now to finish 4 projects that I got started...

Nancy

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

out with the old....

ah....routine...for the past three years I have had the same table runner in my dining room. It was a gift from a friend that owned a quilt store. When I found out she was closing the store, I asked if I could buy it. "No" she said...."you can have it".... It was the buggy barn basket pattern from homespuns...I really liked it.

Yesterday was a day of sewing at Anne's. I had some hand stitching to do on a Christmas present, Miss Nancy brought her sewing machine to work on her tumbler blocks and Anne said she had some hand sewing to do....and that we would laugh....hm... strange, even for Anne..

We sat down and started working and all of a sudden Anne brought out two Christmas packages... One for each of us!! How fun!!

Look what I got...





Is this not the most beautiful table runner you have ever seen. You can click over to Anne's blog and see more photos and read about the pattern. I love it so much...and it will sit on my dining room table forever...

oh, Anne's hand sewing? It was to add the labels to the back of the table runner.lol

For many reasons (that I won't go into) today was a very stressful day... so I decided to do a little retail therapy... I have no idea what I will do with these, but that wasn't the reason I bought them... I think the owner of the shop now thinks I am nuts as I showed up on her doorstep and said "I need to buy"...lol

3 one yard cuts....



And my first ever jelly roll....



I did buy some strips for this quilt but they weren't a "real" jelly roll, just some strips a vendor put together and sold. That one up there... AUTHENTIC....

Guess I need to head over to the Moda Bake Shop and see what I can do with this... I bet they have lots of options...

Nancy

Monday, November 9, 2009

Whats a grandma to do.....

I was talking to my oldest daughter last week and she was telling me some funny things that bitty was doing. Bitty waits until her sister is gone and then goes in her room and drags her baby and cradle to her own room to play with. When asked why bitty doesn't play with her own doll I was told she didn't have one... WHAT??? NO DOLL???

Crisis averted....



Both girls wanted to take this baby home.... Mom said "no"...






Nancy

Sunday, November 8, 2009

And the winner is.......

Seven

and it belongs to

Nancy C. (teenietators)

congratulations Nancy

Send me your mailing address and tell me....do you want sewing or non-sewing items

I will get it mailed out before I go to retreat Thursday


we will have a winner....

20- the number of you that sent me copies of congrats emails to Kristin. Thanks to all of you. Yesterday I overheard her telling someone that all these "weird people she didn't know" were sending her emails saying congrats on her new job. :- )
Her sister clued her in....

I thought it only fair that she get to pick the winner, so I have sent her an email and as soon as she picks a number I will announce the winner.

Yesterday was a fun filled day with a wonderful Baby Shower for my niece. We played games and had great food. We were handed a blue ribbon bracelet with a blue Binky charm. The most fun was watching my oldest granddaughter run around trying to get people to say "baby" which was the magic word. If you said the word, you lost the bracelet. The one with the most bracelets at the end won a prize. She was relentless. She would run over to a baby and say "Grandma, what IS THIS?" I would say "oh, a b-infant?"....she would stomp her foot... At the end she won another one of the games and I ended up with the most bracelets (thanks to Kristin, who walked up to me, said BABY and handed me her 4 or 5). What did I win? A set of candle holders...UGH! I don't do candles, so they will be regifted during a Christmas game...sshhh....don't tell anyone.

I can finally show the quilt I made for the new baby (due in January)....



I thought I got some closeups, but can't seem to find them...dang it...

The tutorial for this is at the Moda Bake Shop. It's a great tute by AmandaJean at Crazy Mom Quilts. Check out her blog for loads of other great tutes on her side bar...

I love this fabric, Wee Play by American Jane...I wish I still had a whole set of FQ's ....

Need to start packing for retreat today. I have it on good authority that my ride will be here at 2pm...and I better be ready to go...

Back later tonight with a winner...

Nancy

Friday, November 6, 2009

numbers....

86 - The number of followers I have

9 - The number of peeps in the contest so far

2 - The number of days left to join in the contest

Where are the rest of you!!!! Wait.wait..wait.(insert light bulb here) .maybe you don't sew? That's it...

77 - The number of followers that DON'T sew

hm....ok...here is what I will do.

I will get two prizes... one for those that sew and one for those that don't. OK? Will that get more of you to respond?

Come on peeps.... help me out here....

BTW.... the reason I picked Sunday IS...she is not back to work until then. So all these messages will be in her inbox on Sunday... Funny, huh...

Off to make meatballs....right after I go to the store and get all the ingredients...

Nancy

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Congrats.......and a contest


Congrats go to my second daughter. She interviewed for a new job last week and last night she accepted.... She will be an office nurse! Regular hours, home each night with her kids and hubby, no holidays, no weekends, still close to home. Not a bad deal. Right now she works with the criminally insane and you know you can only do that for a limited time.....

I think she will enjoy it. I was a pediatric office nurse for 12 years. I loved every minute of it and only transferred to the hospital when a new nurse manager and I didn't see eye to eye....turns out I had some kind of intuition as she was neither a good manager or a nurse...yes, she had lied about being an RN. Who does that and thinks they won't get caught...

So, how about if we do this....

Email my daughter and congratulate her on her new job...

Leave a comment and I will send you her email address... please make sure there is a way to email you...some of you come in as no-reply.

When you email her, send me a copy and I will put your name in a drawing for something good...

WHAT?

Who knows....maybe a pattern, maybe a fq, maybe some thread...I will shop for you....

Ok....you have 3 days... I will pick a name on Sunday am and get the prize in the mail on Sunday Monday duh.....

And last night I averted a crisis...tell you all about it Sunday...

Nancy

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

a little surprise.....

I love a good surprise... going out to dinner, friends dropping by, someone else unloading the dishwasher..

So I took off last Friday to town to do my usual payday errands. I needed to go to the post office, the bank, the grocery store. B-O-R-I-N-G!! So to break things up a bit I decided to see if my LQS had any fabric suitable for another couple of checkerboards. I was looking for some kind of black print and some kind of red print. Right off I found some red with white polka dots. I looked and looked for some kind of black print, but had to settle for a white with a black dot. I figured I can always use dots so I told her to cut 2 yards of each.

That's when she told me.....

"Did you know all fabric is 50% off?"

"really?"

Now that is a nice surprise!!! I bought a couple of more yards...yea, just a couple.

See, most of you can go to your LQS and find a ton of fabric, but mine is almost bare. She is attempting to "down size in order to fit into a smaller store and ride out the recession". Her words. I moved here 3 years ago. She hasn't had a new bolt of fabric since then. For the first year, I didn't even notice. And then I realized that every time I went in, the same fabric was there,just moved around. I think with some good marketing she could turn this around. I was lucky to find these.



Nancy

Monday, November 2, 2009

Design Wall Monday.....



Not much going on here...

Top left is a new pattern called Lilly Pilly. I want to do it in all greens, but won't even start it until after the first of the year.

That's the center panel for a quilt called Tweet D Pie...It's in This Book by Two Sisters at Squirrel Hollow.

Underneath that is part of our quilt guilds BOM with instructions.

Finally, a stitchery by Lynette Anderson. I am sorry, I can't remember the name, and I have no idea where the pattern is....

Hubby is out of town the next couple of days, so I will be busy cutting kits to take to retreat. I like to have all my projects at least cut and ready to start on....
Two friends and I are going to sew for a couple of days in a condo with no responsibility other than for ourselves... can't wait..

Nancy

Sunday, November 1, 2009

A Sunday finish.....

Do you remember this post? When the three of us decided to do these little projects, I thought of something I wanted to make the grandkids. They are 7,6,6 and 3. Now is the perfect time for a checkerboard and when grandma sews they get one made of fabric. And when grandma thinks ahead, they get one with built in storage.




Now to make two (or three) more.

Yesterday was fun... My sister called and asked me to go furniture shopping with her. She has been looking for new living room furniture and one of the local stores had a fabulous two hour sale. After sitting on EVERY chair there was, she settled on a great cream set (she has no young children or pets so she can pick cream with confidence) and she picks it up next week. I tried to steer her to the exact same set in dark red with no luck... she just isn't a red person.
So then she took me to lunch....we really like the soup and salad at Olive Garden...
Thanks Sis, I had a great time!!

Nancy