Progress

1:40am and I just finished stitching together the eight diamond units for the lone star.  Yeah!  All that fussy stitching seems to be paying off — the intersections look pretty good, if I do say so myself.  In between working on customer quilts tomorrow, I will move onto the next step.  When I have more progress, I will post more pictures.

Biting off more than I can chew?

The due date for the next color class project is looming less than three weeks away.  For this project I can choose from the following color schemes:  Double Complements, Double Split Complements and Split Complements.  We are not to use any of the colors we used in the last two projects.  Before I could start on my project I needed to figure out what color combinations I could use.  So that is all I accomplished last week — a list of all possible combinations for my project.  These are the combinations:

• green, red, yellow & violet
• blue, orange, red & green
• violet, red violet, yellow green & yellow
• red violet, red, green & yellow green
• yellow green, red, red violet & violet
• green, red orange, red & red violet
• red violet, green, yellow green & yellow
• yellow green, red & violet
• green, red orange & red violet
• red violet, green & yellow
• red orange, blue & green

Just looking at my lists I decided the third combination was the one that appealed to me most.  I need to decide what to do with those colors and didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do.  I start casually looking through my vast library of quilt books and came across Lone Star Quilts & Beyond by Jan Krentz which I have had for years.  I’ve mentioned my personal challenge is to try something new with each project.  I’ve never successfully completed a lone star quilt so why not?

I am at Ruth’s Stitchery on Wednesday when the doors open with color wheel and color tool in hand.  The goal — to find the fabrics I need in the back room for 40% off.  My friend Lisa and fellow color class student was also there so I bounced color choices off of her and she pulled one fabric for me — of course not from the back room.  Anyway, these are most of the fabrics I bought on Wednesday (another yellow and red violet didn’t make the cut once I played in Electric Quilt) all but the top two were 40% off. 

I came home and promptly got on Electric Quilt to start playing with design options.  My inspiration came from the book, but I’m not doing any specific quilt from it.  In my first coloration I had two fabrics from each family in the quilt, but the yellow seemed to dominate!  So I dropped one of the yellows and added another red violet and it was more pleasing to me.

To keep this somewhat organized I followed Jan Krentz’s recommendation of numbering samples of the fabric.  I started out cutting strips and sizes following directions in the book, but quickly decided I wanted more diamonds in my star so my strip sets changed.  It just took a little thinking to make it all work out.  I had all the strip sets stitched together and then cut apart into rows before going to bed on Wednesday night.

Thursday morning it again took some thinking to lay everything out.  I certainly don’t want to have to rip out any seams with all those bias edges. 

Then came some very tedious matching and sewing.  I am following the recommendation in Jan’s book of pinning all the intersections and then machine basting just the intersections and checking them before putting in the final seam.  As of this moment I have five of the eight diamonds stitched together.  This is what the project looks like at this point.  The very top of the picture has a print out of my Electric Quilt design.  I’m fairly sure you can’t see the detail in this picture, which is fine since I don’t want to give away the whole design yet.  The quilt has already gotten much bigger than my previous projects and I only have 19 days until the next color class.  If this comes together as well as I’m hoping I want to take my time on the quilting.  So it is possible I’ve bitten off more than I can chew before January 16.

Christmas has come and gone …(almost)

We celebrated Christmas last night (Christmas Eve) which has been the tradition in both my family and my husband’s family our whole lives.  Santa has never been a big part of our celebrations.  He is just a guy that dresses in red, is used for decorative purposes and is a nice story. I won’t tell you what my FIL says about Santa.

When I was a child we always opened presents at my grandparents house.  We always had before opening presents.  My uncle’s (He is 12 years older than I am) birthday is on Christmas so he usually chose the meal.  I think most of the time we had homemade pizza.  Once everyone finally finished eating and things were cleaned up we got to go into the living room (the living & dining room were usually closed off except for special occasions and Sabbath) and open presents.

Based on that background, I make the boys wait until after we eat and it is at least dark outside before opening presents.  I have been accused by my children of continually coming up with more things that have to happen before they can open presents.  Jesse was practically twitching on the 23rd waiting to open presents and tried to talk us into opening them that day.  I finally gave him  a time he could use for countdown  — 5pm.  We had a simple dinner at 4pm and were actually ready to get started at about 4:50 pm.  The cameras were even charged and ready to go.  The boys made out like bandits as usual.  Have I mentioned they are the only grandchildren on either side? My sister and brother-in-law are also very good to them.  Every year Guy says there is too much, but every year he is just as guilty of spoiling them as anyone else.

I was in line behind someone at Sam’s Club at the beginning of the month and the cashier was telling the lady it was much cheaper to buy for boys than for girls.  I almost laughed out loud!  That may be the case when they are little, but when they get older they tend to have a long list of electronic wants.

 Both boys recieved digital cameras and accessories and have spent today running around taking pictures of some very odd things.  They also each received a game for their Nintendo DS, a lego set (Nolan a market street set and Jesse a train set), pajamas, classic game controllers for the Wii, money and small Swiss Army Knives.  Jesse also got Sonic & Mario at the Olympics for the Wii, slippers, a Cutest Kitten Wars book, and Nintendo Monopoly.  Nolan got Fox Trot books, a Gerber Multi-tool, and Stop Motion software. 

Nolan had played with the demo version of the stop motion software, but it put the words demo version through the middle of the screen.  Once he loaded the software today he went back and reprocessed his early video.  He and Jesse can get very creative with this.  Here is one of their early videos — someday you might be able to say you saw their work here first

It’s too bad the quality is so much worse once something is loaded on YouTube.

We had a nice dinner today with  family and a friend.  It wasn’t a traditional Christmas dinner, but everyone here seemed to be fine with that.  Dinner consisted of Homemade Lasagna, various breads,  salad and Apple berry crisp and Ice Cream for dessert.

I have to admit I have a feeling of let down every year once Christmas is over.  I have fun getting ready for it and once it is over, just the clean up remains.  However, I do have something to look forward to tomorrow.  Ruth’s Stitchery one of my favorite quilt shops is having her after Christmas sale tomorrow!  She always had hundreds of bolts of fabric (usually anything over a year old) in the back room for 40% off and 50% if you finish the bolt.  Plus many other things on sale.  This is when I buy my backings, but I will be there when the doors open tomorrow with my color wheel and 3 in 1 color tool in hand looking for fabric for my next color class project.

Am I turning into (gasp) a Domestic?

I’ve done more cooking in the last two days that probably the last three weeks combined!  My in-laws arrived near midnight on Wednesday so I do have more people to cook for than usual.  Tomorrow is our Sabbath so I was working on our dinner today.  The main dish tomorrow will be Tofu “Meatballs.”  These are Vegan if you ever need a fairly easy dish for someone that doesn’t eat meat.

Tofu Meatballs

1 pkg. Mori Nu Tofu, firm
1-1/2 c. onion
2 T. lite soy sauce
½ t. garlic powder
1 c. pecan meal (or ground walnuts)
1-1/2 c. bread crumbs
2 t. parsley flakes
½ t. sage
¼ t. oregano
¼ t. basil

Combine first four ingredients in a blender and whiz smooth. Pour into a mixing bowl. Add the last six ingredients and mix well. Scoop walnut sized balls onto cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray. (I use a cookie scoop for this.) Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes. These will freeze nicely at this point. When ready to use, thaw and place in flat shallow casserole in a single layer. Cover with favorite gravy that isn’t two thick. (I will add mushroom gravy to mine tomorrow.) Bake uncovered in 350F oven for 25-30 minutes.

I also made Garlic-Herb rolls.  This is actually a bread machine recipe for a two pound loaf, but rather than letting it bake in the machine I ran it on the dough cycle and then formed into 24 rolls and baked at 350 for 15 – 20 minutes.

Garlic Herb Bread

1-1/2 c. water
4 t. margarine or butter, softened
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 c. whole wheat flour
3 c. bread flour
2 T. sugar
2 t. salt
½ t. dried rosemary leaves
¼ t. dried thyme leaves
¼ t. dried basil leaves
1-3/4 t. regular active dry yeast

Our church is holding their annual Christmas program and Slice of Pie tonight so I baked a couple of pies this afternoon.  I had some eggs left from doing the schools dinner theatre and wanted to use them up so these are the pies I made.

Creamy Peanut Butter Pie
½ c. brown sugar
½ c. granulated sugar
½ c. creamy peanut butter
2 eggs
2 T. flour
1-1/2 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1 9 inch pie shell

In a microwave safe bowl, combine the sugars, peanut butter, eggs and flour. Gradually stir in the milk. Heat at 70% power, stirring every minute, until thick. Don’t boil.
Remove from microwave and stir in the vanilla. Pour into the baked pie shell and chill.
Serving Ideas : Serve with whipped cream

The original recipe on the peanut putter pie had you make it on the stove top.  I modified it for the microwave and it made it much easier and quicker.

Lemon Meringue Pie 

Filling:
1-1/2 c. sugar
½ c. cornstarch
1-1/2 c. boiling water
3 egg yolks
½ c. lemon juice
1 T. butter or margarine
1 t. grated lemon peel

1 9-inch pie crust

Meringue:
3 egg whites
¼ t. cream of tarter
6 T. granulated sugar.

Combine sugar and cornstarch in a microwave safe bowl. Slowly stir in boiling water. Cook on Full Power for 4-6 minutes, or until thickened and bubbling. Stir twice during cooking time.

Mix part of the hot mixture into slightly-beaten egg yolks. Return all to remaining hot mixture. Cook on Full Power for 1 to 2-1/2 minutes, or until mixture begins to boil. Stir halfway through cooking time.

Stir in lemon juice, butter, and lemon peel, until butter is melted. Pour filling into 9-inch baked pie crust.

Preheat oven to 400F. Combine egg whites and cream of tarter in a small bowl. Beat with electric mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form, about 1 minute. Increase speed to high and gradually add sugar 1 tablespoon at a time. Beat until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved. Immediately spread the meringue over the filling sealing meringue to the curst of the pie. Bake about 5 minutes until golden brown.

While I was in the middle of making the pies, I looked out the kitchen window and there were 6 mule deer standing right below the window.  I raced up stairs grabbed my camera and opened the slidder door to snap a picture.  The camera wouldn’t come on!  Oh, come on, I just charged the batteries last night.  I popped open the battery door and duh — I charged the batteries, but forgot to put them back in the camera.  Another race up the stairs to grab the batteries and in the mean time the deer are on the move.  I went out the front door and snapped these pictures.  One fellow even stopped to pose.

You can see on this last picture that it had just started to snow.  I think this is as close to reindeer as we will see around here.

I made homemade chili today too, but am not going to bother with the recipe tonight.  Just a word of warning to my family if they are reading this — don’t get used to this!  I don’t want to spend my whole life in the kitchen.  Also thanks to my MIL who did all the clean up behind me.  If you’ve gotta cook — that is the way to do it!

Christmas Sweets

Today was the first full day of vacation for my boys and we finally got around to make goodies for Christmas.  [I had intended to do it earlier, but am fighting another nasty cold.  It is the third so far this school year and puts me ahead of where I usually am for the whole school year.  Not sure what is going on, Guy suggested stress.]  My weakness is sweets — forget the salt give me the sugar.  I tend to overdo it with making sweets for Christmas. So in an attempt to restrain myself I’ve started making just one choice per family member.  The boys each helped to make their pick.  I think the number one sweet for Christmas in this household is Chocolate Scotcheroos.  We can count on Guy to pick that one so everyone else can come up with another option.  I’ve decided to include recipes for each pick here.  There appears to be a theme to our choices — the majority contain commercial cereal and the other equally used ingredients are peanut butter and chocolate. 

Guy’s Choice — Chocolate Scotcheroos

1 c. sugar
1 c. light corn syrup
1 c. peanut butter
6 c. Rice Krispies
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate morsels
6 oz. butterscotch morsels

Combine sugar and corn syrup in microwave safe bowl and microwave until the mixture bubbles, stirring about every minute. Remove from microwave and stir in the peanut butter. Mix in the Rice Krispies. Press into a 9 x 12 pan which has been sprayed with cooking spray. Using waxed paper to press the mixture into the pan and avoid burning your fingers.

Combine the chocolate morsels and the butterscotch morsels in a microwave safe bowl and microwave at half power until the mixture melts. Stir once every minute. Spread the melted mixture over the Rice Krispies and allow to set up. You can chill to speed the process. Cut into bars. These are very rich so smaller bars are better than larger ones.

Nolan’s Choice — White Trash

2 lb. white chocolate (white morsels work)
2 T. vegetable oil
3 c. wheat chex
3 c. rice chex
3 c. corn chex
½ lb small pretzels
½ lb. pretzel nubs
3 c. Crispix
1 can mixed nuts

Combine the last seven ingredients in a large bowl.

Combine white chocolate and vegetable oil in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave at half power until the chocolate is melted stirring every minute. Pour the white chocolate over the other ingredients and stir gently to coat. Spread on waxed paper to cool. Break into pieces and store in covered container.

Jesse’s Choice — Peanut-Butter & Chocolate Kisses

½ c. margarine, room temperature

½ c. peanut butter

¾ c. packed brown sugar

¼ c. granulated sugar

1 egg

1 t. vanilla extract

¼ t. salt

1-3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 t. baking soda

3T. granulated sugar

48 milk-chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped

Preheat oven to 375F.  In medium bowl, beat together margarine, peanut butter, brown sugar, ¼ cup granulated sugar, egg, vanilla and salt until light and fluffy.  Add flour and baking soda, beating until thoroughly blended.  Shape dough into 48 balls, using a rounded teaspoon for each.  Roll balls in the 3 tablespoons granulated sugar.  Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until light golden.  Immediately top each cookie with a candy kiss, carefully pressing down firmly.  Remove cookies from baking sheets; cool on racks.  Makes about 48 cookies.

My Choice?  I’d have picked the Chocolate Scotcheroos, so I let the boys sort of pick the fourth — Muddy Buddies
9 c. Chex cereal (any variety)
1 c. semisweet chocolate chips
½ c. peanut butter
¼ c. margarine
1 t. vanilla
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
In a large bowl, measure cereal; set aside.
In a microwave safe bowl, stir together chocolate chips, peanut butter and margarine. Microwave uncovered on High 1 minute; stir. Microwave about 30 seconds longer or until the mixture can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal, stirring until evenly coated. Pour into a 2-gallon resealable food storage plastic bag.

Add powdered sugar. Seal bag; shake until well coated. Spread on waxed paper to cool. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.
So that and a long nap pretty much took up my day.  There are enough sugary treats in the house to make me even sicker, unless I can find will power somewhere.  Anyone know where I can buy some?

Cranberry Orange Granola

I put that new oven to good use today.  I made a large batch of granola and instead of taking 3 hours to cook it all, I did it in half the time.  Here is the recipe.

                         Cranberry Orange Granola

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient — Preparation Method

——–  ————  ——————————–

  14         cups  Rolled oats

  3           cups  toasted wheat germ — (I toast raw in a 200 degree oven for about 30 minutes stirring once)

  2 1/2    cups  unsweetened coconut

  3/4       cup  almonds — coarsely chopped

  3/4      cup  raw cashews — coarsely chopped

  2          teaspoons  Lite salt

  1 1/2   cans  frozen apple juice concentrate

  1          cup  pitted dates

  1          cup  unsweetened applesauce

  4          teaspoons  vanilla

  1          teaspoon  orange extract

  1          cup  dried cranberries

Combine first six ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Combine all remaining ingredients EXCEPT cranberries in blender and liquefy.

Gradually stir liquid ingredients into dry ingredients.

Spread mixture thinly on four large cookie sheets and bake at 225 to 250 degrees F. for 1-1/2 hours, stirring every half hour.

Divide cranberries and sprinkle over each of the four cookie sheets during the last 10 minutes of baking.

Remove from oven and mix stir.  Allow to cool and store in airtight containers.

I wish there was a way to embed the smell online.  My whole house smells really good.

He Came, He Saw, He conquered

This is a picture of my oven.  “Big Deal,” you say?  Actually it is.  On Sunday this space was filled with a single wall oven, a microwave and another drawer.  The display went out on my old oven and after check prices on parts it would have been around $250 just for the part.   I had been wishing for a double oven, so rather than spending the money to repair the old we put it toward the new.  That is where the “adventure” began.  We received the call saying the oven was in on Saturday.  Guy and Nolan took my Element on Sunday and managed to just fit the oven into the back.  Monday night after work Guy started tearing apart the cabinets and lowered the shelf to hold the oven.  Tuesday Guy went and bought the outlet to attach to the pigtail on the oven.  He was talking to me on the phone about it having 4 prongs and I commented that the old one had only 3.  So then we were wondering if the wiring is wrong.  I crawled back in the hole and started taking digital pictures and emailing them to him.  I finally ended up taking the cover off the receptacle and pulling it out of the wall so I could get a picture of the actual wiring.  Come to find out when they wired the receptacle they just skipped the ground wire, it was there.  So Guy replaced the receptacle.  Now there is a lovely hole all wired and ready to go.  How are we going to get that oven into the space.  Thankfully I borrowed a dolly from the school yesterday and we brought the ovens into the house on that.  (Guy had used one of the boys’ skateboards to take the old oven out.)  We still had a problem.  That oven is in the corner of the kitchen so once it was in front of the hole there wasn’t a lot of room to work.  Also we couldn’t lift it.  We finally leveraged a board under the oven on the dolly.  That brought it to the right height and we could now slide it into the hole.  It is installed and ready for it’s maiden baking.  Bless Guy’s heart, he just kept plugging away until it worked.  I’m seeing all kinds of possibilities here.  Now I can bake a whole batch of granola at one time instead of in two sessions.  We can bake two Papa Murphy’s pizzas at once rather than doing the kids’ first and then ours.  I won’t have to stack food on top of other  dishes if I’m trying to do a big dinner.  I can bake two things at once that take separate temperatures.  Oh yes, this is good!

Yesterday morning we had a two hour delay for school because of weather, so I started working on more samples for Embroidery Club today.  The theme this month was embroidery on paper.  Before taking the boys to school, I managed to embroider this toilet paper.  (The image is clickable if you want to see it bigger.)  Why did I want to embroider on toilet paper?  Because I can.

Last night I managed to finish one more sample — a candle wrap.  I used one of the blackwork run designs in my Bernina software and just digitized a straight line.  I then enlarged the design and embroidered it on Mulberry paper using metallic thread.  Yes, I know paper burns.  So rather than a regular candle I purchased one of those battery operated tea lights.  It fooled my husband last night he thought there was a candle burning in it. 

Because of the delayed start at school yesterday, I had to take the boys rather than Guy.  (The school is on the other side of town from where we live.)  Rather than coming home and working on customer quilts like I should have, I finished my Christmas shopping and met Guy for lunch.  That means I now need to wrap all that stuff.  I saw that Suzanne wrote on one of her journal pages that she doesn’t go all out on wrapping presents any more.  I think I am even worse than her.  About all I do anymore is put the paper on them (Paper I bought after Christmas the year before for $1 a roll).  I don’t usually bother with bows  and sometimes not even names.  That way the boys have to wait to find out which gifts belong to them.  Suzanne said her boys wouldn’t mind if the gifts were just in plastic bags.  I will admit that we have actually done that for birthdays the last couple of years.  Nolan and Jesse just don’t care.  Enough confessions about what a pitiful gift wrapper I have become.  I’m off to quilt until I need to pick the boys up from school.

Complementary — Take One

After surviving last week I was finally ready to tackle my Complementary project on Saturday night.  I organized my blue-violet fabrics from light to dark and then just started cutting irregular strips and stitching them to a background.  I put fusible web on the back of my word on the yellow-orange fabric and then cut out the letters.  The letters were then fused to the background.  This is what the project looked like by the time I quit on Saturday night. 

I wasn’t unhappy with it at this point, but the word looked a little lost on the background.  I wanted to keep the gradation and include the very dark and the very light so I started toying with different ideas.

Sunday morning I got up and headed to the basement to exercise, but all the fabric from the night before was still out tempting me to play some more.  So I decided to go ahead and cut out my other idea for the complementary project using exactly the same fabrics.  I cut out all the squares and then I did exercise after sewing a few of the squares together.

Next for the day was a trip to Michaels where I picked up a few things to improve on the first project.  Almost as soon as we headed across town, Guy got a call about the shooting at the New Life church.  We did our errands and before we headed home he was paged out to the scene.  That gave me the rest of the evening to play.  I finished putting together the 2nd top and cut out my stencils for the words.  (I changed the words from my original idea.)

This morning after everyone else was out the door to school and work, it was back to the basement and using the Shiva paint sticks I stenciled the words on the second top.  It is doing its 24 hour cure now.  I’m not ready to show pictures of it yet.

This evening I made it back to the first project.   I cut an irregular shape on the bottom, added bead fringe, put ribbon tabs on the top for hanging and then painted a dowel from which to hang it.  This is a picture of the final product hot off the presses — in fact it is so hot the varnish on the dowel is still slightly tacky, but I wanted to see the finished project.

I’m actually pretty pleased with the end results.  I did not quilt this one and there is no batting between the layers.

It remains to be seen whether I will manage to finish the second project before class on the 19th.

Decompressing

I don’t expect to have a lot to say today.  I’m working on recovering from this week and putting my house in order.  The dinner theatre went well and I took a couple of pictures of the boys to post, but somehow I managed to wipe out everything on my camera this morning.  They are pleased, the don’t get really excited about the plays they participate in at school.

We have a very eclectic collection of ornaments on our tree and I thought I would post a few pictures of Christmas decorations and ornaments I’ve made over the years.  Some are from books or patterns, some are copies of ornaments we’ve purchased and some I just made up.

This ornament is made from safety pins and beads.  It goes over a light on the tree so it glows.  The directions came from Christie Low.  A few years ago  we wrote a handout and had a demonstration day for our guild to raise money and Christie provided the directions then.

 

 

 

     I painted these penguins when we lived in California over 8 years ago.  They are probably some of my very favorite ornaments.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 These three ornaments are burned out light bulbs.  The idea for them came from a tole painting book.  After making these guys I ended up with quite a collection of old light bulbs.

 

 

 

 There was a picture of one of these ornaments on one of Carol Duvall’s Holiday specials several years ago.  There weren’t any directions, but I decided I could do it anyway.  They are quick and pretty easy.

 

 

 

 

 We bought one of these ornaments and I decided to make more.  They are just tongue depressors painted and decorated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This is another ornament where we bought one and I decided to try my hand at making one.  I’m not really into Santas, but he was too cute to pass up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    These snowmen were made from patterns.  They are all made from batting.  The trio sits out most of the winter and their noses have faded from our bright Colorado sun — which we have even in the winter!

 

 This group of snowmen were also made from a pattern.  Are you starting to sense a bit of a theme here?  I did a Snowman Collector block of the month in 2000 and have been stuck on snowmen ever since.  The quilt top is finished, but still waiting to be quilted.

 

 

 

 

 This snowman is just a paint can from the hardware store.  This is one I actually came up with on my own.  The can is covered with batting and then decorated with buttons, felt and other fabric.

 

 

 

 

 This snowman is made from Terra cotta pots.  These happen to be very small pots, but they could be as big as you wanted.  I don’t remember where the inspiration came for this fellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Even snowmen stockings.  The directions for these came from one of the Spirit of Christmas books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Finally a nativity set made from a 2 x 4.  The designs were  placed on the wood with a wood burning tool and then filled in with simple painting.  I didn’t have a nativity set yet when I made these.  My children were small so these were a safe set for them to play with.  I now have three nativity sets, but still really like the simplicity of this one.  The directions for this set also came from one of the Spirit of Christmas books.

I didn’t take the time today to pull out patterns and books to give specific titles today.  If anyone is interested in the specifics for anything you see here I can do that in the near future.

 

Stop & Breathe

This week is exceptionally busy so this may be my only post for a few days.

Monday was Guy’s birthday he caught up with me once again for a couple of months.  I thought I had actually managed to buy a gift that would surprise him.  He has been talking about this saw for almost a year.  When I checked Amazon.com it was almost $100 less than I could get it here in town with the free shipping.  The scheduled date for shipping was on his birthday, but then I received a notice that it had shipped and was due to arrive on Monday.  How cool is that — here for his birthday and I didn’t have to unload it from the car.  Last Thursday he comes home and says, ”Hey that saw is a lot cheaper on Amazon.”  Oh great, there goes the surprise.  I went ahead and told him it was on the way, because we sure didn’t need a second one showing up on the front porch. 

Today Quilter’s Anonymous met at my house.  (Guy says first you have to admit you have a problem, but it is actually my mini quilt group.)  We had our gift exchange today.  It was great! Everyone made gifts for the name they had drawn this year and the gifts were all awesome.  There were four quilts, a beautiful fiber runner, an embroidered shirt, hand knit socks and fingerless gloves and last, but not least the gift I received from Joyce, a purse.  We sent emails to our group discussing our likes and dislikes and I specifically said I like blue and yellow.  Isn’t it cool?  It has pockets all the way around the inside, too.      

While we were chatting today we somehow ended up talking about a female police officer that frequents the quilt shop where two of our members work.  I made some comment about how the vests police wear make them look buff.  I then received some teasing about liking my husband in uniform.  I frequently quilt for one of the other members and she has met Guy and she said something about him being good looking even when he isn’t in uniform.  In case I haven’t mentioned it before, Guy volunteers as a deputy with the Sheriff’s office.  The volunteers go through the academy and have all the same authority as any other deputy when they are on duty, they just don’t get paid.  Anyway, the Sheriff’s office recently took formal pictures of the volunteers to have on file.    Since about half the group hasn’t met Guy, I went and grabbed the picture and passed it around.  I got a kick out of the comments — they went something like this — “Oh, he is good looking, he still has his HAIR!”  I’m posting the picture here so you can be the judge (No matter what you decide, I’m keeping him!).  It’s a pretty good picture, but Guy wasn’t pleased that they spent most of the day on the range before they took the pictures so they were sunburned, had hat hair and weren’t freshly shaved.

The final thing that is making this week hectic is the Christmas Dinner Theatre at school tomorrow.   The teachers and students provide the theatre and I provide the dinner.  We are having soup, salad, bread and dessert.  The soups are all homemade (also vegetarian) and I had planned to bake the bread as well.  At this point I think I will be stopping in at Panera tomorrow to buy some bread.  For soup I have a mild Chili, Mock Chicken Noodle soup, Minestrone, Taco soup, and Baked Potato soup.  The first four are finished except for adding noodles to some of them and the baked potatoes just came out of the oven for the last one.  For most of the soups I quadrupled the recipes.  How did I end up with this job anyway?  Oh, yeah it was my idea several years ago to add the dinner as a fund raiser and to get more people to show up.  So now I do it twice a year, at Christmas and in the Spring. 

So until I finish with clean up tomorrow night, I will continue to remind myself to breathe!