Watering the Fish

Hard to believe that on Friday last week my dear grand daughter was 'watering the fish', we were running around in light jackets and Saturday morning we woke up to it snowing. Welcome to spring time in Colorado. LOL

We have had some really lovely days in the 50s and gotten out and started the clean up of the flower beds for spring. Trimmed our grapes on two separate days, and am loving finding all the little spring bulbs poking their heads up. My lilac is starting to bud and the globe willows are turning into lime snow cones that announce spring is coming.

After pruning the grapes I have all these wonderful lonnnnng vines ready to compost and decided I could make some wreaths. Did I know how? NO! Did that stop me? NO! Got on line and got some information, went out and made a couple wreaths. They didn't come out perfectly round, or perfectly tucked, but they are fine and I had fun proving to myself that I could do it.

Pictures later.

Working away on my LOM class and have sorted tons of pictures, gotten a lot in albums and had fun renewing old memories. I am loving that my pictures are getting more useful to scrap and I have tons of ideas to scrap. Life is Good!

January is gone

Darn if the rest of the year goes as fast as January has, we are in Big trouble!

Rummaging around, reorganizing fabrics, desk in my office and various other places I found the year long los we did on SG and there on the top of the pile was January lo made my the wonderful and talented Martha waiting for pictures. What a deal! Preparing for LOM class and a LWC on BPS I have been working with a LOT of pictures, why not use those ideas to make a Jan 09 LO. What a concept. LOL That is on my list of things to do today.

On another note, do you ever get involved in projects that you had no intention of doing or even thought of? I do that a lot (Damn Gemini twin anyway). A few weeks ago I wandered into our local fabric shop and my friend that works there insisted that I look at all the Wonderful purses that the crew there had been making. According to her making purses is the latest and greatest thing to sew. This lady is a talented seamstress and a ton of fun, so yep I walked out of there with a pattern, interfacing's (all special kinds) and a magnetic fastener. I insisted if I was going to try this silliness I would use scraps out of my stash. Well as you can see from the picture, 4 purses (gave one to my daughter for her BD) later I have tried several patterns. LOL

I haven't done this type of sewing for years as quilting has taken up most of my sewing time, but these have been fun and they might make neat gifts.

Back to sorting and organizing pictures and doing some los with all the pictures I have ideas for.

Everyone has to eat!

I can't seem to find time or inspiration to keep up with this blog thing! Too many other fun things to do.
This little guest to our back yard came by to see if he/she could catch a quick snack, and yes she did! We spent almost an hour watching her hunt and finally capture her prey. She brought it to the edge of our ponds little creek back to feast. She is a Cooper's Hawk and really beautiful. Dear husband took several ( like a LOT) of pictures and we enjoyed learning the many neat things my new camera is capable of. This was taken outside our living room window.
Hard to believe we are 12 days into a new year! I have spend time cleaning out, throwing or giving away, cleaning and rediscovering wonderful things in my various stashes. Very cleansing and satisfying over all.
I am not one to set New Years Resolutions, but have set some goals. Get more physically active, take time to be creative, have fun doing it all.
One of my dear friends who works at a local fabric store talked me into making a purse. Now I don't do much of what most would call sewing, but I bought a pattern, the interfacing, etc., brought it all home, dug out some scraps and wala!!! 4 hours later I had a purse! Had so much fun I bought another pattern on a trip with my sister to her local quilt shop and made another one! Having fun and will take pictures soon. I figure my trip to get a spool of thread has cost me several dollars and if I had needed a new purse I could have probably bought one for a lot less!

I am taking two classes from BPS this year - A Life Well Crafted and Library of Memories. Both are pretty intense, but I know I will be more inspired to scrapbook if my pictures are easier to find and Kollette Hall is one of my favorite instructors, so both will be fun.

A mile stone in our family. My Mom turns 83 this year. She is the sole surviving one of our parents and we treasure every day we have her. She is in relatively good health and still able to live on her own, so we are truly blessed.

Another quilt done

Just a pic of another of my own quilts that I have completed. Not a great picture, but it is done so it is my current favorite.
Thanksgiving came even though I am stuck some where back in July or August 2008. What happened to this year??? Time seems to fly by with or without us. LOL
Our Thanksgiving was busy. We had some 28 or so for dinner and the weekend was rather confusing with people coming in and leaving. Work schedules caused some of the kids to leave on Friday, others to arrive on Friday and everyone headed out Sunday. Our son and law and grandkids and our nephew and his family all got caught in the winter storm that hit the Rockies. Both families ended up spending a great lot of Hours sitting waiting for roads to reopen. Thankfully they all got home safe and sound!
A good time was had by all and everyone pitched in so there was no overload for anyone of us 'older folk'. We were all tired, but figure we will all be ready for Thanksgiving in Colo next year.
Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful and now we can all look forward to a busy Christmas season.

Is it really winter!

The weather has been really mild for it being nearly Thanksgiving! Hopefully it will continue until after the holiday as many of those coming for the feast will be traveling long distances. Always nice if they aren't fighting the weather.

Took a picture of my inspiration area to show the neat idea I got from my friend Becky using a curtain rod to hold some of my punches. Cleaned out a drawer with this neat idea and most of the punches I use all the time are right over my work area! What a concept!

My friend Bonna and I just completed a project she got us into (LOL) this fall. A lady had many, many t-shirts that she wanted made into quilts. We did 8 of those little wonders, she pieced tops and I quilted. We are both a bit tired of 57 Chevy theme about now. But they are done and our client loved them, so job well done.

I finished the Giving Well class from BPS and have made several of the projects. Great class and now have a folder full of neat ideas for when I want to put together a neat gift for someone.

Off to do my least favorite thing, grocery shopping, and then see what the rest of the day brings.

Have a great day everyone.

Thoughts from the zoo

Got this picture of our neighbor's beautiful Great Dane puppy, Fergie. You gotta love that face. They also have a black Lab, Bodie that is the same age as Sarge. We have 'doggie play dates' real often as the three get along so well. Fergie loves to come over and will often stand at the gate and wolf to come in. Welcome to my zoo!

Fall is hitting for real these days. Tomatoes got frosted about 10 days ago as did some of the more sensitive flowers. We cleaned up the tomatoes over the weekend and I work on the flowers as time permits. Some of the flowers really love the cooler weather, and put on quite a show. Snapdragons are one of them. They are beautiful right now.
I have been quilting a lot the last week or so. My dear friend took on a project for a lady that involves making lap quilts out of some 100 or so tee shirts. Bonna is so good at cutting the shirts up and making the blocks all fit together into beautiful quilts. My job is to quilt the little darlings. They are fun and not the usual quilting, so is a nice change.
I am trying to keep up the momentum of the BPS Have More fun class and work scrapbooking into my 'schedule' regularly. It really isn't that hard to do since I don't make such a big deal out of the process. Have a great day!

I imagine we are all wondering where the summer went! Where ever it went it went in a rush. I have ignored my blog in favor of working on BPS class Have More Fun, and keeping up with the yard and my darling Sienna. I had forgotten how busy a 2 (almost 3) year old can be, potty training and how big this place is.

We spent most of September digging and dividing the Iris around the yard and redoing 6 flower beds. I know in the spring it will all be worth it, but my back and right hip reminded me that we don't use a digging fork as part of a regular routine. After cleaning, trying to keep colors separated, sharing and replanting the Iris I have, I wondered why we bought 22 new colors. LOL

The BPS classes have been fun and certainly given me a new outlook on scrapping. Stacy Julian is a wonderful teacher so will likely take her LOM class in the spring.

Don bought me a new camera and I love it. Still figuring out how to use it but am loving it.

We inherited a new family member this summer. DD had gotten Miss Murray the Murdoc Bunny for Sienna, but her 4 dogs wanting to lick the bunny made it a little scary to have her in their yard. Hence Murray lives with Gpa and Gma now and she is adjusting well as are we. Sarge and her have taken to rubbing noses through the bottom of her cage, but she doesn't trust him when she is out. Go figure.

To those who tagged me earlier this summer my apologies for dropping the ball. I figured out that if I spend less time on the computer I have a bit more time to create.

Hope everyone takes time to enjoy this beautiful time of the year.