Quilting and Other (BIG) News

I finally remembered to take the camera down to my sewing room to get a snap or two of the baby quilt I've been working on.  I'm quite smitten with it and think I'll be able to use this pattern many more times.  

The pattern (purchased from The Fat Quarter Shop)

And here's my version.  I thought I'd used two different fabrics for the large pieces as they show in the pattern, but in the end used the same for all of them.  

My modified version

Only fat quarters are needed for the colored portions, so the opportunities are endless for recreating this over and over with very different looks.  

Meanwhile, this grammy is beside herself with excitement as Cameron has landed in Seattle and will shortly be winging his way to Spokane and his mom and dad and brothers!!  As Ann texted me, there isn't a smiling emoji big enough to express her (and our!) feelings about this day.  ♥♥♥

Musings

The calendar says it's the middle of August, but there's a touch of fall in the air.  It seems that the few last years, fall arrives about now.  The days are warm, high 70s maybe 82, and the nights are cool.  So much for the "hot August nights" of my youth.  And believe me, I'm not complaining!  I'm loving each and every day.  

I took a little tour of my pots of flowers a bit ago and snapped a couple of pictures.  I'm so not a gardener, but I do enjoy my pots and remember to water them every day or so.  Dan puts them together every May, and I keep them going until fall when we store them in our sun room for the winter months.  

Corner of the deck

One of these on each side of the garage

Front porch

From the looks of these photos, we like red!  Whenever I drive up, I love to see the color all across the front.  

And speaking of driving, I had a fun morning at a coffee shop with three other ladies of the neighborhood celebrating the recent retirement of one of them.  Now we're all retired and think maybe we need to do this more often!  We all marveled that we'd reached this point when we think we're just a bunch of spring chickies.  No complaints, however!

A new baby quilt is in the works and I'll try to post some pictures in a day or so.  ♥

Kidney Stones?!?

For those of you fortunate enough to have never experienced a kidney stone, count your blessings.  I had my first one back about 1980 and had no idea what was happening, only that I was in extreme pain.  And it didn't help a bit at the ER when the nurse said they couldn't give me anything for it because the pain was their only clue as to what was going on.  Well!!  (We don't live near that hospital anymore, thank goodness!)

My second go around was in 2005.  I woke up in the middle of the night in pain and finally woke Dan up to take me to the ER.  On the way there, I said to him that this was reminiscent of that long ago day and I thought I knew what was going on.  Bingo!!  It passed and I was thankful, but exactly four weeks later the same thing happened.  After a week of drugs and no relief, it was determined that this one was too big to pass and so surgery to retrieve it was required.  They decided the one four weeks previous was probably a piece that broke off this giant one.  

I had another a few years ago and then again yesterday.  Last night about eight I told Dan I'd had all the fun I could stand so off to the ER we went again. I'm so thankful to live in a town with a hospital with such a great staff.  Everyone there was so kind and helpful. They did a CT scan and the good news is that there don't seem to be any more biggies lurking around, and this one passed this morning.  I'm hoping for a lifetime reprieve!!!

Meanwhile, I wonder what people did in the "olden days?"  I can't even bear to think about it.  

Cousins and Aunts!

Monday Ann and Daniel and I took a little trip and had a wonderful afternoon of visiting with my two nieces and their little ones.  Jennifer had driven out from Oklahoma with her two, Grant (8) and James (4) and were at Kirsten's.  Kirsten has recently moved to a new town with her husband, Tim, and little Taylor (18 months), so we were excited to not only see Jenny and the boys, but also to see Kirsten's new house. 

We left as soon as Daniel's swim lessons were over and in a little less than two hours we made a quick stop at a Wendy's and then programmed the GPS with Kirsten's new address.  It did not fail and led us right to her door. Amazing!!!  

The boys took right off from their last visit and spent all afternoon in the yard, running and playing and investigating trees and bugs.  We big people, along with little Taylor, spent the afternoon visiting and catching up with our lives since our last meeting.  So glad we get to see them all at least once a year!

We decided pizza out would be the perfect ending to our day and drove to a local neighborhood place and devoured several yummy pizzas--pepperoni and cheese for the boys, of course, and several "adult" pizzas including a pesto one that was especially delicious, along with an amazing pesto macaroni and cheese for Taylor (she ate it by the fistfuls!!).  The weather was perfect and the pizza shop had large garage doors in the front that were open to let in the lovely late afternoon air. There was grass out front and playing out there kept the boys busy until the food arrived.  

Before we all parted, I captured this photo of gang.  

Such a great day!!  ♥

Cameron Update

It gives me great joy to say that four weeks from today Cameron will be back!!  It's been a long five months with one more to go.  He's having an amazing time and has learned so much.  He's learned to live without so many of things we take for granted--running water, hot showers (for him, it's a bucket over the head), meat (they eat potatoes, beans, and cooked bananas), and so on.  He's really looking forward to throwing his clothes in the washer!!  

After five weeks in the bush of Kenya he is back in Rwanda's northern province, not far from Uganda in the area known for Gorillas in the Mist. 

Here are a couple of the photos he's sent us. The first is a gorgeous picture of a sunrise in Kenya.

This next one is of Cam with some children at a school they visited.  Everywhere he goes, the kids are drawn to the Mzungu, the white guy.

He's seen giraffes and zebras in the wild.  Seeing the giraffes was the hardest, and finally on his last morning in Kenya, several of them got up early and went out to be rewarded with a sighting.  Cam was thrilled.  

For this Grammy, the next four weeks can't go fast enough!!  ♥

A Little More Americana is Added

I think I mentioned a post or two ago that I was working on a new project for summer decorating.  A table runner using a "honeybun" (1 1/2" strips) of Primitive Gatherings patriotic fabrics for 2019. The design has three large blocks utilizing lots of tiny 1 1/2" squares and as I worked on it I hoped it would turn out square. Even when I finished the piecing I wasn't sure, but it quilted out beautifully and when folded in half, all parts lined up!!  

The colors are brighter than other Primitive Gatherings patriotic lines that I've used for our living room, so I decided this would probably be a good addition to the dining room table.  

The glass star dish of red, white and blue peanut M&Ms is a perfect accompaniment.  This year I actually found a pantry-sized bag of the seasonal M&Ms at Safeway and it's been so nice not have to use white ones saved from the Valentine's bag and blue and red ones from a regular bag.  ♥

It's Dan's Birthday!

Yup, today is my honey's birthday.  Most of the world has been concentrating on the fiftieth anniversary of the moon walk, but here at the Resort, it's a birth-day! Dan remembers well the day of the moon walk and he says that while the rest of the world thinks it heard Neil Armstrong say, "That's one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind," Dan says he really said, "That's one small step for Dan..."  to honor his birthday.  LOL!!  

Anyway. . .

Dan had a fun day in the woods with his buddy Dennis exploring and picking a few huckleberries. While they were gone I decided I would go for broke and make him a totally from scratch cake and even use round cake pans to make it a layer cake.  Several times this year a message from King Arthur flour has popped up either in my email or on Facebook with a link to their recipe of the year--a birthday cake.  I looked it up and printed it and decided to give it a whirl.  It did not disappoint!

I didn't take a picture of mine and now it's all wrapped up for tomorrow, so I borrowed this photo from the KA website.

Believe it or not, mine looked just like that except it's on a pink depression glass cake stand that belonged to my Grandma Hansen (of the picnic photo in my last post). We both loved the cake and if you'd like to give it a try, click here for the recipe.  (In full disclosure, I used my usual recipe for the frosting--from the back of the box of C&H powdered sugar, chocolate version.)  ♥