Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Teaser Tuesday~May 21st, 2013



 



Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:



• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Here's my teaser for this week!


"Pete never failed to be amused by the uppity righteous crowd and their complete oblivion to danger. It's why they were the easiest targets of all-the thought that they were presently in danger never even crossed their minds. It was almost too easy. Almost."

Friday, May 17, 2013

Out of Town Teaser!

Well, I am out of town, yet again...this time, locally though...well relatively speaking! 
I have brought with me my Underground Railroad project! It's time for me to get caught up with all the lovely ladies who are participating from Lisa's Quilt Circle! I am feeling especially inspired after being out in North Carolina and visiting a church that was a congregation of freed African Americans back in the Civil War days. I also read through the entire meaning of the URR quilts on the drive home. It was so intriguing and inspiring that I can't wait to get my hands in my fabric!

I have several days to do almost nothing but sew! HOW GREAT IS THAT!



Last weekend our lil family had an absolutely AMAZING time in the mountains of North Carolina with friends of ours, Regina and Gary Bushee.

Regina and I went to the "Airing of the Quilts" festival in Franklin, NC while Ronnie, Kyle and Gary went gem mining! They got a TON of gems! The largest one, when cut, is worth about $800! Kyle found one that when cut is worth $500! And they found LOTS of different types of gems. They had planned on doing a couple of other things that day but were enjoying the gem mining so much that they ended up playing in the dirt ALL DAY :o)

Regina and I enjoyed browsing the quilts in the lovely mountain air of downtown Franklin. We stopped in at this shop and that...including a book shop that had 4 cats in it!
We were also blessed to meet the author of the book 'Barn Quilts', Suzi Paron, (and get it signed!) and see several along the mountain roads! (I got lots of pics!) You can read Suzi's blog HERE if you are interested! I LOVE this concept and am planning on starting a quilt trail in Mount Dora! The hard part is choosing which block to put on my home!

You can check out details about the Airing of the Quilts festival HERE if you'd like to see what it's all about!

Sunday we all went together to see a BUNCH of waterfalls....we had a picnic lunch outside and the weather was PERFECT!

I will be breaking our trip into multiple blog posts...but unfortunately my pics are all on my pc at home :/ So....all I can do for now is post this teaser!!

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Process Post! Farmer's Market Quilt

On the Farmer's Market Shop Hop in February, we received a block kit at each of the shops we stopped in at. As I began working with these fabrics, I just HAD TO HAVE MORE!! So I have continued adding to my stash of fruit and veggie prints. I'm using "handspray" as the background fabric b/c that is what came with the kits.
Here is what I have done so far :)
The block in the top left is my Underground Railroad block...but you can see which ones are Farmer's Market...there are 10 so far :) 
 These are the fabrics that I still have to make blocks for:


 Aren't they SO PRETTY!!!??!
I am going to do a thin border of the purple handspray and then a wider border of these veggies to finish the quilt top.
 And see that red and white check fabric in the back left corner?? That is what I am going to use as the background fabric in pinwheel blocks....I am using the scraps from each fruit/veggie and making a pinwheel block to alternate with the fruit and veggie blocks. This quilt is going to be BIG!
Here are my scraps...
 I have three fabrics that I am trying to decide between for the backing....
The daisy and strawberry fabric is my fav but I think one of the other two may go better w this quilt...we'll see!

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Process Post! May 2nd, 2013

So tonight I sewed the binding on this jelly roll race quilt! FINALLY...It's only been quilted for months now...and I even had the binding made up! lol. But I finished it tonight...One more UFO marked off the list!
(OK, so I don't really have a list, but...it is a UFO now completed!)


I also am toying with a scrap quilt pattern...this one:

I don't think that these color values are contrasting enough, but we'll see. I am altering the measurements so that I can cut the entire quilt with my Accuquilt Go, so this is just a test block anyway.
Here is my latest addition to the Accuquilt Go! dies! 3 1/2" squares. YAY!

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April 30, 2013

Today has been a pretty typical day around here. We got up this morning with Ronnie so that we could continue doing our morning bible reading and devotions together. This is SUCH a wonderful gift for our family. I love getting up and spending a few quality minutes with Ronnie before he goes to work. I love being in the Word with him and Kyle as the very first thing we do (OK, except for making a cup of coffee, maybe). And I love that we are praying together and my husband is going out into the world with God already at the forefront of his heart and mind.

We were planning to be gone most of the day today...Kyle was supposed to go work with my Uncle, but due to the weather radar showing that it was supposed to rain ALL DAY LONG, we did not go. And of course, it was sunny all day until around 6:30 this evening :) But had we gone, it probably would've rained.
I was going to meet my SIL, Jen, for lunch today while Kyle was working. We don't get to spend much time together normally and I was thrilled that she could do lunch on such short notice. So I was disappointed to cancel that. But next week we will try again for both things!

I did major house cleaning Sunday, so today I didn't have much to do in the way of chores. Just some dishes, laundry and of course, vacuuming ~since that is a daily necessity with pets! I got most of my things done early (another benefit to actually getting up at the crack of dawn) and spent a good amount of time piddling in the butterfly garden. There is SO much going on there! Things change SO quickly! (See my upcoming post titled "Plants and Caterpillars and Butterflies, Oh My!) And I was scoping out the bird nest that I found last week...yesterday I found that it had 3(!) eggs in it..and the mama was sitting on the eggs today! Yay! I am REALLY excited about that!

School has been going great. We have enjoyed LOTS of field trips and hands on learning. In reading today, we started a new book! Sterling North's "Rascal". I have this great study guide/lapbooking study to go along with it. One of the Chapter 1 activities was to write an editorial. Kyle was aggravated initially at having to do this but then he got involved in his writing and enjoyed it :) He was BEGGING to read chapter two, lol.

We are just about done with school for the year. I want us to go through the end of May though, especially since we did not begin this year until October. I am not really sure why I feel like we need to do this, I just do. We will stop Math at the end of May--I tried using a different curriculum this year, because I was given it for free, and it was a disaster! So I bought our regular (Saxon) and we did not begin it until about halfway through the school year...so we need to complete at least half the book to be "on task" so to speak. It is a 7th grade book, so whether or not we finish it doesn't really matter since Kyle is in the 5th grade. But, I will feel better knowing we are on track (in my mind, anyways, lol). We will hit the halfway mark in the book this coming Friday. But...I want to keep going. Kyle has been learning some incredible concepts and is really enjoying the challenge that has finally started coming around.

We will be done with our English book in another 2 weeks or so. Kyle has learned two more sentence patterns than in years past. Shurley English is AHHHMAZING!

I am SO behind in blogging about field trips, homeschool days and hands-on educational experiences. I will get caught up one of these days. Kyle has learned and experienced SO much this year in the way of Science and History. We have attended TONS of events this year.

Ronnie and I decided (for the hopefully final time) where my raised bed boxes will go. He will be making me three 4ftx4ft raised beds for gardening. I am very excited and can't wait to get started! But with all the other projects going on around here...it's a tad of the ways down the list :)

In my sewing room today I have been tinkering around. I have a birthday party to attend this Saturday night and have been getting some squares cut for the little girl as her present. I probably have about 500 of them cut! SHE SHOULD BE STOKED!!! (I taught her how to sew and quilt last summer and for Christmas this year she asked for (and received) a sewing machine! yayy!). I am also toying with a quilt pattern where I am altering the size of the pieces so that I can use my Accuquilt to cut them. It is a scrap quilt, oh so cute...and I am working on a test block to see if I can make it work. I am also in the process of making a few more Farmer's Market blocks....but that'll be in my upcoming post titled "Process Post, Farmer's Market Quilt".

Well, that's about the sum of what's running through my brain tonight. Tomorrow Kyle has a physical. So we will be out of the house rather early for that. We'll probably go out to lunch, then he will have swim team and then we'll head to church. In between all that, we'll get school done and I will get some sewing done!
Good night ya'll!

Teaser Tuesday! April 30th


 


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:


• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
One of the books that I am currently reading is a Christian fiction novel called:
My Teaser:
Ellie pushed open the heavy door of the Pinkerton Agency, wincing slightly as the pebble she'd placed in her boot pressed into her heel. Heeding the reminder to alter her gait, she limped toward the oak desk.
(pg. 34)

Holy Land Experience, 2013

Kyle and I went to The Holy Land Experience a couple of years ago and had an opportunity to go again this year! I didn't take near as many pictures as I did in 2011, but I snapped a few :)



Jonah
 Kyle was SO mad at me for making him take this picture, LOL.....
 He always loves climbing a rock wall!



Communion. This was SO cool. We did not partake of the Holy Communion last time we went. It was an awesome experience.

 Kyle was chosen to participate on stage in one of the shows :0)
 One of our FAVORITE things to do there is visit the gardens...
We love going to The Holy Land!