Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

So FINALLY here are the pictures I promised of our garden in April when we had to protect all our plants from the freeze. One week it was 80F, the next it was 30F! Our yard sure looked funny. ;-)



Garbage cans and plastic bags... the true tools of a gardener. ;-)




For once, my husband was glad I saved all those plastic pots and cement containers!

Looking Forward....

I can't wait for tomorrow to be here. I am taking Friday off as vacation so that I have an extra long weekend (Monday is a holiday here at work so I don't have to come in), so tomorrow is really my Friday. :-)

This weekend is probably going to be pretty busy. We're having the furnace guy coming on Friday morning to check the A/C and furnace for the summer. We don't have any plans for Friday, but considering that the weather is supposed to be nice, we probably will find SOMETHING to do. We may go see IronMan at the movie theater as it shouldn't be as crowded on a Friday. On Saturday, my husband's family is having a "gathering" at his sister's house which is just up the road from us, so we'll spend most of Saturday with his family. I wanted to go visit my parents on Sunday, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen.

My parents are very big about spending time with the extended family. While its important to see them, if my Aunt is planning a party for Sunday, I don't want to drive out to Utica, NY to see the entire family when I really just want to go visit with my mom. Plus, one of my older brothers is finally starting work on his house that he's had for about 5 years now. He's putting a new roof on this week, and it looks like they may still be doing it on Sunday.

It will be interesting to see how the weekend plays out, but at least its a weekend and I'm not at work! :-)

Poor Blogging

I've been a "piss-poor" blogger lately. I haven't even posted anything since last Friday. I was supposed to put the pictures of our covered garden on here, but just never got around to it. Unfortunately, its been one of those weeks where everything is needing to be done (or wanting to be done) and I can't seem to find the energy to do it all.

I was able to get the entire top to my quilt finished up last night. I still have to add the flying geese borders, but the main pattern is complete. It looks amazing. Every time I finish a portion of a quilt, I'm still surprised at how good it looks. It just doesn't seem right that I made it and that it looks that good. Hopefully (and that's a BIG hopefully) I'll be able to get some pictures taken of the main pattern this weekend and post them on here. But NO promises! :-)

I still have a bit more sewing to do though before the quilt is done. I have to cut the fabric for the borders and sew all the borders together, which will probably take just as long as the main pattern for the quilt.

Sisters

It has always seemed odd to me that when we are very little all we want to do is be like our big sisters. Then you go through the phase where your big sister doesn't seem as cool anymore and you just want to be like your friends and fit in. Finally, you get old enough that you realize that your best friend will always be your sister (or sisters if you have multiple like I do).

Sisters are always there for you and no matter how different you seem to be, you can still relate to one another because of going through the same things growing up. They are family and you always stick together regardless of whatever is happening. Sisters are a friend to talk to; a shoulder to cry on; and someone to laugh with and share memories.

I'm just glad to have my sisters and to be able to help them when I can. I feel lucky to have them and to know that I can share anything with them and not be judged.

Love ya, Laura and Moe!

Yard Decorations in Late Spring for Upstate NY

So the weather in upstate NY has been gorgeous for the past week or so. We had sunny warm weather for about two weeks. The temperatures were up around 75 to 80 degrees, which is pretty unusual for this early in the year. Because of all the nice warm weather, all the plants and flowers have been growing like crazy. Our garden plants have literally doubled in size in just a few days.

However, now the weather has decided its not done yet with winter. Yesterday, it was actually snowing! Last night, the temperatures dropped down to 30 degrees, which is never a good thing for plants that are trying to grow and aren't ready for a good freeze. So when we got home last night, Rich and I desperately tried to find everything that we could use to cover the delicate plants. I think about half our yard was covered by upside-down garbage cans, pails, and pots and the other half was covered with sheets and plastic bags to try and keep everything alive.

Only time will tell at this point whether the plants will survive the hard frost we had. When we took the covers off this morning, the plants' leaves were very brittle and a few of them cracked. I don't think we've actually lost any plants, but they may have to start over with their growing which probably means that we won't have many flowers this year. I'll be posting our photos later today showing our nice yard decorations. ;-)

Baby Quilt #6

While I haven't finished ironing and cutting all the fabric yet (I've been lazy lately), here's the patterns of what the next baby quilt will look like. The two duck fabrics will make flying geese on the border while the light fabric with the bottle in the middle (it has other baby stuff on the fabric) will be borders between the flying geese and the main pattern of the quilt. The pink fabric with the letters on it is actually the backing. I could only get photos of three of the four main colors in the quilt. The fourth is actually the bunnies again, but with a blue background.

This is what the overall pattern in the middle of the quilt will look like. The actual colors of the fabrics are almost identical to what was on the website. Wahoo! :-)

Another Quilt Down....

I finished another baby quilt last night. This one I had finished putting together a while ago and had even machine sewed the binding on, but I hadn't finished (or even started) hand sewing the binding. I finally finished it last night. I'll post a picture of the quilt on here eventually, but in its unfinished state you can see it under Ellie when she was "quilt testing". So I now have no started-but-not-finished quilting projects.

I have fabric for the next baby quilt that I'm making for a due date of September, so I have some time before I really have to start working on that one. I just need to iron and cut the fabrics and I can start sewing. At this point, I'm trying to determine the type of quilting I want to do on it. I've been hand tying the past few baby quilts, but I think I want to machine quilt this one. The question is... what pattern and how much quilting? I haven't tried quilting on the new machine yet, so I'm a little afraid to do it on a quilt that I'm going to be giving away.

Other quilters say that its the best to try stuff on other people's quilts because if you don't like it you don't have to look at it. But the way I see it is that its a piece of myself that I'm giving to someone else and it should be good. It shouldn't just be the "throw-away" part that I don't want or like.

Time will tell what I want to do with the quilt. At least I have time to figure it out.

Baby Quilt #6

Last week I ordered fabric online (a first for me) for a baby quilt that I will be making for some friends that have a baby due in September. The website (www.equilter.com) had pictures of the flannel fabrics and they were pretty cute (many based on kids' nursery rhymes). I was a little hesitant to buy fabric online as I couldn't actually see the fabric or feel it. However, I figured with a baby quilt if it turned out to be a bust, at least it was only a little bit of fabric. :-)

So the fabric arrived on Friday afternoon and as soon as it arrived, I opened it up to find the cutest fabrics I've ever seen. They were good quality and looked exactly as the website had portrayed. I'll have to take some pictures of them to post on here.

To put it in words though, the fabric for the main design of the quilt was four different colors. Two fabrics had little white bunnies on them with a blue background on one and a yellow background on another. The other two were blue and pink backgrounds with the cow jumping over the moon on it. (I couldn't resist!) The fabric I got for the backing actually has the alphabet on it and for each letter it shows a different item (T - teddy; A - airplane, etc) . They even had X and Z on there. I was impressed. ;-)

No More Boot!

I received excellent news from the doctor yesterday that I don't need to drag around my heavy boot anymore. I have to wear a stiff ankle brace for the next two weeks to help stabilize my ankle, but its a heck of a lot better than a heavy boot. Plus, I can start driving now. They said I can't run, jump or twist on it yet, but I'm happy to be just getting closer to normal and I probably won't need physical therapy.

On the quilting front, I haven't really been able to do much quilting lately. I'm working on sewing (by hand) the binding onto my sister-in-law's baby quilt, but I haven't had a lot of motivation to sew lately. I think I get into these ruts every once in a while. I am expecting to get new fabric in the mail on Friday (YAY!), so I'll be able to start the next baby quilt. I've also been sewing the loose ends of the fabric I have for our bedroom quilt. I read on another quilting blog that its handy to sew the raw edges of the fabric before washing so that it doesn't unravel as much. We'll see how it works out. Since I haven't posted these before, below are snapshots of the fabric for our bedroom quilt.

Here's all the fabrics laid out together with the colors that will actually be touching each other in the quilt positioned next to each other.

The four main colors below (green, white, red, and blue) are making up the main pattern in the quilt. The green is just a border around 12" blocks, and the 12" blocks have a a combination of white and blue squares and white and red triangles.

Finally, the border on the quilt will look somewhat like a curling ribbon with a white background, and the two shades of blue being the ribbon. The green is once again a border. Its difficult to see in the pictures, but the darker blue fabric has a lighter blue pattern that has a little bit of irridescence to it. The light blue fabric is completely irridencent, so they work really well together.


All said and done, I think between the different colors I have somewhere around 15-20 yards of fabric! Rich advised me to increase the amount of excess material by 25% to make sure that I have plenty to work with. However, I think if I only increased it by 1/4 yard I would have been fine. So I'll have lots of extra that I can use for other quilts or table runners, or something. It will be fun to think of the "or somethings". :-)

Think SPRING!

While this time of year is usually seen as good, sometimes I think that spring just isn't getting here fast enough. Only a few of my flowers are starting to poke through the ground and the grass hasn't even really started turning green yet. So... to help others who find this time of year frustrating, here's some pictures of flowers from my garden from last summer.


Some pretty coneflowers.


My nice yellow gaillardia (which I probably spelled wrong).


A larger picture of the left front corner of the planting bed. By the way, Rich (my hubby) built that stone wall himself. At the tallest part, its about 18" tall. The shortest end is only about 6".


This is one of my gorgeous roses. I'm hoping the plant survived the winter as I really love the flowers. They are so pretty and as they age, they fade to white and pink versus yellow and pink. They also have a wonderful smell that isn't too flowery and has just the right amount of citrusy smell to them.


This is the same rose bush as the last picture. This one you can see a bee trying to get some nectar along with an older bloom right next to a brand new one.

Official Quilt Tester

Now that I have the camera hooked up to the computer, I was also able to download some pictures of my cat, Ellie, helping me with my quilting. She is the official tester to make sure my quilts feel good.

Caught in mid-lick. ;-)

Time for a BIG stretch!

Giving me the evil look because I disturbed her sleep.

The last one is, of course, the aftermath of her testing.

New Quilt Pics

I finally got the camera connected to the computer again and here's some pictures of the quilts I made for the twin girls.

New Toy!

I FINALLY got my new toy this weekend.... a brand new sewing machine. :-) When I first got it home, I was actually afraid to use it because I didn't want to break it. I've now sewed a few practice pieces on it, and I absolutely love the machine.

I ended up getting a Bernina 440 quilting edition (for quilters who read this, they'll know what the machine is). It comes with a few standard pressure feet, but it also comes with the walking quilting foot. However, the BEST part about it, is that it comes with Bernina's Stitch Regulator foot. This foot attaches to the machine and it senses how quickly you're moving the fabric underneath it and automatically adjusts how quickly the needle moves so that your stitches are always the same length.

Once I get a little more used to the machine, it will definitely be a dream to use. I have to make a few "mini-quilts" to test things out and see how to do different stitches. I also want to try a few new techniques that I haven't tried before, so it will be good to make some practice pieces.

Happy Quilting! ;-)

Taco Loaf!

After cooking the same exact things for the past few weeks, I was tired of the recipes I have for ground chicken (which I needed to make before it went bad). So I searched the internet for a while to find a receipe that involved ground chicken and the ingredients I have in the cupboard. Usually when picking out a recipe online, you only try it if there's a lot of people that say its good.

In this case, I found a recipe for meatloaf using ground chicken and taco seasoning (and a few other random things). Reviewers said that it was good and that they would definitely make it again, so I decided to try it. Fortunately, it was still edible when it was done. But it was essentially and huge taco loaf. Its not that it tasted badly, but I definitely would not make that one again!

So not only did I get rid of a car that was once termed "The Loaf", but I've now made a Taco Loaf. The car was definitely better than the dinner!

Tuna!

Over the past few months, one of the beer manufacturers (I think BudLite) had a commercial where if you drank BudLite you could hear animals talking. There's a dog in the commercial that's constantly saying "SAUSAGE!" and you hear the person asking different questions and the dog keeps saying "SAUSAGE!" Well, we finally figured out that each time we say something to the cat, she just yells "TUNA!" instead of "SAUSAGE!" :-)

Kitty On the Mend

Last Thursday I had to take my cat, Ellie, to the vet for a checkup and for them to check one of her canine teeth. We had noticed a few months ago that the very tip of the tooth was stick out from under her lip a little, but we assumed it was just the way her lip was at the time. Two weekends ago, I noticed the tooth was sticking out even more and when I touch it (because it looked weird) it actually moved! Off to the vet!

Within 15 minutes of seeing her, the vet decided that the tooth had to come out right away. They put her into surgery right away to remove the tooth. Since they had her under anyway, we had the vet clean her teeth. The vet was actually really surprised that we had noticed the loose tooth because cats hide that sort of thing very well. Most cats have lots of cavities and they just chew around them and put up with the pain. When they cleaned her teeth, surprisingly only one other tooth really needed cleaning. All the rest were really clean. So now we have a liquid antibiotic to squeeze down her throat twice a day (it started as pills that we couldn't get down her, so we switched to liquid). Thankfully she's starting to feel better, although she is still "velcro kitty".

The oddest thing was looking at the bill...$350! The amount wasn't really weird, but the weird thing is that its cheaper to have a tooth yanked out than to actually clean them. Doesn't that send the wrong message? For someone who cares about the money more than the pet, they'd sooner leave the teeth along and then just yank them out instead of cleaning them!

Needlepoint

I finally finished my needlepoint (cross-stitch) that I've been working on for 3 years! I can't believe that I had the patience to keep at it for 3 long years. Part of me is still incredulous that I actually finished it. It does look absolutely amazing though. I don't have any pictures yet (shame on me) as the camera STILL isnt' hooked up to the computer. Things have been just way too crazy lately and neither myself nor my husband have been able to take the time to get the camera hooked up.

I've already picked out the next pattern that I'm going to be working on: Van Gogh's Starry Night. Its not quite as big as the last one, but it will still take quite a bit of time to finish it. However, I've already told myself that I can't even think about starting it until I have a few other projects finished. I have two baby quilts that are totally complete with the exception of sewing the binding onto the back by hand. One of them I start on Saturday and have one side almost finished, but the other one I haven't started yet. Thankfully, both those mothers aren't due until June and July, so I still have some time to finish them. I found out over the weekend that I have another baby quilt to make by September, too. So my order of business is going to be finishing the bindings on the current quilts, then making the September baby quilt. Eventually friends will stop having babies so that I can make a quilt for our home. ;-)

Not That I'm Counting...

I officially only have 9 days left in the cast at this point. It will definitely be good to get rid of the cast. I'm really hoping that the doctor will take the cast off and give me a walking boot to get around in for a while. It seems somewhat odd because earlier this summer I would have done anything to get rid of the walking boot. However, after being on crutches for the past 5 weeks, I'm tired of it and I want to walk again. I'm trying very hard to stay positive about all of it at this point, but its starting to wear on me. I've been doing well by looking forward to things that I want to be able to do, but after this past weekend its been difficult.



We went to look at a dog on Sunday. She's a 7-year old german shepherd named Sasha. She was the sweetest thing. She was very well behaved and behaved exactly like a shepherd should. When we first met her, she was slightly aloof, but as soon as her foster shook our hands and told her it was alright she came right over to us to smell our hands. She was even willing to play with us and come to us without any problems. After being with her foster for 2 weeks, she clearly saw him as her buddy and wanted to be with him. My husband took her for a short walk and she didn't pull except to try and get to her foster, but she didn't pull a huge amount. She also knows all her basic commands, which was really unexpected. My husband asked her to sit without expecting her to actually do it, and she just did it.

On the mend...

So I'm finally starting to feel like I'm on the mend. My foot is done swelling in the cast and I can usually keep my foot down near the floor for quite a while before it even starts to feel uncomfortable. Thankfully I'm sleeping a little better at night, too. I only have two weeks left before the cast comes off! I can't wait for it to be gone so that I can take a normal shower and do normal things again.

Yesterday, in fact, I was so preoccupied at work that I stood up to get something off my bookshelf and actually partially stood on my foot with the cast. I didn't even realize it until after I was sitting back down again. It didn't hurt at all to stand on it! Two weeks ago, even something brushing against my toes was painful. Now I just have to concentrate on getting better.

Long Time...

It definitely has been a while since I last posted on here. Unfortunately, its been pretty crazy the past few weeks with my surgery. I had surgery on my foot on February 4th and have been recovering since then. The first week I was essentially in a drug-induced stupor for most of the week. Unfortunately, the first pain medicine I was on (hydrocodone) made me incredibly ill despite eating a good amount of food. I ended up not taking any pain medication for about 12 - 16 hours because I couldn't keep anything down. Luckily, my husband was able to call the doctor and get a different prescription which didn't make me sick.

The surgery went well and there was nothing really too unexpected. The doctor did discover that the tendon in the arch of my foot was about 3/8" too short, but he was able to re-attach it to where it needed to be. However, because it was short he couldn't put me into a cast right away because it would have put too much stress on the tendon. So this past Monday I went back to the doctor and had stitches removed and my foot/leg had a cast put onto it. Unfortunately, I had some issues with swelling (which I had before the cast, too) that kept getting worse with the cast, so I had to have it re-casted on Thursday. When they took the first cast off, there was visible bruising all around my ankle due to the pressure inside my cast. Thankfully the new cast only has minor problems with swelling and as soon as I elevate it, the swelling subsides.

Now I just have another 3 weeks to go in my cast (which is non-weight bearing of course) and I can start doing rehab to stretch out the tendon and get the strength back in my leg. The doctor said it should only take about 4-6 weeks for a tendon to fully heal. When I have the cast taken off, it will be 6 weeks post-op so everything should be healed up just fine at that point. Hopefully it will continue to heal quickly and I'll be back doing normal things again.

However, with not working for the first two weeks post-op, I was able to get the binding sewn onto the first of the twins' quilts and the second binding is about 80% sewn onto the quilt. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it pretty soon, although after speed sewing through the first binding, I haven't really wanted to do any work on them.

Anyway, I'm actually exhausted today. My parents came up to visit and we went to the mall for a little bit (about 20 minutes actually inside the mall) so that I could get out of the house and go somewhere other than the doctor's office. I was able to get a new purse that can actually be put on your back like a backpack. As I can't really carry anything with me right now because I am on crutches, at least the backpack/purse will allow me to carry around some essentials around the office when I go back to work on Monday. We'll have to see how being back in the office works because all of the interior doors in the office are very heavy (they really want to be closed all the time) and none of them have handicap buttons to open them for you. So we'll have to see how it goes. If its too difficult to get around the office, then I will have to tell my manager that we either have to get the doors fixed or I will be working from home until I'm off the crutches.