Don't we love technology?

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I posted and we have been busy.  Had a couple of dentist appointments, bought and installed a new garage opener, have been painting and trying to get caught up on a couple of quilts....this one is getting bound now, but I have been having difficulty with my blog and the pictures that I have been air dropping from my phone don't want to load so with the Mr and his limited experience, we finally got this one on today.  Erica was here again this last Friday and she got more butterflies done and her lamp and frame came so it will be fun to get that finished.  She took the soldering iron home to work on that project.

I also have been fascinated with my ROKU tv's accessibility with so many u-tube and Netflix programs from which to choose, I can watch any quilting program anytime or so many other interesting programs...it is amazing.  We have had rain, but we don't have to shovel it and I have visited with some of my friends from Wy and CO and understand that they all have lots of snow.  We actually had sun today and the temperature was 51 degrees. My really great friend in CO has a new dog...a brown cocker who is a joy now for her since she is living alone.  I spoke with her today and I am so pleased for her and know that pup will have a wonderful home!

I will have to get some advice from my daughter in order to get those photos uploaded now and even though I have been doing these for so long, I am pretty tech challenged I will be the first to admit.

"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works". ~unknown

Friday with Erica

 So last Friday, Erica was off and we embarked upon starting the butterflies for her lamp.  We still have more to cut and foil, but after starting to tin the edges, I realized that among some of the things I did not keep was the temperature control for the soldering iron.  So she ordered a rheostat and on her next day off we will cut and foil more.  We did cut a large one and several smaller ones, but she needs even more.  I was so pleased that she took to this so well and feel confident that after she masters the solder, she can do anything she chooses.  I am anxious to make some small projects again also.  I have also started a quilt of valor and intend to make at least 3 more.  This one has been basted with the washable school glue which eliminates all pinning and no wrinkles.  It takes no more time really after you get the hang of it and is so much easier to quilt as there is no shifting of fabric.  I am still working on those other UFO's though.

The Mr. and I went to our new dentist yesterday and really liked the staff there.  All of our records had arrived and even though I have a very small cavity, everything was just fine.  We are just about finished with all of the health issues and established all of those professionals.

Yesterday we had a TV to take to Goodwill and we also checked out the RESTORE here.  We like to haunt the thrift stores and there are some great ones here.  The Mr. picked up a light fixture which was marked at $25.00 and because it was "green tagged", it was half price.  He had a ceiling fan with some lighting which was pretty sad in the room he calls his "hidey hole"...the room in which he does his leather craft.  This will be a great improvement and because he is so handy, he can install it with just a small modification. Raining here this week, but the temp is so moderate and the sun is shining today.  I don't really feel like we have had winter.  The big box stores here are already getting the spring plantings in so that is encouraging.

Busy week

I spoke with one of my friends this past week.  I am still trying to recoup from my sciatica and finally, it is better until the next time.  We spoke about these things at our age now which impact our daily lives and we are realizing that it is just a fact of life.  We spoke of quilting and of some of the things I have done and I mentioned that my daughter, who is learning to do a few more things, has a stained glass project in mind.  Most everyone who follows my blog, knows that I have done some of this in the past, but I don't think I had any of it on display in the past 8 years except for one window in my sewing room.  This is a lamp that I made several years ago and wasn't able to hang it in my last home.  I had lots of specialty tools, saws for glass etc. which I donated to younger artists as I moved from one location to another, but I did keep some basics and hope that my artist daughter will continue to do this craft.  This hangs in my sewing room now above a machine.  Friday, we will do what she wants to do for a lamp.

I titled this blog "busy week" for a specific reason.  We are still adapting this home to our needs.  These windows below are on the west side of the "pool" room and although we have large of trees for shade and privacy isn't a problem, the sun can shine on the felt on the table and the carpet, not to mention the heat generated in the warmer months.  (31 degrees this am and snow)  We also have a glass door out to our deck in back.  Now we have these cordless, cellular shades on all four windows. The Mr. spent part of 2 days installing them and one day involved getting a new doorbell and installing that.  Another 2 days was spent trying to "fix" the new dishwasher.  Really it cleaned great, but the door was not shutting well enough and it finally just would not connect in order to run it.  What an adventure that was.  The front of the door came off (lots of screws), the electrical stuff (not sure what the technical term is) got disconnected and tested.  Then the door wouldn't go back on properly until the Mr. remodeled it(shhhhh), after finally getting it back together and no luck, we decided it would need to be replaced.  He spent the better part of two days on the floor trying to determine what was wrong. It became frustrating as he is really good at fixing just about anything.  Finally as he looked at the top of the dishwasher, trying to decide what to do, he discovered that the little u-shaped arm wan't connecting with the switch on the door and with a 15 second bit of pressure, the arm was adjusted down a small amount and "voila" the dishwasher took off!

These are the kinds of adventures that have kept us laughing and crying.  But the list of things we have wanted to get done is not getting any shorter, so we will keep on and are thankful that we are able still to do most ourselves, but as my friend last week and I realized....we are not getting any younger.

New Year projects

Oops! Should have flipped this picture...So I took a little break from this blog over the Christmas holiday, but not from the many projects in our list.  This entryway runs from the kitchen to the hallway toward the bedrooms and you enter from the front double doors.  It drops down a step to the carpeted room where the pool table resides although I think it was considered a sunken living room at the time the home was built.  We have worked on a myriad of small projects but this entryway was so dark that I didn't realize that the grout wasn't actually dark.  The bricks are of varied colors so being in a high traffic area, and since it was all dark..it wasn't a priority.  With a bucket of water and a scrub brush and some heavy duty cleaner, I have been on my hands and knees scrubbing a little bit every morning.  I am nearly finished and you can see how dirty it was and still is in this area. YUK!  

 The Mr. has been busy with small projects also.  He needed a cue holder and opted for a small one rather than a larger one as he has had in the past. A few years ago, a friend gifted me an old table and 4 chairs as I reuse and repurpose things.  The table was in really bad shape so it couldn't be used so the chairs without seats were reused as stools at the foot of the bed for the dogs to use.  We cut off the backs which I painted as garden angels and returned them to the gifter for her daughters.  The legs were shortened and new cushions fashioned for stools for the dogs.  We used them in 2 homes and when we moved in here, they were not needed.  The wood was old, but nice hardwood so the Mr. took them apart and the pieces were sanded, routed, and cut to size, then glued and painted. He installed them yesterday. This was just a small part of the chair wood.

So as promised, I am slowly finishing some UFO's. This is the quilt that I am assembling with the Farmer's Wife 6" squares.  These are the ones that I had finished, and I have begun to stitch some more. If I make 18 more, I can have a square quilt and I have completed a few this week. I call it "pink caramel" and we'll see how many I can finish.

One of the projects we completed this morning was the light over the dining table.  I don't have a picture, but it has 3 lights and was designed to hang from a chain.  However this kitchen/dining area has really low ceilings, so the chain was just looped up and tied with a wrap.  Removing some chain links seemed like a small project since we have done so much of this kind of remodeling but we neglected to take pictures and struggled to figure out how to reassemble it when it was shortened.  It literally took us all morning to finish this project, but it got cleaned and we finally figured it out, even though there were a few extra pieces left over?  It looks great and the main thing is that it works.

One of our neighbors stopped yesterday as we were taking down our lights and after she left, I thought about our conversation.  She is a master gardener and has been very helpful in informing us of the native plants and offered me some of hers earlier this year.  But reflecting on what I have tried..some successful and some not.  I can do many things...a jack of all trades and a master of none.

"When I was growing up I always wanted to be SOMEONE.  Now I realize I should have been more SPECIFIC."  ~ Lily Tomlin

Cookies and quilts

 I posted earlier that I would be working on some unfinished (UFO's) projects.  Above I have completed 33 6" finished squares from "The Farmer's Daughter 1920's" book.  Not having touched these in several years, I am choosing to finish them before the fabric rots.  After some thought, I realized that I am never going to get all of the squares finished as I am only a few pages into the many patterns.  So I decided to make a center panel from fabrics that I think would have been used during that time period.  The exception may be the first border, but this green was one I purchased when I went to Ohio several years ago with two of my quilt buddies on a trip.  Among other things, we stopped at quite a few quilt shops and I knew I wanted to use a green in a future quilt that was similar to one used by quilters in the first part of the 20th century. I think I must have been born a few years too late as I am constantly finding myself attracted too older things, especially old wooden utensils and furniture. Oh, well.

I remember that my grandmother had several pieces of linens that had similar flowers embroidered with black floss using the buttonhole stitch and my mother inherited them. Mostly I remember that they were dresser scarves and table cloths.   I do it a lot on appliqué.  This tree of life was one I saw in a magazine and I adapted the size to suit me so it is not proportioned as I saw it in the book.  But it will suffice.

With Christmas coming this week, I have been baking cookies and made some peanut brittle.  It was a little difficult to find raw peanuts, but I did. It has been interesting dealing with the humidity.  In Wyoming, dry weather rarely affected my baking.  I like crisp, crunchy cookies, but here everything absorbs a little moisture.  So my friend, Barb, who always loved a soft cookie, would be happy.  I miss all of the Christmas bazaars with her....she always wanted to see if a cookie was soft, so I would see her pressing on the wrapped treats to see if they were soft or hard.  (She is still alive and well and probably pressing on cookies I imagine.)

"A balanced diet is a Christmas cookie in each hand."

Christmas Rose

A few posts ago, I said that my intention was to finish some projects.  This quilt top is DONE! It will not have borders and measures 80X96.  I have the backing and the batting and most likely won't glue baste it until after Christmas, but will do that and start quilting soon after.  Rummaging through my UFO's I found the Pink Caramel 6 1/2" squares from the Farmer's Wife 1920's book.  I have 33 of them completed and worked on it last in 2016.  So that will be my next big project to work on.  It will get finished I hope.  My neighbor behind me with the chickens and new beautiful baby named Charlotte brought me more eggs last weekend.  I made a quilt for Charlotte and when I called to tell her it was done, she walked over in the rain, with Charlotte snuggled at her chest. She also wants to learn to quilt so I hope I can help her with that endeavor.

The Mr. and I have been busy, me at baking goodies and helping him when I can.  We mounted 3 of our tv's on walls, replaced all of the recessed lightbulbs (and adjusted some of the fixtures) as the bulbs were too small in the can lights. He is making shelves for an old sled that I have placed on end to be repurposed as a night stand next to a twin bed, put shelving in his workroom closet and lots of small projects with many more on the list.

My daughter gave me a couple of rose bushes this summer and I planted them in the beds out front, not expecting them to do well...I have never been  very successful with roses, but look!  It had one rose on the spindly bush this summer and when we had a freeze last week, I noticed that a partially open rose had frozen.  I didn't even know it had bloomed.  So look.....I have several buds about to open.  Please, don't freeze again!

I have spoken with some of my friends back in Wyoming this past few days.  I miss them but I very much intend to stay in touch.  I do not miss the snow.  I also received a wonderful card from my neighbor in Cheyenne and she informed me that they had lost their dog.  He was having health issues when we left and that another neighbor, a wonderful neighbor in his 80's had lost his dog.  So all three of us had to say goodbye to our furry friends this fall.

We took a drive yesterday to Littlerock WA as the Mr. is scheduled to play pool there next week.  Not being familiar at all with much here, we knew he would be traveling in the dark so thought it would be a good idea to find it.  Rather than take the interstate, we opted to take the back streets and roads.  Littlerock is just a wide spot with a post office in a trailer, a bar and a grocery store, but the drive was beautiful!  It was drizzling a bit, but a good deal of the drive was rural and with so many green acreages and trees, it was pleasant.  It took us about 50 minutes to reach this little burg, but it was a pretty drive.

"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses." ~ Ziggy

Candy Kiss Gnomes

With Christmas on the horizon I have been as busy as I can while still battling with this Sciatica.  Not a very patient person, I am not accustomed to slowing down so it has taken me more time to accomplish my tasks.  It used to take me one evening to decorate my tree and this year I spent 3 days between ice and Ibuprofen.  I have made a couple of batches of cookies and have more to make and I did get my cards out...who sends cards?  ME, but this will most likely be the last.  For one thing, I needed to let some people know our change of address and that brings another story.  We have had this address for 4 months and I had a dear friend tell me that I put the wrong return address on the card she received....How many others?  Yep, time to quit!

Yesterday my favorite daughter came and we decorated cookies together---mostly she did the decorating.  I found a Candy Kiss set of cookie cutters at Hobby Lobby. (she had shown me photos of triangular shaped cookies earlier and these reminded me of that similar shape.)

 As I got these out of order, bear with me. We made a royal icing with Wilton's meringue powder and water, whipped in the mixer and then added powdered sugar.  That's not necessarily an easy task as you can see that it snowed sugar all over me, the counter and even the stove.  I had a cake decorating teacher once say that if I couldn't write my name in my range hood with powder sugar that I wasn't doing it right.  I did it right yesterday.

 So as much as I tried, I still got these out of order.  See the kisses shape?  Erica colored the icing and she added a caramel flavor. She drew on these with an edible marker and in the bottom photo she was beginning to outline and continued to flow the icing on the hats. She thinned the icing and actually painted the face color on. When it was dry, the hats, beard, and blue coats were added as each color dried a bit.

 She added the nose, eyes and mouth and they are adorable.  We also decorated mushrooms that she made with a mold that she had ordered and I will post those pictures next.

I also received a package from a dear friend in Saratoga.  She had asked for pictures of the house and knows how I like to decorate.  When our son came to pick up some things in Cheyenne before we moved, he took all of our antlers, our elk antler mount and some other Wyoming rustic things that we didn't think we would have room for.  One thing this friend noticed was that I didn't have any antlers lying around.  We spent so many years hunting and they always reminded us of good times.  She reminded us that we needed a few and she insisted that she would send some.  I will post those pictures later also...Thank you Ginger!

"In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips." ~ Salman Rushide