Gardening and Quilting

Memorial Day Weekend was quite busy yet fun.  I worked in the garden, quilted a little and visited with family (always fun).

My garden is growing date is 5/27/12

A wall hanging marked up for quilting

Blocks for June's Guild meeting -- I made 9 to bring; maybe I'll win the lot of them.

Posie Gets Cozy's blog (http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/posie_gets_cozy/) has some nice garden pictures.  I'm thinking of planting peonies in my flower bed (along the front of the house) and maybe some delphiniums.  I'd like to do a english cottage garden of sorts.  It will take time as I'm trying to see what flowers will fit with my neighborhood. 

Just wanted to update and say howdy!  Weekend is coming up soon.  So PTL!

Gardening

Poor DH (aka 'dear husband) was kept busy this weekend helping me get the raised beds up and planted.  We couldn't finish mother's day weekend due to rain on Sunday.

Top picture front bed has too much clay soil. We had amended the soil in a corner bed and thought we'd incorporate that into this bed...hopefully it will do fine with all the other good stuff we put in.  Planted squashes -- summer, zucchini, and winter along with cucumbers in this bed.

We ran out of mulch and were too exhausted to get more.  Planted tomatoes, herbs, peppers (green and hot and sweet banana), carrots, bush beans in this bed.  You might be able to see some green string separating the areas.  I've sort of following the Square Foot Gardening method but can't find my book ... it's in a box in the basement and I haven't had time to dig it out.

Also trying to get some quilting done.  There is a patriotic challenge at the quilt guild in July and I've started a wall hanging that I hope to have finished.  And there's also my log cabin/maple leaf quilt that I need to work on and get it done. 

Time to close.  ~~ more later.

Gardening, Quilting & Other Comforts of Life

Seems like this weekend was a very busy one.  If you know me, you know I like it when things are easy-going and calm. 

Thursday night, or more accurately Friday morning, hubby and youngest son when to the midnight launching of the AVENGERS.  They said it was great.  Friday evening I'm trying to get some quilting done while hubby recoups from his busy day.  We've cleared some brush and he rented a heavy-duty chipper to grind it up.  We had a lot of tough briarbushes out back.  So Friday he did a lot of sleeping while I got caught up on laundry, did some work on my Craftsy May BOM and chilled with a good movie.

Craftsy May BOM

Saturday we had to get up early to get to the town clerk.  He needs a passport for work so we decided I should get one too.  We've talked about taking an Alaskan cruise at some point and also perhaps traveling to Scotland and Ireland and perhaps England.  Maybe some points of Italy too.  So we wanted to get to there early and get it done.  Then we went to Costco as the freezer was just about empty and he wanted to replenish it.  He needed a new pair of sunglasses (has been doing a lot of traveling for work lately) so we hit Bass Pro Shop.  He lucked out there as they had a couple pair of shoes I can wear to the office so we didn't have to hit DSW's, Kohls or JCPenneys.  It seems we did a lot of running around. 

Today we picked up what we need to build a couple of raised beds for my veggie garden.  We've been talking about it for the past few years and have decided to just do it.  Granted we are not where we want to be for the rest of our lives and never imagined that we would be here for four years so we decided to do what we need to enjoy living in our home and this area while we are here.  Next weekend, Hubby and youngest son will build the beds and we will get them put in and veggies planted. 

I am at the stage of life where I am trying to align my desires with my life.  If you enter my home, you can tell I'm a quilter as my quilting room is currently in the former dining room.  *grin*  easy access and no climbing stairs.  There are other areas that I want to develop.... gardening is one.

Okay, I think I've written enough.  May your week be full of blessings and I'll see you back here next week.

Quilting Thoughts

Current projects:
-- the maple leaf/log cabin quilt that I'm currently working on as well as
-- the Craftsy' BOM. 
-- Mel's top is waiting to be machine quilted
-- quilting frame is waiting to be finished and put together
-- quilting room is waiting to be moved from 2nd floor to 1st floor (putting guest room on 2nd flr)

Then there are a number of quilting projects I'd like to do:
-- vest (for me)
-- a couple wall hangings (Christmas Wreath and Christmas Tree)
-- string quilt blocks -- a couple a month so in a year or so I'd have enough for a quilt
-- wall hanging for a children's day care center in NH
-- lap quilt for my nephew Matt
-- lap quilt for my nephew Mark

In between all of this I need to work a full-time job; clean my house (hubby's threatened to enroll me in a Molly Maid's course -- dusting is just not my thing); plan, prepare and plant a veggie garden; tend to my knock-out roses, and bushes; help hubby with some yard work; exercise, eat right, grocery shop, laundry, dishes, etc. and enjoy life.

Now that I've written down what I have to do.  I need to make a plan to get them done.

Oh yes, I also have to get my tush to the local church and join as I've been talking about doing this since we moved to Ohio in 2007!  There's a Nazarene church down the street from my house that looks inviting.  I also want to join the local quilt guild especially now that it's about 10 minutes from where I work (meets 1st Monday of the month).

Craftsy April B.O.M.

Working full-time and trying to keep up with all that I want to do isn't easy.  However, housework gets set aside for quilting.  I mean, a girl has to do what a girl has to do.

This month we were thrown a challenge. We could do anything we wanted with the hexagons instead of the sunrays. So the first one I did was, of course, the challenge.

A grandmother's flower garden which is appropriate because I am a grandmother who needs a flower garden. The next one is the hex stripe which was fairly easy to do. 

And then I decided to do the sunrays as well.  I have some red-orange fabrics left from a quilt I did long ago and thought they'd look nice as my sunrays. As you can see, I need to finish tacking down the rays.  It was late when I was working on this and I think I needed to re-do the bobbin thread.

Here you have all three of them together. 

Happy Easter!

Today was a relatively quiet day for us.  The kids are unable to come over for Easter and I have yet to find a home church so... I did a little quilting, tried a new tuna steak recipe for dinner as well as attempted to make pumpkin flans for dessert for hubby and me. 

I've been busy with work which accounts for the lack of updates.  I've also enjoyed this month's Craftsy block-of-the-month which is English Paper Piecing.  I'm a little surprised at that as I've been avoiding paper piecing but it was a nice change.  I wouldn't want to do a whole quilt in paper piecing but a block or two or a wall hanging would be do-able for me.

The BOM included a sunbeam or you could do a challenge block using the hexagons.  So I haven't done the hex stripe (working on it though honest), but I jumped to the challenge and did a Grandmother's Flower Garden which I call "Out of Place".



.

 Called "Out of Place" because sometimes, like the odd pink petal, I feel out of place even though I may fit in to my surroundings.  This took pretty much all week as it's hand-pieced.  I did machine stitch it to the background fabric around the outer green edge and both edges of the pink round.  I am looking forward to doing the other two blocks for this month when I can squeeze it in.

It's been a busy month with the new job and hubby has been traveling off and on for work.  Last week I also managed to catch a cold he brought home with him and was battling that.  *fun**fun*

This coming week, I will be taking a couple of exercise classes being offered through work after hours.  Pilates and Zumba!  I had originally signed up for three (Body Blast -- cardio) but figured since I've been fairly inactive all winter long, I'd better take it easy.

I need to get ready for the work week by tending to the ironing (at least some of it).  Hope everyone has a blessed week.

Thanks for stopping by!

Nice End to a Hectic Week!

Hur-rah!  I began a new job Monday after being unemployed for a few months.  With the time change and all the walking at the new job (learning my way around plus the parking lot was a short distance from the building), by Friday, I was exhausted.  I wasn't used to getting up and out of the house in the mornings, and missed the opportunity to take an afternoon nap.  *laugh*  Here is a picture from when I exit the building to the stairs I have to climb to get to where I park my car. 

Good news is that I dropped 1.8 lbs from Monday morning. *laugh* Forced exercise... gotta love it!

Thursday night I tidied up the house in preparation for my grand daughter's arrival (and her parents of course).  She is constantly on the go and loves to run. Being almost two (turns two in April), she is inquisitive and wants to check everything out. So the boxes in the living room and kitchenette area had to go to the basement.

Friday evening it was nice to come home and find them here.  We celebrated her birthday as she'll be in New England celebrating with her cousins next month and *sniff sniff* grandma and grandpa won't be able to get the time off to join them.  So her other grandparents will have the fun.
Not much quilting has been done this week or this weekend although I'm hoping to get upstairs before the night is over. 

*sigh*  Unfortunately the visit ended too soon.  I'm looking forward to the time when we will be able to have her for week long sleepovers.  That will be fun!  We did spend time visiting with her parents as we haven't seen them in a while either. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all the Irish and non-Irish among us!