Long winter

It was minus 1 outside when I got out of the sack today and I should be posting pictures of our snowy piece of property.  We have had a lot of wind, which is typical of course, but with the snow, our driveway always drifts.  Our driveway is a very long graveled circular drive and we do not have plows out here as we are a private division.  The snow blower has gotten a lot of use   and this is the first year since we have lived here that we have had this wintry weather.  (Should have known better since we have lived in this area for 45 years.)

We do not experience the kind of gridlock that the eastern part of the country does as we are so

rural.  The snow packed and  icy roads do not deter our activities as everyone here has 4W vehicles, so off to quilting my buddy and I went yesterday.  We are a tough bunch of ladies, trudging through the snow with our heavy sewing machines and one of our quilters is 80 years old.  She is an inspiration to us and was a little late yesterday "because she had to shovel her way out!".

Anyway, with the long winter days, it keeps us busy and we are already preparing for our quilt retreat next summer.  We give away a lot of door prizes, mostly donated by merchants here and handmade by us.  So above is my idea for a sew-

ing caddy.  The red plastic is for watering baby chicks purchased at the ranch supply and the jelly jar fits perfectly inside the center.  I put odd old buttons in the bottom to support the old wooden spools and added a pincushion to the top of the jelly jar which could also hold pins or a tape measure.  Since this is a ranching community, there are a lot of people who have chickens.  I am also working on several more quilts and the LONG WINTER this year affords me much time.

The little dogs and the cat even snuggle together when the cold weather and wind blow snow when they go out, although as you can see by the look on Spencer's face, he is not real happy about having to share his space with Coalette who makes herself at home anyplace.

"Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves." ~ Sir James Barrie

The Birds

Above, the birds are scrambling for food as we have quite a bit of snow. However, with that comes all of the "debris" that they leave.  I need a hard rain to wash away everything. This is a short post as I am knee deep in other projects...several quilt projects to be exact and I plan to spend the weekend sewing as much as possible.  This quilt above, the twister wreath is the first twister I have done.  I purchased the template at the quilt retreat last August and until one of my twisted sister quilters decided to try the pattern, I had been procrastinating. The directions were not very clear.  But with the help of the others in my group, I decided to tackle it and voila!---I really am pleased with it.  This is a small quilt about 36 X 36, but it would be a great tree skirt or table topper and I may eventually embark on a larger project.

I went with a buddy to Laramie this week for a quilt shop fix and just a few miles along the way, we saw a herd of about 150 elk grazing along the side of the highway.  Always awesome!

Christmas craft

For quite a while, we have had a very white Holiday season.  I Actually think we may be in for some more snow and it has been very cold! However, we do not have the flooding and tornadoes experienced by some of our neighboring states and sympathize with their tragedies and cannot imaging how their Christmas must have been.  Ours was quiet, celebrated with neighbors.  Very peaceful!  This project has been on my bucket list for some years and finally my buddy and I were able to work on these.  Our first attempt using a coat hanger wire to string these on was a complete bust, but we had originally planned to use these foam rings and with hot glue gun in hand and all of the ornament balls we have collected for years, we proceeded.  It was fun and a real success as far as we are concerned.  Mine is the red and gold and the other belongs to my buddy.

Even though we had lots of balls, we still haunted the thrift shop and the dollar store for more.  (After putting away the Christmas trimmings, we found more, but oh well.)

I love mine and I found a place to store it, but it took many more ornaments than we expected, not to mention a lot of hot glue.  We have had many critters tromping in the snow, rabbits and deer and antelope and one lonely spike elk.  A neighbor has a horse, Lola, who stays busy chasing the deer from her hay and the bald eagles are still watching over us from their perch in the tree south of our house.  The animals are all fat so they must be able to forage for enough food, including the bunnies who are ravaging my plants.  We have so many!  Breeding season for the cottontails will begin in February according to the information we have found so we will be competing for the ground plants.

I am quilting like crazy.  We are still meeting on Mondays from 9-3 at our library with machines and fabrics and sharing knowledge.  At least once a month, we go to lunch and are nearly finished with our row by row projects.  One more row and we will each have 11 rows to incorporate in a quilt, each from a different quilter and they are so unique.  What a wonderful way to remember each of these gals whose friendship I have so enjoyed. It is one day we all anxiously await each week.

My wish for all is a safe, healthy, productive new year!

"Friendship is the golden thread that ties all hearts together." ~ Anonymous

Quilt ladder and more

 This is the "more".  Since we have lived here, we have put our tree in front of this window and the elk antlers hang above.  We decided the first year to decorate the antlers--last year it sported balls and lights, but this year, just lights.  It does require a bit of a balancing act, but after the tree was decorated and we lit everything...voila! The tree has grown antlers.

We as retirees are realizing that we need to downsize and are not exchanging any gifts..we don't need anything, don't really want anything (Amazon has that for us during the year) and we just get what we need and want when ever the time comes.  That is a blessing for us and we are fortunate  But I did want a quilt ladder as I have quite a few quilts that I would like to display during the year.  We had beautiful alder wood trim in our home and there were a few pieces left in the crawl space by the previous builder and owner.  I suggested that they could be used to make my ladder and the Mr., being the engineer and handyman, took this as a small challenge.  He does such precise and beautiful work.

 The cross pieces were ripped from a wider piece and glued, screwed, and clamped above.

 It is drying above and I might add that all of the trim was prefinished before he began the construction.

And here it is with some of my quilts displayed.  It allows for several in a small space and it is a Christmas gift I can take wherever I go.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night under a warm quilt!

Let it snow, let it snow!

 As I write this today, nearly every school in Colorado (that is where I get my news), is closed because of the mountains of snow we received.  We are actually just a few miles from the state line and in the valley between 2 mountain ranges, we are experiencing a true winter storm.

 I was up early today and when I let my little grey fur kid out, he barely got off the back step to do his duty and the snow was up to his little belly.  The major roads, the interstate is closed and it looks like the snowblower may actually get used today.

I spent the better part of one day last weekend making my Christmas cookies, so this post is just about that, and the snow.  I have boxed and delivered a few, but as our cookie jar seems to empty itself, I think I may have to break down and make some more.  These are sugar cookies, dipped gingersnaps, biscochitos (a Mexican cookie made with lard and anise seeds) .
So today as it snows and blows, I will be baking and watching Christmas movies and staying in where it is warm.  It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

More stuff

Remember that I told you about the little stools I made from the old chairs so that my fur babies needed to get up on the beds?  Well here they are and it seems that I should have a bed exclusively for them.  Oh wait a minute, they do have their own beds.  This is just for nap time.

Last weekend we went out to get our tree and you can see how pretty the forest was and the snow was deeeeeep!  We did however successfully get our trees and mine is up and decorated.  We had a beautiful day to do this and again ate our picnic lunch overlooking the forest.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to Sheridan WY with my friend and neighbor to spend a few days with her mother.  She lives at the foot of the Big Horn Mts and needless to say it is beautiful there also.  We shopped and ate and toured a mansion one evening with friends.
It was amazing and there were musicians and figgy pudding and apple cider and just felt like Christmas!!

Her yard is overrun with whitetail deer and wild turkeys and you feel like you have returned to the turn of century and see our state as the  pioneers must have seen it when first they came.

This is the trunk I have begun to paint, but today will be reserved for baking my Christmas cookies.  I have 5 batches of dough in the fridge and am late in getting started to it will be a marathon of baking today.  The trunk will wait!

WINTER PROJECTS

This is the first of several projects that are floating around in the back of my pea brain.  And thankfully, the Mr. just goes along with my ideasHe is always there to help with my requests although sometimes I have to step back and let him take charge.

What initiated this endeavor was the purchase of new beds and the inability for one of my little furkids to access the comfy spot he always claims as his.  The other little grey guy can fly but Roger has a body built for laps only.

Last year a friend had given me an old broken table and 3 chairs and her thought was that I might

 use the wood for something.  I did take the backs and make garden angels for her daughters, but I needed some stools to put at the end of the beds.  So the Mr. first cut off the legs, and then I took offnthe old grungy seat covers.

As you can see...very grungy and they had been stored in the crawl space for about a year.  There was another original cover under these fake needlepoint covers and a million staples.

My real surprise was that there was actually straw as the first layer of padding, followed by

some other kind of cotton or wool substance. And that meant that these chairs were really old. How long has it been since straw was used in padding furniture?

So as you can see, after using a couple of garage sale seat pads which had a nice 2 inch  foam, and scrounging through my fabric stash, I recovered them with a pleather fake tooled fabric.

My adventure with the staple gun was another story.  We have 3 and they, of course, use different size staples.  The electric one which we purchased at some time to make things easier

was jammed and neither of us could even figure how to open it so I was back to using one of the old arthritis aggravating machines.

I am however, pleased with outcome and the little furkids can jump up on the bed with ease.

Today we are headed out for another adventure.  We have our tree permits and this will be the 4th year since we have had Christmas here and we are very close to tree cutting areas if we can access them.  We got a really nice snow in our area Thanksgiving and that will determine how available the forest will be for us.

So with thermos in hand and turkey sandwiches, armed with shovels, chains (yes we have been stuck) and saws we will be on the "hunt" for the perfect trees.  I always want a tall skinny tree and our partners in crime usually get a big fat tree.  We will have the camera and intend to document this trip again.

I have an old trunk that my mother-in-law gave me years ago..a steamer trunk to be exact.  It was in really poor shape on the outside, but it is in good shape inside.

I have hauled it around for about 40 years and it has been painted several times and the paint has chipped so I am giving it another life and will be documenting it on one of my next posts....perhaps after the tree adventure.

Hope all had a nice Thanksgiving and a shout out to my sister who had a birthday this past week.

"He who has imagination without learning has wings but not feet." ~ Joseph Joubert