Holiday treats or why you should never flush jellied cranberry sauce down the toilet!

OK, after Thanksgiving I took all of my “fat” food up to the store and the girls have been eating on it for a few days. A few days later I tossed the leftovers but the really juicy ones I thought would be better flushed. We don't have a disposal at work and they were to liquidy to go in the trash bag. So I got two containers flushed and then it was time for the sliced, jellied cranberry sauce. The slices just perfectly fit in the hole in the toilet. The toilet started filling up, I took the lid off of the back and stopped the flow of water. All the time I am sort of yelling. Judy and Micki came running. We couldn’t even use the plunger because the water was at the top edge. So Judy scooped most of the water out and then we used the plunger. It just made each slice of cranberry sauce pop up. I reached in and got them and then we did another slice. We were laughing so hard they heard us in the front of the shop. It all worked out fine and I am SO glad the bathrooms were cleaned at lunchtime that day!

Vacation, Darth Vader and ornament

The past week some friends and I went on a vacation together. My brother has a wonderful condo on Anna Maria Island in Florida. What a beautiful location! There were 8 of us and it was so much fun. I highly recommend taking a vacation with friends if possible. There are a lot of photos at the links below, a lot!

http://krissysquilting.smugmug.com/

http://sannton.smugmug.com/

http://ocarol.smugmug.com/

This is a photo of me kissing the manatee on the Anna Maria sign. It is such a fun sign.

Four of us went parasailing. It was so great. We were on an 800 ft. line 500 ft. above the water. Then as you are coming in for a landing the dunk your feet in the water. I was a little worried about the taking off and landing but it was actually very easy!

Krissy was attacked by the man eating plant. ;-D Just kidding. Krissy is a really great photographer and has a knack of taking awesome and also funny photos.

The family came later and we all went to Disney World for 2 days. It was Joshua's first trip to DW. What fun. He is a bit taken with Star Wars right now and he got to actually fight Darth Vader! Too cool! I was so afraid they weren't going to choose him but he was the last one chosen so, whew! Below is a link to see him actually fighting Darth Vader with his purple light saver, ummmm I mean light saber. (he insists that it is a light saver)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XGy8Ph0R-TA

I have been busy making Christmas ornaments. Not quite finished. The really wonderful "Merry" by Patrick Lose inspired me. I am thinking of a wire hanger with a bead or two twisted onto the wire.

Pumpkin Patch

Saturday Joshua and I went to the Pumpkin Patch. It is a local place that has a fun, fall, free-for-all for kids each year. We stayed about 2 1/2-3 hours, which was a pretty long time for Granny! There were 6 bounce houses, 2 mazes made from hay, a merry-go-round, hay ride and the MOST copyright infringements I have ever seen in one place. As you can see from the movie below there is Mickey, Madagascar, and the Backyardigans. Also on display was Star Wars, Dora, Sesame Street, Ratatouille and lots, lots more.

Joshua had his first snow cone. He decided on grape but then noticed there was a guy with a blue one. He asked what flavor that was and I told him coconut. He lets me know that coconuts are brown. It is hard to argue with that type of logic.

WOW!!!

It was a crazy day at the shop. Since we are getting ready for the garage sale it was sort of busy and distracting all day. We also saw and ordered some beautiful new fabrics. Check out the garage sale photos below!

Linda stopped in and showed us two quilts she has been working on. They are both beautiful. This first photo is a king sized quilt made from silk ties. They are really pretty. She used a fusible interfacing on the back to keep them from unraveling.

The quilt below are blocks from a swap we did. Her quilt is stunning. She has an embroidery machine and embroidered beautiful blocks which she placed in between the swap blocks. Linda is one talented lady!

This beautiful block below is one of the larger embroidered blocks Linda made. Beautiful!

I wanted you to see a preview of the garage sale stuff!! IT IS AMAZING.

Serendipity!

I spent this past week visiting my mom and my brother in Georgia. It was a wonderful visit and we celebrated my brother's birthday where I also got to see both of my nephews, 2 aunts and a cousin.

I left to come home yesterday and when I got to the gate at the Atlanta Airport there was an exhibit there called Found Objects Transfigured. It was awesome and at the time it didn't occur to me that there was more of the exhibit in the airport. Time was very short and I was trying to take a few photos with my phone, keep an eye on my stuff and watch my coffee while they were starting to board my flight. I took one of the small catalogs near the display, which was behind glass, and when I looked at it on the plane I realized that there were several displays in the airport that I missed! Susan Shie has a piece in this exhibit but it wasn't near my gate so...

I have checked the web and can't really get a link with photos to give you but I will post my blurry, glarry, not so great photos anyway. If you are in the Atlanta Airport through August be sure to check out this exhibit in the T Gates area.

This one is by Jane Burch Cochran and called Rabbit Hash. There is amazing detail but of course you can't really tell in my photos.

This amazing "postage stamp" quilt is made with real postage stamps. I am so sorry I didn't get the name of the artist. It was really pretty too.

This piece is also by Jane Burch Cochran and I didn't get the name of the piece. It has a lot of yo-yos which I find amusing because it seems to me that most people do not like to make yo-yos and find them well...tacky and dated. Again sorry for the blur.

This really interesting piece is by Gordon Chandler. It is made from an old wooden hand truck. I thought it would look especially great in my friend Carol's back yard.

Cute competition for machine quilters and fun classes

Our classes are really exciting this summer. We have quite a few new classes and also several that I am interested in taking too.

This Wednesday is our Project Linus day at the shop and we are hoping for a large group. Joan, who is in charge of our Project Linus has found a great spot for the quilts everyone so lovingly makes. I will keep you posted and let you know about the group as we learn more. There are so many quilts in her office that it is getting difficult to walk around. Great job everyone!

It looks like Krissy may have some competition with her machine quilting. Connie got her new machine set up, with ORANGE legs no less, and yesterday when I took Joshua up to the shop she let him quilt on it. he did super and just moved all over the quilt. He is only 4! As you can see from the photos he is fearless.

This Friday is our Freaky Friday class and we are going to make this cute little quilt. We don't have quite enough students so if we don't have enough we will just have to cancel it. That will be a shame because this is SO cute!

Friday night is our first Gifts Galore class and we are making the little cupcake pin cushion. It is really neat and the pattern is included in the class.Next Saturday, the 26 of July, is Carol Mc's class on the little fabric boxes. They look so fun. I am going to do my best to take this class. The boxes would make such cute gifts. Just imagine all the fun presents you can make for someone you care about. You can even use the fabric box you make to hold a gift. These are pretty wild but you could make the boxes soft and feminine too.

Last year some friends and I did a swap of rows for a quilt that we wanted to make. Each of us picked a theme and then the rest of us made a row for everyone. The themes were very neat and so different; ocean/beach, Oriental, new grandson, garden and Krissy's row was for photographs. Krissy's row used the vinyl in quilt blocks and when she puts it together it will make a great display for photos. Very unique idea! My row was the ocean/beach theme and the rows were so wonderful. I got a palm tree, turtles, dolphins, undersea scene, hibiscus, and more. They are so great. Joan made me this amazing landscape row and I mention it because i am going to take her landscape class next Sunday. I think I am going to make a small underwater landscape. I can't wait to get this quilt together. Would you all like to see my other rows?

Isn't this cool little tool neat? It has a suction cup that attaches to your smaller rulers and is a real finger saver! Many times when I am using a small ruler my fingers start to hurt from pushing down on the ruler. This little tool gives you a handle!

Our good friend Sharon is going to teach her mini pineapple quilt in September. It is SO cute! I am lucky enough to own one of hers which I bought at a mini auction at the Dallas show a few years ago. The whole quilt, including the borders is only about 10". She makes these a lot for gifts and for the auction. I want to take this class too!

Emilyanna Jones

Well, today was really exciting at Quilt Country. Emily was coming into work and she saw a large snake in the road and ran over it and saw it wasn't dead so backed up over it. Somewhere in there the snake jumped up into the motor/wheel well section of the car. She went to the gas station and they couldn't do anything but the birds were dive bombing her car. Strange! Then she just drove to QC where we all had to go out and see the snake. It was HUGE, about 5' long!!!! Of course no one wanted to touch it so Lewisville animal control was called. Meantime all of the guys in the shopping center had to come check it out. I guess snakes are a "guy thing". The animal control guy couldn't do it alone so Emily's dad, Todd, came and helped. Part of the car had to be taken off to get to it. So They got it in the bag and all ended well. The photos below tell the story. You can see that Emily wasn't afraid of it and held the bag!
Thanks to Emily's mom, Connie, for the fun title.

It seemed appropriate that the security company was Viper!

PEEK-A-BOO

Lots of fun stuff

It has been a busy June so far. We have been working in the yard a lot and also having some work done in the yard. We finally had a HUGE bed that was 23' X 54' and 4' high (no kidding!) taken out of the front yard and grass put down. We have been fighting that thing since we moved into this house 4 1/2 years ago. Did you know that when you buy mulch that you need to be sure that it has been baked/treated for weeds??? Well if you ever get nut grass in a flower bed that is thick enough to mow...you might as well just plow or burn it off and start over. At least that is our experience.

Quilt Country has also been really busy. The two sales at the beginning of the month were fun and everyone seemed to enjoy them. We have gotten lots of Christmas fabrics and more is on the way. We have the new schedule ready and there are some fun classes. I have been wanting to take Joan's landscaping class and now there is Carol Mc's new fabric box that is tempting me. There are some photos of Carol's boxes below. Then we have 2 machine quilting classes using your small machine on the schedule. Martha is teaching a beginning machine quilting class and Carol Mo is teaching an advanced machine quilting class. These should be great!

I think Joshua and I may go see Wall-e today. It looks like great summer fun!

Boy does time fly!

It is hard to believe that my last post was the end of April. When I started this blog I had every intention of writing every week. Well, with the flood, quilt market, a visit to our moms in Atlanta and life the month of May just flew by. Sorry this post is so long but...

We did have a great time in Portland at Quilt Market and the weather was really nice. There are a lot of "free spirits" up there. Many people we saw had tattoos, piercings and pink or purple hair. They weren't all young either. It was neat and the city has a great public transportation system. One evening our group was on the lite rail with Sandy Gervais and her family and we were enjoying visiting so much that we missed our stop. That was funny and we all had a good laugh. When we split to go to our separate hotels we all said if we weren't at the convention center in the morning to come looking for us. The city of Portland is very into conserving water and energy and also into recycling. Even the toilets in the convention center had two ways to flush, up for liquid waste and down for solid waste. That is a neat way to put it, huh? There was lots of delicious seafood too.

One of our favorite booths at Quilt Market is the Artgirlz booth. Those girls are such fun! Below are photos of us together in their booth. There is also a photo of the quilt we are making in our Freaky Friday class this week. It uses their felted wool balls, flowers and squares with the charm in the middle.

Krissy had a beautiful quilt debut at Quilt Market, the Hibiscus. We have a red and a yellow version at the shop.

The Judy Day sew-in at the shop is going really well. One Sunday a month we sew on our Judy Niemeyer quilts from 9-5. Several of the group have finished one of their quilts. Since these quilts are like potato chips, you can't make just one, many of us have more than one going at a time.

Our applique group is meeting in the shop on the second Friday of every month EXCEPT for this month of course!!! I forgot and put the garage sale on that Friday so our applique group will meet on the third Friday in June. This is the quilt they are working on. The project they are all working on is from a book called Affairs of the Heart. This is not a class but they all help each other with tips and techniques so if you are interested come check it out on the the second Friday of each month except for June of course which will be the third Friday.

Floods, parties, inchies, Linus and more

What a wild and crazy last few weeks it has been. We have had swaps, birthdays, huge Project Linus Day, and of course the flood.

We are always busy just before Quilt Market because we are finalizing new patterns, taking care of photography and stuffing patterns. That is usually enough to keep things mildly nuts but this time... About 2 weeks ago my husband Tony, who usually gets up earlier that I do, yells back to the bedroom "Sandy, grab some towels and come help mop up the kitchen." I jump out of bed and before I can get the towels and get there he yells again, "Never mind, just go back to sleep." As if that could happen. I walk in the kitchen and it is covered in water. A pipe under the sink had broken and apparently the water had been flowing for hours and hours. Every room in the house was covered in water and the den had 3" of standing water. Where do you begin? Well, it is 2 weeks later, the contractors have been out and it looks like we will be in the remodeling phase for a while. Below is a photo of the back door in the den, after we had gotten about 1"-2" of water out. We are SO lucky though, almost none of our personal possessions were damaged!

This is a photo of the kitchen with the fans. They are trying to dry out the cabinets. It didn't work so the lower cabinets will be replaced in the kitchen. If you want to see all of the photos you can check out my smugmug site http://sannton.smugmug.com/. The fans are so noisy and in every room so we were in a hotel for 4 nights. It is good to be back in the house with all our stuff!

INCHIE SWAP - Remember the inchies I told you about? Well, 11 of my friends and I had a quick little swap and it was so fun! We had about 2 weeks to sign up, get them done and turn them in. Some of us made 12 just a like and others made each one different. They are SO cool. I think I will put them on a bracelet, but I haven't done that yet. The photo below shows the 12 inchies that I received. I love them all and each one is so different.

This photo shows some of the swappers oooooing and ahhhhhing over each person's swap.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - Last weekend was Krissy's birthday and Jesse wanted to give her a surprise party. It was fun and the cake was beautiful. I picked up some of the items for the party and did a really goofy thing. I went by and picked up the plates but forgot the napkins so when I went back to get them I totally forgot which plates I had gotten and the result was NOT pretty!

PROJECT LINUS - Last Wednesday was Project Linus day. One Wednesday a month is dedicated to making quilts for Project Linus. This past week the ladies were VERY prolific!!! The completed 14 quilt tops and have several more that are partially done. Amazing. You can come join the group at Quilt Country on May 21 and June 18. It us such a worthwhile project.