over the top

At the quilt shop, I found these little do-dads, made by Moda. This one is a little purse. I brought several home and then took the label off one of them, attached a yo-yo and a Mary Engelbreit button. It's a bit "too much", huh?




That's a lot of "cute" in small package, lol! But I sent it to Nancy for her birthday and she liked it and that's all that matters! Also sent her this:



A pinkeep for her basket.

OMG, I just looked at this picture closely and see so many things wrong with it! I have terrible finishing "skills" to say the least!

Here's the back of it, truly sad, but cute fabric, lol!



Nancy, hope you had a wonderful birthday!

And Tobie was the recipient of the BOAF cube it box from my previous post. She wrote and said she got it...Tobie, hope you have a great birthday!!

Now I'm waiting for something else I made recently to arrive at it's new home, and then I can share that here too.

I'm so thankful for the wonderful friends I've made.

so much goodness...

... more than I can even share! Recent finishes for friends, a couple of which I don't want to show here until they've been received, but then there's this one...



Hopefully, she won't see it here before the postal person delivers it to her house. Anyway, it's from a Birds of a Feather chart called Holiday Season's, which includes four different designs, but the summer one is my favorite. Hope she likes it!

And not only was Nancy kind enough to lend an ear (and a shoulder) last week when I was having a meltdown, as if that wasn't enough, all by itself, she also sent me these little beauties:






They are the cutest kitchen towels I've ever seen!! I absolutely adore bluebirds of all kinds, but the sweet little vintage ones like these are my favorite!!

Thank you so much Nancy! You are a real treasure and made my week with your thoughtfulness. Thanks for listening and actually caring.

Here's my progress on Willow House. Not that much to show...I've been too busy with whatever else...




And while waiting for something in the oven, I decided to take a picture of this corner of my kitchen.



It's the top and side of our fridge, lol. If you look closely enough, you'll see some dust.

Would love to redo the cabinets and repaint the walls but we're kind of looking for a new house, so not sure I'd like to put all that energy (and money) into this one.

Anyway, my house isn't anything fancy and I've certainly seen better pictures of homes on blogs, picture perfect, etc. But I'm so inspired by what's out there...people taking snapshots of their ordinary "things", that I snap away at my "stuff" too.

We haven't always done that, have we? I mean, I can't recall my mother ever taking a photo of any kind of object in our house other than the Christmas tree, lol. Well, maybe her Corvette...aw yes, pictures of our cars. And for years, I'm pretty sure that's all I ever photographed as well, besides children, relatives and pets. But now, there's pictures of our stitching , our gardens, our homes, our cooking, and little things like tea towels!

Am I crazy to buy hard copies of these photos? You can see some on the fridge there. That cupcake picture was too perfect to pass up! After a few computer crashes, I worry about losing these pictures forever.

So inspiring to see others cherishing, savoring, their everyday life, so full of extraordinary things. sigh....life is good.

glimpses into my vacation, or parts of the story, or how to save a life

First off, there were to be no elaborate meals during vacation, so we started off with grilled cheese and pickles,



and I stitched on this, which is Willow House from Blackbird Designs,



and then this got pulled out when I was organizing the stash...my first patchwork quilt that i never finished the binding on, so I was working on that too....



and then we sorta hit a "bump" in the road, a "miscommunication" of sorts on the part of certain medical professionals and are ending the week with these little "life savers":




Nothing like finding out how close to a MAJOR F up (and by F up, I mean, serious consequences) for a certain cupcake's husband either having A) a major stroke or B) heart failure and possibly dying...nothing ahem, trivial to send your vacation to a grinding halt.

It's all good. I am staying close by...had plans for the quilt store with the sale and picking up the newest Loose Feathers at the not so local stitch store...and some other things, but nope. Not budging one inch. Silly girl, tricks are for kids.

meant to be

Lesson learned today:

when things don't go the way you want, or plan them to, sometimes it's for a very good reason.

Like a life and death reason.

I will try and blog about this later when I can write it all out in a comprehensive way, but let's just say right now, never trust what a doctor or nurse tells you if you feel in your heart that what they say is "questionable". And even if you do, get it in writing. Because even though I asked my husband's nurse FOUR TIMES if a certain thing was OK for him, and she ASSURED me, verbally, every single time that it was, it turned out to be NOT OK. Caught in time? They say so, but all I'm doing is praying, not trusting what they say again for a long, long time.

Yep, I do believe in angels. And divine intervention. Cause my DH was at a doctor's office today, where the mistake was caught, instead of at the airport, waiting for a delayed flight to arrive with me on it.

Still counting those blessings.

counting them twice

Finally able to get some pictures, although fourteen hundred skeeter bites were acquired in the process! All of this rain has not helped in keeping the mosquito population down.

Anyway...here's My Quaker Garden, by Blackbird Designs:

(all pictures are clickable for a larger image)




I was so happy that the frame for this was reasonable, after so many expensive choices I've made this year on other framed items. The molding is from Honeywood (not sure of the spelling), there were a lot to choose from, but I'm happy with this one.

A few months ago I sent a pile of stitched things to my friend Tobie, as she's been helping me finish things into pillows, etc. Well, imagine my surprise when, things I was expecting to pay her for, showed up in my mailbox with a sweet birthday card...she'd done the finishing as a present to me!!

She made this wonderful tuck pillow out of denim for my CHS "Land That I Love". It was hard to get a good shot and this one really shows that I need to press it better. It also doesn't show the wonderful cord hanger with bead accents that she made.



And this one she made for my Bent Creek's "Wahoo, Life is Good"....isn't the fabric perfect for it? I need to straighten the stitched piece up some as it's pretty crooked in this shot.



This one is a pillow and has a very pretty bow on the upper left hand corner but out of several shots I took of it, none of them show the bow! Dang it. The skeeter bites were starting to itch though so I had to hightail it inside, bow or not.



Tobie, thank you again! I love it all!

Today is a little (well, a lot to be honest) sad for me as I should be in New Jersey on the beach, visiting with friends from the ME group, but due some health issues (with me and my DH), I decided it was better to stay home. I'd already purchased the plane ticket and gotten other things for the trip, and really did want to go, so it surely wasn't an easy choice to make. I'd sorta like to cry again over the whole ordeal, but instead decided to just count my blessings.

Like this one:



A puppy who loves me so much my heart swells with joy. Not to mention my family, my good friends...being surrounded by people I love and things that make me happy like my stitching. Oh, and the fabric...let's not forget about that. There's a quilt store that's going out of business...you won't believe the amount of beautiful fabric that I got for half off! AND, my nearest quilt store, Suzy's, here in Garland, is having a sale this coming week...they have a lighted transfer thing that I need for another new hobby of mine (well, not new, but something I'm going back to doing), embroidery. I have Jenny Hart's book and lots of projects and ideas lined up.

Have a few days off from work coming up, that were originally scheduled for my trip, so I'm going ahead and taking them. Hope to use those days to organize my stash some and hang some samplers that have been needing a spot on the wall for months. Other than that, just stitching, quilting, and embroidering. Maybe some baking. Yes, anything under 90 degress this time of year is downright cool to me.

pugs and whatever

Check out Astro's Blog for some recent pictures of our pups. I still haven't gotten a good picture of my recent finishes to share here...so much rain and just busy with work and resting.
Sorry about that. Don't give up on me. If it stays cool this week I even plan on making some cupcakes for my friend and her family and will be sure to get pics of that too!

Meanwhile, today's picture:



This is an apron my friend made for me for my birthday, being modeled by one of my daughters, who is covered in pug hair and has a pug at her feet. It's all about the Pug here at the Cupcake Castle. Well, that and cupcakes.

sprinkles

What was inside that box...




Mocha (my favorite)!




Vanilla




Red Velvet




Going to Sprinkles was fun, a nice birthday treat. But mainly because of my friend, just being together, not because these are anything to write home about.

And at $19.50 for a half dozen, um....I can't see driving back over there for any more.

The Magnolia Bakery recipe produces a much tastier vanilla cupcake, IMO.

But they sure are cute anyway, don'tcha think?

just a few things

Well, thank you so much for the birthday wishes! And who knew I had so many young, 29 year old friends out there! Yippee!! The miracles of modern science, boy hidee.

Nancy, you mentioned a July birthday too, what day is it on?

Siobhan, we had a big ol' honkin butter cream frosting cake and although I just had a little slice of it, I did think of you, off in the "land of the fruitcake". You poor girl. I hope when you make it over here to the US, you'll get that cake and just celebrate your birthday a little early, lol!

There are so many things to share that I think it will have to be broken down into a couple of posts. I am overstuffed from a birthday dinner at Texas Roadhouse and feel a nap coming on...

So here's this finish, from the Blackbird Designs book Needle and Thread:

(pics are clickable)



I think this one is called My Quaker House. And it was stitched on 40 count French Vanilla although on the backside of it because the front side was just too dark. Used recommended threads, one strand over 2.

And then there's this, which I just finished up this morning:

It's for a friend. She's survived breast cancer twice now and when this design first came out (in 2005, IIRC) I knew I had to stitch it for her. It's from the JABC Stitch Every Day series, No.7500 and is called "For the Cure". It's charted to read "What if the Big C was" or the alternative "For my Friend", which was my choice, obviously. It's stitched on 30 ct. For the Cure Pink by R&R, with Weeks and Gentle Art threads, two over two.
The lines in the heart are stitched vertically, gives it a different look, I like it.

What do you think?

This will be a little cube-it box type thing, once it's sent to the finisher to do her magic on it!

No good light around today for picture taking...it just keeps raining and raining here. But I'm not complaining, really...love the rain and know we're in for a long hot summer so this rain filling our lakes up is a good thing! Anyway, more pictures later this week...

Make it a good one!