I Have the Best Friend in the World!

Sometimes a friend comes into you life that really changes things!
About 15 years ago I met my friend Carmen and my life has been so much richer than it ever could have been without her.

Today she asked me if I would mind taking her to Roberts Crafts (which is our local Hobby Lobby or Michaels) and I told her no problem as I needed to make a trip to Office Max for some ink and Big Lots for something for MR Creative.
I knew that she had been on the look-out for black yarn. When her friend passed away she "inherited" a big huge supply of granny squares that needed to be made into afghans. Carmen really enjoys the simplicity of sitting and crocheting using odds and ends and bits and pieces to make beautiful blankets that she then gifts to family and friends or most often donates to charities such as Project Linus and other groups that cater to adults and teens who are in need of comfort and care.
Yep, Roberts had the yarn she needed and then as she was checking out she added a Cricut "bundle" to her cart. It included an Expression machine, a Jukebox and a Design Studio program at a special price. She had mentioned that she had been watching the infomercial on TV and how much fun it would be to play with it. The checker asked if she knew what everything did and I smiled and said, "I will help her out with it".

After I put it in the trunk and got in the car she said "you just put your birthday and Christmas present in the trunk"
OH, MY! I first really told her that I didn't deserve such a gift and even after she explained I still don't think I deserve it, but she told me that she wanted to show her appreciation for helping her out for the past 5 years and she knew it would be something I would love and use forever (or as long as the machine lasted! LOL)
I just can't get over the love and generosity she showed me with this gift. I am boo-hooing as I type this.

I found Carmen when I was a beginning quilter and she urged me to join the local quilting group, New Friends but it took me a couple of years to finally take her up on it.
I got to know her a bit more a couple of years later when I joined in a round robin with the Utah County Quilt Guild and she was the leader. I had a month when I was behind and called her to ask if I could take an extra few days and she was so kind and told me that it would be just fine.
She reminded me of New Friends and before I knew it I was a member of the Night group and soon became president LOL
Carmen always guided and kept our groups going with lots of ideas, classes and suggestions. She encouraged me to design and teach my first group class, a simple Christmas sampler that is filled with good memories of her ability to help without taking over.

Over the years Carmen has been a friend and mentor to soooo many quiltmakers to-be and she has produced students who are wonderful quilters now. She never stops learning and exploring the world of quilts and has taken me to so many new experiences such as hand dying and painting fabrics, using templates on occasion, trying all kinds of new patterns and teaching me more than I can ever mention in one post.

Unfortunately Carmen and I share something not so good. We are diabetic. She and I have discussed many of the difficulties and unfortunately she began to have some real trouble with her eyes. Suffering many problems that have affected her vision and ability to drive. Because I am a homemaker and don't work outside my home I have been available to take her to many appointments over the past few years when she knew that it wouldn't be a good thing to be driving. She also had other things when I would give her a helping hand with the driving. We often used this time as an excuse to "have lunch" and do some JoAnn's or quilt shop visiting and it was so much fun. I loved my time with Carmen as we could talk about almost anything because she is so well read and keeps up with current events like me. She is sort of like an older sister or maybe a cousin that lives near me. My own family is so far away and unlike so many of my friends, I didn't get to have sister days or lunch with my Mom or a cousin and I have been blessed to have her in my life.
I still feel like I have been given much more than I have given to her but as she once said about a different friend...
"If she wants me to be her friend so badly, I can be bought with a Featherweight, or in my case an Expression gift. I still would always be her friend with out it but I am sooo lucky and blessed.

Thanks to my dear friend Carmen!

Homegrown Tomatoes

I was making salad for dinner last night from the last of the lettuce that Mr Creative had harvested last week and realized that we had only part of one tomato in the house so I went out to pick a few of the small cherry types we had growing.
These are wonderful little morsels of sweet tomato taste. I am not sure if Mr Creative remembered which one they were but I hope we can grow them next year.

My supper salad with our homegrown tomatoes and lettuce and a yellow pepper from the farmer's market last week. Yum-O

Happy Anniversary To Us

Mr Creative and I celebrated our 33rd Anniversary yesterday.
He, being the thoughtful guy he is had these beautiful flowers delivered. They are very cheery and happy aren't they.
No gifts for us this year maybe if we ever find an outside dining table we will get that. I told him we should buy a chainsaw to use in the yard. Not romantic but helpful! LOL

Bits and Pieces in the Scrapbook room

I guess I am in a cleaning mood or something.
Now that I have started getting the sewing/quilt room in order I have been thinking about all my goodies in the scrap/guest room and how jumbled they ended up when DD B and grson A stayed in it. I just sort of shoved stuff into some baskets and put them in our basement storage area "for now" Yea, that famous phrase.
So, when I went to Wallyworld yesterday I spied this really cute storage cart with lime green fabric bins and ahhh, haa! A way to coral those bits and pieces in the baskets LOL. So...more sorting and now I am down to one basket, the smaller one, and removed the top bin to put my boom box on that shelf with the next two bins being this and that and a drawer for ribbon.

I love ribbon and buttons so I have it more visible so that I can see what I have and use it! That's not all my ribbon but at least the ones I had in bags and tucked here and there are in one place now.

Update!

Can you believe it?
I spent this evening finishing up clearing the cutting station and even a couple of those ziploc bags of leftovers and tis is the result.
Not quite finished as you can see the pile of mostly patterns, print outs and a couple of teaching samples but this makes me sooooo happy!
The second picture shows the crumb quilt starts and smaller bits and pieces in the basket ready to go.
Makes me want to work on some of those wips (works in progress) waiting for me! But I think I deserve a break for the night! LOL

Un-Piling the Bits and Pieces

I am a piler-upper...
I remember going to a clean your house lecture and the one thing that made sense to me was NEVER put something down "for now" because if you do it starts to become a pile!
I want to clear off my cutting station but the part that isn't covered with the mat is a pile-ing spot. When I cut fabric then the bits and pieces or unused fat quarters and pieces of fabric end up piled on the cutting table. Sometimes things that have no place at the time end up there too.
I will stuff them in a zip-loc bag sometimes if they are for an on going project and once the project is done the leftovers tend to stay right in that bag.
After I returned from my weekly quilt friends meeting I was just annoyed at the bags and piles so I began sorting pressing and putting those bits and pieces into orderly shape. Little tiny pieces or leftover small pieces (and that is subjective LOL) went into a basket for a future project with my group. Bonnie Hunter has an incredible scrap quilts site where she not only shows many, many scrap quilts but shares directions and step by step tutorials all for free! What a WOMAN. I saw the Crumb Quilt project and thought it would be perfect for my evening quilting friends to do and donate for our yearly charity project. We have done everything from fall leaves, fabric challenge, twist and turn among many others. We are going to have a lot of fun creating our own version of the Crumb Quilt.

I also sorted a whole bag of leftover 2.5" strips and they went with the "worms" pile ( from the book Open a Can of Worms), I found a bunch of Nickles (5" squares) and then cut as many pairs as I could from various pieces of fabric in the piles and bags. They went to the Nickle stash for future projects. If the pieces were fat quarter sized then they are to be put into my fq boxes above the cutting table, not shown, by color and if they are larger then they go in the 1/2yd drawer or folded onto another shelf by color. Whew....

Now came the problem fabrics...too big to be in the Crumbs pile because I know they can be used in the future for small projects, and yet not a fat quarter! So....
I now have a new box labeled.....
Large Scraps LOL, Yup and for now if they fit then I will keep adding to the box but once it is full I am going to have to figure out something else or donate them to the Crumbs project.

I hate to show this but here is the messy pile in need of sorting! It is smaller now but still there. I will persevere!

Family Reunion and New Fabric

Mr Creative's family tries to get together every few years to see how everyone changes, tell family stories and of course eat like crazy! LOL
This time we headed to the tiny town of Marion...up near the much bigger town of Kamas...but just in case you don't know where that is it's not too far from Park City...hope that helps. Anyway our Nephew J and Wife A hosted the party and boy they did a terrific job. Serving us home smoked ribs, brisket, and baked chicken, with all kinds of yummy sides. Since I am a low carb eater I really appreciated that they only seasoned the ribs and added no sauces, letting everyone season their own. Amy made a really outstanding Pico de Gallo and NO one was hungry.
Of course they spent a part of the time talking family history and sharing a few pictures that Mr Creative's brother J
had printed from slides he had taken years ago. I am hoping he will be willing to share them so I can do some scrapbook pages for DH. I don't have many pictures to work from.
J and A had several activities ready to go for the many, many kids from an old fashioned hoops game to a parachute. Of course being the D family get together there had to be stilts. Mr Creative"S father had made stilts years and years ago and the family grew up with them. He remembers having one set of stilts that he had to climb the apple tree to mount...good thing they had short ones this time LOL

The only two adults who did the stilts were Mr Creative (in the navy coat) and our nephew D who is the same age as our oldest son D at 31. OK, Mr C said that he should have been given a bit of a handicap since he is 27 years older LOL!

This little gr niece S wanted me to take her picture in my sunglasses holding my stork scissors. She was fascinated by them.\

Now for the new fabric. Right before we left to head up to the party I found this in my mailbox! I love getting new fabric and I love ordering from the Fabric Shack online. They have a great clearance section and such reasonable shipping and fast delivery. I found when DD B was here that I had hardly any grey fabric so I found two, then I am always up for greens! LOL I got the two repros and one that I might add to my Debbie M BOM waiting for a border. The paisley fabric is going to be the background of the free BOM from Bunny Hill Designs of darling baskets. I am smitten with those baskets and one day I will make them. I am printing the patterns for later but I am planning to use the same background throughout the blocks but will scrappy up the baskets and other accents.

In Nana's Backyard

When grandson A visited us earlier in the month Nana had to take pictures of his adventures in the backyard. He usually had lots of fun out there with our "low tech" "low cost" toys.

He, like most kids, loved the sandbox we have out there. It is very small and just right for toddlers to dig and play with buckets, shovels and toys. His favorite thing was to excavate the sand to the grass! LOL

Mr Creative and DD B came home from a Walmart run with this red ball. He has been trained well by his Daddy B in the basics of soccer even at his young age! He enjoyed running back and forth in the yard, often with Belle in pursuit.

I got out the croquet set for him to have some different sized balls to play with and he mostly spent his time taking the balls out and putting them back in the case.

The day he was leaving to return to Texas he discovered my backyard gazing ball and surprise "That's ME, Nana". He ran back and forth finding himself in the glass.
Mr Creative and I loved spending out time with A. I was taking some pictures of Mr Creative and A when DD took the camera and snapped a few of all of us together. This one is so cute as we played around. DH was a good sport and kept on smiling LOL

A New Project...

Like I need another project to work on but, I HAVE to support my friends as they teach in our group so....
LOL
I guess that is going to be my justification for starting this quilt. I had purchased the fabrics a year ago from Connecting Threads for a class at the Utah Quilt Fest. Some lovely foundation pieced snowflake/stars but they turned out to be very very time consuming. So I set that stuff aside for maybe later?
Then when CN presented this idea to our group I thought YES! something to use those fabrics with. My original intent was to make a wall quilt for my bedroom and the new project will work nicely.
The pattern is from Carol Doak and is free...if you want to try it. It probably takes about 3 hours to make the whole block and it finishes at 12".

Everyone Sing to Big A...

Happy Birthday to you....Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday Dear A....

Happy Birthday to YOU!

My baby turned 20 on Sat and it seems that time just can't slow down no matter how hard I try to make it do so.
I got him some new ear buds just like mine that he was always borrowing only his are black mine are a lovely lime green. Mr Creative got him some shells for his gun so that they can go shooting soon. He couldn't find exactly what he wanted at a price he was willing for us to pay so he got some $$$ for when he finds it! LOL

We are so lucky to have our youngest son in our family. He is not the kind to be "all out there" but will surprise us with funny comments and some smart points. He loves to argue when he "knows " he is right but as he matures he is learning that it isn't always the most important thing ( or at least I THINK he is learning that)

Love Ya A!

It's Me and Kind of a Sad day

I know I have been absent from blog-land for quite a while now but between being busy with my family events, having my DD B and grson A visiting and just being a bit lazy, my blog just hasn't been updated for longer than I had planned.

Having A around the house has been such a wonderful thing. Since he lives so far away we don't get to experience the day to day happenings with a growing toddler. So much changes in a few weeks and it's not fun being a long distance Nana!

We had toy explosions in the living room, and family room. Little clothes and diapers, and books where ever you look. Someone to play with Belle and help her eat...more on that to come, and sand everywhere but the sand box!
As I walked around the house today doing some chores that were over due, I snapped a few pictures that showed me the differences.

Belle waiting by her medicine bottle for A to give her a daily pill.
The guestroom all clean an tidy once more
A forgotten sock that will be mailed off soon.
A car seat with only a plastic dinosaur in it.
No need to close the Papa-made gate since there was no one to keep in the backyard
and a covered up sandbox.

We sure miss you already A and B. Now it's only until Dec until we see you again.