The Flight of Time

Time flies and I'm not keeping up!  Once again I've been gently poked for not being up to date here, so let's see what I can do in the few minutes before bedtime.  :-)  So.  In no particular order......

Thanksgiving dinner was enjoyed by all.

Vacuuming is enjoyed by some more than others.  In fact, some of us are downright serious about it.   Have to cultivate that.  :-)

The Tramp and I treated ourselves to a show before that opportunity flew away.

The generations having fun at lunch.

Fun with vegetables at Sweet Tomatoes.

Trying my hand at repairing a sewing machine cabinet.  Just call me Tim!

The red mat on the kitchen floor is in front of Charlie's cage.  I made four of them out of flannel backed with the Babyville PUL diaper fabric.  It catches the mess and is washable.  Definitely better than the newspaper I was using.

Project Feederwatch has started for the season.  I've been playing with Photoshop and the Fancy Camera.  I have soooo much to learn!

Also learning to clean up vintage sewing machines.  A smelly messy job, best done outside on a strangely warm December day.

Finishing up the Christmas rush of t-shirt and memory quilt tops.

Celebrating ED's birthday in style.  (Wait a minute.  Wasn't I just the young mother??  Where did those years fly to?)

Making Charlie new foraging toys every day.  He's still learning to find the treats in them.  I now have a whole big bin of parrot toy parts gleaned from dollar stores and craft stores.

Another big one flew out the door.  Very handsome with it's purple accent.

Added the border to Mom's pretty king-sized quilt top.  It's now at the long-armer's.

More purple!  A double sided quilt this time.

Still dreaming of the day I can catch a photo of this flicker in flight, showing off the spectacular bright yellow feathers under it's wings and tail.

Despite how cute she looks, Maisy is in the dog house at the moment for endangering Charlie.  Grrrrrrr.  Don't worry.  I'm also beating myself up for letting my guard down.  :-(

A memory quilt top with lots of pockets and sparkly bits.

It only took a year but I finally dragged out and finished my Peanuts Christmas tree skirt. Yay!

I WON, I WON, I WON!   I won a set of "holiday blocks" at the quilt guild meeting tonight.  I'm so thrilled.  I'll be able to make the lap quilt in the picture.  The rest of the cutting table is cluttered with the remenants of last minute Christmas sewing.

Aaaccckkkk!  It'll be Wednesday before we know it!  Time needs to stop flying!!!!

Fall-ing

In the interest of not falling so far behind.....here we are again!  So what can I say about fall.  Ummmmm.....

Leaves are falling.  Fast.  There were even some snow flurries the other day!

Trying not to fall asleep at the sewing machine this evening.  I finished up this attractive quilt top.  Carolina blue anyone?  :-)

It doesn't help with others falling asleep all around me.  We have the headless dog.

The dead dog.

And the ha ha I'm more comfortable than you dog.

Charlie?  Tell me what I can say about falling in regards to you.  Oh yeah.  Stuff falling on the floor.  That's the way parrots roll.  Sigh.

Newspaper catches some of it.

The dogs hope at least some of it is going to fall to the floor!

Silly dogs.  It's falling on you!

Don't we look pleased with ourself.  Are they your fall guys Charlie?  :-)

In the interest of keeping Charlie busy I've been researching making foraging toys for his cages.  Here he is hanging from his toes finding the Cheerios inbetween the beads.  There are crackers on there too and the little Milk Duds box left over from the pinata fun is stuffed with more goodies.  He's still learning to find stuff so the box is still intact.  Quakers aren't supposed to be the best climbers but he hasn't fallen yet!

 Maisy's morning nap in her sunbeam, though the sun has "fallen" downstairs a bit.   As long as one paw is still in the sun she's happy.

 Last week I started to take this Singer 15-91 apart for cleaning and rewiring.   I'm hoping to fall in love with the process.  We'll see.

The motor and some parts are off and klutzy me is taping the screws to paper so they don't fall to the floor and get lost.  At least they aren't as tiny as the screws on our laptops.  When The Tramp has one of those taken apart I'm afraid to even come into the room!

In the interest of seeing falling numbers on our bathroom scale we've been enjoying brisk walks around the neighborhood.  Yesterday I managed to catch the rising moon as well as the effect of the falling sun.  Lovely colors.  Have to enjoy them while they last!

Now I'm going to fall into bed.  Nite!

Arrrggggghhhhhh!

Hi!!

(We'll get to the arrgghh later.)  Since I last posted Halloween has happened.

We had hoped to see Poyla, MD and Stardust Halloween weekend, but illness prevented it.  I'm told Stardust is still recovering and they are glad they postponed.

T-shirt quilts have rolled out the door.

And I even grabbed a few minutes to make some sewing machine covers.  Finally.  I've been saying I should make them all covers for years.  Prequilted fabric, purchased bias tape.  Now really, how hard could it be?  ;-)

The view out of every window (ignoring reflections) is amazingly colorful.

And this weekend we were treated with a visit from The Sailor Son and his boys!  They missed Halloween too, due to illness and bad weather so we tried to give them some extra Halloween related fun.  Stickers from Aunt ED.

The gluten-free lasagna came out ok.

And the caramel apple trifle even ok-er.  :-)

Cousins had a great time together.

The Viking's new hobby is opening and closing the drawers on the various sewing machine cabinets.

 Ninja Turtles were carefully carried around all weekend.

In lieu of trick or treating, The Sailor Son surprised the boys with Ninja Turtle pinatas and oh what fun they had swinging that stick around!  It takes a whole lot of swings when you're four years old.

When you are six you can beat your turtle to death pretty quickly.  They weren't sure they liked "killing" Leonardo and Michaelangelo so I taped them back together with neon orange duct tape and everyone went home happy, with lots of little boy jokes about my taping up the turtle's butts.  :-)

I think Maisy sees candy on the table.

Yup!

Ivy with her "what did I do?" look.  :-)

There were treats for everyone.

Sunday was the train show at the fairgrounds.  So many layouts to see.

So many buttons to push.

"Daddy, Daddy!  I want to see!!"  Five was heard to say, "This is fabulous!"

Then we went to Pullen Park to work off some energy in the playground and ride the train and the carousel, both firsts for The Viking.

After a day of recovery, today I tried to get some things done.  Heh.  Tried is the operative word.  The arrggghhhh happened this afternoon.  We have this big ass Zojirushi bread machine.  Fabulous appliance.  Unfortunately I only have a few gluten-free bread recipes suited for this size machine.

So.  This meant trying to work out how much larger I needed convert the measurements in this book to make it work.  Hmmmm.  Cups and mLs.  Ok.  I tried to up the recipe by 1/2 and it made for some crazy measurements.  The Tramp was willing to help me but apparently I wasn't asking the right questions.  :-P  It ended up that I brought a variety of measuring cups and spoons, both imperial and metric, up to The Sandbox so he could help me get my head around it.

So this is what we ended up with.  Not only is it complicated by all the many flours and seeds but I got all wound up in both types of measuring cups and spoons.  Arrrrgghhhhhhh!  After I started measuring ingredients I flipped to the front of the book and realized, HEY!, the book is Canadian!  Well dang.  No wonder my breads from this book have always seemed a bit off.  I've been using the wrong measuring cups for.......two years?  Sigh.  Lesson learned.  (Yes, that's a coffee grinder for "cracking" the flax seeds.)

This gluten-free business is ingredient-heavy.  Almost the whole refrigerator in the garage is taken up by all the flours, meals and seeds.  Crazy.

But in the end.....at least it looks like a loaf of bread.  :-)