Sunday, June 16, 2013

Summer Vacation Days 25 to 30

It has been a very busy week!  Mostly I sewed!  Tuesday morning, Janice and Marilyn came over to sit and stitch.  We laughed, chatted and sewed.  It was wonderful fun.

I had intended to work on Jennifer's quilt, but that kept me in a separate room, so I opted to sit in the big room and cut out another quilt.  3 years ago, I attended the Paducah Quilt show and purchased this really fabulous quilt kit.  Well, I finally started cutting it out.  It is a variation on a log cabin block but there are 4 different block styles so there is a lot of measuring and cutting of different sized strips.  I managed to cut up 4 fabrics for their blocks, out of 10 fabrics.  I guess I have some work to do.


Jennifer's quilt blocks


After quilting, we ventured out for lunch, then up to Jackson so I could pick up the Car Club T-shirts and show photos from Murry.  We stopped at the local quilt shop, It's Sew Easy, and Marilyn was hooked!  She purchased fabric for a bed runner she wants to make and that will be her first quilted item.  I found some fantastic fabric featuring Singer treadle machines that I will use to cover my new "ironing board".
Janice found a wonderful batik that has many bright colors, and will be perfect for her T-shirt quilt.





new ironing board fabric!

Off we went to Lowes, where Janice finished designing and organizing the new wooden floors for her house.  I finally picked out tile for the downstairs bathroom.  It was tough loading it into my truck.  Fortunately, I had the Lowes employee AND the kindness of another gentleman who just happened to be walking by.

Bathroom Floor Tiles

Wednesday and Thursday, I spent more time working on Jennifer's quilt.  The blocks became rows, and the rows became a central square. 

Jennifer's quilt without borders








 Friday, Marilyn came over again, I had the initial borders already on Jennifer's quilt, and since Marilyn was working on her first quilt, I sat in the big room again so I could help her out.  While she was working on a step, I stitched some placemats intended to be door prizes at next year's Bunny Run Car Show.  These placemats have been cut out and partially completed since last year.  It is just one more task I want to accomplish this summer.  I now have 5 sets finished.  Only 3 more sets left that are cut and unfinished. 








Jennifer's quilt with two borders.  One more to go!





Bunny Run Car Show placemats













Earlier this week, Terracycle had sent me two emails offering an additional 100 points each.  I only had to provide photos of my collection stations for the Beauty Brigade and the Candy Wrapper Brigade.  Well, since school is long over, my collection stations are very dismantled.  I had to get creative! I actually created two short movies using photos I took.  Here are just two of them.  
















Saturday, I had to meet two buyers in town, so I decided it would be a good day to stop by my classroom to see how all was.  When I approached the school, I could see piles of furniture in the hall ways.  I figured they were still cleaning.  I entered anyway and found that several of the rooms in our hall are cleaned and the floors waxed, not all and not the hallway.  My room is done.  SO, I spent a little time contemplating placement of the shelves and my work station.  I will need the handtruck to move furniture around!  Since I have a filing cabinet to move in, I decided to wait and take care of all of that at the same time. 

Upon arrival home, I continued to work on the placemats and Jennifer's quilt. 

Two other items I accomplished are to get Vince to rehang some framed photos: 












And this darling I picked up at Goodwill, it just caught my eye..a black wire wall hanging.  I did not initially know what I was doing with it, but then realized the little rings would work very well to hold photos.  Thus it now hangs on the wall in my small studio, holding photos of my friends and family!







I am sure there are many other small activities I have left out, but here are the highlights!
Next week:  Off to Energy Camp with Whitney and possibly a quilt retreat!

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Summer Vacation Days 21 to 24

Well, it has been a very busy few days!  Once again, I neglected to post daily since Friday, so I have to give you a jumbled mix of this weekend's activities. 
Actually, I am a bit surprised that it is Tuesday evening already.  Once again, I feel as if I have accomplished very little over the past few days.  Let us see what has occurred.

I picked up my vacuum from the repair shop again.  It is working much better.  The problem is a design flaw, so I have to live with it until it fails again then we will spend the extra money on a more permanent fix.  It does work quite well, and I was finally able to vacuum all of the carpets in the house.  Thankfully, we have wooden floors in about half the house (the part we spend most time in) and that is easily swept with my nifty straw broom.  Did I tell you that the broom was hand made here in Selmer Tennessee?  Hockaday brooms (http://hhbrooms.com/) has a broom corn festival every year and they demonstrate the making of these brooms.  I went last September and purchased my kitchen broom.  It is marvelous! 

 Saturday, Janice and I had our joint yard sale.  As always, she has more stuff to sell than I ever will.  I did very well for my collected items.  I sold more than half of what I brought there and thanks to a new facebook page for selling items locally, I have sold several more.  Mom and I plan to go to Jackson to trade in our books, possibly next week.  My garage is quite neat now, but still full of boxes.  In fact, I brought home several boxes of items. 

Janice had these really nice die cast metal cars and trucks that Vince and I  bought to use as door prizes for the Bunny Run Car Show in April.  As members of the club, we are responsible for contributing 10 door prizes each year.  Last year we brought in fishing lures.  They were not such a big hit.  Usually I make car related fabric placemats, but did not have time to finish those before the show.  However, for the next three years or more, we are set.  The cars and the placemats I plan to finish this summer will keep our door prize commitment met. 

I also brought home an antique wash stand. It needs a really good cleaning, but it is a very nifty addition.  Right now, I have my large pasta bowl in it.  I thought it added to its character!  
I also brought home several boxes of picture frames that Janice was going to take to the dump as they had not sold.  I rescued them, brought them home and will get those up for sale within the next two weeks. 

I worked  a little on Jennifer's baby quilt.  I have all of the small pieces sewn into 9.5 inch squares and managed to complete one entire row!  

Today, Janice, Marilyn and I had or sewing/quilting time this morning.  Janice was cutting out another quilt top and while I intended to work on Jennifer's quilt, I felt rude sitting at my machine in the adjacent room while she sat in the big room.  So, I pulled out a quilt kit I had purchased several years ago and began cutting that new quilt out.  (it is on the list of projects!!)  So, we all sat around my studio, cutting and sewing and chatting! 

We then took a field trip to Jackson (after lunch of course!).  I met up with Sherry to sell her an old sewing box that I had
Then I stopped at Serra of Jackson to pick up the Bunny Run Car Show photos and some additional T-Shirts for the quilt I am making for next year's show. 

Our journey took us to the quilt store where Marilyn was hooked!  She loved the fabric there and purchased items to make her first quilt.  We will work on that later this week.  I purchased some nifty fabric with treadle machines on it.  I plan to use it to cover my new ironing board (which was originally a table, and now serves as my 'big board' ironing board). 

We also stopped at Lowes where I purchased tiles for the downstairs bathroom floor.  Since we had the septic backup a few months ago, the floor has been just concrete.  The only task to complete in that room is the floor.  SO, Mom and I plan to work on that this weekend.  Vince will only be needed to either teach me how to use the tile saw or cut the tiles himself! 

Well that wraps up the past few days!

I am enjoying the journey!



Friday, June 7, 2013

Summer Vacation Days 19 and 20

I just commented to my mother in law that I have not done anything the past two days.  She said I did a lot.  Let us see: 

I picked up my dry cleaning and dropped off a tie of Vince's that has a drool stain on it. 
I picked up my prescription.
I sold two books on half.com and dropped those off at the post office.
I renewed the registration for Vince's Pontiac at the county clerk's office.
I took the plastic recycling to the dump, picked up the bag of chip bags they collected for me and snagged a cork out of a wine bottle in the glass recycling container as well as a couple of egg cartons from the plastic container!
I had lunch with Whitney in town, since I only ate half of my Subway sandwich, I saved the other half for dinner, then left it in my car overnight.  So that was tossed in the trash! ewwww IT WAS YUCKY!
I also cleaned out the pantry.  Boy was that a chore!  I managed to eliminate some Tupperware containers in favor of canning jars.  Thus I added more items to yard sale pile for Saturday.  I also found that I have 9 brand new Yankee Candle Jars in the pantry. 
I joined a new Facebook group here in town which is aimed at giving items away for free.  Freecycle is not very active here.  I have found homes for the box full of Cardboard shipping tubes, all of my old candles (not the ones in jars) and the extra glassware left over from the anniversary party. 
I uploaded the anniversary photos to Shutterfly and ordered some copies for friends and family. 
I cleaned out my fabric stash, sorting out small fabric pieces for my dear friend Debbie's postage stamp quilt.  I also managed to put together two bags of fabric for a charity quilter in Memphis whom I will meet up with in the coming weeks.
Tomorrow is the yard sale, and I know that I am more than ready to part with these items in my garage!


Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Summer Vacation Days 13-18

Vince and I have just returned from New Jersey and a TON of memories!

We drove to NJ, taking Sal's four wheeler back to him.  We have had that in our shed for several years now, and we are glad for the space that is now available.

The trip was fairly uneventful, we take two days, as the drive is long (over 16 hours of actual drive time).

New Jersey was just as I remember it, congested roads, huge houses (called McMansions for some reason), many people from New York that now call NJ home.  It also held many memories of school days, friends, old homesteads, favorite hangouts.

We spent Saturday at the Englishtown Auction.   It is not really an auction, but a flea market, but it has always been called the Englishtown Auction.  It was basically as we remembered it, loads of people selling all types of items.  A lot of brand new items, but the more interesting tables were those who were selling items from their homes.  Love to look through those stands!

We had lunch with my dear friend Kathy and her mother at a local Chinese food restaurant, food was great, company was better! 

We tried to get onto the beach at Seaside Park, but did not want to pay for a day pass at 3:30 in the afternoon, especially since we just wanted a walk, and the cost was $10 per person!  YIKES.  If we were spending the day, it would have been a different matter.  We did get to see the ocean and loads of dunes.  Our time was short due to preparations for the Anniversary Party.

Saturday, Rob and Isabel also arrived in NJ, we met up with them for dinner at Cranbury Pizza in Cranbury NJ.  Great pizza, just what you would want in NJ.  We ate outside and enjoyed the scenery of historic Cranbury.







Sunday, we arose early to attend services at the Cranbury Methodist Church. The service was fantastic, and Brother Ron showed great passion not only for God, but also for his congregation and life.  Communion was served on Sunday, and Bro. Ron encouraged everyone to take as much bread as they wanted to.  (I know you are with me here!)  So, when I stepped up, I said to Vince "Watch this".  I reached out and took the entire half loaf that Bro. Ron was holding and began to walk away!~  The look on his face was priceless and well worth the effort!  We all laughed and I returned the bread, took my portion and proceeded with the service.  When the service was over, Bro. Ron asked our names and invited us to their church picnic, as long as we did not eat all the food!  I believe they will remember us for a while.

The Anniversary Party was held in the Knights of Columbus hall.  I remember going there as a child for summer events with the Knights.  We had anniversary and birthday parties there as well.  The original building was torn down when the new road was built, and the new K of C hall is where we had Rob and Isabel's anniversary party.


 Everyone had a great time!  We laughed most of the time away.  I had collected some photos of us as younger people, and everyone had a chance to share those and laugh at ourselves.  It was crazy fun!


 Robert and Isabel finally received their wedding quilt.  It took me 2 years to get it finished!  I used the double wedding ring pattern, the rings are dark blue and white with an off white background.  I like how the white rings appear translucent. 








 My friend Eva's daughter, Torri is graduating from High School this year, and I made her a graduation quilt.  Her favorite color is turquoise, thus the color scheme.  When I give quilts, I fold them with the backing showing and tie them with a ribbon.  She loved the backing fabric, and did not realize there was another side!  She was even more excited once she opened it. 




 A number of my cousins were able to attend the party.  These are the cousins on the Christ side of the family.  It has been many years since I have seen them, and many years since some of them have seen each other!  After I gave Rob and Isabel their quilt, little Madison (front center) told me that she had wanted a present from the table, too.  I had to explain that those were presents for Rob and Isabel.  She was insistent that she get a present, so I resorted to telling her that she had to get married first. She was good with that!

Here are the girls!  My dearest friends and family.  This photo shows friends from high school and college, my sister and myself, my cousins.  We all had such a wonderful time that we decided that we should celebrate Rob and Isabel's anniversary every year in a different location. 

Right now, I am thinking Tennessee for next summer!  Perhaps a trip to Memphis along with the party?