Bad news on a beautiful day

After a couple of chilly, rainy, even stormy, days I'm really enjoying a perfect fall day today. Blue sky, about 70 degrees, light breeze. Just the kind of gorgeous Fall weather we wait for all summer. I feel like I should just go outside and sit in the sun, soaking up as much of its warmth as I can.

But even on such a beautiful day there is sadness too.  Last week my son's Chocolate Lab, Jenny, had a biopsy on a lump that they found on her belly. It turned out to be cancer so this morning they had x-rays done to see if it was localized or if it had spread. Unfortunately, it has spread to her lungs and the vet says it's a very aggressive strain. She said normally a dog could have from four weeks to six months to live, but as aggressive as this cancer is they probably shouldn't count on much more than the lower end of that estimate.  Son & Daughter-in-law are just broken hearted. Jenny is only eight years old and they thought they'd have her with them for many more years.

 

Our beautiful girl. Great personality, loves kids, loves to swim and hunt and go camping. According to my son the best dog ever.

Marathon sewing.....

...produced this mountain of 4-patches this afternoon:

Someday these will become an Orange Crush quilt so I put the Orange Crush icon over in the sidebar. I love the Bonnie Hunter quilts, but they sure do have lots of little pieces. (The better to use your scraps, my dear.)

Not much else going on around here. We had FCE Club last night at Eileen's new house. While it's not a big house, it's so nice and open that it seems bigger. Her kitchen cabinets were made at a local cabinet shop and are beautiful and I just love her countertops. If I had the painting all done in my kitchen I'd seriously consider getting some just like them. Is it a compliment to copy someone's design choices?? I hope so, because I wouldn't mind being a copy-cat where those countertops are concerned.

Sunday morning

Here I am, back in Pierce, staying with the kids for the weekend. Just having a peaceful hour or so while the two younger ones are in Sunday school. The Oldest is awake, I can hear her music, but she's having her own peaceful time before the others come back.

Daughter sent pictures and called to let us know all about the blue skies, sunshine, sandy beaches, palm trees, sight-seeing, etc. in Mexico, but she forgot to get out warmer clothes for the Youngest. A bit challenging to find clothes for Sunday school this morning.....he wound up going in shorts, the long pants we could find were high waters or way to big around the waist. Hopefully God won't care that he went with cold, bare legs.

So, what do the kids do while Grandma is here? Let's see.

Obviously, they like computers. The Oldest usually watches TV, uses the computer and texts simultaneously.

Here's Max. Do you think we should get him a computer too???

I hate shopping

Seriously.  But, I got to Pierce last night and saw that my daughter had gotten the big ad for Herbergers' Good Will / Fall sale......complete with coupons. They had ankle boots on sale so I snitched one of her coupons and headed to Norfolk this morning once the kids were off to school...and after I made a trip to the HS to take Oldest her forgotten laptop.

Walked in the door near the women's size area and right away found three tops, all marked down. Tried them on, they fit, so headed for the shoe area. They had the boots I liked in my size, they fit (remember, ON SALE) so I paid for my stuff. Used my snitched coupon, signed up for a Herbergers card to get another 20%, got an instant percentage off because it was the first day of the sale. Good deal. Found out the 20% card discount was good for the whole day.

Sometimes it pays to know the right people & be from the right place.  This is their Good Will sale so for every item you bring in for Good Will you get a 20% off coupon. In chatting with the sales clerk I found out she is the granddaughter of some people I know from Orchard, maybe her grandfather is even related to DH. I told her I hadn't found out about the sale until I got to Pierce so hadn't been able to bring in my Good Will stuff. She was feeling kindly towards me by then and gave me some coupons anyway. I promptly headed back into the store and found two pairs of slacks & three more tops plus a necklace, an iridescent purple purse and a housewarming gift I needed. Used my Good Will coupons, card discount and instant discount. If I have to shop this is the way to do it.  Herbergers' is kind of expensive normally but I love this annual sale and it's a great place to shop......so much variety it boggles the mind.

Here's my haul.....minus the necklace and housewarming gift I see.

Now off to the library to look up some genealogy stuff.

A little bit done..........

Some Heart Blocks made.

My quilt group uses these for donation quilts. Also have a container of fabrics in pairs for 4-patches and more strips to cut into segments.  This is the sum total of my quilting activity this past week. I won't be doing much during the coming week either since I'll be staying with the grand-kids a couple days at the beginning of the week and then again over the weekend.

DH is busy picking apples and more apples. This year we're asking a few dollars per bucket instead of just giving them all away. Spray & Tangletrap are expensive plus it's a lot of work. Our freezer is filled with as many apples as needed and I still have canned pie filling from last year. I'll dry some of the Golden Delicious when they're ready, but there's no need to go overboard.

As you can see, I've been playing with my blog background again.  These new templates that Blogger is offering are really cool.

Not really among the missing..............

.............it just seems that way because I post so seldom. Life can be pretty mundane a lot of the time and I don't think you want to hear about it every time I do laundry, wash the dishes, clean the bathroom or vacum up the cat hair, do you?  Didn't think so.  I just haven't been very motivated this summer to do a lot else. I've sewed a little but not enough to always have something to show in a post. I've read a few books, some page turners, others I struggled through. I've worked very little on genealogy and I know my profile says I like to do digital scrapbooking but the most I've done there is collect freebies off the Internet. There you have it. Booooring!!

But now......halleluja.......I've finished something I can show, even though they're not mine.  I finally got these two old tops quilted and bound.

They turned out pretty well, maybe not exactly square, but then they weren't made that way to start with. The second one is my favorite and has several fabrics in it that I would dearly love to have a yard or two of (I think I mentioned that in an earlier post) and they both have wonderful navy blues with tiny white figures. And they were truly made with the maker's scraps. The pieces in the blocks of the first one aren't very big but some of them were cut from pieces that had been pieced two or three times to make them big enough.  How many of us would bother doing that now? Definitely a case of "use it up."

I have a few old tops of my own and working on these has me ready to dig them out and finish them up. I think that would make their makers happy.