GOOD TIDINGS!

  I hope all of you, my wonderful blog readers, have a most wonderful holiday season. I have many readers from all over the globe and there are too many celebrations to be named here! So, whichever holiday you are celebrating- or even if you are not celebrating anything- have a great rest of this year and I hope all your dreams come true next year!

  Please keep on coming back to see what I am up to. I have a few things planned for next year.  And I have many more STORIES!

 

   Hugs to you all, my friends!

                                 Finishing Up and Starting  More-

      This last weekend was a great weekend for getting a few little projects done. Saturday was spent with my good friend Lexie. We visited one of my favorite shops, then headed south to see our friends’ new home.  While at the quilt shop I was asked to teach a bag class, and even got put on the class schedule for February. It was so wonderful- made me smile even more that day! While visiting our friend, Eileen, even though we finished off a pitcher of margaritas for lunch we were able to visit another quilt shop. They had moved the shop  recently, and were having a customer appreciation event at their new location. I picked up this pattern-

 

And I even ended up making one of these on Sunday. Super fast, super easy.

 

 

  I also found some great pig fabric for a pillow case for someone for Christmas-is this not adorable fabric? If there was a baby somewhere in my future I would have bought the whole line- very cute faces on these critters-

 

   Sunday while I was waiting for Amber to come over to help me bake, I finished up a few of these cute bags-

   Now, when I started these little bags I had no idea they were made using templates. While not a total hater of templates, I would prefer not to work with them for the most part. After spending a damn hour and half screwing around with these f---ing raindrops I finally decided I could not figure out how to make them without the templates, so I traced the silly things off onto template plastic and proceeded to make these damn bags. They were fun to do- even with all the bitching and moaning coming out of my woman cave (see there is a reason I have a door on my room) and her directions, as always, were great.

 

I also made Dale a new collar- now she is styling-

 

I am looking forward to another sewing weekend!

Sew on my friends, sew on!

                                                LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW

 

  We have not had much snow here in Colorado- at least in the Denver area- this year yet.  Although I am not a big fan of driving in it, I sure love looking at it. I love the way the snow makes the trees sparkle and makes everything look so clean.

  My hometown got a pounding of snow this week which took me back to when I was a kid and still living there. Oh how I loved those snow storms!  My friends and I would get all bundled up, and, looking just like the kid in A Christmas Story, head out for some fun. Then, when we got wet all the way through our 400 layers, we would head indoors for hot chocolate and popcorn while our clothes dried on the heat vent. Once that happened, we could go back out again and play some more!

 

  We had a big hill behind my house-it was called Bloody Lane. The older kids could start up high on the hill, and when you got close to the bottom there was a cluster of trees you had to swerve to miss before you went down the last leg of the hill. Some did not have the skills to miss those trees, hence the name Bloody Lane. Then, if you got to the bottom and could not stop you were screwed, as there was a shit crick- yes crick, not creek- at the bottom and it was NOT fun to go into that!  I am really not sure why it was called a shit crick- I cannot ever remember seeing anything bad in it but I was always told don’t play in it, so who knows. It was probably full of radiation from 3 Mile Island or something. Shit is easier to explain to a kid than radiation.

  I remember one time I got to go sledding with my brother. I could not believe he was taking me- and his friends were going to be there! We get to the hill, and what do they have? A hood of a car, upside down, ready for us all to get in and come down the hill. Too flipping cool! Now, I really cannot remember what happened, but I do remember leaving there crying. Such a nerd.  I will have to ask my brother if he remembers what happened. Someone probably made fun of me, or maybe I chickened out at the last minute. I will go with possibility #2.

 

  My friend Pen and her sisters had these giant silver, round saucers that had handles on them. Boy, were those things awesome to use! I just had an old crappy sled- pretty shot from usage by my siblings but by golly it still flew!  I loved that feeling of flying coupled with the terrifying feeling of holy crap- what if I couldn’t stop? The one thing I hated is that I had glasses- try keeping those bastards on and clear when sledding or doing anything else in the snow! It was a pain in the ass- but I was totally blind without them so I had to suck it up and wear them. Oh well- as you see I survived. I am such a whiner!

 

  I also remember building big igloo looking forts on the corners where the snow plow would pile all of the snow. We had some kick ass ones!

 

  As I got older, I used to love to walk in the snow at night. It was so quiet and peaceful. My footprints would be the first ones in the newly fallen snow. I could walk and walk and no one would be around. Everyone was inside- no traffic at all. I wish I could experience that again. Maybe someday I will be able to that again. Out here I am afraid I will get mugged or hit by a car. Not exactly a relaxing experience.

 

  I think I will go now and wish for snow- rumor has it we may see a little here this weekend- whoo hoo! Added bonus- I won’t have to drive to work in it!

Keep warm, my friends!

CARTOONS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

Everyone with kids knows the joys of long trips with kids in a car. To a kid, anything over 10 blocks is a long trip. Out of town car rides are long dark adventures. The constant cries of Are we there yet, I gotta pee, or Sean is touching me, make traveling such a delight.

 

                                                     

When our kids were infants, we could double wrap them in diapers, strap them into car seats, give them a sippy cup and we were off. Once they outgrew the car seats, pet taxis worked well but then they outgrew those crates as well. Of course we did get some stares when we would stop at rest areas and took the kids out of their crates for walks on their leashes.  But hey, other parents did it too!! 

 

                                                  

Now we have tried to make traveling as entertaining as possible for our kids. We would play educational games such as the alphabet game, license plates and state capitals, road kill bingo and so on. My husband would regale the kids with stories about the historical significance of areas or about local  crimes and monsters or some other such trivia.

 

On this particular trip, we were traveling along Interstate 70 through the mountains of Colorado. I was driving and hubby was taking in the scenery.  Mountain driving in Colorado is always tricky, what with other careless drivers, critters such as elk, long horn sheep, deer and bears, plus the numerous falling rocks and landslides and the occasional avalanche in the winter.

Amber was sleeping soundly in the back seat, the drugs having finally kicked in. Sean was stirring restlessly, so I suggested we play a version of the alphabet game, using the name of a cartoon character for each letter of the alphabet. A- Adam Ant, B- Bugs Bunny, C-Casper the Ghost, etc. etc. etc.

Things were going fine. We were winging through the alphabet and the miles were whizzing by. Cartoon characters were reviving childhood memories of hours in front of the television. Then it was Sean’s turn. His letter was Y.

 The letter is Y. I got one yelled Sean. “YOSODOMY SAM!”

 

 

Like I said, driving through the mountains is hard enough. Now I am laughing so hard I am crying. Tears are streaming down my face as I hurtled down the interstate at 70, okay 85 miles an hours. I can’t even see the road. My husband has his head sticking out the window and he is gasping for breath. His ears are flopping in the breeze.

Sean is sitting innocently in the back seat asking “What? What? What is so funny?”

I finally regain control of myself. A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed that I only ran a few cars off the road. Hubby pulls his head back in the car and regains his breath. He looks over at me and congratulates me on not wrecking the car.

I am thinking I will never be able to watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon again, especially one with poor old Sam in it.

Then hubby says he would really, really like to see that cartoon. And the laughter started all over again.