Cold....Lucky....Lighting Up My Life

Against my better judgment we participated in the "Blizzard of '09" and now it's cold, cold, cold. I DO NOT LIKE COLD.

Believe it or not, I won the grocery store drawing for $50 worth of groceries AGAIN.

That makes three times in the past year. Maybe I should start buying Powerball tickets.

As for lighting up my life, here's the lovely little Ott light my good friend Flicsha sent me for Christmas all the way from Florida.



Thanks so much, Flicsha. I have just the spot for it.

So....What Have I Been Doing???

Because we all know I haven't been blogging don't we? And I haven't been taking pictures because this is a photo-free post. (Photos added 12-09-09)

Let's see, since the last post we had Thanksgiving at our daughter's. Our son-in-law was (and still is) in the hospital so we brought our 6 yr. old grandson home with us for the weekend. He likes hanging out with Grandpa so they went turkey hunting one whole afternoon, put every puzzle in the house together and spent lots of time with the race car set. Oh yes, his dog came to stay too, they're kind of a matched set.



Look at that face...maybe he didn't want his picture taken!!! :)




Dec. 1st we went to the Christmas concert at school for grandson and granddaughter #2.

Tonight was my FCE (Extension Club) Christmas party. I made a little snowman wallhanging for the name I drew but forgot to take a picture of it and I'm too lazy now after the big meal to take a picture of the gifts I got. Also finally got the tree put up and decorated today. It will be my black kitty's favorite place to sleep now. She was under it within 5 min. of me getting it decorated. It's been snowing out so it's really starting to feel like Christmas. It's really cold out too and that doesn't add to anything. Brrrr.

And last, but not least, I changed my blog background to a Christmas theme. There are starting to be so many websites offering backgrounds that it can be hard to choose.

My kitties were being cute last night

Nicky decided she was going to live under this chair. I think she was frowning at me when I took the picture.



And Nuey thought he'd take a nap in the clothes basket on the clean laundry.

My laptop started giving me some aggravation on Wednesday. The sound started going out. I thought maybe the drivers needed to be reinstalled but it didn't help. The thing won't even be 3 yrs. old until Feb.

I wanted to catch up on the TV shows I like but miss because they're on Thursday night when I work or conflict with another show. I was actually looking at new laptops on the Dell site and trying to decide between a green one or a purple one. Or maybe the shiny black one with the wild, colorful design.

Then I remembered a Creative Extigy external sound card contraption I bought about 5-6 yrs. ago when I wanted to record some tapes & LPs to my old laptop. Had never even taken it out of its box. So I dug it out of a tub in the basement and hooked it up. So-so sound. Went online & downloaded the latest drivers and installed them. Now this laptop has the best sound it ever had. Turned down as low as it will go it's still a little bit loud. That's with headphones. I bet with speakers it would rattle the windows. LOL It isn't the most convenient setup but it works and I can get some more mileage out of this laptop, even though a new one would be fun. Expensive fun.

A full day..........

Today was one of those days where I got a lot done, as opposed to most days when I piddle around all day and don't accomplish anything.

Yesterday I got a batch of squash baked & scraped out of the shells to be ready to can today. I also got a quilt loaded on the machine yesterday, all ready for quilting today.



I was ready!!!

To start the day off, the UPS man brought this:



He was so funny. Before he got it out of the truck he asked if my husband was home. When I said yes he wanted to know if it was a Christmas present for the DH. I laughed and said no it was my very own air compressor, because the tires on my car keep going down. (the wheels are bad...pinholes, apparently it happens when they get old) I don't think he delivers air compressors to very many women!!! LOL

After that I got my jars in the dishwasher & went downstairs to quilt while they washed. Once that was done I'd get a batch in the canner, then go sew quilt blocks into rows. I hadn't canned anything on this new stove so didn't want to be too far away from it for this first run through. Of course, my blocks were laid out on my mighty fine "design bed."



I think I'm going to LUV this quilt!!!!

When a batch in the canner was done & taken off the stove to cool I'd run downstairs and quilt some more. Repeat the sequence a few more times. Multi-tasking at it's best!!!! LOL

And here are the results of my day:



22 jars of squash. There must be another 50 jars "on the hoof" so to speak. Don't think I'll can that many more.



I used the "Bayside" pantograph and it quilted up very nice. DH called it "strange." He doesn't care for the colors, but since it belongs to a friend it really doesn't matter at all.

Maybe I should start every day with a dose of Excederine. The caffeine really gets me going!!!

Happy Birthday to you................

Sunday we celebrated our granddaughter's 11th birthday.



She's so funny. Every time I asked her what she wanted for her birthday she'd say "pumpkin pie, my very own pumpkin pie with my name on it." So being the good grandma that I am, I made her a pumpkin pie with her name on it.



Also, since I'm such a good grandma, I got her an MP3 player with more room for her music. Hopefully that will end the hissy fits over not being able to get all the songs on it that she wants!! LOLOL

Grandma duty...................

I spent from Saturday after work until late this afternoon staying with my grandchildren while their parents went to Denver for the Broncos/Steelers game. The kids are growing up and pretty much do their own thing. I just need to make sure everybody gets fed and gets up and goes to bed on time. Here's a picture of Hailey & Tyler's "thing."



Isn't that a magnificent tent? Two rooms so they can both be in it but still be separated. Looks like something a Bedouin might live in out in the Arabian desert.

I was on my own all day today & yesterday while they were all at school...they were all out the door by 8am...so Monday I scanned about 200 pictures that I wanted copies of (I needed scrapbook fodder for all the digital goodies I've downloaded) and Tuesday (today) I spent from 10:30am to 3pm at the library going through microfilm for obituaries & wedding write-ups. So, that takes care of scrapbooking and genealogy.

And I did get a little quilting in too. Here's my setup on the kitchen table:



And here's my make-do design wall:



Notice the corrected Bricks & Stepping Stones blocks!!! LOL

All in all I probably got a lot more done than if I had been at home. Gotta love it.

3 for 3

That's right, we're 3 for 3 for zip, zero, nada Trick-or-Treaters 3 years in a row. Next year I won't even buy any candy & leave the porch light off. Bah humbug!! Bummer!!!

Now I can start agonizing over Christmas. What shall I get everybody. I think they'd be happiest with gift cards so they can pick out their own & get what they want. But that just doesn't seem like much fun and my 6 year old grandson would be disappointed without anything to play with on Christmas Day. There will at least have to be something small in their gift bags to go with the gift cards if I go that route.

It's just all too stressful.....I think I'll go take a nap. :-)

Ghosties 'N Ghoulies....................

We'll see if we get any Trick-or-Treaters this year. The last couple years we haven't had a single one. Getting candy just doesn't seem to be a big deal for kids any more or else they're just too lazy to walk almost a block to the only house on the street to get it. Walk..........who am I kidding??? Parents drive them from house to house. Sure different from when I was a kid, or when my kids were young.

My beautiful new...............

........kitchen range.



I had to share a photo while it's all shiny & new. It sure is great to have more than one just-barely-working burner. Got a good deal on it too. It has a small dent at the bottom of one side so they gave me $75 off. With the difference in sales tax it comes to about an $80 savings. The cabinet beside it completely covers the dent. I LOVE my $80 dent!!! LOL

I finally finished ripping & resewing the Bricks & Stepping Stones blocks. Now I just have to pick off loose threads & press them again. Still can't believe I messed up such a simple block. The lesson here is, "read the directions" rather than just sewing stuff together willy-nilly.

Finally....SUNSHINE!!!

That's right, we had sunshine today. I finally felt wide awake and didn't yawn once all day. It's only supposed to last 2-3 days so we'd better enjoy it. Fall is kind of a bust this year. It froze hard so early that there won't be any "pretty" this year. And all the gloominess certainly brings a person down.

So what did I do today? Well I vacuumed & vacuumed & vacuumed some more. Then I spayed with flea spray. Yes, my cats had fleas and therefore my house had fleas. Advantage seemed get rid of them on the cats and all the vacuuming and spraying seems to have them out of the house....after spending about $100 on spray, Advantage and flea collars. They've been really bad this year.....my pets weren't the only ones in town infected and I know of people in Colorado & Florida who have been fighting them as well. Call it "flea terrorism."

One good thing came of it though. I pulled everything out from under my bed to clean & spray since one of the cats likes to hide under there and found a box with three quilt UFOs in it (is that really a good thing?) that I thought I accidentally threw out when I painted the bedrooms three years ago and switched the bedroom and sewing room around. And that's the only even remotely quilty that happened here this week. :)

Let's take a vote....

....and here's my vote!



That's right, it's snowing again and I say it's time to vote NO on this nonsense!! Maybe Mother Nature would do the democratic thing and stop the flakes. Spring was short, Summer was weird and now it looks like we're skipping Fall. Let's vote in some sunshine, ya'all.

Keeping busy doing nothing much

This is the scene that greeted me yesterday morning.....





This is the second time it's snowed and it's not even the middle of October yet. What happened to Fall?? The Old Farmer's Almanac is said to be predicting a long, snowy, cold winter. Could they be right? It's off to a good start.

There hasn't been much quilty activity going on around here except for going to Quilt Club last night. Our friend Lori from SD & her sister joined us. Her sister doesn't sew but I think she got a kick out of watching the whole proceeding. Luanne, our hostess had us do string blocks....would you believe we got all 48 of them sewed. We jabber a lot, but we work as fast as we talk. We're well-fed too...Luanne brought all kinds of goodies and some absolutely fantastic cheesecake made by her daughter-in-law.

What's been keeping me busy lately is dehydrating apples & pears, making deer jerky and some chokecherry jelly. The dehydrator has been working overtime...the pears are getting too ripe too fast.



The picture includes the three "do-overs".....jelly that didn't set up. Wouldn't you know it was the box of Sure-Jell that I just bought that didn't set up....the 5-yr. old boxes and the boxes from last year worked just fine. Go figure!!!

Since it's pear season and pear season is short, I've been making French Pear Pie every few days. Yum. And since we've been eating so much pie it's probably a good thing the season is short.



It's really not fair to show a picture of food without the recipe so here it is:

FRENCH PEAR PIE

Single pie crust to fit your pie pan.

Filling:

Enough peeled, sliced pears to fill pan
3 T. frozen orange juice concentrate
1/2 t. dried lemon peel
2 heaping T. cornstarch or Clear-Jel (I prefer the *Clear-Jel)

Mix thoroughly, pour into pie shell.

Topping:

1 C. flour
1/2 sugar (increase both of these a little if your pan is larger than 9")
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/3 - 1/2 C. softened butter or margarine

Mix well and put on top of filling, pat it down firmly. Bake at 375 for 45-50 min.
Test with a toothpick to be sure pear filling is done.

Cool and enjoy with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream on top.

* The catch with using Clear-Jel is that it is only available on-line or from Amish bulk food stores.

Eye candy

Today's eye candy is my Bricks all sewed to the Stepping Stones and pressed.



Behind them is a pile of scrap strips left over from the backings of quilts. I cleaned out underneath my quilting machine. Yaaaay me!!!! LOL They'll most likely get cut into strips for Heartstrings quilts but I AM considering cutting the cat fabric into bricks along with a bunch of my other cat fabric and making another Bricks & Stepping Stones quilt. Don't know what I'll use for the Stepping Stones yet but I'm considering an assortment of hand dyes. What do you think?? Or should I just stick to two colors? Hmmmmmmmmm

Today I've been deeply into harvest-type things again. First thing this morning I got a load of apples in the dehydrator.....Golden Delicious...and they ARE delicious. After lunch I went out to the garage and found some of the ripest pears and made a French Pear Pie. It's in the oven now. Maybe if I remember I'll post the recipe in a later post. We really like it with a good helping of vanilla ice cream on top.

.............Had to take a minute to take the pie out...looks good.

Once the pie was in the oven I pulled on my gloves & went to dig in the freezer for some bags of chokecherries I put in there more than a couple years ago (can't remember exactly) and put them on to cook. It was either they were good enough to cook or they were getting thrown out. They'd been in there long enough. They seem OK so I'll make jelly on Tuesday since I work at the library on Monday.

DH picked the squash & pumpkins today. There are only four big, orange pumpkins, just enough for each grandchild & us to have jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. The squash more than made up for the small number of pumpkins...65!!! My friends & neighbors better lock up their houses and cars or they might find them full of squash. LOLOL

Happy Halloween!!!

It's a little early, I know. I found my new blog background at thecutestblogontheblock and thought I might as well get a leg up on my Halloween decorating. It might be the ONLY Halloween decorating I do!! LOL I love Halloween and have a couple of boxes of decorations stashed in the basement storeroom, but somehow or other a bunch of other stuff has gotten piled in front of those shelves that I'd have to climb over/move to get to them. How does that happen anyway??

In a way, Halloween is the perfect holiday. You can decorate as much as you want, make special treats and eat all the candy you can hold. No presents to buy and wrap, no big holiday meal to cook, no house to clean so guests to the big holiday meal can get in the door. Just fun, fun, fun.

I've had a couple Halloween/Fall quilting projects hovering in the background for a few years now. Will I get them done this year?? Probably not, but they're fun to think about and look at the patterns and pet the chosen fabrics. Sometimes that's enough, ya know? The new blog background does put me in the mood though.

The week so far

It was hard to get out of bed this morning since it was so dark, gloomy & windy. The forecast is for even stronger wind for tonight and tomorrow. Maybe I'll sleep in in the morning. Yeah, right!! I never can sleep past 8:00 no matter how hard I try for later. :)

Monday and Tuesday I made deer jerky a little different than we have always made it. Most years part of the meat gets made into summer sausage but last fall we didn't need any more of that so the meat just got cut into chunks and frozen. We have always made jerky by slicing some of the meat, soaking it overnight in a flavoring & salt solution and then drying it in the dehydrator. This time we used ground meat, Jack's Links original flavor jerky cure & seasoning mix and a "Jerky Gun." It turned out pretty good, but a little peppery for us. I think for the next batch I'll use all the cure but a bit less of the seasoning mix.

Tuesday night I went to my oldest grand-daughter's freshman volleyball game at Pierce. They won in two sets. And I found out the difference in having the game at the high school gym instead of the downtown auditorium gym. When freshman games are downtown they go for three of five sets and cost $1. At the high school they play for two of three sets because the JV and Varsity teams play too and the cost is $5. You have to pay for less bleacher butt, apparently. :)

Last night I worked on my Bricks & Stepping Stones for a while. All the 4-Patches are sewed to the bricks now. My least favorite part...pressing...has to be done now. I've made a lot of blocks, now I have to decide if I want to make a twin-size for the bunk beds or a bigger one. Guess I'll wait and see how far the blocks go. Is that relaxed, or what?? :)

Today was spent at the library. There was some end of the year stuff to do and new books to unpack. Otherwise it was pretty quiet. People who weren't at work didn't want to come out in the cold wind, I guess. I go back for the evening hours but don't expect it to be too busy then either.

Sorry there's no photos but some weeks just don't warrant a lot of picture taking.

Here's my stash

Judy L. over on Patchworktimes.com has issued a "Show Us Your Stash" challenge. She asked for "A Picture." LOL I needed four to show mine and there's a small set of plastic drawers off to the right of the tubs in the first picture that you can't see that holds cut squares and bricks.






The bookcase and the two tubs are overflow in the basement. The nearest set of plastic drawers under the tubs has more fabric.






Oh, yes, there's a box of scraps lurking on a shelf in the basement storeroom but I didn't feel like climbing over everything to get to it. Isn't what I've already shown bad enough???

UPDATE: Oops!!! I just realized I forgot the box of hand-dye scraps and the large tub & 3 smaller plastic tubs of hand-dyes in a basement closet. See, I really need one big room where everything can be together....not in this lifetime, I'm afraid.

Finally!!

I finally DID get to some sewing on Wednesday. Nothing exciting, just some black & white four patches for my Bricks & Stepping Stones.



And on Friday I pressed. It's just nice to work with fabric again.

I canned the last of the tomatoes that I intend to can this year. The total comes to 35 qts. and 21 pints. I doubt if we'll have to raise any next year. My canning for the year should be done now. DH is picking the pears now, but those and the Golden Delicious apples will get dehydrated so I'll probably be working on those for the next month, off & on. Lots of butternut squash out in the garden...hopefully I'll be able to find good homes for some of them.

Life in the slow lane

About the most exciting thing that's happened around here lately is getting our new furnace installed yesterday...fancy shmancy programmable thermostat and all. My husband will never be able to figure out how to set it. He's hopeless with electronics and they keep getting more complicated all the time. Isn't he lucky to have me to deal with them??? LOL

I'm still canning. The apples are finished and I'd like to say I'm done with the tomatoes, but there's still a box of them sitting here so I may do a few more. Here's what was done on Sunday & Tuesday---apple pie filling, Caramel Apple Jam [ala Judy L.] and pints of tomatoes to put in hamburger vegetable soup.


Next on the list will be dehydrating the Golden Delicious apples and the pears. The squash are pretty well ripe but they can set for a while before I have to think about doing anything other than make some pies & maybe a little pumpkin bread or bars. There's still deer meat from last fall that needs to be ground up and made into jerky so will have to get on that. Before I know it there will be more.

And here's a blurry picture of my hand with is canning injuries. You have to watch out for those sharp knives & be careful to not peel the skin right off when tightening those jar rings. LOL


Today I WILL sew. It's been way to long since I actually sat down at the machine. I have my hand-dye Bricks & Stepping stones handy & will work on that. It was started as my quilt club project but this year we've mostly worked on string quilt blocks for charity at meetings so I might as well work on it at home. Someday it might even get finished :D I'm getting kind of antsy to start on Bonnie Hunter's Orange Crush. I've got the fabrics picked out and that orange is calling to me :D

Time flies..........

....whether you're having fun or not!! I checked the blog & couldn't believe it had been almost two weeks since I posted. With two "family" weekends in a row it kind of ate up the spare time. One weekend was our nephew's wedding and last Sunday was our granddaughter's Confirmation. I find it hard to believe that she will be fourteen next month. To me she's still that tiny red-headed baby who we all stood around trying to figure out where the red hair came from. LOL Now she's a blonde, but it changes from time to time. LOL


And here are a few of the things that have been keeping me busy. Tons of apples...we've given away more than three dozen 5-gal. bucketsfull already and there's no end in sight. I only need to make some apple dumplings to freeze, 1 or 2 batches of pie filling and maybe some Caramel Apple Jam (Judy L.'s recipe). I still have quite a few bags of frozen ones left from last year. Below are pictures of one of the trees from two angles. It's just loaded. There are four of these, though the other three might not have quite a many apples on. Click on the pictures to get the full effect.










As if the apples weren't enough, I have these to deal with. My tomatoes have been awfully slow to ripen, and I've complained to several people about it, so a boxful was left on my porch today. Most of these are really ripe & with what I had picked 2-3 days ago from my own, I'll have about two canners full or 14 qts. to can tomorrow. I was going to make the apple dumplings or can pie filling tomorrow, but I guess that plan got changed.

On the genealogy front, I got a reply from the gentleman in the Netherlands about his family tree. We've exchanged information. He sent me a 14-page report that's much easier to figure out than his online family tree and I sent him a report on the descendants of the couple that immigrated to the USA. I also have information on two of the names that he didn't have so I'll be sending that to him once I have time to get it organized. Maybe some pictures of the descendants as well. His report gives me another 3 generations or so of the elusive Veenkers and the von Hebel lines going back to the mid-1400s. Yay.

And now, a completely gratuitous kitty picture. Doesn't she just look very regal lying there? All 14 lbs. of her!! And that's my Double Delight behind her, the only thing quilty in this whole post.

Should have pictures.....oh, well

Our nephew's wedding was Saturday....a lovely outdoor wedding and it was a beautiful day for it. It sure got chilly after the sun went down though. We left a little before 10:00 and you could see your breath. Brrrr..........didn't think I'd be saying that for a while!! LOL No pictures, of course. I was travelin' light. Well, not exactly, with bug spray & flashlights in my purse. Actually there wasn't room for the camera.

Sunday was the annual family get-together for my husband's side of the family. Rather poor attendance this year. Hmmmmmm.........could it be because everyone saw each other at the wedding the day before????

I've had some good luck with genealogy research this last week or so. Have you tried the pilot records search at www.familysearch.org? I found my great-grandparents' marriage license and my DH's great-grandfather's death certificate. I found that the search goes better if you capitalize all the names, otherwise it seems to miss things. Then I came home from work today and looked for a few more names. Kept coming up empty so I started doing Google searches for them and found a family tree for my DH's great-grandmother. It was all in German/Dutch and even translated it's difficult to work through it so I sent off an e-mail to the site owner offering to exchange information. Now I have to wait (impatiently) for him to reply. I'm hoping he can send me a report that consists of just DH's great-grandmother's line and not all the rest. I don't know what genealogy software he uses but it certainly does things differently from mine and I find it hard to decipher. It includes lots of things in the report though, like witnesses at weddings and christenings. I hope something comes of it.

"Working my scraps......"

The piles on the right are considerably larger now and the pile on the left is a lot smaller. The pile of scraps and smaller pieces of material had all been ironed several months ago. I finally got tired of moving the pile and got busy cutting them into 3 1/2", 2 1/2", 2" and 1 1/2" strips. Smaller chunks get cut into 3 1/2" x 6 1/2 bricks. Pieces that don't work as bricks get put on a pile to be cut into smaller squares and short leftover strips get put in the "strings" pile. I have a tub of fabric odds and ends left to press & cut up and a copier paper box of smaller scraps. Right now my cutting hand hurts so the rest of the current pile will wait a couple days for me to finish.

I've printed out several patterns from QUILTVILLE.COM that I want to make some day. I have Fons & Porter's twosy/foursy book as well so I cut some 4 1/2" strips when the piece of fabric is big enough. There's a couple of those I'd like to make someday too. Judging from the amount of fabric I have to use I'll have to live to be a 110 at least.

Quilt finished

Here it is, the quilt my granddaughter will be getting for her confirmation/birthday gift. The pink & green match her room and her favorite color is purple. I hope she likes it. You just never know about teenagers, and she will be 14.

Once I finished quilting & binding those five quilts for the quilt show at the end of July I'll admit I was a little burned out. Quilting & binding this one is easing me back into sewing. Tonight I actually pressed some strips I sewed together quite a while back. They are black/white and will be the four patches in a Bricks & Stepping Stones that's been in the works for a year or more. The bricks are all handdyes that I cut up into bricks and strips. This one has sort of been my quilt club project quilt for all this time. When we don't work on some specific group project I take it along to work on.

A long day

The sweet corn was ready today, so guess what I've been doing all day....right, getting sweet corn in the freezer. I expected to get out to the patch early and zip through picking it, but after over 4 in. of rain overnight I waited a while for the plants to dry off a little.......wet corn plants and 60 degrees didn't sound like a lot of fun. To top it off the wind blew like crazy sometime in the night & it was all flat on the ground. It's so much fun to pick when that happens. My back was killing me by the time that was finished and it still all had to be husked, scalded & cut off. Would you believe my husband wanted me to cook lunch????? He helped pick & husk so I guess he though he deserved to eat. What with all the messing around it was after 3pm before the first batch was ready to cut off the cob. It's all in the freezer now so that's done for another year. Just another one of those things on the list I like to get checked off. He went to Pierce tonight to get my peaches so sometime this week I'll be doing those......just love eating fresh peaches.

What a zoo............

That's exactly what the library was yesterday and last night. I wonder if Monday evenings are always that busy............I don't usually work then. It was busy all day, then we had a Library Board meeting, then in the evening it was crazy busy and there was a Quilt Club meeting in the meeting room. Lots of bodies, all the computers running....the poor air conditioner couldn't quite keep up....or maybe it's just showing its age. I know the feeling some days.

I was hoping for a quiet evening so I could spend time with the quilting group but I could only pop in for a little bit from time to time because it was so busy up front. Our friend Lori from SD came to sew with us and I really didn't get much chance to visit with her. After spending the evening with the whole group she probably thinks we're as crazy as a cageful of monkeys. I think I offended a few stitchers with my efforts to keep the noise level down, but if the other patrons start complaining about the noise from the meeting room we could lose our free meeting space.

My neighborhood's been pretty quiet since Sunday evening when my neighbors got a citation for their barking dogs disturbing the whole area. I called the Sheriff's office Sun. morning after they barked for two hours straight & all day on Sat. It's amazing what a citation and the knowledge that they're going to court & paying a fine & court costs can do for keeping the noise level down. Of course it probably means they have to keep the two barking ringleaders in the house all the time, but hey, these are their beloved pets, right? They shouldn't mind living in close quarters with them. All I know is that I feel a lot calmer without all that barking.

The fun continues.

I can hardly believe it myself..............

I stopped at the store after work to pick up a few things and found out I had won the $50 grocery drawing for July. Talk about surprised...........!!



In this post last January I tell about winning this drawing. What are the chances of it happening twice in the same year? Maybe it's just make up for all the years I never won anything.

Dog Update: Neighbors tell me they barked all day. When I came home from work there was one I'd never seen before in one pen, the one that used to be there had been moved to a pen at a different house and I'm not sure where a couple of them are. One of the Pit Bulls near me was trying to get up on top of the tarp again, still trying to get out. Right now the best I can do is hope for some strategic lightning strikes, but I doubt if I'm THAT LUCKY.

My rep stands............

Here's the fine machine that has been occupying my time lately.



I'm fond of telling the kids at the Library that there's nothing they can do to the computers that I can't fix. I have a pretty good reputation for getting ailing computers working again.

This one presented quite a challenge. The owner reported popups & other problems. She tried to figure it out but finally brought it to me. Nasty bug, whatever it was. Wouldn't let me boot into Safe Mode, or load programs, or delete programs. Every time it rebooted it got worse. After a couple times it wouldn't reboot at all. The owner hadn't backed anything up so I rebooted from the XP disk and saved some stuff, but not being familiar with programs on the machine & where they stored things I missed some things.

Everything I tried, it shut me out of until all there was left was the startup screen saying how much memory it had & what disks it had. Couldn't even choose a boot disk to reinstall Windows. Finally cleared the BIOS and that fixed it enough to choose a boot drive to reinstall XP. Maybe my memory is faulty but I don't remember ever having to pull the Windows CD out of a computer at the first reboot during installation, but on this one I did. It just kept looping until I figured that one out. Lots of online research required in solving all the problems this one had.

It's ready to go home to its Mom now and has a full compliment of anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-everything software installed.

What I'd really like to do is put a curse on people who like to turn bugs like this loose on the Internet so that whatever they tried to do backfired on to them ten-fold.

Dog Update: All quiet today...no barking...no dogs seen. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Further dog update: They're back in their pen & seem to be resting. Should be good & ready to bark long into the night.

Not a lot happening

Yesterday I delivered the string quilt to my daughter's house. DGD had stayed the night with a friend so she didn't see it right away. I hope she doesn't think it's too dorky of Grandma & friends to make a quilt for her friend & gives it to him with a certain amount of grace.

Here's a rhetorical question for you. Why do people always tell you to have a good day?? Especially when you have to go shopping. To me a good day is when I DON'T have to shop for anything. I did finish buying prizes for the library's Summer Reading Program though, and the pizza party is Sat. at 11:30. Then that will be over for another year. It's always a good feeling to get it crossed off the list.

I'm really surprised nobody blasted me for the post about the neighbors & their dogs. Only one comment made & it thanked me for my post. Maybe the post was a bit harsh, but it stands. Those dogs woke me up with their barking in the middle of the night so I'm not feeling any more "neighborly" to them. If those people won't bother giving them water on a hot day do you think they will clean up the pen? So you know how lovely accumulated dog poop smells on a hot, humid day? That's what my future holds from these neighbors & their "pets".

HAVE A GOOD DAY!!! :-)

Ready for a little ranting?

.......or venting or whatever you want to call it. We've recently acquired some less than wonderful neighbors. Four households in our neighborhood and another household further away near school. They all have big, loud, dangerous dogs...several pit bulls among them. The household near school also has a strange young man living there along with five pit bulls. Recently several kids where attacked near this house, at least one bitten. They said the door was opened & the dog just shot out right at them, on the attack. The Village made sure they got rid of the five pit bulls there, the deputy serving the papers got bitten so that dog is now dead. Four more are locked up somewhere. They had tried moving two of them to the daughter's house but that didn't work, she had been served papers too. Another house about a block away from me has at least one pit bull & there's a pen with three big dogs, two possible pit bulls, one possible rottweiler less than a hundred yards from our yard. With several small children in the neighborhood it's a definite worry. I know the people living near me are neglecting the animals.............their water container was laying on it's side when I got home from work yesterday around 4pm and it's still laying in exactly the same spot so I know they haven't been given water. They barked off and on all morning. What is wrong with people???? I'm afraid one problem is that their dogs are probably smarter than they are. All these people in five households are related and I doubt there's a fully functioning brain among them.

One of the couples lived here before and moved to Ewing because they felt they were being "harassed" because of their dogs. The minutes of a recent Ewing Town Board meeting in their newspaper states that "C.H.'s pit bull won't be a problem any more because it has been moved to Orchard." Sounds like Ewing is plenty glad to be rid of them. Lucky Orchard. Most of the nearby neighbors would just like to make these dogs disappear some dark night. And if their owners packed up and suddenly left nobody would shed any tears over that either. End of rant.

All finished & ready to go

This is the quilt we worked on during our sewing day for the Nebraska/S. Dakota members of Heartstrings at the Orchard Library. Tomorrow it's going to my daughter's house so my grand-daughter can give it to her classmate who has been fighting cancer. I think it turned out very well and I hope he gets to use it for a long time.

What's wrong in this picture............................?

I took some pictures of my quilts hanging in the show today. They looked nice, but there is a teensy weensy problem with this one............can you find it?

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Over on the right side, fifth row down. There, see it now? Well, this was the first time I noticed it too. I admit I'm a little embarrassed. How many times did I look at that quilt & not see it? I laid everything out on the floor before I started sewing. Sewed the rows & left them lay while I sewed the rows together. Laid it all out & left it for a while to admire it. Loaded it on the machine & quilted it. Spread it out over the couch & took a picture for the show entry......never noticed a thing wrong. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! By the way, that picture was on my blog and none of YOU noticed either or I hope somebody would have let me know. I just hope I can live with leaving it as it is.......otherwise I'd have to take off part of the binding, pick out the quilting, take the piece out & turn it the right way, requilt that section and reapply the binding. Sounds waaaaaaaaaaaay to tedious. We'll see how resistant I can be to glaring errors.

Amish store

Judy L. talks a lot about going to a nearby Amish store and the wonderful produce they have there. There's an Amish store near where I live too, but it just started up a few months ago so they don't have a whole lot yet.....and none of that wonderful produce. This is a photo of a few things I picked up when I made a little jaunt out there this morning. So far they have mostly bulk foods but they are planning to expand. The young Amish lady who owns it says she orders a little more each time she puts an order in.


Best of all, I could get Clear Jel without having to order it online...and cheaper too. In fact, I thought the prices on what I bought were quite good. The cinnamon and pecans were real bargains, the ginger was quite reasonable, but I thought the nutmeg was a little high compared to the other spices there. So far I've only compared the prices to the place online I ordered Clear Jel from last year and find I saved $20. I need to compare the spice prices at the regular grocery store. I'll probably be even happier with my purchases after that.

So far this little store isn't offering a lot of competition to the regular grocery store in town but they do offer good deals on the staples, and of course the Clear Jel, which you can't buy in any regular store I've looked in. I hope as time goes on that they will offer fresh produce and fresh farm eggs seasonally as well. Growing vegetables and raising hens for eggs could be a nice little bit of supplemental income for some Amish families and us English could have good fresh food at a reasonable price. Couldn't beat that.

Voila!!! Pictures!!

After searching for & finding my camera, here are the blocks we made last Tuesday at our sew-in all sewed into rows.



And the following pictures explain why I had to search for my camera. Amateur photographers sometimes have to be parted from their equipment. Love her self portrait but could have done without the one of Grandma trying to hide behind an Oreo.

























So there you have it, pictures of the weekend after all............and the stack of finished quilts as well, if you pay attention to the backgrounds.

Genealogy tidbit

While I was reading blogs last night I came across this post: http://www.genealogywise.com/forum/topics/your-favorite-free-or-lowcost I always like something free or cheap and I hadn't heard of some of the sites listed in this posting.

I must admit that I have been extremely lucky in finding family history on the Internet. Admittedly most of it was on private websites and from people I made contact with through private websites but some of these sound worth a try.

I have a few elusive ancestors that must have been hiding out when the census taker came around and I swear whole families must have been stowaways when they immigrated.....or maybe they paddled over from Germany in a canoe!!!

Crossing things off the list

Two of the grand-kids were here over the weekend....Hailey and Tyler. They are both great kids, but man can they fight. Yet neither one wants to do anything alone. They're both too stubborn for that. I didn't think to take a single picture.

I got the five quilts completely finished and took them to Tilden yesterday to check in for the quilt show. I will go back to take in the show and bring them home on Sunday. I forgot to take a picture of the stack before packing them up.

Last night we had a local author at the library for a book signing for his first book called "The Hills of Mars." It's part family history, part Nebraska pioneer history and the story of a little community that no longer exists. I totally forgot to take my camera, so no pictures.

Do you see a trend developing here with the "no pictures" situation? I really need to do better. I DID get some new rechargeable batteries for my camera so maybe I'm not completely hopeless after all.

Today I'm hoping to get the blocks we made at the sew-in last week laid out and at least get started sewing them together. Better not hold your breath waiting for pictures.

A good day

Today we had our mini Heartstrings sew-in for Nebraska. We started the day off by meeting at the Orchard Library before going to Ashfall Fossil Bed State Historical Park. Being the frugal quilters we are we wanted to all ride in one car & only have to buy one park sticker. I did my tourist's duty and spent actual money on a souvenir bag full of pretty stones. Does that make me dumb as a box of rocks?....Don't answer that!! The pictures show the large, new barn enclosing the dig, Mike Voorhies, the discoverer of the site, working at uncovering a fossil, US (Lori, Linda, Flicsha, Jennie) and my bag of rocks on a map of the excavated portion in the barn.

Next, our thoughts turned to FOOD. We found that the restaurant we planned to have lunch at is closed on Mon. & Tues. Their loss. After some discussion we headed to the "One And Only Winnetoon" to eat at Elaine's Tavern. Good food & we got to gawk at a busload of tourists. After eating we toured around Main St. fixed up to look like an old timey town. I took a lot of pictures but the gremlins got them....or maybe I accidentally made some change to the settings dial that made all the outdoor pictures' exposure totally blown out. All I have to show for that adventure is these: Outhouse Row.


After taking the scenic route back to Orchard, skipping the 3hr. $5 hiking tour of "Mars", opting instead for the free drive-by, we got back to the library in Orchard and sewed for a few hours.














Hey, I'm not in any of those!! How did that happen? he he

Even with some goofing off and silliness we managed to finish 51 blocks, enough for a quilt with a few left over. I'll set them together, quilt & bind. The quilt will be going to a boy in my grand-daughter's class who has been fighting cancer. I hear he's doing well and hopes to start 9th grade with his class this fall.
We had a good time and there's been talk of trying to get together sometime again this summer.

Don't think I'm cut out to have dogs

The dogs have gone home!! The kids picked them up a little after midnight last night. You have never seen three such happy dogs. I thought they'd wag their tails right off.
Jenny is much calmer in this picture:



And here's Zoe, the little rabble-rouser. I'll miss that cute little face & satellite ears, but I WILL NOT miss that shrill bark. Every little noise and she would start barking and trying to incite the Labs to join her.



I never got used to them jumping up to follow me around every single time I moved. My cats watch me all the time, but they don't want to join in every time I move from one spot to another.

I did get the binding on another quilt today. One more to go for the quilt show. I think the labels are going to be the iron-on kind, I'm running out of time. The next week or so will be pretty busy....work tomorrow, budget meeting with Village Board tomorrow night, followed by Quilt Club in Ewing. Tuesday will be touring Ashfall, lunch out and sewing with some fellow Heartstrings members. The rest of the week will be routine, but next Monday I work, run my quilts to Tilden for the show and hurry back for a book signing at the library in the evening. Maybe I'll collapse after that.