WIP birthday

This years garden is turning out great! I've been weeding (actually grassing, new word in my vocabulary, I have more grass than weeds coming through) about every other day to keep it clean. Everything I have planned to grow is not yet planted, but I will be adding it in the next couple of days. The tall plants are sunflowers and I hope the birds don't eat them all and we get to have some sunflower seeds to snack on. I'm happy to say all the tomato plants (about 14, I may get more!!!) have come up from seed from last year! (Walt from work said there is a word for this so as soon as he tells me I will glady be using it, often.) Since I don't recognize the varieties of tomatoes it may be either cherry, roma and/or beefeater tomatoes. I've got some herbs in front of the sunflowers. I need to take more detail pictures during the day. So far we have gathered one delicious looking jalapeno...hehe! Which of course I didn't take a picture of because I was too excited to remember.


We are also getting some interesting new bugs in our area. The boys found some caterpillars eating my hibiscus! We left them alone and maybe try to figure out what kind they are later. They also requested more plants that will attract butterflies...so poor me will be off at the nurseries in search of more plants! Yea!


I was trying to distract everyone with my garden, but in truth I am running behind on a birthday quilt. Ugh! It will not be ready until next week. I did not forget that today is my niece Cristal's 9th birthday!! Hope you are having a great day! Here's a preview of the fabric, Odessea fabric collection, it's a really pretty ocean theme and I think it will turn out pretty. It should be in the mail soon!!!

www.flickr.com

Happy Birthday Cristal!

School is out!

I have been sick with allergies and an infection, anyways it has worn me out and I have not had the motivation to post so now I have lots of things to tell everyone. Here are just a few pictures I want to share and a few words. 

School is out! The boys of course are very happy. It is always fun for me too because we have our annual last-day-of-school-water-balloon-fight. It's usually a surprise but the boys are starting to pick up and remember. I filled almost 100 balloons (and that was because some broke or had holes) with water and almost lost 2 fingers. They were sore for a couple of days. We had a blast and were soaked through. The weather was very accommodating, it was hot! I was so soaked that my pants were falling off from the weight.

I made a gift for Ram's teacher for teacher appreciation and finally gave it to her the last day of school because I was still working on it until right before they got out of school! (Yes, the last day!) This is my first one turned out pretty good! The book had easy to follow instructions., I can see the possibilities of gifts and I still need to make myself one.

Same day... We drove to Prue and attended Cody's high school graduation. Here he is the happy grad, I think he was the tallest one in his class! I remember when I met Rog he was just a couple of years old and could barely talk!

May 11th was Rog's 38th Birthday, I recycled previous birthday decorations and came up with a theme...Cars and Batman...haha! I think he had a good time!

Some school artwork from the boys.

Ram drew a picture of himself and Rem. I love the faces and the noses.

An etching Rem did in school, I love it! He said it's Navy stuff he has been interested in.

I have to show off my new purse I made from  a Japanese magazine "Cotton Time", it turned out smaller than I thought but I still like it and of course I learned some new techniques.

My health...I did go to the doctor and I'm on antibiotics and got an allergy shot (haven't had a hip shot since I was five!). Did not realize how sluggish I had been for about 3 weeks. The diagnosis is seasonal allergies.

We did not make plans for Memorial weekend so everything is up in the air to what we will do.

Happy Memorial Day!

or Decoration Day

U.S. holiday. Originally held (1868) in commemoration of soldiers killed in the American Civil War, its observance later extended to all U.S. war dead. Most states conform to the federal practice of observing it on the last Monday in May, but some retain the traditional day of celebration, May 30. National observance is marked by the placing of a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. Flags, insignia, and flowers are placed on the graves of veterans in local cemeteries.
taken from http://www.reference.com/

Avalon quilt

I know I know...this is late! aaauuuhh! but not too late. I'm getting better. It will be in the mail tomorrow.

It turned out really beautiful and bigger than I thought, even though I changed the pattern slightly. I used the Avalon pattern in the book Material Obsession, it said 18in squares but I made them 16 inches. This is a great book I love it. I had checked it out at the library and decided that I loved all the quilts and bought it. I'm getting ready to do a Dresdon plate block like the one in the front of the book. Pretty!

Just to make excuses for myself why this did not get there on time. I kept changing my mind about the quilting. I ended up with a meandering pattern, wasn't as bad as I thought even though I quilted it on my Bernina. I think anything bigger than a twin size will be hard on my hands and my nerves...haha! All this weekend I spent on the binding. Ram took a picture of me when I was almost done with the hand stitching, Sunday morning. My little photographer. My fingers hurt I had started with a big needle and it was difficult and then I changed to a smaller needle and it went faster.

Here is the back of it....I love the backing fabric it's from the Ooh-la-la collection, didn't find any of the coordinating fabrics but I think it works great on it's own as the back. L loves it. She keeps touching it when I have it out and working on it.

The pile of dirt to the right is our compost area.

Here it is!!!! The great reveal! I used the fabric I had bought a while back from Anna Maria Horner collection called Chocolate Lollipop. See L loves it...hehe! (The lens on my camera is dirty because the top of the pictures are blurry.)

I hope you like it!

Happy Birthday Isabel!

sneak peak WIP

I have another birthday sneak peak!

No details for now, just that I am almost done and I'm loving it! I think I want to keep it...hehe! But, alas it will definitely make it to it's recipient, my niece Isabel in California.

So here are some of the colors...not all because I didn't get a before shot of all the fabrics. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that it will be done and on it's way before the special day.

Don't forget Earth Day is Thursay, April 22nd. Think green.

signs of spring!

Finally, some signs of Spring!

We have had an abnormal cold winter and in the past few days has begun to get warmer, but {this is a good but} yesterday I noticed the blooms on my bleeding heart! Bestill my heart! {hehe, I know bad joke...} I live in zone 6 and this plant has done so good every year. I even butchered it last year by yanking half of it off and giving to my mother-in-law. So far it's doing great and the hearts are gorgeous. I just got done pulling weeds that have overgrown my perennial shade garden. Which I will have to move because the electric company cut the tree down {actually glad the tree is gone} and now there will be no shade during the Summer. I will have to transplant them {not happy about that}.

Happy Spring!!

rockets and flying geese

I can't wait...

I took pictures of Jaime's birthday gift that should arrive pretty soon, belated. {My sisters know that getting it in the same month is pretty good for me!} His birthday was the 11th of this month and thanks to several set-backs {stitches, taking it apart and sewing back together, the new stitching regulator (which is actually pretty cool once I got the hang of it), running out of fabric --changing my mind about one of the colors -- and not giving myself enough time} did not leave until yesterday. USPS should deliver in a couple of days. The flying geese pattern is new for me, learned quite a bit about triangles, they are easy and hard at the same time...haha! To get the corners perfect you have to be careful, mine are not. Don't look too close. This is my first machine quilted item. You can see the stars in the last two pictures. I had the boys hold it up and it was hard to get them to hold still there were several blurry pictures before I got a decent one. There was also another small gift that I forgot to take a picture of that will be a surprise. Lets just say it matches the quilt...hehe!

spring break

Just a quick post about spring break...

I took a few days off for spring break and we hit two museums.

The Philbrook was originally a villa built in the 1920's then it was donated to the city as an art center in 1937. (I took this picture from the Internet I didn't think of taking a picture of the building and it's so beautiful). They are having free family day every second Saturday of the month this year and the kids get art supplies. They have art activities but we spent so much time in the gift shop we ran out of time.

The boys had a great time they got to go into all the rooms and they actually enjoyed looking at the art. It was a little bit chilly so we didn't go see the gardens, but not much is blooming yet so maybe next month.

We also went to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium {a different day...hehe}because snow was forecast for Saturday and their prediction was accurate. We got snow Saturday morning and Sunday and it melted by Monday. That should be our last frost. {should, keep fingers crossed.} We saw a magic show at the Planetarium with 'Brandini', it was pretty fun he had the kids participate and explained how science helps his magic tricks. The TASM is not very big but we were there for 3 hours because they had to see everything in detail. The F-14A Tomcat was the highlight for them. L enjoyed running around.

The Philbrook

This is one of the first paintings they say and they said they had seen it before then they ran off so I didn't get to read about the painter.

TASM & Planetarium

Magic show

Backyard view and big snowflakes coming down.

View of my small vegetable garden.