School's Out!!!!

The semester officially ended last Monday and I enjoyed the rest of the week by catching up on all the little things that I let slide. It was a lovely week. Here are a couple shots of part of my final project for my Design Communications class. What a great class. Really challenging but very rewarding.

I thought I would spend the summer getting re-acquainted with my sewing machine and my garden/yard but I didn't have to wait very long because Thursday a return customer mailed me some fabric for a baby quilt. I got right to it and finished it and already sent it in the mail since we will be gone next week to visit Kristen in Texas. My pictures all turned out blurry, I guess I'm out of practice.

I'm so excited to see Kristen in action since we will be tagging along with her for one morning while she's at work. Bess will join up with us and we will have two days together as a family and that will have to last us for the rest of 2009!! We will have a wonderful time:)

Spring Has Sprung!!!!!!!

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted, but come to think of it I've been crazy busy so it makes sense. Today, the first day of Spring, seemed like a very good reason to do a post. It is, after all, my very favorite time of year:)

I took this picture at school along a walkway. There is a smallish field nearby and they were all over the place!!! Oh, the fragrance!!! It was simply wonderful and it put a skip in my step, literally.

Since I have no sewing projects to show, I will show my projects from my Design
Communications class. Three plan drawings were required and they took many many hours.


These are two of them and I must say that I am pleased with the outcome. They received good remarks from my instructor so what more could I want? We are already on to the next project so the pace continues. I'm afraid I will have to wait until summer to do any quilting since most of my classes (I have four) have big projects coming up.

Saturdays (aka Donut Day)

This post is a little belated since it's already Thursday, but that just shows how crazy busy I've been this week. Lots of projects for school. Anyway, I wanted to document our Saturday morning ritual..........DONUTS!!!!! It's a very long story, but suffice to say that treating ourselves to donuts on Saturday mornings is a very important part of our family history and even though the girls are grown and gone, we still keep the memory alive. There's a wonderful donut shop about a 10-15 drive from our home (yes it's that important) called Yum Yum Donuts. So after sleeping in to our hearts' content, we make the drive and settle in for a delectable feast. This is how it goes: we take our own coffee(Tim) and milk (me, because I like non fat frosty-cold milk and they don't always have it). This is is the mug I use. Kristen made it for me years ago and I'm tickled pink I get to actually use it because I rarely drink hot beverages, especially on the go. While Tim is making his coffee he pours the milk into this and puts it in the freezer while I get showered, etc. By the time we leave the house it has a slight frosty layer, yum:) Once we are there I go and grab a seat. There aren't many but there's usually one available. Meanwhile, Tim stands in line and buys the donuts. I let him pick because we like similar things. He buys 4 donuts and we split each one. Our very favorite is only available during the fall........pumpkin! Several times this past fall we arrived at the shop when they had just put them on the shelf. They were still warm and the experience of eating a freshly made donut is hard to compare to anything else. It's simply delectable. It sort of makes it difficult to go back to eating room temp donuts again, but somehow we go on:) Another top favorite is a glazed buttermilk stick and of course their regular glazed are wonderful as well. This particular day Tim opted for an Apple Fritter. We split that one 70/30 because eating the equivalent of two regular donuts once a week is indulgent enough and an apple fritter is considerably bigger than a donut (after all, they do have holes in the middle, whereas a fritter is filled with gooey sugary apples!!)

This particular Saturday was Valentine's Day so I took a photo at the next stop we made and that was at Barnes & Noble. I had bought Tim a gift card for his birthday and he wanted to use it to buy a new journal.
Here's the selection. It took a while for him to find just the right one and for some insane reason I didn't photograph it, but you get the idea.

Aside from the journal buying, that's how a typical Saturday morning goes for us. We look forward to it all week long:)

Getting Things Done

I've had a very productive few days and still managed to have plenty of quality time with Tim, my fabulous, wonderful husband. I finished the Friends and Flowers table runner and it was difficult to get a good picture of it due to its length. It's not really all that long but my camera skills are wanting. Anyhow, I'm pleased with the outcome and I think Janet will be as well. I also spent oodles of time working on a sketch plan for one of my classes. On top of that I got to take a cat nap today. Pretty terrific day and now I have a movie date on the couch with my sweetie. Oh, and the temps reached into the 40's!!!!! Sunshine and warmth really make a difference:)

Friends and Flowers

My dear friend, Janet, has commissioned a table runner from me. Actually, what really happened is she saw what was going to be in the works and put dibs on it! I bought this charm pack and accompanying fabric a couple of months ago with the intention of making the runner for my shop. When she visited me recently and saw them she realized how well the fabrics suited her home. How fun is that? So now I get to make this knowing whose home it will rest in and where the prayers will go! Love it:) Sorry for the fuzzy photo---the charm pack is the Friends and Flowers collection by Mary Engelbreit.

A Prayer in the Mail

I haven't had a sale in my Etsy shop since before the holidays. I took a break over Christmas when my daughters were home and I think I made the best choice. However, lo and behold, a quilt sold yesterday!!! I was doing homework at the time so I was pretty excited about it. I made this quilt during the summer with a fun collection of fabric from Clothworks. The designer is Sue Zipkin. I'm not familiar with her work but these caught my eye when I got the Hancock's of Paducah catalog in the mail last year. The title of the quilt is Fruits of the Spirit because I literally machine quilted the words love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control into the quilt. While doing so I prayed for the child who will eventually be wrapped in it. I have no idea who that child will be, but God in His sovereignty does and I trust Him with those prayers. In addition, this quilt sold to a person who lives in the same town I went to high school in, which is on the West Coast and I now live on the East Coast. Pretty neat, huh? So my day started with an exciting trip to the post office (by the way, Priority Mail rates went up) followed by a few errands and will finish with me doing homework into the wee hours. Well, maybe not the wee hours, but more hours than I had anticipated. Could it have something to do with the hour long haircut I got at a beauty school that normally takes only fifteen minutes elsewhere? My husband asked if she cut each hair one by one!! It sure seemed like it!! No photos to show, thank goodness.

Homework

I am really excited about my classes this semester. I am a Landscape Architect student and so far I am loving it! I have a beginning design class where we are learning basic drafting and our first homework assignment was to answer some get-to-know-you kind of questions and letter them in block style. It was fun but after a few hours my hand cramped up! I'm sure I will adjust :)

I am hoping that once I am in the swing of things I will be able to make time for quilting again. I want to keep my Etsy shop running and I have a list of projects I'd like to keep making progress on. But school comes first. However, if I can squeeze it in, I'd like to make a bunch of blocks like this and make a good sized lap quilt. We'll see.