LIving in Utah in June

So, I do a lot of complaining about HAVING to live in Utah...it's hundreds of miles away from the nearest ocean beach, it's a couple of thousand of miles away from my parents, siblings and DD and family.  It gets dang HOT in the summer and snows often in the winter.  My skin gets dried out from the low low humidity (less than 10% today for example) but.....
There are some wonderful compensations.  Being a paper crafter  this is one of the perfect places to live for crafting sales  LOL  There are quite a few major companies headquartered here in UT and we do get the advantage of their warehouse sales. 
One of those companies is DCWV.  I love this company because they are always innovating and changing to the trends but still offer most of their classic items for a long time after they first are introduced.  So, here was my latest sale purchases

$5 and I got all this!  back 4 vinyl quotes about Family, 3 complete stacks of Cherry Limeade pp, large stack of Recollections basics, pkg neutral colors chipboard set, and 25 various but mostly cupcakes and chocolate themed cs paper.  Yep I am a lucky lady to live here.

And I wanted to show you some of our summer garden harvest already!
Peas and summer squash fresh from the garden.  We had the squash last night and will eat peas for supper tonight.  Mr Creative has worked really hard on the garden this year and we are seeing the rewards!

Design Wall Friday and More...

I am feeling pretty darn good with all I accomplished in the sewing/quilt room this week.
I have already shown the two quilts I got bound earlier this week.  Next I finished two more blocks for my Victoria's Friendship Quilt they are little bitty 4 inch blocks but luckily are pretty simple.  It was fun to fussy cut the floral bars on the Shoo-Fly block and the corners of the Crown block.  As we get closer to finishing up this quilt I am feeling free-er to do more fussy cutting because I know I have plenty of fabrics for finishing.

Next finish is the 2012 Baby Challenge Quilt for New Friends Quilt Circle.  I am a green and pink girl and decided to sash the featured print with it.  OK, I whined a lot about having to use flannel but as my friend Peggy says "it's part of the challenge this year"  I did another machine binding and if you notice I didn't show a close up  LOL...still working on making that look better but it will be a very sturdy binding for sure.
Last night Mr Creative and I went to an auction in the Salt Lake City area and we had our eye on three specific things.  A pretty set of china (which I didn't win), an antique (OK, 1930's-40's era) toy train and an oak hutch top....

Yep, I got the hutch top!  I am so excited to have a place to display more of my special collections and dishes.  It is sitting in front of a half wall that I am going to have Mr Creative and oldest son D use as the base.  I don't have a lot of room for a china cabinet but by placing it on the half wall it will allow me to have half of one  LOL.  It is in very good shape with all the medallions and pieces I will need to make it a beautiful display piece.  I am going to buy some lights to put in so that you will be able to see what I put inside.  I am a happy girl this morning.
Oh, yeah, Mr Creative got his train too!  LOL  We paid $90 for the train and $95 for the hutch so I tease him that by bulk mine was the better buy.

One More Thrift Store Buy and A NY Beauty

 From yesterday's shopping trip to DI I also found a great pattern for my grd's Cabbage Patch Kid doll.  When DD was a little girl I would buy these type of patterns that had an outfit for her and then a matching one for her CPK Deanna.  I was so pleased to find an unused pattern for future doll outfits .  You can see that the CPK iron-ons were still intact!  Gotta wait a bit until little K can fit the patterns but that's OK

This is my very first finished New York Beauty block!  I have to admit that it was my "learning" block and I had to undo and re-do a bit but it's so pretty.  This will be an all mixed up quilt using all kinds of prints from my 19th century stash.  No block will be the same but the fabrics will appear in multiple blocks.
I am hand piecing this one using INKLINGO which is making it so easy...REALLY it is!  LOL 
I have decided to continue by piecing the largest arc and then the middle one and then the center one and I will add the outside piece last to all the blocks. 
It will not be a get 'er done project but one I can take my time with.

Thrift Store and New Shoes

Here in Utah our local thrift stores are mostly Deseret Industries (DI).  My family loves to find all kinds of bargains there and since I had a bit of time to play today I went in to my local store.  I was looking for a jar to keep my homemade rosewater in but of course no jar for that but look what I brought home!
In the back is a candle holder for my Winterberry by Pfaltzgraff Christmas/Winter dishes.  Now I have a matched pair as I had bought one at a yard sale last summer...

The oil/vinagar bottle is going to join the others in my paper crafting supplies and the candy dish will now become my Kosher salt holder.  There is a funny story behind the salt container.
When my family visited us for my dd's HS graduation  we had a bunch of pineapple pieces leftover from the fruit tray after the party.  My sweet Mom decided to make a pineapple casserole for dinner the next night.  She needed some sugar and spotted the bowl sitting on my stove.  We dug into the casserole that evening for supper and YUCKY!  She didn't know I kept Kosher salt in my sugar bowl as we didn't use that much sugar  LOL  One day I spotted the little ceramic "tag" of word salt and knew it needed to come home with me.  I put away the sugar bowl and used a candy dish much like the one in the picture.  It had just been accidentally broken last week and I was glad to get a new salt container.
As for the shoes.  I went into Ross hoping to find a pair of flatter black sandals but saw these cute tan/nude ones and was thrilled.  I love White Mountain shoes because comfort is just as important to the company as looks.  These looked cute but they have the welcome bonus of being so very comfortable.

 

The only problem is the sticker that some "idiot" placed on the suede foot-bed!  Sheesh, as you can see it hasn't been easy trying to get it off and I don't want to ruin my sandals or have that sticky tag getting goo on the bottom of my foot.  I am going to do some surfing on the net and hopefully find a solution...stay tuned.

My Little Girl

When my son asked me to baby sit little Miss K on Saturday I jumped at the chance and of course decided to take a few pictures. 
Loved this shot of her and after some fiddling around with Picassa I came up with this sweet face.

New Friends BOM-2010 Finished

It's always good to have another quilt finished but this one is special. 
I lead New Friends Quilt Circle's block of the month  2010 ( I think  LOL) and this was one of the two quilts I did as the samples.  I did one that I gave to my grd C that was made with pink, black and white fabrics that turned out great, however this one I made for my living room and I love it.
I used 19th Century reproductions in pinks, green, tan/cream, and blues.  I wasn't sure about the blue but I think it adds a bit of a spark to the quilt.  It has been waiting quite a while for quilting and when I found out a new member of our group is a long arm quilter I decided to give her the quilt to do.  Her name is Mary Spencer and her business  is LIVING QUILTS.COM
 I requested feathered wreath's  and she did some great motifs playing the the feathers idea.  I think I will request in the future not such dense quilting but it's so nice to have something new for my wall and something to enter in our local show in July!  Hurrah!

Finished Friday...almost!

Yeah, I know it is actually is Saturday but it sounded better to say Finished Friday.  LOL
Well, each year my quilt group New Friends Quilt Circle does a special community service quilt project.  We call it our Baby Quilt Challenge.   Someone from the group purchases fabric and divides it into either fat quarters or half yards, depending on the fabric, and members of the group are asked to create a quilt to be donated to an area hospital for use with their NICU.   Last year the fabric with panels were chosen as the challenge and I did create a quilt top but unfortunately it never got quilted and so it sat in the UFO pile until Jan of this year.  I did get it about half quilted but then it sat again until this weekend.  It is finally finished. 
I often use the projects to work on new ideas and techniques.  Making the top worked out pretty well and I did the machine quilting myself...it has a bit to be desired but I tried out a stitch in my machine that did a wavy line that worked out quite well on most parts but I ended up with a bit too much stitching in the center of the quilt this time.  I also decided to work on my machine binding but with the binding already cut for a narrow hand bound quilt it was more tricky than it could have been and the corners are at bit wonky but it certainly went much faster than hand work!  LOL
I am glad that it is now finished and I can turn it in for this year's show challenge area.  Now to finished this year's quilt  LOL

"Celebrate" With Three Dog Night!

 

 

From the Quilt Room

Funny how things seem to go along in order and then before you know it chaos everywhere!  LOL
A picture of the design wall in my quilt room...

 Yep all those blocks show works in progress! 
Upper left New Friends BOM Debbie Mumm's 20th Anniversary Quilt
middle and lower left and across the middle Harry Potter Project of Doom blocks
peeking from behind the Harry blocks is a little LeMoyne Star table runner
lower center Red and Cheddar Feathered Stars
right lower orphan block basket
lower right Bonnie Hunter's Crumb blocks MY style
Upper and middle center applique blocks from Lori Smith's Victoria's Friendship Quilt
All of that are PIGS (projects in grocery sacks), UFOs (unfinished objects) WIPs (works in progress)  or whatever you want to call them. 
So of course I decided to start this....

This is the beginning of the New York Beauty done with 18th Century Repro prints in a mix and NOT match style.   This is my inspiration...but I will do my own thing.  I am using Cathi's from Quilt Obsession (see my side bar) idea of dividing my pieces into glassine envelopes.  So far it works great and I am on my way to making 16 blocks   I will be doing them the "easy" way with Linda Franz's INKLINGO method and they come together so nicely and with the lines printed on my fabric everything matches up.  Here they are ready to go and hopefully you can see the lines printed on the fabric for cutting and stitching.  THANKS Linda I would NEVER have tried this on my own!

Catching UP

Been busy doing this and that but not anything terribly exciting until last weekend with the Utah Scottish Festival. 
Had fun but...boy did we get hit with WINDS!  The sun shelters were going down left and right and displays were knocked over and papers and kilts were flying.
All of that happened on Saturday from about 11 AM until we left about 9 PM.  Most of us had our booths down by 3 PM and I felt bad for those who had them almost blow away with poles bending or snapping and covers lifting and tearing.
Fridays was much less windy and warm but that Saturday was a killer!
Here's a few pictures

Kitchen Herbs

I love growing herbs but I don't always have the best success with in-ground planting...unless it is something that almost grows all by itself!  LOL
I have a huge sage plant, chives that do very well and a rosemary in a pot that has made it through two winters in the house.  The more tender herbs are much less successful. 
I saw a cute pin on Pintrest where someone(s) had used kitchen colanders to grow plants.  Well, why not try the herbs in a few?  I had Mr Creative search the local thrift store for them every time he went and we ended up with three.  In went some of those cocoa fiber basket liners and then potting soil.  I figured they would do as well as in pots.  One warning I found was to be sure the metal containers didn't get too hot as they will "cook" the plants.  YIKES!
So far they are doing pretty well, I planted oregano, sweet basil, cilantro, and a stray petunia.  I think the basil is now ready to cut both in the colander planter and in the multi-plant pot that is growing herbs in the side openings and a patio tomato on the top.
Fingers crossed for a successful herb growing method at last!