It Never Fails

Just when I have a good thing going...BOOM...something else has to come in and screw it all up!! I had a great time in Minneapolis this past weekend at Market. The fabric line up for Fall is terrible (IMHO)...just not my style. But the talent out there for new patterns and such is absolutely incredible. Hopefully sometime this week, I'll have a chance to post pics of some of the goodies I picked up while there.

Unfortunately, I overdid and knew better. By our arrival home on Sunday evening at 5:30pm, I was pooped. Then we had to attend a graduation reception so it was late before I got to bed. On Monday morning, I couldn't get the baby to move, so I headed down to L & D to get checked out. Five long hours of NST and an ultrasound later, I was headed home. She was fine...I was just a little paranoid and I'm sure she was just a little tired from my over-activity over the weekend. A couple of other good points, tho ~ I did spend Saturday night with my step-dad and great aunt and uncle to celebrate the life of my birthmother as she had died exactly a year before. Then on Sunday, we stopped at IKEA before heading home and it was AWESOME! I found so many neat things I'd like to have when I get really serious about redoing my quilting studio :)

This week seems to be flying by...can't believe tomorrow is already going to be Thursday. I have spent the last three days/nights trying desperately to get caught up and also get my printer fixed. The big job I've been hired to do is due in two weeks and without a printer, I am royally screwed. Jim and I thought we had the problems solved tonight...but to no avail. I think I'm going to have a big bonfire and give it a proper going away...

Anyway, off to bed now for some sleep. My little redhead decided it would be fun to get up at 6:15am this morning which she NEVER EVER does. It's early to rise for me tomorrow to help Wyatt pack his lunch for his school picnic and then try and continue with getting caught up around here. I was hoping I'd get some quilting in this week, too, but the days are flying by...

To Market, To Market...Jiggity Jig

Lots of exciting things have been happening here this week. I had my regular OB appointment on Tuesday with Barney and everything looks good "for an old lady". LOL Baby's heartrate was still great and I haven't had any major complaints except for this wonderful cold I seem to have picked up with the weather change. I start going every three weeks now which can only mean that D Day is that much closer!!

I also stopped into a new quilt shop while in DSM..."The Quilt Express" on the west side. Very nice shop for just getting going, lots of fabrics, books and patterns. And they are selling Viking machines. It's a sister store to one of my other favorites, The Quilt Junction, so I even got to visit with a gal I used to work with! They had the new edition of Quilt Sampler so I picked one of those up while there and found some really cute 30's FQs to make Sharon's purse from.

When I got home, my Amazon.com book order had arrived! I have been trying to order, without success, the Lois Hallock "Organizing Your Perfect Sewing Space" book for months now but it's always out of stock. With a special deal I had through Amazon, I ordered not one, but TWO copies of it and only paid $4 including shipping. What a deal!!! Now to just convince the hubby to "redo" my quilting studio yet AGAIN.

Yesterday was my bi-monthly meeting with CCQ. We had a great time, as always. I passed off my now-completed Wizard of Oz quilt top to Pat for her to quilt and also got the binding machine sewn onto my friend April's quilt (another LONG overdue project!). I also got the pieces cut for my new Cindy Taylor Oates inspired duffle bag that I want to get done before my trip to MN in June.

Last night, we traveled to Omaha to pick up J's new truck. I am SO excited for him. He found it on EBay about a week ago and we waited patiently for the auction to end and ~ luckily ~ ended up with the winning bid. It was everything the owner said it was + more. The really great thing is we ended up paying about $7k less than retail book value on it, so it was a deal, too!!! It's old by today's standard (a 2000) but it only has 51,000 miles on it and it's red (J's favorite color) and BIG. Extended cab, diesel, four door with a short box. It's really pretty. I am SO glad he finally got something for himself. He works so hard (which I unfortunately sometimes fail to openly appreciate) and it's about time he has something besides his farm truck to drive around. I'll see if I can post pics of it soon.

Then my friend Jennifer and I were talking about International Quilt Market (which is in Minneapolis this year) and ~ even though I had hoped to go ~ had not made any formal plans. As luck would have it, her hubby didn't really want to go, so we made plans to go together. We're leaving this morning about 10am so I'd better go finish packing and get ready! There are going to be SO many really, really neat things about Market and I am very, very excited. :)

Whew! I've been on a wonderful roll this week!!! LOL

384...Is That All?!?!?

I finally did it! I finally finished up my long-overdue Round Robin and passed it along last night. Aahhh...the smell of sweet success. The only disappointing thing is I got to thinking about how many pieces were in it...hmm...24 blocks each with 16 half-square triangle blocks...384 blocks or 768 individual pieces of fabric. IS THAT IT?!?!? Why in the heck did it seem like a never ending project?!?! LOL I would have expected the number to be up in the thousands for as long as it took me!!!!

Well...it is great to get it moving on to a new home anyway... Here's a pic of my completed round:

Now to move onto the next one. I swear I am NOT going to procrastinate this time around!!! And I already have in mind what to do for it so I hope to start working on it (and maybe get it finished!!) this weekend.

And it's time to move on to other projects of my own. I think one of the first things I'm going to do is get the borders cut and sewn on my baby Wizard of Oz quilt. It's something so simple...I just need to get it done and off my list. Although those fabrics I posted the other day are STILL desperately calling my name...

A couple of days this week, I've spent working on new Barn Quilt projects for the summer...we have two currently in progress and another five that have been confirmed. I need to get the new block list out so potential owners can get their choice made and get my printer put back together to be prepared for the big t-shirt order (200+) the committee placed last night. The shirts are going to be really nice and everyone loved the design we're going to use. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to get some ready for the bus tour that's coming in on the 24th of this month. The majority of them need to be ready to go by the 8th of June.

Tonight I'm off to mark out and start painting one of the barn quilts we have primed and the base white coat on. It is a pattern called Country Roads and we'll be doing it up in grass green, grey and black. It will really be nice when it's done and a different color scheme than what we've used before.

Not much else on the agenda for the weekend...so I'm hoping to get alot of things caught up. We'll see how I do!!!

I've Held Off...

I've been a good girl this week...holding off on any new projects and continuing to work on the RR I absolutely, positively NEED to get done and passed. Finally got all of the 1/2 square triangles sewed, cut, pressed and trimmed last night so it's on to making the last 19 blocks today. I hope to have that done tonight so I can pass it off tomorrow. I'll post pics before it leaves here.

Another neat thing has been going around the quilting blogs so I thought I'd join in once again.

Six Weird Things About Me Hardly Anyone Else Knows

1. I eat all of my food one thing at a time. There isn't a conscientious order to it, although I have noticed that I tend to eat my main entree last. I DO NOT mix my food together except in the event of it being purposely served that way (i.e. chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes). I rarely ever eat dessert.

2. I have this HUGE and I do mean HUGE fear of locusts. My brother used to pluck them off our backyard tree and chase me with them as a child. When the bzz-bzz sound starts in the summer, I stay in the house. One year, when we were first married, Jim brought a shell of one into the house and I cowered in a corner in the living room and screamed and cried until I almost threw up.

3. I always wash my hair first when in the shower and leave the shampoo on until I'm ready to get out. I guess I figure my hair will end up cleaner the longer I leave it on there.

4. The favorite part on my cat is the hair in his ears and I cannot pet him without making a psseeet sound and pulling on it. I would never own a short haired cat that I couldn't do that to.

5. When my mom first died, I refused to have any intimacy with my husband for four months because I was afraid she could see us. (Yeah, I know...it's REALLY a weird thing but she was the first "close" person to me who had ever passed away and I guess the thought of her looking down on us made me feel better in some odd way. Even though it's pretty apparent I'm over that now since I've had three children since then!)

6. I like and have an interest in WAY too many things...I think I could go to college and be a professional student because I could stand to major in about 10 other things right off the top of my list. No wonder I'm a SAHM...I could never make up my mind what type of job was right for me...everything became boring after about six months!

Guess that's about it. It was a fun exercise but it took some thinking!!!

Ever Get That URGE...

to start something new?!?! LOL That's where I'm at this week. I'm not necessarily bored with the projects I've been working on...it just seems as though I've been working on them so much lately, that I'm tired of looking at them. Hmph. Maybe that's why I have so many things in my WIP pile!!!!

Anyway...I've been working diligently on my Round Robin since it was actually due Thursday this week (blush)...and I'm still not finished. I ran out of fabrics on Friday so had to make a quick (?!) run to the Quilt Shop to pick up some more. Here is what it looked like when I got it...








And this is what my first finished border looks like...








And here's a close-up of two of the blocks:



It was really a DUH moment for me after I started on it. GREAT idea...but the brain just didn't register how many of those little 1/2 square triangles I was going to have to make.

Anyway...back to my urge :) So while I'm at the quilt shop picking up the remainder of what I need for this RR project...I start looking around (always a bad idea when you're in a hurry!) and what do I find? This fabric:

I already have 4 or 5 yards of it at home...originally purchased with the intention of making Baby A's quilt from it as soon as it was confirmed that Baby A was really a girl :) Had no idea on pattern at the time...just bought it because it yelled at me from across the store!!! All of a sudden on Friday, the light bulb turned on and it must have been about a 500 watt one...I could see the pattern in my head and knew exactly what I wanted to go with this fabric. So here is the pattern I'm going to use:











And here are the fabrics I bought to go with the yellow print:



Luscious, aren't they!?!? I think I need chocolate to fulfill the craving! I just want to push everything else aside and start on this one NOW!!! LOL


On the bright side...at CCQ this week, I did get the borders rip-it, rip-it off of the baby size Wizard of Oz quilt and also got two other projects organized and ready to go. One was a set of blocks that my friend Mikki gave me...after she bought the fabrics, she figured out that she didn't really like them. Most of the blocks are already done...I think I'm going to split them out and make tablerunners for Christmas gifts this year. Then the other project is a derivative of a project I started last year (another with 1/2 square triangles!)...I sewed the wrong two fabrics together for the quilt design I was doing...so now have enough of those blocks to make another quilt! Decided on a block design and made those into sets. Not sure when I'll get time to put that together...but at least it's started :)

I'm off to ignore what's truly calling me and work on finishing up my RR. I have the new one to work on now, too ~ I'll have to post pics of it soon. It's gorgeous done up in 30's prints.

Here's to Another Great Week!

Yeah! I feel so good to have gotten some of the things off my to-do list accomplished again this weekend.

DONE! 1) Declutter the kitchen. I KNOW there is a TON of stuff I could get rid of out of my cupboards. And it was all given away on Freecycle and is already outta here!!

DONE! 3) Sweep and scrub the bathroom floor. Declutter the bathroom closet. Hehe...I "got out" of doing this as Wyatt LOVES to clean the bathroom (he's a strange child!! LOL)...so he did it instead of me! Of course, I had to slip him a couple of dollars for his savings account...

DONE! (almost! Have a little area left to do) 4) Clean off the tops of my built-in cabinets and declutter.

STILL TO-DO in the next couple of weeks:

2) Clean the ceiling fan in the kitchen and the lights in the kitchen, dining room and bathroom.

5) Open up all of the windows and put the finish coat on my remaining built-in cabinet so I can get the glass put in the doors and my dishes put away.
6) Go to Ace and pick out the new paint for Afton and baby's room. Then it's on to cleaning out her room of the furniture that's in there, removing the old border, priming and then painting!! Need to really get a handle on this before I get any more preggers.

It feels SO good to have these things done :) Now onto some quilting for this week. When I originally made out my list of things to get done, I never really put a "timeline" on them so I think I may go back and do that sometime this week. For right now, I need to get my Round Robin finished up because it's due on Thursday and I'd also like to get that Wizard of Oz baby quilt borders straightened out and finished by then, too. If I work quickly and have time, I may even get my Triple Irish Chain Colorwash finished and ready for borders, too!

Then the fun thing for me this week is to pick out a quilt for MYSELF to make...I have birthday money to spend that's burning a hole in my pocket PLUS I have a full card at one of my favorite quilt shops that's worth $25 in merchandise. WooHoo! $125 to spend on something for ME :) I'm seriously thinking about purchasing the fabric for the 3D Dresden Plate that I'd like to get done before next year's quilt show...OR I could save it for Sharon and my trip to the MN Quilt Show in St. Cloud in June...OR I could spend it getting the remaining fabrics I need for Afton's big-girl bed quilt...Oh, the options!! LOL

For right now, I'd better go get my rear in gear to finish moving things around in the kitchen. Our new refrigerator is being delivered tonight!!!!