Every day I think I should post......

....and then I go to bed instead.  :-)

We continue to visit the dog park.

Where we do the usual dog stuff.

Until we get tired....and stretch out in the cool dirt.  (sigh)

And we meet all sorts of dogs, including this sweet great dane.

There are decorated fire hydrants all around.  Very cute.

Especially this one outside the skate park!  :-)

The Tramp bought me a composter.  Yippee!  I've always wanted one that didn't require lots of digging.

It was a bit of a fight to assemble.  The Tramp said he didn't know how anyone could do it without some significant tools.  I don't think that's a problem for us....do you?

Of course it's always advisable not to drill into your finger.  Way too much drama.

Kathie and I finished our Holiday Block kits in time to sell at the guild meeting.  We sold out!  :-)

It was a big crowd this month.  It's a fabulous meeting room.  Plenty of space for over 200 people and tables for charities, library, workshops and etc all around the perimeter.  And a nice stage for speakers and show & tell.

I finished ten of these mug buckets to donate to the guild's Heritage Day Auction & Boutique.  The pile of cut t-shirts has been stabilized and returned to Julianne.  The fleece is waiting to be made into a dog bed cover.

We spotted this on our last trip to WalMart and I couldn't resist taking a photo.  New Zealand Springs Scent.  Huh?  Interesting marketing decision we thought.

The Tramp and I had a chat Friday evening which resulted in the decision to finally paint our bedroom.  The dull yellowish-greenish color (darker than it appears in this photo) sucks all the light out of the room.   The whole house actually, since it, or a version of it is everywhere we haven't painted yet.  The house is shaded and somewhat dark as it is.  Nice in a hot climate.  But this is more than I can live with.  We also took down the wooden slat blinds which I hated.  Yay!

We removed the vanity light fixture since it kept blowing expensive CFL bulbs.  Removed the mirrors to make way for medicine cabinets. 

First up was painting the ceiling white.  Much better than 25 yr old dirty popcorn.   Whoohooo.  What a difference.

I think I mentioned a while back that popcorn ceilings are evil.  (Last year at this time in fact, as I painted in preparation for moving in.)  Grrrrrrrrrrrr.   What a mess when it starts coming down as you paint it.  Not too bad elsewhere, but always around the vents.  Sigh.  I even tried to stick some larger bits back up with my Tacky Glue.  Yeah.....I know. 

There was so much ugly black dirt by the vents too.  Ewwwww.

The room brightened up as soon as the ceiling was done.  Then the pale chiffon pink on the walls added even more brightness.  :-D

I have a sallow complexion, so looking at myself in the vanity mirrors surrounded by all that yellowish-greenish ick was sooooo depressing.  Note the Formica matches the walls.  SIGH.

But with a white ceiling, pink walls and a fabulous new light fixture it will all be a rosy glow from now on.  Yay!  This is a low budget project so I'm going to have to live with the counter as is for now, though did you know there is Formica paint?  Hmmmmmm.

The tramp also replaced the closet light since the old one worked intermittently.   Not good in a room with no daylight that is painted in a light-sucking color.  So now it's all painted and bright too.  :-) 

So still a bunch of finishing work to do.  The Tramp is replacing all the beige outlets and switches with white ones, and the medicine cabinets are still in their boxes.  The floor in the vanity area and closet is still subfloor, but we bought some cheap vinyl tile and will work on that next....when our joints and muscles have a rest and we don't stiffen up every time we sit down!  :-)

I finished the two churn dash memory quilts today.  I hope the client likes them.

This is what a pile of 49 t-shirts looks like.  Yoiks!  I got most of them cut today.....before my legs and feet gave out that is.   I'll get them finished and stabilized tomorrow.   No rest for the weary!  ;-)

Fabric, skin, feathers, and fur

Hello out there.  Ummmmmm.....  What to say???

The kits for Holiday Blocks are put together.  I sure hope I win them.  The colors make me happy!

I finished another churn dash top for Patchwork Memories.  Borders are in the works, and I have t-shirts waiting to be stabilized for another custom t-shirt quilt.

We were blessed with a visit from Middle Daughter, Poyla, and Stardust!  What can I say?  Grandmother heaven.  :-)  The skull quilt was a hit with the parents.  Stardust reserved judgment for the time being.   The ceiling fan was much more interesting.

We had great-grandparent love.

Grandmother love.

And even a little Tramp time.  No success convincing her he's scary.  LOL

The obligatory photo of the four generations.   Though someone was much more interested in the ceiling fan than the camera-dad. 

We exuded cuteness.

We found our toes for the first time.

We laughed.

We cried.

We went to the park.

And just had the most wonderful weekend.  Stardust also got to meet her New Zealand cousin (Grand #3) via webcam.....who apparently, has just discovered his belly button.  Too cute!

Charlie had a good week too.  I added another treat cup to his play stand.

And bought him some peanuts in the shell.  It took him a day or so to figure out that they needed to be torn apart to get at the good part.

And of course the dogs are always waiting for something to be dropped.

He always rushes over to see if he can get hold of the camera.  And this time he managed to snatch the strap.  :-)

The dogs have had some exciting newness too.  Yep.  At the local dog park! 

I stopped there for a preview and promptly got all our proofs of rabies etc together and went to buy the dog park permit. 

Our first visit was yesterday evening.  It got dark enough for the overhead lights to come on, so the pictures from my phone are dark and blurry.  (Yes, our dogs really are in the photos.)  There was somewhere between twenty and thirty dogs having the best time in the one acre park.  It's a nice place and we met a bunch of really nice people.  I'll try for some daytime photos next time.  :-)

Play date

Kathie and I had another mental health day today.  :-)  We ended up at my house again since my car was in the shop (sigh).  Our play time consisted of experimenting with sun dying.  We used the instructions in Karen Eckmeier's article, "Sun Prints With Tissue Paper," from Quilting Arts Magazine, Summer 2006. 

We tore up a rainbow of art tissue, wet our fabric, cut up some plastic bags to work on, put on our old clothes, mixed our paint colors, and got busy "painting" our fabrics with "sun" paints. Then we lay torn strips and chunks of tissue paper over the wet paint and lay it all out in the sun to dry.  Dying fabrics is not something I do, so this was a fun new experience.

The hot Carolina sun dried things up pretty quickly.  This one still has the tissue paper on it.

And after I peeled the paper off!

You can almost see landscapes in them already!

Then we played with putting shapes, in this case leaves, on the fabric before we placed it in the sun.  A sun resist?  I saw a similar thing on How About Orange, though she used light sensitive dye.  So we didn't have a clue if it would work.

As Kathie would say, "Cool beans!"

After lunch we got onto our other project.  We are making up a set of Holiday Block kits for our quilt guild.  We have permission to use Bonnie Hunter's Happy Scrappy Houses pattern.  And made a good start cutting the strips and squares for the kits.  Two blocks in each of 21 kits that will be sold for a nominal fee at the next guild meeting along with a whole bunch of different kits (we hope!).  There is a small budget for fabric (as yet unspent) but most of this is from my stash.  Can you tell I lean towards brights?  Last time Kathie and I did this, two or three years ago, I won our set of Holiday Blocks at the December meeting!  Yikes.  Another UFO!  I think I better dig those out and make a quilt from them. 

This is the "dog bed corner" of our bedroom.  Nothing much bothers Maisy as long as there are cushy beds scattered around the house for her to lie on.  Talk about the lap of luxury.  :-)  The other two get hot and like to lay on the tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms.  Not our crazy Maisy!