Back in Town...

I went out of town this weekend and spent it in Rockford, IL.  That was nice.  I stayed at a nice hotel which was easy to get to and the rates weren't that bad.  It was the Alpine Inn which is by East State Street and Alpine.  It's really only about 1/2 block away from the intersection so it was quick to find.  When I walked into the Alpine Inn the "nook" for the continental breakfast was off to the left hand side.  On the right you just see some of the sofa that people could wait while their rooms were getting ready.

My room wasn't quite ready so I was told to help myself to the coffee or juice.  It was nice to see that they were having the coffee available 24/7 but they had baby Styrofoam cups.  They did have, however, two different types of coffee available and had tea also.

I had a king size bed since they only have twin size or king, I took king.  That was so nice.  I had PLENTY of room and took advantage of those 4 pillows that were on the bed.  My little room also had a small sofa, end table and desk area as soon as I walked in.

It rained, of course, the whole time, but overall I thought it was a good place to stay.  With tax added in, it was just over $79.  The continental breakfast was pretty good.  Obviously, tea and coffee, but they also had 4 kinds of dry cereal, 2% milk in a gallon container so if you wanted to drink milk and/or have it on your cereal you could.  Also included was orange juice, apple juice, mini bagels with cream cheese, donuts, English muffins, and a toaster so you could toast them if you wish.

I also stopped by Great Clips and got my hair done.  Gotta love their $7.99 specials that happen each year.  I L.O.V.E. to have somebody wash my hair so that extra $4 was well worth it.  Eventually I made it home but have to share with you some new hand fans that I picked up.  These are three different ones and they work beautifully.  

I also made it home in time to finish up my Blackberry cordial that I have had sitting for a week.  it was a small batch which yielded about 1 1/2 cups of cordial and, of course, vodka infused blackberries.  They have been soaking in vodka and brown sugar for a week.

My next batch (next month) will be strawberries or raspberries.

I thought I would end today with a couple of pictures that I like.  This one is a Yellow Magnolia that she has in her yard.

 The other picture that I have to share is from work.  This is what I get to see out of my window if I'd turn around and look at it.

That's all for now.  I have to put my mini owl cross stitch on a new frame and see how it works out.

I hope everybody has enjoyed these pictures and has a wonderful evening.

"One Clip at a Time"

Today, Monday April 24, is Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It was a horrible thing that happened and few of us today can relate to.  I remember running across a paper clip campaign which dealt with trying to teach students the magnitude of the numbers.  You might want to go to the website and learn more.

http://www.oneclipatatime.org/paper-clips-project/

If you don't want to do that much, here is a brief explanation why a small town in Tennessee turned paper clips into a worldwide statement.

"The students’ research found that Norwegians wore paper clips as a silent protest and symbol of resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. It was this simple idea that eventually, and quite unintentionally, turned into a worldwide phenomenon, drawing international media attention and letters of support from literally every continent."

I think that it was a wonderful project and to honor it, and my Norwegian ancestry, and Holocaust Remembrance Day, I will be wearing a paperclip.  I wonder how many people will ask me about it.

How about you?  What will you be doing?

Resting on Sunday?

I wish I could rest on Sunday.  Saturday always seems to be the day to go grocery shopping and such and that means one should be able to rest on Sunday.  I suppose it could happen if I remember to do my laundry on Saturday.  This week, however, I didn't so I had to go to the laundry mat on Sunday and get the laundry done.  Soooo up by 8 a.m. to get the laundry done.  After that it was another trip to Walmart while talking with a friend who was traveling.  Walmart took about 1 1/2 hours since I wasn't in a hurry and I was looking for a few items that I wasn't sure where they were at (highly unusual for me).  After that it was time to go home and start some cooking.

Late last night I did the 3 ingredient sloppy joes which are good.  Somewhere between good and very good.  I will probably make that recipe again.  Today I tried to make some Blackberry cordial for the first time.  Next Sunday will be when I can test/taste it.  If it turns out well I will make some more.  This recipe only makes a VERY small batch which suits me since it is only me.

I also tried the Old Fashioned Goulash recipe.  It was good and made a lot.  I have 5 containers in the freezer of it) but I can see it needs tweaking.  If I had some Adobo seasoning I might not have to tweak it but I didn't want to buy any new spices.  As it was, it needs to be spiced up a little bit.  Another thing that I would change would be when you add the spices.  According to the recipe you don't add the seasoning when you cook your meat.  You add it when you add in the tomato sauce and other things.  I think that it would pick up the spices better if you added them when you were cooking the meat.

I am also proud because I remembered to take off the blade protectors from my chopper this time BEFORE I tried to chop up an onion.  Yeah, I forgot that last time.  The onions didn't cut up much so I finished them by hand.  Go figure!  The blades are dull when the covers are on them?  Yeah, I know.  My brain was dull that day too.  LOL.

Now I am tired and I have to put my phone on the charger again (lost count if it is for the 2nd or 3rd time since I am talking with a friend).  I told him to give me 1 hour and we can talk again.  So before I use up my 1 hour time frame, I'm going to sign off here and lay down for a bit.  :)

Everybody have a great day.

One block at a time...

That's what I try to tell myself.  Just do one block at a time and eventually they will get done.  Of course it is totally possibly that if they don't get done I will forget why I was doing them anyway and in that case I'll just throw them all together and create another new project!  Hmmm.  That might be a good thing to do with my Hexies that I have cut out but not stitched.  I need to finish the red hexies and turn that into a wall hanging and then the rest will just be a totally different layout.  That should be interesting.

I did get one block done today.  That is one of the Solstice blocks that I am behind.  With this one getting done, I am current until Wednesday when another block will come out.  Here is my Solstice block.

I also made another needle minder (yes they are addictive) but haven't taken the picture yet.  I will show that perhaps tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will also be making a couple of recipes.  One will be goulash.  Haven't made that in years.  Another one I will make is a new version of sloppy joes.  It only has around 3 ingredients and I' curious to see how it will taste.  No comment yet on the ingredients until I see how it tastes.  I promise I will let you know if it is good or not.  I also might make a berry cordial.  My recipe calls for Black Currents but I'm not sure I can get them around here.  There is a controversy over them.  If I can't get them, then I will change up the cordial to a Blackberry Cordial.

I picked up a new magazine, one of those specialty ones, and I must say that I'm finding a lot of interesting recipes in it.  It is called "from Garden to Plate" from the Editors of Country Gardens.  I'll talk about that magazine more in the future.  In the meantime everybody have a great day/night and remember to breathe!

Breathing is a great stress reliever and it will cause you to pause and rethink or slow down.  All good things.  So until tomorrow when I write more...Just Breathe.  Take a step back and Breathe.

Easter Pictures and Progress on Mini Owl

I hope you all had a great Easter.  I was at my sister in laws (Bobbie or Roberta) for around 5 hours and enjoyed myself.  It was just Bobbie and I for about 2 1/2" hours (I got there early) so we had a wonderful talk about cross stitching and other things.  Bobbie always sets a wonderful table.  This is what her table looked like this year.

This is Bobbie.

And her flowers which are on top of the entertainment center.

I had a delicious meal which consisted of Pork Tenderloin, potatoes (3 kinds of baby potatoes, thin sliced red onion, a dressing), asparagus (with ground nuts - not sure what kind, freshly grated Parmesan and a dressing), sauteed pearl onions and mushrooms, and biscuits.

The wine we had with our meal (I forgot to ask the specifics) came from Spain.  The company was just as good as the meal. Lively conversation and a relaxing time.  Bobbie had gone to see Hamilton (on the stage) and talked about that.  I talked about the Quilt Festival.  A couple of her friends will be going to Spain soon to take a week cooking course/vacation, and my niece was just accepted into Georgia Tech Masters program in Prosthetics and Orthotics (MS) with nearly a full ride. 
She already has a job lined up in that field and will be starting in January.   Way to go Madison!

I finally got started on the Mini Owl cross stitch from HAED.  It doesn't look like much but I have about 250-300 stitches done already.

It is being done on 18 count Aida and I had page 1 of the pattern blown up A LOT!!!!

It is so much easier to read after getting it enlarged.  We'll see how it goes.

I hope everybody has/had a great day.  I see that the owl has coffee in hand so I guess I'd better get back to stitching.

Happy Easter everybody!

I will be going to my sister in law's in a couple of hours but wanted to post before I leave.  I hope everybody  is going to have a wonderful day and take it easy.  It is a day for positivity and rejoicing no matter how bad a day you have.

My day has started out well.  I managed to get another block done in the Solstice Challenge.  Now I am only behind one block.  I should be able to get that done before the next block comes out on Wednesday.  Here is the block that I did.

I also made a few more needle catchers and will take one of the filigree looking ones with me to give to Bobbie as a hostess gift.  I think I will slip it inside of her Easter Card.

The enameled ones are the pins that I have bought over the years at the International Quilt Shows.  I took off the backs and turned the pins into needle minders.  I will see them much better this way.  I have a couple more of the pins to do plus one or two from work.

That's it for my report today.   Remember to Enjoy the Day.

Go and get away from the computer and Enjoy!

Bye for now.  

And now....

It's time to post some more pictures from the quilt show.  I'm almost done with those...really I am.

Oh before I forget.  Sue you should have an forwarded email from me.  I forwarded the HAED newsletter that I received.  I look forward to seeing what you might pick out.  There is so many great charts there.

Now where was I?  Oh yes.  more pictures.

I so want to be at that place right now.

Lace and velvet...always a great combination

And no Janine, I'm not making this for you.

It would be happily ever after if I had this quilt.  :)

I have to remember to think outside of the lines with vines.

Another place I'd like to be.

That's it for today sharing.  Today is a payday and time for me to go get some bills paid and hunt down the last of the thread so I can start on my owl.

Have a great day and for those who celebrate it, have a great Easter.

A New Start

I'm sure the title for this post isn't hard to figure out or comes as a surprise to those of you who read my blog.  Y es, I squirreled and decided to start another project.  I'm not giving up on any of my other projects but I just can't narrow myself down to only doing one project at a time.  Mom would do that and I drove her crazy when I'd set a project down and pick up another one.  That's ok though because she would drive me crazy watching her just work on one thing at a time.  Admittedly she finished her projects faster than I did/do but she also had more time to spend on doing it.  Her thing was crocheting.  By the time she was ready for the nursing home, she had narrowed her crochet stitches down to one of two and would be able to whip out pot holders, scarves, and afghans rather rapidly.  Good going Mom!  I'm glad that you did that even if drove me nuts watching you.

I, on the other hand, like to do embroidery and cross stitch as well as quilting.  This new start is a cross stitch one and the pattern is one of my new ones I just got.  Why this one?  The decision was easy.  I didn't have to buy everything.  I had over half of the floss colors already and with a 60% coupon for Michael's, my Aida cloth came to under $5.  Not bad right?

This is the new pattern I decided to do.

I will be stitching it on 18 count white Aida.  For those who are not cross stitchers, that means I will be doing 18 stitches per inch.   After gathering up all my floss that I could find and/or buy, I found myself only missing one metallic thread color and one color of floss.  Not bad.  I'll check at Michael's tomorrow (went to Hobby Lobby today) and Walmart for those two pieces but can work around them for now.  I am also going to start it in a different way than normal.  I am not going to start in the middle but in the upper left corner and work one page of the pattern at a time.  I will, of course, have to carefully measure or count to make sure that I won't run out of Aida cloth.  I know that I figured in 3" for border and framing.  Theoretically I should be able to just count 3" down and 3" over from left side for my starting point.  I might try to count it out also just as a double check.  No cutting down the Aida cloth until the end I think as a secondary double safeguard.  :)

Here is what my pile of colors look like after winding them all on bobbins.

 Quite colorful aren't they.  I soon had them all safely in their plastic container (which has the name of the project on the outside) and in numerical order.

Tomorrow I think I will start to whip stitch around my Aida so the fabric doesn't fray and also might possibly make a new needle minder or two.  We'll see how that goes.

But that will be tomorrow's post.  Let me leave you all with a quote that I liked.  I hope you like it as well.

I'll talk to you all tomorrow.  Have a wonderful day and night.

Elastic Girl......

That's what I need to be.  I need to be Elastic or ElastaGirl since I am being pulled in all directions at the same time.  Nothing really new for this time of year but it does put me through my paces and keeps me on my toes.  No wonder my calf muscles hurt!

So today it is minimum words but still sharing some eye candy.  Enjoy.

Made with denim jeans 

I want to take my markers to this quilt and fill in the blanks!

I could probably do this one too if I wanted to.

Called the Path of Tears.  The quilting has figures walking the path.

Makes me happy to look at this one.

Another happy one.

The dog looks happy.  :)

Time to get back to work.  Everybody have a great day.

I was a bad girl.....

But it felt sooooo good.

Most of you know that those words mean I went and bought something that I wasn't suppose to.  You'd be RIGHT!  This time, however, it would be cross stitch and not quilting.  I opened up an email from Heaven and Earth Designs (HAED) and saw they had 35% patterns.  I have a wishlist with them so it just seemed right that I go and buy 4 of the patterns before they were no longer offered.  

And to answer Sue's question before she asks it, I haven't forgotten my other cross stitch patterns that I plan on doing.  I just can't find them right now.  There are in the house some place.  :)

These are my newest collections for that is really what I think I am doing.  I am collecting.  By the time I get to work on them I might be in my 90s and wear 5 different types of magnifiers to see the pattern.  That's ok.  These, especially the map, are worth it.

Wish me luck in doing them.