Does this Happen to YOU?

I am really in the mood to finish up a few little projects that don't have much left to be done.
This little quilt was supposed to be done in July but it got put on the back burner for months until I decided just to finish it up. The quilting is a mess...too close together and too jerky but in the end hopefully the baby who gets it will be warm and grows up Loving Pooh Bear and friends.
So I used up all the leftover bits and pieces of the top thinking I had enough to bind the quilt and as you can see it will end up about 8-10 inches short! GRRRR!
So what's a quilter to do? I will raid my stash and hopefully come up with a suitable piece to finish the binding after all.
I will let you know.

Family Traditons

Every family has traditions even if you don't always think that some of the things you do together are official tradition.
Christmas for me as a child had a number of traditions but one that always seemed rather magical was the Advent Wreath. Every year my Mom would make sure that this special wreath appeared on our table for the Christmas season and there was always a big beautiful one at the church too. During Sunday School I made a miniature one, probably more than one time, that had a ring of Styrofoam, plastic holly and small candles for the four Sundays of Advent.

I was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints as a teen and then came here to Utah for college where I met and married Mr Creative. Utah and the Mormon Church doesn't have the same traditions of the Advent Season and so no wreaths to be found and especially hard to find are the sets of candles. When I do find them I stock up and I haven't found them for two years now and my stock pile is dwindling. I did continue the tradition of the Advent Wreath with my family and over the years have made several different ones for our table. A few years ago I got lucky and Joanne's Fabric and Craft had a "bare" candle wreath that I was able to meld with an artificial greenery wreath and also carried the candles as well.

I wanted to pass the tradition on to my children and so this year found one lonely wreath at Joanne's in Draper and bought some purple ribbon for decorating it and presented it to my oldest son and his family today, the first Sunday of Advent. I gave them one of my carefully hoarded sets of candles as well and told them that they are like "gold" LOL

Mr Creative was supposed to create a listing of scriptures to read for each day before Christmas but time got away from him so that will have to come sometime this week hopefully. I made my son and grandson pose with me to commemorate the event...not such a good pic of me and little I but DS D looks great!
What traditions are you passing along to your family?

Fun Little Project

Thanks to OkieLadybug from the Cricut world I found this great idea for "altering" (which is Cricut speak for covering with paper and embellishments) a little mini lunch box tin from Dollar Tree.
She had created and shares the cut files for the little box and then she has a great video post so that you can watch her create.
I am making sme gifts and thought this would be just perfect as a little mini photo album holder.
The papers are from a couple of different sources...the paper for covering the box and the little album was from two stacks sold by Michael'... Holiday Collection Patterned Paper and Cardstock by DCWV and the little bird is from a Christmas Glitter patterned paper stack 2008 by DCWV. Ribbon Making Memories, buttons from my stash, Perle cotton and hemp from my stash. The Merry Christmas stamp is an old pre-inked stamp.

Here is inside the tin with the mini book

Just a thought. Okie paints her tin and then uses ink to distress it...I was too lazy and just left it as it is but you can see the blue color and print on the edges...maybe I might have to either see if I can find some with different colors printed on the tin or actually paint them LOL
It uses Plantin Schoolbook or she has a file for George too and if you have those two and even the trial version of the Design Studio you can make these great tins!

Black Friday Shopping...or

I am very very spoiled!
LOL

One of the bad things about living in Utah is the lack of a beach and the ocean and being so far away from my family in NC. However, one of the great things about living in Utah is Roberts Arts and Crafts stores.
Long time ago Roberts was known as Provo Craft being located in...
You guessed it Provo, Utah. When they began to expand they became Roberts Crafts and they separated from the Provo Crafts part of their business and Roberts was the retail while Provo was the developers of new products for crafting. Funny thing is that even that they are so closely related we here didn't always get the newest supplies most especially the Cricut products but things are being made up for in the past couple of years with the mega sales of Cricut cartridges.
Lucky me today was one of those sales...lowest price on ALL regular carts...4/$100...minis $14.99 and solutions $19.99. I had talked to DH and said that I really don't NEED any new carts but maybe I would go look and see what I could find for DD for Christmas...
YEA, Right! I am sure he thought and he was right. As you can see I manged to find 4 that I "needed" and one for a gift (which is why one is hidden with the Cuddlebug folder I got to make some cards...after all it was 40% off too)
So, DH Mr Creative Days just smiled when I returned after shopping and I even waited until almost 9 am to go thinking they might be sold out of the ones I was interested in as a sort of preventative LOL

Oh yea I did get tops for the family to wear in an upcoming photo to come does that count as Christmas shopping?

Thanksgiving at Our House

Here we are ready to eat. The traditional family pose with Belle in Aaron's arms LOL.
As you can tell is was a sunny day with the afternoon sun shining through the window in the kitchen making it a challenge to take decent pictures.

Grandson I with an olive on his finger. Every kid has to do that don't they?

The day before I had two helpers in the kitchen making some side dishes. Grson I and I making the Broccoli Cheese Rice Casserole. along with his sister C who were great mixers.

Everyone enjoyed their contributions to our meal even tho C spent the day with her Dad's family. I made sure she could have some of the leftovers when she gets back.

Gobble Gobble

To all my family and friends near and far...
Happy Thanksgiving

Instead of Cleaning the Bathroom...

Yeah, I should be cleaning the bathroom or maybe the fridge or de-junking my bedroom but....

I just needed to add the final borders and this top was done so...that is what I did! LOL
The color looks off on my screen but it was in bright sunshine so maybe that didn't help. I know it is wrinkled and needs pressing, and some thread trimming and maybe even some final applique but I am thrilled to have this done before next year's projects start piling up!
Thanks to Debbie Mumm's free BOM for 2008 (I think) I was able to make two different color palates of this great wall quilt. It is destined for my living room when I don't hang seasonal quilts.

Because of....

This.....

I created these...
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This was such a quick and simple way to make some wonderful cards.
The first I made using the instructions from Christmas With The Cricut and it was so fun and easy I did a second one using a different cut. Only problem is that I haven't figured how to create the oval opening in a rectangle to cover the "tape"on the back side of the card but in the end I am OK with it just the way it is! LOL
I wish I could show how pretty the sparkles are...kind of like seeing Edward (for those Twilight fans out there) only in this case in blue not "diamond" but I can buy some "diamond" glitter next time it is on sale or even use a coupon. Hummm I think I have one burning a hole in my purse!

Get 'Er Done!

On the cutting board you see the final trimming of the flying geese strips for the last border of my quilt.

This is a wonderful time for me because I can really see the perfect points and lovely geese coming to life on the border strips.

Adding the first of four sides...yuck my machine table is cluttered!

Ready for the last side and it will be done.

TA-DA!
My top is done except for one small thing...taking out all the paper behind the flying geese...Not so fun but I don't mind so much since that means it is the last thing before making the quilt sandwich!
I love my top and can't wait to hang it in my bedroom above my bed. Maybe I will get ambitious and paint!

Just a Little Bribe...

OK, so I am not above spoiling my grandson with a little "bribe" to finish our shopping at Walmart. As usual kids want everything in sight and this 5 pack of Hotwheels were a good inexpensive choice over other things he had his eye on! LOL

Just love to watch little boys playing with cars, trucks and things that go vroom.

Weekend with Grandson I

I's parents celebrated their 3rd anniversary by taking a few days off and spending a weekend at Wolf Creek Resort in Ogden Canyon so...
Mr Creative and I had I for the weekend. Good thing there were two of us! LOL He's an active normal 2 1/2 year old and Nana has lots of stuff that he wants to explore that we always tell him, No. It was surprising that he didn't kick up a fuss one time the whole weekend and remained cheerful and happy. We took him on a little trip to Park City to visit a vacation resort but they neglected to tell us that kids under 10 weren't "allowed" so they gave us our gifts and we headed out to play at a park and eat dinner on the way home There was a small train show at the library that I and Papa enjoyed too.

Hard to tell from the pictures but Park City had snow and it was very cold in the late afternoon. He did enjoy running around and playing on the big toy but found it icy in places and he had to borrow Papa's gloves which wasn't terribly successful. LOL

I took this picture of some snow making machines going at the Park City Ski Resort. It was pretty cool to see these plumes of white shooting out. Mr Creative said the snow felt much like regular snow but a bit grainy.
Didn't get anything done around here except for a bit of cleaning and no crafting at all!
I had to take a long nap as I slept in our bed and ended up soaking through in the middle of the night despite a 11 pm change. I was plenty worn out...I guess it proves why children come to us when we are young! LOL

New Moon Fun

If you are a Twilight Saga/New Moon fan check out this blog for some great giveaways!
http://giveawaytoday.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-moon-giveaway-5-for-november-12th.html

Storytime Slide show

My gr'son I and I have been attending pre-schooler Storytime at the AF Library this fall and we always had a great time Wed. was our favorite day because by the time we dropped off his sister at school, headed to the fitness center for Nana's walk/weights and I would play in the childcare, then headed home to clean up (Nana not I LOL), it was time for Storytime at the library. We always visited a fast food place for lots of indoor play and lunch, his favorite being Carl's Jr since it has a great play area, then home to Nana's for hopefully a nap and if not some playtime until Mom picked him up after work.

Unfortunately storytime is over for the year so I and I will have to come up with something else to do each week. I took some pictures of his last time at the library and a picture with him and his "teacher" Miss Laura!
Thanks, AF Library it was great! Check out the slideshow in the sidebar and see!

8 Sets of Flying Geese and Fall

I love foundation piecing to make everything fit perfectly together but gosh I need to make 7 more sets of these flying geese by Tues.!
I am thinking with all the daily stuff plus a trip to Joanne's I probably will be behind once more LOL
I have them all pre-cut and ready to stitch, thank goodness so once I get started they go pretty quickly. Lucky for me.

You might recognize this little wall hanging from my last post....sort of.
My quilting friend PN showed us this design at my last New Friends meeting and I thought I might need to have something to show for my church women's' group so I decided to do my own version as a sample. I am not going to need it after all as a teaching sample but it's nice to have this little WH for fall. It has a few "problems" I don't like the autumn leaves fabric on the last round of the top and in my haste to get it done I didn't pay attention to the nature of the design of the wide border fabric and it turned out quite wonky on the sides LOL. It is a CW era reproduction and after studying quilts from that era, it often happens that the women who made quilts didn't pay attention to continuing designs as they didn't want to waste fabric I suppose. So as everyone and their dog says now, "It is what it is! LOL

FYI Givaway

Beth is giving away a great prize on her blog...check it out...but remember that I "need" to win! LOL

New Friends Presentation Old Block, New Designs

In my post about the pink and green log cabin sample I explained about our New Friends Quilt Circle's meeting featuring the Log Cabin block. I won't go over that again but my friend CM sent me pictures of our examples from the meeting to share on my blog.
Starting on the left side of the couch...
ND made an example of a Winter House and Trees little quilt that is set using a Log Cabin method. She got the idea from the most recent Quiltmaker magazine which had the pattern online, lucky for us. It is a darling idea and she said except for having to use a template on the roofs of the houses it was pretty quick and easy.
Next is CN's example of a folded Log Cabin which was an old method made "new" by using a method Foldy Stuff. It was interesting to +see a modern take on what was done 200 + years ago.
You see my sample above that and to the right of mine is CH's Log Cabin flowers. So pretty in 30's prints. Below that are blocks from member RB who is still in the process of creating her project which will turn the Log Cabin blocks into a star.
On the bottom right is a cute fall wall quilt by PN which she found on freepatterns.com. A quick and easy pumpkin themed project.

We also had several Log Cabin quilts for show and tell too...it was a great meeting and now we have some new patterns and ideas to keep us busy! LOL

It's Good to Have Something to Show

Some weeks or months it seems that I don't get as much accomplished as I wish I could. Many distractions and such have kept me from doing what I want to do so it was nice this and last week to get a couple of things to show. LOL
First are six more of the Civil War Love Letter blocks.
Since it is my turn to hostess the group I had to have my 6 ready with hints or tips to share yesterday. I was glad to see them finished and this time there weren't any that were "bears" to complete. the one on the lower right looked like it would be but it really wasn't.
I have been complaining to my friends that even though the foundations measured perfectly before sewing many of the blocks didn't square up to be six inches no matter how perfectly I sewed. It was really bothering me a lot! My friend CM gave it some thought and we have come to the conclusion that it just might be that will all the many seams with their bulk and threads the blocks are sort of shrinking as I sewed them and maybe adding a tiny bit to the foundation by enlarging the copy to over 100% I could compensate. So....I tried it with that bottom right block and....

yep, it was larger but it was too large LOL I went for 105% but probably could have gone for 102% and it might have worked. I am glad I tried it though and as soon as I have one with a bunch of seams and pieces I will try again.
My favorite of these it probably the upper middle with the wonderful red print and black to bring it out!

This little project was an example for New Friends Quilt Circle's monthly meeting. The board did a presentation to the group on the Log Cabin block...Old Block Pattern, New Designs. Our year long focus has been Everything Old is New Again and I had the idea for the Log Cabin presentation so I was in charge of researching and starting the presentation. I found this beautiful example of a quilt combining the Courthouse Steps version of the log cabin and a sawtooth/variable star and just loved it and wanted to use it to show a new idea with an old block. My friend CM helped me create the pattern with Electric Quilt but I wanted to show an example too so between all the stuff I had to do late Sunday evening and Monday night I cut and sewed a small example. The blocks are 9 inches finished and I used leftovers from my Debbie Mumm sampler. I love how it turned out but need to figure out a border since I used scraps LOL