Thursday, July 17, 2008

Playing Catch-Up

I am a dud of a blogger....it's been almost two weeks! I have no real exciting news on the quilting front. Here is this month's Saturday Sampler block that I will be making....
















And here are two quilts I saw at Leah's this week, that I'm interested in making....



































I am almost done with the Little Blessings binding. I have begun cutting a "Flannel Brick Road" just like the one we made for Craig.... only this time, it will not be flannel. (at least not the bricks, maybe the back?)

One of our good friends has lymphoma, so I'm making the Brick Road for him. He has been a special friend/mentor to Laurie, so she is taking the lighter colored "bricks" to some of the meetings that he attends, and will get all their friends and his sponsor, etc to sign bricks with get-well/hope-filled messages, written in permanent marker.

I'll assemble the quilt and probably try to stitch it in the ditch. Must find out if I need a different walking foot for the Janome 1600..... for stitching in ditch. Here are the colors I picked up for his quilt. I was just looking for "guy" colors, not too flowery, strong natural colors.... These colors are not horribly accurate, but you get the idea. :)




















On the gardening front..... (again, those of you with REAL gardens might want to hold down the guffaws, so my delicate feelings are not hurt! teehee! Every gardener starts somewhere and this year I think is my real start!!)

I have zucchini! (click to enlarge)
















I have cucumbers!
















I have tomatoes popping up all over! Mr. B is contemplating BLT sandwiches!



















And here's a little Good Morning to You!















I harvested the first zuke, cuke and tomato yesterday! (I picked that cucumber because it was crooked - I have lots of straight ones I'm letting grow a bit more)!















And here is a look at my Morning Glory trees this year! I keep thinking the vines will choke out the neighbor's trees, but everything is coexisting at this point, so I have lovely blue-blossomed trees out back!




















Last night, I met my girls after work and we visited a scrapbooking shop called Scrapbook Oasis (here) which was right down the road from Laurie's work. We kind of got our feet wet, making our first real pages, etc.

I am interested in both the scrapbooking aspect of it (there are six HUGE bins of pictures from the 30 years of marriage/parenting hiding in a closet upstairs) and also especially the cardmaking aspect.

Check out the cards this this lady has made. Amazing! I saw a lot of techniques last night that I really liked, like stamping and coloring in, etc

(Because, you know, I am 5! and I miss coloring! Very relaxing and fun!) I also saw lots of ways to deplete my wallet, but all in all, there are a lot of frugal ways to make cards and have fun at the same time. With cards costing $3.50 on average these days, there's a bit of room for getting a few gadgets to make really personal ones!!

However, as I said above..... I am a dud at the blogging right now, because I forgot to take pix last night. I will try to get pix from the girls of their pages and post later!


:)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to see the pictures! We are old hands at memory books - we started back before the scrapbooking craze began (the dinosaurs were stomping, etc.) tho we did not embellish as much as they do today. We have about twenty large albums, for about as many years...yes, I'm behind too!! Those stacks of photos don't call as loudly as the quilt fabric!!

Joy said...

Indeed! If I scrapbooked the way some of the ladies do (one picture per page with really gorgeous embellishments), I would need a library to hold all the volumes. They do BEAUTIFUL work, but I cannot afford/do not have time for that. I'm just wanting to spiffy them up a bit, label nicely so the girls can look back and know who is who, etc...

We plan to make two sets of nearly identical albums. Divide up pix, so that if it's a Laurie event (a birthday) the best pix of her in that event are in HER book, and the event is represented in Karen's book also. Vice versa for Karen's events. Sort of divide the tons of photos in that fashion. Any really priceless pix, we will scan/duplicate. Then some day when we are gone, the girls can just grab "their" stack of books and it's all been done for them....

Kevin and Michael went through about a year long process when their folks passed away, getting the pictures sorted and divided and copied....I hope to avoid some that for Karen and Laurie, although there was some "tripping down memory lane" between the boyz which probably was helpful in the grief process....

That's The Plan anyway. Do I get credit for good intentions? (As the bins of pictures dry rot upstairs!?)

Hugs!

Karene said...

Hey !!! Impressive fruit of the vines !!! Love the tomatoes and zuccini....so, um, when do I get some, huh, huh !!! Just kidding !!! You truly amaze me !!! Quilter, gardener, Suzy homemaker, Red Hat Queen, awesome transcription service owner, etc....the list goes on and on!!! What can I say, you're terrific, my friend !

Love ya,
Karene

p.s. looks like some snails got to the zuccini leaves, huh....sorry, didn't want you to get a big head or anything....teehee