Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentines Day! I hope everyone is having great day. We celebrated Sunday with the whole family here for dinner. Beth did it all, what a wonderful treat for me. She went way over board, the table looked beautiful and her dinner was delicious. She made Lasagna, garlic bread and salad. For dessert she did her specialty...Oreo truffles with a little surprise inside of a tiny peanut butter cup or a carmel turtle and then to top it off she dipped strawberries in chocolate. I will have to post pictures tomorrow of these wonderful goodies.

These blue berry muffins are a tradition that we have here in our family. I started making these for the kids about 15 or 20 years ago. I bought these little disposable tins and have saved them and used them each year. They are looking pretty bad...they are almost antiques after all. I have bought new nice heart shape tins but apparently it's just not the same because the kids complain any time I don't use old original ones. It's even getting hard to tell they are heart shape any more but it is tradition and I am not going to mess with that.

My little grandchildren are not really that thrilled with the muffins, not really their tradition, so this year I made these little valentines. I used my cricut to cut out these shapes to make these toppers and filled the bags with cherry hearts. The kiddos loved them.

I had another little valentine quilt I wanted to show but somehow I deleted it...it will have to wait until tomorrow now along with the other Valentines stuff. Have a great day

Monthly Projects

The first part of the year I had a friend say she was challenging herself by making some gift items once a month. I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea so I decided to do it too. She suggested doing these potatoe bags first. I went and bought the new batting made especially for these...it's called "Warm tater". I ended up with 8 bags. They really work nice in the microwave.

For February I decided to do these small notebooks. I found the little pens at Walmart and they were perfect with these. I picked up the notebooks at the $ store. I love doing projects with materials from my stash and these were done that way.

Humm...I wonder what I will come up next month.

Goodbye My Old Friend!

Well I finally bit the bullet and took my good old friend in for a well needed service. My Viking Lily 540 just hasn't been herself for several month so I put her aside to rest and brought home my back up sewing machine from the cabin. Now it will soon will be time to take it back up north, I needed to get "Lily" back in working order. FYI - I came across the receipt when I purchased her...I bought/received her for Christmas 1998 and back then she cost me $1200.00 . I can't believe she is that old, I guess she deserved a little break. She has been worth every penny spent on her. Get well soon Lily". I am looking forward to be back creating with you.

Weekend

Have you ever had one of those weekends when on Friday afternoon, you are almost at the end of the work week, and you think, boy I am going to get tons done this weekend. You have a list of "to do's" a mile long. Maybe a little reading, some sewing, some cleaning and organizing. Then the next thing you know it is Sunday night and you don't have anything crossed of that list. Well that was the weekend I just had. Not that it was bad...I did get to see 5 of my 6 grandkids and spend a little time with them but I also didn't get alot of me time and my "to do" list is still as long as it was on Friday afternoon. I think the weekend needs to include Monday too.

Our Sunday activities did include a very low key Super Bowl Party. I just had Brett and Julie and the boys come. Here is Connor spending some time sitting with his dad watching the game...he is pretty active so he didn't stay there long.


Not everyone was interested in the game...meaning Beth. She decided after we ate she would work on some of her hair flowers. She is getting pretty good at it and thinks she might even need a craft room of her own...very little chance I will give mine up to her.

So for my "to do" list...I will probably add a few items to it and give it another try next weekend and if it doesn't all get done that's ok and if some of it does...that's GREAT!

I'm Back!

Well it's been quite a while since I have posted. December was just crazy, busy and hectic month but we had a great time. I made a goal back then to get back to blogging as soon as the holiday's were over...then for Christmas I got a new laptop from my son Tom and kids. Problem was tho that it was going to be late arriving. So I made a new goal, this time as soon as the new laptop arrived I would be back to blogging. Another problem...laptop didn't arrive as scheduled. Tom checked on it and found that for some reason we can't figure out the order had been cancelled so he had to start over. Well guess what happened yesterday? This sweet red laptop arrived. I love it, thanks Tom! So I am back to blogging.


I love the color red...if you can't tell. Also for Christmas I got a great new camera...also red from my great daughter Carrie. This she gave me early since my old camera bit the dust on Thanksgiving and she knew I would need it for all our Christmas activities. Maybe getting one early and one late balances each other out. I would have posted a picture of the camera but I can't take a picture of my camera with my camera. I also have a red phone too but it is old school according to my kids so I won't embarrass myself with a picture of that. Now I just need a Kindle...do they make those in red?

Anyway now for what I have been up to lately...last night I decided to make a few cards. I wanted to send my missionary a valentines card but it couldn't be to cutesy for a guy so I came up with this card for him and the other card I made for a sweet friend that will be 90 years old on Monday. I know the picture isn't the best, photography isn't one of my strongest skills but I am working on it.

Now today and I came home to this sweet little girl. Faithy and her dad came to visit and now she is spending the night. She was trying to spell something with these letters, I tried to explain to her that she needed a vowel or two but she just couldn't figure that out so she decided to start drawing Uncle Matthew a picture which we will put in the mail to him.

Well I am somewhat caught up, lets see if I can stay that way!

Let the parties begin!

After a busy weekend last week with all our Thanksgiving activities you would think we would be ready to relax for a bit...well we just kept partying. I started out early Saturday morning with my "Funny Bunny" quilt group friends. Crystal drove from Tucson early and I treated Crystal, Bunny and Debbiesue to breakfast. I made everyone a "homemake" donut for a party favor. It was actually a pin cushion, they turned out so cute. I actually served an oatmeal bar for breakfast. I wanted to do something different and my sister gave me this idea, it turned out really nice. I took pictures on my nieces camera and can't quite figure out how to get them off, so those will be coming later. Sadly on Thanksgiving my camera dropped and it bit the dust. I was so sad and my niece kindly offered to let me use her camera. I greatly appreciated it. Thanks Katie and Mark.

Later Saturday afternoon I hosted my family annual Gingerbread House party. Everyone brings their gingerbread kit and we have fun decorating them. This year we didn't just have houses but also gingerbread boy/girls, little villages and even a train. Here is Thane with his portion of the village. Didn't he do a good job. Beth helped all the little ones color their frosting with the color of their choice. Thane picked a lime green. Looks great Thane!

Oh you are probably wondering now just how I got these pictures if I can't figure out my nieces camera. Carrie arrived early from Casa Grande with my granddaughter Jessah and brought me an early Christmas present...a new RED camera. Red being my favorite color I was very excited. Thank you so much Carrie, I love it.

Here is Beth Ann and Jessah. I haven't seen Jessah in quite a few months, I couldn't believe how long her hair is now and she is getting so grown up. It's hard to believe I have a grandchild almost 13 years old. I can't be that old can I? Love you Jessah and miss seeing you more often.

Here is Faithy and her cute little house. I like how her color is actually a color very popular this year with alot of Christmas decorations.

This is Hunters train, it was really cute but he refused to have his picture taken with it. He did a great job on it tho.

By the end of the evening we were all pooped out. Thane and Lily included but we had a bunch of cute decorated gingerbread. Next weeks parties startes on Thurs., Friday and Sat. Am I nuts?

Thanksgiving Traditions

What a busy fun time of year. I love all the traditions that my family does in the fall. One of my favorites is Thanksgiving and not only for the wonderful food. Bright and early on Thanksgiving morning my 2 nephews and niece came over to hang my Christmas lights on my house. Carrie came in from Casa Grande to help too. We started off with some cinnamon rolls that Beth Ann stayed up late the night before to make for us...Yumm, they were so good. Then it was outside to do the light while Beth stayed in to do my tree and other decorations. It is wonderful to have personal decorators. The light crew was missing one of their main men...Matthew who is serving a mission in England. I can't really remember just when we started this tradition but we were joking that we think Matthew and Nate have hung Christmas lights for my Mom, my sister Kathy and me since they were about 5 years old. Now the job has enlarged with several of them married with homes of their own. Last year we added my niece Katie and her husband, Mark's house to the line up. Nate did mention that we maybe should pay his airline ticket for coming from school in Colorado to do this. Sadly he didn't get to do much else...Thanks Nate, Katie, Mark, Carrie and Beth, you guys did a great job!
After the house was decorated we were off to my brother and sister-in-laws, Reed and Kristy for dinner. Everything was just wonderful. So wonderful I forgot to take any pictures while we were eating. Here is my Dad and Tom outdoors enjoying the wonderful weather we had.

And then after dinner we were off to do the lights at my Mom and Dad's house. Everyone got involved again this time adding Gage as a helper. I should mention those not actively doing the lights sit and watch those that are. We all have to add in a suggestion or two...not that those doing the lights pay any attention to these suggestions. By this time the weather had gotten pretty cold so we got the fire pit going...some of us stayed nice and toasty while others were on the chilly roof. Here are Mark, Dad and Gage enjoying the fire and staying warm.

Kathy, Amy, Mom and I tried to stay warm too. We ended up wrapped in blankets. What a wonderful day we had. Matthew we missed having you here.

Hope everyone else had as great of day as I did.