Leaves, leaves ....and MORE leaves!

Today was another glorious fall day On The Pond. Since all the leaves are down except for the oaks, we celebrated with rake and leaf blower....and by way of a mid-day break, a trip to Walmart. I suppose it's because of Thanksgiving holiday travel, but in our short walk through the Walmart parking lot we saw quite a variety of license plates. North Carolina of course, but also South Carolina, several from California, Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, and even Alaska! Since the parking lot was full, I'll bet there were many more vehicles with interesting tales to tell....though maybe not as interesting as a driving to and from Alaska. My goodness!

Our street is a private road, one lane and narrow. And since our property is in one of the "corners" of the oval we have almost no frontage. Where to put all the danged leaves can be a dilemma...especially as we still want to receive mail. :-) We ended up having to pile some on the pond side of the road though I kind of hate to do that. These are the initial four piles. We made them quite a bit larger this afternoon.


But the front yard looks much neater now! I took this before The Tramp blew the driveway clean of leftover leaves and pine needles. Tomorrow we tackle the sides and back. Egads!


On a quilty note, yesterday some of us visited a local quilt shop that's closing. Sad, but I understand....I guess. Bad me, with a cabinet full of UFOs, couldn't resist a prettily put together kit. I took out the fabrics to stroke them today. Maybe I can do something with them tomorrow. IF, I survive the rake and leaf blower.......

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wow. It's hard to come back after a blogging hiatus. Enough said about that.

Today is a rather quiet day after Thanksgiving. We had a lovely dinner with Mom and Dad. White tablecloth. Fine china. Leg of lamb. Mint sauce. Sooo good.

The Sandbox is settled in it's new location on the pond. I took this photo last week at sunset. Glorious.


Autumn in general has seemed so much more colorful this year. I took this photo with my iPhone in a moving car. You just can't go wrong. Everywhere you turn there is another photo opportunity. :-)


Today is a dull day but outside my window was an all-over orange glow. I'm taking photos through screens so it's kind of hard to reproduce the effect but here is my view.


The dogs are adjusting. Maisy makes herself comfortable where ever she is. :-)


Ngaire is ever the lady, and Ivy suffers in silence....mostly. Right now she is clawing at my arm so I think I better go let them out. :-)


Our new addition to the family is Charlie. He's a Quaker Parrot and is doing his level best to make our lives more interesting.


Ok... Time to let the dogs out and then maybe some sewing!

Ace in the Hole

It's done! And it's a slam dunk if I do say so myself. I'm so pleased. The Tramp helped me down off the ledge a few times, gave excellent design suggestions, rearranged my fabrics, and pulled out some poor choices. Love you honey! :-)

Next job is to make sure it gets signed by the guests at Middle Daughter's wedding. After which we move house. When that dust settles I will start stressing over how to quilt it and bind it.

Our little bit of "fun" this weekend was figuring out how Maisy the Innocent, Maisy the Unpredictible, Maisy the Weird, was ending up outside the fence. She digs, but only for voles and toads and smelly things. With her short legs she certainly isn't a jumper or a climber. How the heck? We walked the inside of the fence and didn't see anything. When she disappeared again later in the day we put the dogs back out in the yard and walked the outside of the fence to see what would happen. The Tramp found the broken spot in the fence when she stuck her nose through the hole! We just didn't see it earlier in the day. Sigh....if I can just keep her corralled until the move.....

Just call me Trouble.

Purple Rain

Rain? HA! I wish! It's HOT and HUMID. Sigh. I'm so ready for chilly weather. :-) We had an early Spring so I can only hope that means an early Autumn. We'll be moving house all through September so keep your fingers crossed for me.

The purple blocks are done! :-D Next step is to trim the excess backing fabric from the blocks and get them sewn together.
Hmmmm.... I may cheat and work on something else for one evening. Or else I could pack some more boxes. Not! :-)

Blue Moon?

No visible moon tonight...but the stars seem to be in alignment for us these days. :-)

The blue blocks are finished! Yay! The green was such a struggle but now I don't see what my issue was. The blues were easier but I see fabrics in there I don't like. I think I need to not look at it for a day or so and look again with fresh eyes. :-) Border fabrics are hanging to the side. They are growing on me too.


Speaking of blue..... Our new house is blue! And I love the red front door. :-) Only a couple more weeks 'til closing!


And even better...check out the view from the front windows. We will own a slice of that pond.

Sigh. Nice!

Little Green Apples

The green blocks are done. Yay! I'm don't normally work with green so I found them a bit of a struggle. I'm not completely satisfied with some of my choices but in the overall scheme of things they will be just fine.
Today is our sixth wedding anniversary! Where does the time go? We've lived in four houses already and are about to move to our fifth. I think that's quite enough moving thank you very much. :-)

Life marching on...or...don't step on the bubble wrap

Well the house isn't sold, but we are buying. Yikes!

Pop, pop! Pop! Darn it, what's that bubble wrap doing on the floor? Pop!

While I fight my way through the boxes, packing paper and...Pop!...bubble wrap, I've been working on a wall hanging...Pop!... for the Middle Daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law. Pop! I want to have the top done so it can be signed by everyone at the wedding.

So far it's looking...Pop!... pretty good. Progress is being made. Despite the bubble...Pop!...wrap. SIGH.


Don't we just look so comfortable snoozing in our sunbeam. Sheesh! Just you wait girls. I'm gonna make you pack your own toys. :-p

POP! (dang it!)

Outside there isn't any bubble wrap.

Yet.

But the yard has been invaded by something equally unwelcome. I included my toes in the picture for scale. Yowza. We've been invaded by alien toadstool beings!


So what's new with you???

I never know what to title my posts!

Hello. Remember me? Not too much sewing happening and we are still embroiled in selling our house. What a pain!

Much of my time for the last few months has revolved around the guild's raffle quilt. It's a gorgeous vintage grandmother's flower garden top that was donated to us. The talented Karen Comstock of Quiltricks designed a border for it and we've put in over 180 hours hand quilting it after appliqueing the border. I've been one of the many who've been hand quilting "Little Orphan Annie" as well as traveling to various local venues with other committee members to sell raffle tickets. We have quite a bit more raffle ticket selling to do before the drawing in October. Same as last year, our charity partner is Military Missions in Action.

It has been so hot here! The first picture is from the Rural Reunion in Raleigh this last Saturday, and the heat index was about 107F. Yuck. This is the first event we had the finished quilt to show.

Before this week we took the quilt, frame and all, to each venue and chatted to the crowd about quilting while we worked. This was at the Carthage Buggy Festival.
Our first outing with the quilt was at Spring Daze in Cary.
The quilt has also spent time in several of our living rooms. This is mine.
This is Mom's.

I'm looking forward to taking a photo of the quilt hanging. It's glorious!

The other quilty type thing I've done recently is attend the North Carolina Quilt Symposium in Charlotte, at the beginning of June. I took a class with the lovely Kim Diehl. She was teaching a quilt from her upcoming book, "Simple Graces." She was worried about looking short in the photo and I was trying not to look like an Amazon. LOL Can you tell I'm hunching down?

And a class with doll maker Patti Medaris Culea. So much fun! It was a class on doll face painting and we got to play with Patti's Shiva Paint Sticks. I admit it. I'm hooked! Got to get me some of those paint sticks! :-) Those are Patti's hands on the right, demonstrating.

And my doll heads. They still need the details added in order to be considered done.

Ewwww

No sewing this week. A day at work, time in the garden, shopping, and this....


Mold! Ewwwww! Caused by a leak. Which resulted in ruination of the carpet.....


And removal of this not-so-glamorous-but-perfectly-serviceable kitchen cabinet unit. (It did have doors and drawers before we started taking it apart.)

So the plumber comes tomorrow to cut more holes in the wall and find the source of the leak. Double ewwww.
After the warranty company has the drywall repaired we'll have to install a new sink and vanity and replace the carpet with something more sensible for a powder room. SIGH. Not what you want to be doing when all you want to do is sell the house.

C'est la vie! :-)

Cherrylicious

It feels so good to finish a sewing project! I spotted this table runner pattern online quite a while ago and just fell in love with it. Thank you Monica! I quilted feathers in the border and a pattern in the background, a la Patsy Thompson. And it came out ok! *happy dance* (I don't think I'm ever going to get over feeling I'm going to ruin everything when I quilt it. LOL)