in the rearview mirror

NoJo and Gumdrop had crazy hair day at school ... and Littlelle decided to participate, too......she doesn't have a lot of hair to work with, so that stretchy band with a bow is about as crazy as her hair can get...
...i went to see Little Nonnie ... she looks like she's in a race ... she was a bit peeved with me because i was later than i should have been and she thought she was gonna miss lunch...
...it rained for four days in a row ... we had to wait for a break in the storm to place flowers and a flag on GeeJay's grave ... i usually go on the sunday before because traffic in the cemetery is crazy on Memorial Day ... most of the graves were already decorated with the flags that Boy Scouts place on veterans' graves ... but they always seem to miss my dad ... so i take a flag with me, just in case ... and Auntia likes to leave a pinwheel...

...Gumdrop graduated from kindergarten ... the kids signed and sang i love little baby ducks ... it was really sweet ... we are all very proud of our little graduate...

can you believe that refrigerator??!!?? i bring home the bacon and Auntia is supposed to put it away ... there was a ham (yes, an entire ham ... blech - but still...) that i had completely forgotten was in there ... lots of fruits and veggies that made it in but never made it back out again ... too many eggs and too much butter ... and who knows what was in the leftovers containers - totally unrecognizable ... and then i found the turkey breast that i put on the middle shelf to defrost four days before ... it had been shoved to the back ... that was the last straw...

it's still a mess ... but at least the best if used by dates that were older than april are gone ... and i can find the oatmeal......this is Gumdrop, Auntia and NoJo in the movie theater as the credits for Star Trek were running ... i think i'll wait till it comes out on dvd to watch it again ... it was dark and loud this time ... and i found myself dozing off...

the cupcakes totes are about half finished ... the wall is weeded ... the geraniums, lobelia, tomatoes, basil, ivy, money plant, bocopa, lily,and more geraniums are all planted, the grass is cut and trimmed (fodder for another post ... i hate weed whackers) ... we visited with the Moths before their barbecue ... Michael Myson's house has been given official approval ... the cakes have been baked and decorated (future post) ... the bills that had to be paid are in the mail ... a savings account for Littlelle has been opened ... and i even managed to scrub one bathroom...

fiddle dee dee

Nancy at Blogging, Near Philadelphia is hosting A Quilt for Melanie Wilkes block swap ... it is nine-patches with alternate unpieced squares from civil war reproduction fabrics ... i've never participated in a block swap before and i don't work with reproduction fabrics ... Gone With the Wind was never my favorite book or movie (although i think that Clark Gable was a hottie) and i don't like Scarlett O'Hara - or her attitude, for that matter ... however ... i've always thought that Melanie Wilkes had true grit ... and so i stepped out of my comfort zone and asked to be included in the swap ... 120 nine patches and 120 alternate blocks ... i went to Harriet's Treadle Arts to look for fabrics ... talk about sensory overload - there are, literally, hundreds of civil war reproduction fabrics to choose from at Harriet's ... maybe thousands ... i left with a bright pink tomato pincushion, a white marking pencil, a batik fat quarter for Mr. Husker's quilt, an embroidery hoop for Auntia ... and no civil war fabric - not even a fat eighth ... because i could not decide ...... thank goodness for eBay ... i bid on five different auctions and won four of them - the fabrics have been washed and folded and sorted (there was a bit of fabric fondling, too - i hope i haven't found a new love) and are waiting for pressing and cutting ... but first i had to work on my BOM for The Quilter's Studio...

...the meetings are the first saturday of each month ... we are given a kit for the assigned block (from Block Party) and a suggestion for an alternate block that uses the same piecing skills ... the BOM fabric is the blue hydrangeas from Lakehouse and is absolutely beautiful ... we are making 12 9-inch (finished) blocks ... that would make a very small quilt, even with sashings and corner stones ... so i make my assigned blocks and give them to Auntia to add to her assigned blocks ... then i make the assigned block and the alternate in pink and orange Lakehouse fabrics times three ... when we finish with this Saturday BOM i should have enough pink and orange blocks to make a quilt for each of my three granddaughters ...... i've been randomly pulling the fabrics out of the bucket each month without paying much attention to which of them have made appearances in the previous months' blocks ... so i placed the 16 blocks (in stacks of three) on the floor to see if i'm gonna have any kind of balance ... i think they will look okay ... they will definitely need some kind of sashing - the squares and triangles in the blocks are all different sizes and my brain will not wrap around different sized squares living next to each other without boundaries to keep the peace...

...and then i need to get those cupcake totes ready for Gumdrop's birthday party ... and the wall needs weeding ... i haven't planted the geraniums ... and the alyssum and lobelia and tomato plants are still at the nursery, waiting for me to give them a good home ... the lawn needs to be mowed, trimmed, and watered ... the house needs a good cleaning ... there are bills to pay ... flowers ands flags to be placed in the cemetery... cakes and cookies to bake ... NoJo and Gumdrop need to see Star Trek with their nonna ... a barbecue at Mrs. Moth's ... and i want to see Michael Myson's new house ...... i think that Miss Melly is gonna have to wait a bit

molly muffin

don't those look delicious?!? aren't they the most beautimous muffins you've ever seen? okay, oh-kay ... there are a couple of them that are kinda ugly ... but i ate them right after i took the picture, so they didn't suffer for too long ..... my youngest daughter makes the very best cinnamon muffins that i have ever eaten in my entire life...

...here she is the night before mother's day, rocking out to whatever is on the iPod (or is it an mp3?) and stirring the cinnamon sugar ... did you notice her posture? how does she stir and stand with her shoulders so straight and her head so high and not make a mess?!?

i dunno how she does it ... i've used the same recipe and my muffins are not as good ... there must be some secret sumpin-sumpin that she puts in them because they don't taste like plain old cinnamon muffins when she finishes with them ... they taste like ... uhm ... heaven comes to mind...

sigh...

...there are no muffins this morning and i will have to settle for a mediocre Costco parmesan bagel ... sigh ... i hope i don't have to wait another year for my very most favorite muffins in the whole wide world ... are you reading this, Auntia?

a new addition

this is my great-nephew ... he entered the world
May 19, 2009
at 12:14pm
6 pounds and 12 ounces
20 inches long
and he is gorgeous!

the beaming face looking through the window is his grandmother ... i think she just might be a little bit happy to meet her grandbaby boy!

welcome to the world, little one!

blue skies

it has taken a bit of doing ... and far more time than it prolly should have ... but i think that Mr. Husker's sky is gonna be okay ... i added lightning over Long's Peak and some pinwheels for the crazy weather that is found on any Rocky Mountain top ... Auntia suggested a sun made with the shooting star block from Amazingly Simple Star Quilts ... which was, by the way, not amazingly simple ... i am grateful that i don't have to make an entire quilt of those stars ... i pieced the sun from yellow fairie frost and a red scrap from the dragonheart kaleidoscope quilt that i made for a dear friend ... now i gotta get busy on trees and a lake...

...this morning my little piggy Gumdrop danced at a festival in thornton ... look at those gorgeous brown eyes ... she can do a mean coffee grinder and has no problem performing hip hop-itude...

...240 dancers (ranging in age from 2 to 60-something) danced their hearts out ... it was a great show ... and the weather couldn't have been better - the cool early morning warmed into a beautiful sunny day...

...Gumdop will be graduating from kindergarten in eleven days and celebrating her sixth birthday in june ... i'm making cupcake totes to hold party favors for her birthday guests ... and Auntia is going to frost cupcakes with the skills that she is learning in her cake decorating class...

...we went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine yesterday ... omigawd! Hugh Jackman is a hottie ... and when he jumps off the waterfall - omigawd!

edith keeler must die

star trek
... i liked it ... i think i will allow myself to love it ...... i am not (nor shall i ever be) ready for an end to the mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new lifeforms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before ...... that being said ... i dunno ... i just kept expecting time travel to fix things ... edith keeler had to die ... gracie and george had to be transported to the future ... zefram cochran had to achieve warp ... i have become accustomed to time lines in the star trek multi-verses being fixable ...... i love the new mccoy, scott, pike, uhura and chekov ... i did not like the new amanda grayson (thank gawd she bit the vulcan dust and shouldn't be back) or the very young kirk ... i didn't like kirk's mother, but i did like his father ... i am okay with the new kirk and the new spock ... but i am truly grateful that my spock was there to hold my hand (and i noticed that, with the right lighting and makeup, he remarkably resembles (in a good way) my ex's mother - enough so that they could be brother and sister) ...... i didn't like how ugly the new romulans are ... orion females should probably not attend star fleet academy ... and i can't quite wrap my head around spock and uhura being an item ... that is a bit ...
w-e-i-r-d
i dunno ... i think i need to go back and watch it all over again ... a few more times ... maybe five or six...

...this was in the lobby ... yep, the new transformer movie will be in theaters near you on june 24, 2009 ... can you tell who is excited beyond all measure? enough so that she was willing to stand in a crowded lobby and have her picture taken with BumbleBee...

...who is, by the way, definitely male

plan to fail

this is what happens when i fail to plan ... a couple of weeks ago i had cabin fever ... instead of waiting for my friendly postal person to pick up the stuff that needed to be mailed the day before lasterday, i decided to drop off the letters (bills) in the drive-up box ... Auntia wanted a change of scenery, too ... so off we went for the two mile jaunt to the post office ... we mailed our important stuff ... but neither of us wanted to go home ... the local quilt store that was just a few miles away closed at the end of march and we have been sad without fat quarter fridays and quick trips for fabric fixes ... now the closest lqs is about 15 miles away ... it is where Cabin Fever Quilts used to be (which, considering our mood, seemed an appropriate destination) but is now The Patch Works ... we headed up 287 ... and then i couldn't remember if it was on 287 or 95 ... and it was raining ... groan ... i wasn't lost ... but i didn't know where i was going ... groan ... anywho, after a few wrong turns we found the lqs was right where we left it and we oohed and aahed at fabric for an hour or so ... i saw the blue fabric in the picture above in the clearance basket ... it was a little less than one and a half yards and i thought it would make a perfect sky for Mr. Husker's quilt ... i decided that making a bunch of half square triangles and then putting them together into friendship stars and bear paws would make it more interesting than just plain squares on the diagonal ... so i started whacking away at my (very limited amount of) pretty blue fabric ... i made dozens of hsts and started piecing them into blocks ... but they were all too small when i tried putting them together with their companion blocks ... groan ... Sven's quarter-inch tape had slipped (or maybe gremlins moved it in the middle of the night) and everything was wrong ... so i (threw the too small blocks in with the orphan blocks) fixed the tape and started piecing again ... finished up eight of the pieced blocks and cut some plain squares ... took them downstairs and placed them above the mountains ... groan ... i forgot about the set-in triangles ... and i am down to 7 inches of fabric ... groan ... i gotta come up with a better plan

whitie tighties

One evening a husband, thinking he was being funny, said to his wife, "Perhaps we should start washing your clothes in 'Slim Fast'. Maybe it would take a few inches off of your butt!"
His wife was not amused, and decided that she simply could not let such a comment go unrewarded.
The next morning the husband took a pair of underwear out of his drawer. "What the heck is this?" he said to himself as a little 'dust' cloud appeared when he shook them out.
"April," he hollered into the bathroom, "Why did you put Talcum Powder in my underwear?"
She replied with a snicker, "It's not talcum powder; it's 'Miracle Grow'!!!!!"

see what i mean abouth the emails?

the sky is falling ... the sky is falling

i think that nothing in the world smells as good as a brand new baby ... Littlelle and her mommy came for a visit on thursday ... she slept most of the time ... her tummy was full and she was warm and clean and safe in her Auntia's arms ... there were a few moments when she kept her eyes open long enough for a picture or two...

she has lovely long fingers and long, skinny arms ... they're still kinda wrinkly and she stretches them out like baby bird wings...

if she starts to peep, we're gonna have to call her Chicken Littlelle

big foot

the ever elusive big foot has finally been caught on tape ... check out this video...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andypearson/bigfoot-caught-on-tape-8so

...seeing is believing!
some people (you know who you are) send me really dumb emails ... i'm just sharing the wealth

i think i'll go put Harry and the Hendersons in the dvd player and chomp some of those corn pops - we're down to the last two boxes ... woo hoo!

a spoonful of sugar

allergies ... every spring Ebony's allergies kick in and she is miserable ... her eyes get red ... she sneezes and snarfles and paws at her face ... next thing i know there's no fur left on her nose because she has licked and pawed it away ... so i have to give her the dog's equivalent of benadryl everyday ... she hates it ... she refuses to swallow the pills ... i tried wrapping one in bacon - she ate the bacon and spit out the pill ... so i tried wrapping one in cheese - she ate the cheese and spit out the pill ... and then i tried wrapping one in lunch meat - she ate the lunch meat and spit out the pill ... i tried everything i could think of (with the exception of pigeon patties and earthworms - i draw the line at bird crap and crawlies with no legs) and she always refused to swallow the pills...

...and then i remembered the easter morning that i had a Peep in one hand and her leash in the other ... it was a yellow chicken Peep and i was looking forward to biting its little head off and nibbling on its tiny feet ... but i was distracted for a moment ... and when i looked at my hand, the Peep was gone ... it was in Ebony's mouth and she took a lot of pleasure in swallowing it whole before my very eyes ... i was sooo mad at her ... i told her to enjoy it because that would be the last opportunity she would have to steal a Peep from me...

...light bulb moment - Ebony likes sugar ... and she especially likes marshmallowy sugar ... so i stuffed a pill into a marshmallow and gave it to her ... gulp and gone!
every few days i assembly line some Ebony medicine ... she has become a bit of a connoisseur - she prefers flavored marshmallows (strawberry is her favorite) at room temperature and not even a little bit dried out ... it helps the medicine go down

clubbing

do you remember this guy? his name is Mingo and the last time i saw him he was stretched out in the middle of The Quilters Studio - not taking a nap ... well, this is the sad state that i found him in when we went to the BOM club on saturday ... it seems he's been hitting the bars ... just look at that sad, pathetic face ... alone in the corner ... forsaken ... the word on the street is he's lost his standing with chicks to this guy...

a biker musician dude who travels with his own bali pops band and fat quarters groupies ... wearing his plaid shorts, birkenstocks, and cool shades - he wins them over with his rockin' rendition of you are my sunshine ... dancing and flapping his wings in some kind of weird pink mating ritual ...... it just isn't fair ... it's enough to drive a bird to drink

love me tender

my sister is the best ... she is my friend and confidant ... she never ever says i told you so! when she gives me advice and i don't follow it and the end results kick me in the butt ...... she always has my back and she is my soft place to fall (and, believe me, i fall ... a lot) ...... she gives me her time and her patience and her love ...... she taught me how to read ... and how to embroider ... and how to put on mascara ... and how to burp a baby ... and how to cut my losses...

... she let me tag along when she went to the movies ... and she taught me that Elvis was the King ... i gave this quilt to her two years ago at the fantastic tea party that Traveling Man and Mrs. Izziesmom hosted at the Brown Palace Hotel in honor of her sixtieth birthday ... the quilt's name is all shook up! and it's sole purpose is to hug my sister when i can't ...... today is my sister's birthday and i hope she has the best day ever!
happy birthday, Nicci!!!

cutting the apron strings

Auntia will start cake decorating classes on wednesday ... she needed an apron ... so i made this one for her ... it is from a pattern (by Mary Mulari) called Mary's Reversible Apron ... it takes one yard each of two different fabrics and is easy to make ...... it is too long for Auntia and she has to fold it up ... she can bring the waist ties around the back and to the front and still has enough to tie a bow (on accounta she's so teeny tiny - grrrr)...

...needless to say, when i tried it on i had to remember how to tie a bow behind my back ... when i make the next apron (for me) i am going to eliminate the Velcro on the neck straps (and make a loop that fits me), shorten it by a couple of inches, and curve the sides on the bottom instead of having right angled corners...

and now ... for your viewing enjoyment ... the elusive ... the rare ... the priceless ... the coveted
science beam up badge...

lit up...

...in the dark!!!
pretty cool, huh?!?

synchronicity

look at what came in the mail yesterday ... Kim had a book giveaway last week and sent me The Quilter's Kitchen by Jennifer Chiaverini and a lovely, quilty card ... she wrote that her favorite pork recipe is on page 153 ... so i thought i would share a picture of that page ... but the book had other ideas ... it fell open to...

are you ready for this?

you gotta believe me ... this was not staged...

...the book fell open to page 61 ... sweet and spicy nuts ... coincidence?!?
anywho...
thank you, Kim! i love the book!!!

the backdrop for the book and card is the completed pink and yellow ripple afghan that Auntia was working on ... she listened to the last half of Wizard's First Rule and the first half of The Stone of Tears while she crocheted ... and now she's gonna make one for me while she listens to The Blood of the Fold ... aren't you, Auntia?

taken for a ride

yesterday i made the monthly trip to Costco ... i needed baby butt wipes, PreserVision (for Little Nonnie's Mother's Day present), envelopes, and Dr. Pepper...
i knew i was in trouble when i first walked in the door ... six-packs of geraniums for $21.69 ... and we're talking big, pink geraniums ... hanging baskets for $16.49 ... hanging baskets with pink geraniums and vinca vine ... then i remembered that i needed some clear storage boxes and bread and pancake mix and sugar and socks with grey heels and light bulbs and a shop stool (seriously ... it has wheels and a little lever that makes it go up and down ... it is way cool) ... and then i found an easy go cart (it is the green thing in the picture that looks like a trash can that's been whacked off sideways) and decided that $17.99 was a small price to pay for not aggravating my sciatic nerve when i lift bags of dog food and potting soil ...... before i knew it, the shopping basket was overflowing with stuff that was not on my list ... for a total of $208.84...

...it was not easy loading all of that stuff into Auntia's car ... and it's a good thing that she wasn't with me - i might have had to tie her to the roof ... but the easy go cart held all of the plants and the little stuff and is so very, very green ... i think it will come in handy for...

...giving rides to a goofy boy...

and his goofier sister ... she's a white-knuckled rider ... i think i scared her with the sudden stops and figure eights and all of the woo hooing ...... every nonna needs one of these!

itty bitty's quilt

this is Itty Bitty's quilt ... the bear paw blocks are from stash ... i have a small collection (cough) of jungle fabric that will be a star quilt someday ... the pink flamingos were getting lost in all the other noise, so i changed the inner squares to pink ...... and it started really shouting ... so i shushed it with the tan and grey borders ...... it is free-motion quilted with indian elephants ...... whoa ... wait a minute ...... INDIAN ELEPHANTS ...... in AFRICA???

what was i thinking???

the backing is pale green flannel ... by the time it was ready for binding, i knew that my first great was gonna be a niece ... so it is bound with pink flannel
this one is named you'll be in my heart

fyi - there's a book giveaway at Dawn Heese's blog for her new book, Geese in the Rose Garden