Odds and Ends of Quilt Blocks

One of the reason's I enjoy going with DH to his conferences is the opportunity to do some catching up on my quilting or scrapbooking. This time is was quilting catch up. I caught up on two BOM's I am teaching (no pictures yet) and Carol Doak's BOM for her Yahoo group and finished up the final two blocks I should have done in December for my Civil War Love Letter group.
I took everything ready to cut and sew if I could or at least had the fabrics chosen ready to cut. Since these were small projects I was hoping I would have time to work on my Spinning Daisies quilt but alas...ended up bringing it back still all snug in it's ziploc bag! LOL

Carol Doak's Yahoo group BOM Jan. I am using Fossil Ferns and Batiks for my fabrics...I went for an Northern Lights sky and icy mountains and stream. It is very pale and I like the way the batik snowflakes fabric contrasts.

Jan. blocks for the CWLL group chosen by me as the hostess this month. I think I have a mistake to correct darn it all. and in the one bottom middle when I cut the pieces in my mind the small squares that are in the middle star were pink so when I finished the block I realized you don't see a star at all...they should have been brown so you have store of an "x" shape and I think the outside flying geese also are reversed...sigh...so I guess I will be remaking this one LOL
update: Block has been "corrected" and now looks right!

These are my Dec blocks and I will tell you I just missed completely when C told us that she had forgotten to add the seam allowance to the block on the bottom right...LOL... so it turned out perfectly 1 inch too small! LOL At least it wasn't one of the more complicated blocks...one more to remake. This isn't' looking good when I have to remake one out of 6 for two months running. I know that the flying geese block, middle top is a bit off but it's just going to stay that way LOL.
Update: the too small block has been remade and all are now correct

What We Did on Our Winter Break

'Bout time I updated my blog, right?
We arrived home after our short break in St George just fine and now are back to the day to day once more.
A few photos here to show you what we did down there! LOL

This was taken in Beaver, Utah as we left our favorite break stop the Utah Dairy farmer's cheese factory outlet. We love to pick up some fresh cheese curds and the little bags of cut up variety cheeses to snack on as we travel. I bought enough to take home this time luckily cheese stores for quite a while. LOL
I am really attracted to sunsets these days, and for that matter, I have been for a long time. I guess those beautiful bursts of color as the sun moves it's way west just call to me. Funny thing is when I am on the East coast on the beach I love to take sunrise pictures for the same reason in a way...all those beautiful colors that emerge from the rising sun just for a few minutes before going on to the blue sky gets me every time LOL

You may not know that my DH H really loves to find Indian rock art or petroglyphs, that have been created in his native Utah. He is drawn to wondering the what and why and where of those mysterious symbols that show up in Utah's high deserts and mountains. As time goes on much of it has been destroyed and or vandalized so it is a wonderful feeling to find something he has never seen before. When we checked in to our timeshare the Welcome lady told us about a "park" that has some great examples of petroglyphs near the Paiute reservation just beyond Santa Clara. The weather hadn't been terribly cooperative for a hike after H finished up his meetings/training and we thought maybe we would have to postpone seeing them until we came back again. But since I wanted to visit the "hardware store/quilt fabric store" on Sat. we headed out in the early afternoon and got a lucky break when the skies began to clear and by the time we left the store and picked up some limeade at Sonic it had turned sunny and warmer so we headed out to look for that park and after passing it by and making a U turn back arrived at a red dirt muddy "road" to the parking spot and trail head.
I elected to stay in the vehicle with a book I had brought and H set off on a 2 mile hike to find the petroglyphs and as you can see from the pics he found them.

Maybe one day I will have him write up a post explaining what he thinks they represent as he has studied many examples of rock art, and has pretty good theories about it. But with no written language to explain and not even really knowing "who" did the art it will probably remain educated guesses.

OH yea,
As you can see I found some fabric in Hurst Hardware and Fabric store LOL I didn't buy these but wanted to remember what they looked like for a future project so I took a picture LOL I hit a great sale as they has their "flat folds" $4 a yard which are great quality quilt fabrics off the bolt that I love to buy from whenever I can LOL
This is the fabric I bought...as you can tell I am think I am ready for spring! LOL

HI From St George Utah

DH has a conference here and so I joined him for a few days away from life
St George is nice...over 60 and though the sun is behind clouds for now the best part is NO SNOW! LOL
We have a nice condo with just one bedroom this time but DH gets a whirlpool tub which he misses when he is away from home.
Not sure what else we will be doing after his conference maybe going on a search for petroglyphs that he has heard about near Santa Clara, Ut but it's sure to be a lazy take it easy rest of the week!
I can't post pics until I get home but I have taken a few neat sunset pictures on the way down so far.
See ya in a few!

People and Places Layout

Second two pages for Cozumel on our cruise. No journaling so far but I a still deciding if it needs journaling since I did a lot on the first page. DH says he doesn't remember some of the pictures LOL He asked me "now where was that?"
Supplies are mostly the same with the last pages I posted.
Sigh...it would be nice to be back on a cruise right about now!

Fog...

Fog

The fog comes on little cat feet....











Sits looking over backyard and city...



















On silent haunches....










... And then moves on

(with apologies to Carl Sandburg)

Looking out my back and front door as the inversion begins the day and so far the cat has moved on each day and we have sunny skies!

Back to Cruisin'

I wish I meant a real cruise but at least I can re-live my 2007 cruise with the pictures and pages I am creating. LOL
I wanted to get a start on a couple of pages before I take off for a St George, Ut break with my DH for his conference. We have gotten a Timeshare getaway at the Worldmark Timeshare and are looking forward to hopefully some warmer weather and a chance to get away!

These pages are of our time in Cozumel Mexico our first Mexican port. It was our shopping stop so we stuck to the main shopping drag but we still managed a couple of pretty shots. I posed with a Day of the Dead display in a tiny museum and DH got a picture with some young men dressed up for tourist pictures. I admire them for trying to earn some money by doing something that made them stand out. Wish we could have done more for them but the tip for the "free picture" will hopefully help them out. That is something that I am grateful for that my children and grandchildren are taken care of and don't feel the obligation to help support their family.
Supplies are from a DCWV paper stack and cardstock stack. I hadn't planned on this color scheme but after finding the yellow PP in the stack it seemed to say Mexico to me so, there you go from there.
Flowers are prima and others from my stash, glitter brads are Doodlebug and Oriental trading, also ink by Stampin Up and I even used some MM paint too. I did the word Cozumel with my Cricut which was supposed to weld all together but some how even though it showed welded, it cut 3 pieces LOL Oh well next time I will be sure to overlap just a bit more. I distressed the word with paint.

And that is probably more than you wanted to know!
(bye the way I just found out I spelled Cozumel wrong so I will be re-doing the title soon but not today!)

First Birthday Layouts

For some reason these pages were so hard to pull together...I really had something else in mind but wanted to use the two Storytellers Club kits that I had pulled out ready to scrap. Anyway this is what came out in the end. I take so many pictures that it is so hard to choose only a few! LOL

We have a few family traditions for the first birthday...spaghetti for dinner and the baby gets to eat his own cake with his hands and my s0n wanted to make sure we did each of them. As you can see baby I had a great time!
His birthday was last April so Nana is very slow at getting these done.

Winter Sunsets

The other evening I looked out my kitchen window to this beautiful sunset. Almost makes winter bearable LOL Love the look of the bare trees and the sky in the background.

Scrapping a few days ago

Not sure what happened to my edited picture but a few days ago I did a couple of pages from the pictures I had sitting on my scrapbook table. Of one of my most favorite subjects my older grson I.
A couple of every day set of pictures from time he spent with Nana and Papa. First page was spaghetti o's and how our dog Belle watched every spoonful he ate LOL

Second page is some fun he had with a tape measure and Papa...you notice that Belle manages to sneak in many photos with I in them! They are very good friends and Belle is very happy when I comes to visit because she gets to play doggie vacuum when I shares his cookies and is done eating and loves to treat Belle to his leftovers LOL

Snow is done...for now

Got up this morning to blue skies and no more snow!
Hurrah! I was getting cabin fever since I wasn't about to go out in this stuff...such a chicken aren't I? LOL
Not sure how much new snow but I would venture to say maybe 8 inches or so?

Spent the past few days doing some reading and a bit of sewing on my Civil War Love Letter blocks...it was so bad with the snow that the President of my quilt group cancelled Tues. meeting. I was NOT looking forward to driving yesterday so it was a good thing LOL
I will share my blocks soon. I need some Triangle papers that my friend usually prints for me to complete 2 of the blocks so I am at a standstill on those blocks and one more needs the paper foundation that she also keeps the CD for our group so I am stuck on those two for now. That's OK as I need to do last month's blocks LOL Plenty to keep me busy for sure.

Happy New Year!

We gathered at home for a mellow stay at home New Year's Eve 08 celebration.

The biggest thing happening was the annual puzzle that DH and kids love to do. I am soooo not a puzzle person so I let them enjoy! LOL And the sparkling grape juice that turned out to be very sour and yucky!

DH and son A finished the puzzle Jan 1, 2009 at close to 10pm. Now it is in it's box much to their dismay!

Here's hoping you have a great 2009...that's what I am planning.

Gosh Has It Been That Long?

Well I knew it would be hard to keep up with the blog during the time my DD B and family were here but I thought I would be able to post once in a while but I guess I was really wrong!
Yes we had a very snowy Christmas week with snow almost every day until Sunday after Christmas. Now we have been dry and the snow has been slowly melting away but I know it probably isn't over for the winter!
Here are a few Christmas pictures.

My special delivery service for neighbor treats! DD B sonIL B and baby A with Chex Mix for my neighbors.

Christmas Eve family dinner...soup in a bun or a bowl depending on if you choose Broccoli Cheese and Chicken or Minestrone all quite yummy!

Christmas Jammies picture and as you can see we don't go for the matching jammies LOL

MY two little darlings under the tree...that was quite a feat to get that picture LOL
I will share more soon but just wanted to say "Hi" and hope you all had a great Christmas.