Fickle as a Teenager..Updated

I think from now on I will refer to spring as a teenager!
Sheesh...we can go from a beautiful sunny day to winds blowing a hundred miles an hour! (OK maybe a bit exaggerated but not much!) Yucky grey skys and I bet more snow...sigh..

Here was a lovely sunny warm day about maybe a week ago?

A few days later with snow and icy cold

Today with the wind blowing like crazy and back to those cold skys again!

I guess we are really backwards here in Utah...March is going out like a lion this year!

Monday morning...yep it's the teen thing again. We woke up to snow as you can see...ARG!

Funny Bunnies

For all my ranting and raving about scrapbook magazines I will say that I have found some ideas I just loved. LOL

Saw this in Scrapbooks Etc...I think the current issue... or at least a facsimile of what was in the magazine and just loved the simple look and funny bunnies. I used the bunny from the Doodlecharms Cricut Cart instead of the Animal Kingdom they used (since my DD has borrowed it) and a frame I bought using a 50% off coupon of course and just some stash papers. Then added the little flowers and button brads as my own touch.

I hate that you can see my reflection in the glass and should have taken the pic without the glass but oh well...

PS DS A saw the bunnies hanging on the wall in the living room and said...
Looks like you got tired of making a quilt and just put them in a frame! LOL I told him they were paper not fabric and he says to me...You have me "brainwashed" with quilt stuff! LOL
Just had to share the funny.

A Morning Mystery

Everyone is ready to go with a mystery quilt project lead by CJ. You can see we are excited to see what fun project C is presenting.
C and I talked later and said it was kind of hard to find a project that would be do-able for everyone in our group, something that would be able to be done in a few hours and would adapt to any style of fabrics.

Although I didn't take pictures of my progress C did a wonderful job of filling all of her requirements and making everyone happy at the results. Here she is with her two versions of the quilt.

Below are a sample of all of the blocks we worked on. Can you believe how wonderful each one turned out yet so different.

top l-r
D used all blues, A used reds and greens, MA pretty pales
middle l-r
Mine 40's-50's inspired prints, N pretty purple, green and yellow, CN subtle warm greens, browns, rose, J scrappy fun
bottom l-r
M fun novelties picked by her gd, P went baby sized, K used browns

Not shown N and R who had to leave and J who wanted to work at home.

Easter Baskets and a little surprise...

Yesterday I was feeling poorly so in between some cleaning and laundry I would take a break and veg in front of the TV in my scrapbooking room. I also took the time to put away my stuff from the sat. swarm and pulled out the "lame basket" I did for the challenge Sat.

I needed to make three more so working from mostly leftovers and what Tomi called "rummage" items (in other words stuff that has been stuffed away in a basket for me and never touched since I bought them) I finished up the other three. The rules were that you couldn't "pick" through and find something but just reach in your deep dark storage spot and pick an item then use it as inspiration for a project. My rummage item you can hardly see but they are some cute brads I bought at the Target Dollar spot. Then I also pulled out the popcorn boxes I had cut for something else that ended up not being used. Using paper, ribbons and some Argyle bunnies cut with my cricut I created some little baskets to fill with goodies for my grkids. The original was a "test run" and I found that there were some things that I needed to do differently...

First of all his ribbon bows were cute but a bit overwhelmed with the blue gingham paper baskets and the bunny needed to be outlined a bit to show up. One is a girl bunny and the other three are boys.

So anyway there they are...

When I took the picture I sat them beneath my kitchen window for the light and when I was editing the picture I noticed a bird clinging to the screen outside. I have a Finch feeder right by the window and caught this little girl (I think) waiting her turn hanging on the screen! LOL

Some spring hope!

One of the first flowers of spring in my garden is an early jonquil that usually is one of the first bloomers. We had several days of over 60 degrees and the plants took advantage of that lovely warmth and sun. You can see just to the right of the flowers the Bleeding Heart plant sending up it's first shoots too. Each year I try to remember that plant needs dividing but I forget LOL..maybe this year I will remember. Of course being spring here in Utah today got much colder and cloudy and began to snow and rain tonight. Sigh...

Took this picture in the Target parking lot Sat evening after stopping to pick up a copy of Twilight the movie...and yeah I watched a good deal of the extra stuff before bedtime LOL Anyway... this was such an interesting sky that it called to me for a picture.

Getting Buggy on Saturday

Here we are the March 09 Cricut Swarm Utah group and don'g we look fine?!
We had tons of fun, great food and lots of laughs as we spent the day together scrapping and cardmaking together. I love all of the fun poeple there!

A few decided to to ATC's and swap them and they were so cute I took a pic even though I didn't make one.

At the Scrapbook Expo

Been looking forward to attending the Scrapbook USA expo in Sandy Utah all winter. It's a great break and a chance to do some shopping too!

I have to confess I forgot my camera today...even had it sitting on the table but as I changed "purses" I just plain forgot to stick it in my bag so no pictures unfortunately.

I was a very good girl and did some picking and choosing at the booths my biggest purchase was at the Scrapworx booth since they had a great buy on acrylic albums...$5 for the 8x8 and $3 for the cute scalloped edge 6X6 ones. Other than that it was just a little bit here and there.

There are some companies that mostly had products they had overstock on and stuff they were clearing out which was nice at the Basic Grey booth as I was able to get some nice ribbons, brads and buttons but resisted the kits and papers. I was looking for Cowboy themed stuff this year as that is what Camp Nana will be themed this year LOL

Anyway, tomorrow is our Cricut swarm and scrapbooking. I am packed and have kits all ready for the pictures and hope I don't have to buy much at the store but I will cope!
I will remember my camera this time and share a few pics after the swarm.

New Friends Celebrate National Quilting Day

A few years ago some of the members of the board decided it was time for our quilt group New Friends to not only celebrate National Quilting Day (usually the 3rd Sat in March) but also give back to our community and the City of American Fork. We decided to hold what we call a day of Quilt Celebration and offer free to the public some sort of instruction and displays.
This year CM was in charge and she conceived the idea of doing a "free quilt". The plans were to offer instruction through out the day of 12 different blocks by members of the board, and along with members of the group sew up a sampler quilt. It was a wonderful success this year with several people joining us for instruction, lunch and quiltmaking time.

Group members had the choice of creating a quilt to keep or to donate it to our ongoing charity projects. I volunteered to teach the Sawtooth Star block demonstrating how to do flying geese and a bonus of how to make them dimensional. I wasn't able to stay the whole day as it, as usual is a busy Sat but got two of my four blocks done for a baby quilt. I will be sure to take a picture when I complete it. I just wanted to do something that wouldn't end up in the pile of unfinished projects as usual so it will be small but cute! LOL

Pictured above is a collage of one of our instruction times and lunch which was a pot luck of soup and salads. Yum as usual!

Our long time board member CJ gives me a happy smile as she works on her project.

And all finished our 2009 fund raiser quilt...isn't it darling? CJ and ND did this one for us bright and happy and hopefully will bring in some good money. We use our money to buy batting fabric and other supplies for our donation/charity quilts. It is so helpful to be able to create them right in our quilt room with quality supplies. We also have bought all kinds of supplies used by the quilters like, rotary cutters, mats, blades, and even purchased machines that we provide for the members to use. We have several who are not up to hauling their machines any more and it makes it so much easier when we have techniques to teach, and those donation quilts to work on!

Let me know if you want to buy a ticket or 20! LOL

So, what happened?

OK so sometimes I wonder if there are sewing pixies...not the nice ones....who mess around in my sewing room while I am not looking!
I am pretty sure that I cut all the triangles at the same time and they should be the same size, right?

Well as you can see this block is not square and not the same size? OK I guess my sewing could be off which is not unusual. Or maybe when I removed the freezer paper I got the bias edge off. However I don't think that can account for this bad of a mistake.

So I squared up those two bottom pieces as best I could then finished the block and used my iron and gasp, pressed the heck out of it! LOL
I have plenty of square up room on these blocks but it was just so strange. I did measure the top part of the block and it looks like it is 1/4 inch larger than that bottom right pair so something got messed up way in the beginning. Oh, well it is almost finished just needs the center and it will go in the pile.

Harrisburg PA Quilt show LO

Finally something to show for the past couple of days at the scrap table!
These were from the same trip to PA. back in 2006 and the main reason we actually went, LOL, the quilt show and workshops.

If you remember a few posts ago I ranted about the layouts from magazines? These are the pages I was looking for inspiration for and why I was having SUCH a HARD time finding any. When I take pictures of a quilt show they are usually my favorite quilts for one reason or another such as the technique is special, or the colors or fabrics chosen are special or it is just a beautiful quilt to me so I WANT to use those pictures to remember the trip. Maybe I am just more of a visual person and would rather see 10 pictures rather than one "good" picture and a page of journaling?
Well anyway this layout (S) was a bit challenging as I wanted to focus on the photos and what I saw and was attracted to at this show.

Supplies used
pp's Costco stack, cardstock, inks from Stampin Up, Titles from Cricut Opposites Attract cart, scallops and arrows from Accent Essentials (?)
I used the arrows to point out the enlarged photo for example on the lovely floral quilt those are 1" squares that make up the design!

A card for today...

One of the young couples in our church is getting married on Friday and since I had a challenge to do a "spring looking" card I thought it would be a good time to make their card.

Used a DCWV card stack and only had to add a greeting sticker and jeweled brad along with a stamp CTMH.
Now to pick out a gift! LOL

Three Days in a Row!

Gosh I can't believe I have posted layouts from three separate days! I usually don't do scrapping for that many days in a row! LOL

Anyway this is for a challenge...use felt, circles, red and bling on one page.
Youngest DS brought me his stack of school ID's saying I am going to throw these away if you don't want to scrapbook them. They sat on my table for about a month and then with this challenge and an idea I already had in my head here is the layout!
Supplies:
PP from stash, cardstock from scrap stash, felt letters from craft store, sticker alphas from stash (maybe Making Memories?), glitter brads Oriental Trading

A Quick LO and spring showers?

Did this layout for a challenge to use green or at least 70% green on a page. I had a variety of leftovers from a kit and papers so I decided to join them all together with a couple of fun pictures of my sister P. The quote is an interesting one from Thomas Jefferson oddly to me kind of got with the pictures.
Love ya' P!
Supplies: Storytellers kits, misc papers from stash.

then of course because it is March we had an expected spring snow shower...rather blizzard like for a while but Belle "had" to go out of course. So I took a picture out the door until I was getting hit in the face with that snow! LOL
When she came in she had lots of snow on her back but loves the towel massage before she can go through the house with wet paws and fur

Valley Forge first two pages

We had the chance to visit Valley Forge after our trip to Philadelphia didn't work out. I am so glad we did because it was an incredible park and Sept was a lovely month to tour around. I am sure there was more we could have seen but all in all it was great.

Supplies
cardstock, Storytellers Kit, ink, title cut with my Cricut and Plantin Schoolbook cart

My Scrapbook Rant...

OK so what do you notice about these scrapbook layouts?

AS I have been looking through the most recent 3 scrapbook magazines Scrapbooks etc. trying to get inspiration for my cruise and Pennsylvania pages I have noticed a real annoying (to me of course) trend. One photo, or one large and a few small photos lot's of "embellishments" a big one word title and lots of blank space.

When you are doing a special photo or maybe a place to showcase a personality trait etc., OK it's good but most of us just don't scrapbook that way, or at least that is my experience. I want to find examples to help ME scrap the wonderful travel photos and unless I go back to 2004 or so to even find examples to use.

The other thing is that although they aren't, all the pages could be made by the same person.
I guess what I am saying I don't mind trendy styles and supplies but how about a little variety in style? I pay good money for these magazines and just get frustrated when I don't have much inspiration for my own pages.

So what do you think? Am I just a whiner or anyone else feel this way?

Scrapping the Blue Ridge Parkway

When DH, my Mom and Dad and I took a trip to Hershey/Harrisburg Pa a few years ago to experience a quilt show we took the opportunity to travel back on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We didn't do the whole thing only from Waynesboro, Va to somewhere near Staunton but it was a beautiful drive. It was heading into fall but still nice and warm.

I grew up making fall leaf trips to the Parkway and camping trips in the mts of Virginia and North Carolina and it was fun to share this part of my younger life with my DH who had never seen this part of NC and Va

We made a stop at a living history cabin near Humpback Mt. and our host explained that they are trying really hard to recreate life close to the turn of the century mountian "farm"> I loved the way they had used quilts...vintage bye the way...all through the cabin. It was a great stop and the host gave us some starts for plants because they found they weren't "authentic" to the time period so they had to go! Mine didn't survive the trip but I am pretty sure my Mom had luck getting them to grow.

Supplies used:
Magic kit from CTMH, cardstock and brads from my stash, Maya Road ribbon, sticky stitches, Thickers, CTMH stamp set...Reminisce (?), inking and journaling by me!

It was great to be creative in the scrap stuff again! LOL

Parkour...

There is this "extreme" sport where people, mostly young men, run, jump, slide off and in general just with their own strength and speed create their own sport. I think my little "I" might have a future in that! Not for the faint of heart... watch this youtube if you you dare!
I am not sure I would want anyone I know to do this but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jquXcwooV6A

DH H and I took him to our little local big toy a couple of days ago and he couldn't stop climbing those stairs, sliding, running and trying to climb his way to the top of the big toy.
Scared the pants off me a few times but he was an intrepid boy and had a great time.

This shot shows the static he created as he slid down that slide! He sure got my son D's hair for sure as it is fine and blonde as can be.

Nana and her boy...

Papa assists in the crazy climbing and acts as "I's" safety harness.