I have been BOOED!!

Jeanne from luv2stitch has "booed" me.  Here is the sign to prove it!  I love Halloween!!  Even thought I have not decorated I am still looking forward to handing out candy tonight.  I love seeing all the little kids.  I promise to decorate next year!  Now I need to "boo" some others so I am going to list you here.  Take this photo and post it on your blog and consider yourself "booed"  (No candy though, sorry)

Kim       Saska

Faith     Natalie    Annemiek   Dot

OK guys, no go forth and BOOOOOOO!!!!

Here is an example of one of the wine vests that we are making for the Christmas craft show.  One of the women, Kim, is a HUGE Ohio State fan so she made some of these.  I am not an OSU fan but I like how this turned out.  Great job Kim!
Here is a little table topper I finished yesterday.  I used up some of my left overs from the FS quilt.  No the bigger version is not finished yet but it is ready to sew into rows and I am hoping to get to it this weekend and get it all put together.  LTW is going on a cruise (I don't know why she thinks she can take a vacation??)  so no hurry for another week.  I am not sure what I will work on after this one is finished.  What do you think of this little beauty?  I really like it.  It is even nicer in person, the flash washed out some of the color.
Here are the wet and dry ingredients of the Apple Hill cake I made yesterday.
All mixed together.

TA-DA!!  The finished cake!  I brought it to work today as we have a lab meeting and I thought it would be fun to share.  I will let you know how people like it.  The recipe is over at Kim's.
I hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween weekend!!  Be generous to those little trick or treaters (big ones too)!

Thursday sPam

When I email with LTW she always calls it sPam (since my name is Pam). Isn't she so clever? I am sorry I have not posted much this week but it has been a mixed up kind of week. DH was in Las Vegas all week and is due home tonight. That is a good thing. Halloween is tomorrow and I love that holiday. I didn't decorate this year and my friends can't figure it out. One even told me it must be the end of the world beginning, lol. Boy I sure hope I am not the one that starts that!!

I was home from work today because I didn't feel very well. I think I need some time off of being around "people". Is that wierd? Last night I was getting ready to go to CHV and quilt when I had to speak with the woman in charge of the Christmas craft show that the CL's are entered in. It was not a pleasant conversation and that was not the best way to begin the evening! She thought we had promised her a quilt to raffle off at the church. We had asked for her to waive the booth fee and then told her we would be able to give her a quilt but she didn't want to do that so we told her we would discuss with the group and get back with her. LSS, we forgot and she never contacted us again until last night and the show is in a month (first Sat in Dec). Now, I *know* I could make something nice but again, she never confirmed and she assumed the answer was yes. I feel that if we paid our fee like everyone else we are not obligated to donate something so big as a quilt for the raffle. I know there are a few other donations but no one is donating something so big. So we would be out our fee, the cost of making the quilt and the lost profit from selling said quilt. Understand that the church does not give us any money to do what we do but they let us use the facility to meet and we give quilts to people that are ill in the parish. We also donate a quilt each year to a sister parish as a personal favor to our priest. Well, this woman was soooo angry with me she actually hung up on me! What would you do?

So I think all the stress made me feel ill today. My head hurts and so does my throat, ears and stomach. I guess I will survive. I made the Apple Hill cake Kim had on her blog and am taking it to work tomorrow. I took some photos and will post tomorrow. (Cord is at work). I also worked on a little making a little quilt from the scraps of my FS quilt. I'll show you that tomorrow too (yep, I need some way to lure you all back!)

Anyway, Supernatural is about to begin so have a good night and I will post more tomorrow!!

Spartans WIN in the Big House!!!!

I could not believe it when my son's lacrosse coach called me on Sat morning to ask if we wanted 2 tickets to go to the University of Michigan's "Big House" stadium to watch the rival MSU vs U of M football game.  What?  Are you kidding me???  My son was THRILLED!!  Of course you might think he called a buddy to go but the first person he called was my DD2 (the one that goes to MSU) to see if she wanted to drive down from East Lansing to Ann Arbor.  What?  Are you kidding me??  OF COURSE SHE WANTED TO GO AND WATCH THE SPARTANS WIN!!!
Two tickets to the BIG game ...free from coach

Gas to Ann Arbor...$45

Food at the game...$25

Opportunity to watch MSU beat Michigan in the BIG HOUSE...PRICELESS!!!

Final score 35-21

Speaking of MSU I got my quilt back from LTW last week and look at the block "S" she put in the white blocks.  Cool huh?
She was able to put the same "S" in the small MSU blocks too.
I took this while it was blowing in the wind but you can see how big the white and green MSU squares are.
We have our own rivalry in our house too.  The orange cat rivalry.  Now on the left you see Aiden and on the right, Jack.  Aiden (and all the other cats) really does not like Jack and there you see him pushing her buttons to see if she will leave and he will get the couch all to himself.
I was binding my Spartan quilt for the quilt raffle and settled on this for the name of the quilt.  PRICELESS!!  Who knows how long it will be before it happens again.  The last time MSU beat U of M at their stadium was 18 years ago, so I need to savor this victory.  This makes my quilt a memorable one don'tcha think?

How was your weekend??

Happy (Belated) birthday to me!

Say what?  I know right?  My actual birthday was in July but I was unable to connect up with my BFF Ellen until last night!  She recently went on a cruise and was gone for quite awhile.  It was an amazing cruise.  She knows how much I love my "weird shoes" (her words not mine) so she bought these cute leather slide-ons from   Morocco.   Aren't they the cutest little things??

You may recall the last birthday present she gave me.  No?  Well does the ugly quilt ring any bells with any of you?  Remember her wanting me to work outside my comfort zone?  Well after having to endure an entire year of my saying "Don't ever do that to me ever again!!!" she gave me this beautiful Halloween quilt all cut out and with the pattern!!  MUCH better!!  WHEW!!  I LOVE it!  although there *are* a lot of flying geese in the pattern, lol.  I know I'm never happy huh?  Seriously, Ellen, I love it!
We met at Carrabba's for dinner and this is what I ordered, pasta Weesie.  I was a little afraid it would be Mrs. Jefferson, but whew, dodged that bullet.  It was amazing.
Ellen got this one.  Raviloi stuffed with chicken and spinach and cheese...YUM!
We had a long catch up at dinner.  It's funny even though we have not seen each other in awhile it made no difference in the conversation.  Our daughters have been best friends since they were about 9 or so and swam together.  Ellen is the person responsible for getting me into some serious quilting.  She and I love to travel together too (I usually do all the driving and planning) but she is great company and we have a lot of fun together!

As I was walking out the door to meet her last night this is what I saw as I was leaving so I had to snap Mosen's picture.  Isn't he so cute?  It just made such a cute picture with the hat in the background.
I have to make the second MSU binding tonight, the binding for the M string quilt and the binding for the pumpkin patch.  I will probably sew down the binding on the MSU quilt and label it to bring in on Monday.  Of course it is the BIG MSU vs U of M football game on Saturday too so I will be glued to the TV for that!  I am also hoping to help my friend Debbie cut out some squares for a quilt for her son's wedding.  (So people can write on them).  We have a 7 on 7 lacrosse tournament all day on Sunday so that will be a long day too. 

What does your weekend hold?

What do you want? (warning political rant)

People ask this question all the time.  What do you want to eat?  What do you want to do today? and so on.  I'm asking what kind of country do you want to live in?  Capitalist or Socialist?  So you can see where this is going and if you are not interested in politics I suggest you come back another time!  

I, like Dot at Rantala Rags, am sick to death of the main stream media not giving fair coverage to the McCain-Palin ticket.  Please take a minute and visit Dot as she has a very interesting article worth reading on this subject.  She is right and so is the article.  As Sean Hannity says, this is the year that journalism will be declared dead.  If half of the things the Obama ticket is doing were being done by the McCain ticket they would be crucified by the main stream media.  The whole thing makes me sick!

If I wanted to live in a socialist country I would live somewhere else.  Socialism does not work.  Just look at the socialist countries.  Oh sure, it may work for the first generation when you and I will keep working because that's what we know but eventually the generations wise up and realize that they get the same whether they work or they don't and then the system fails.

Do you really want the government to run your life?  Are they better equipped to tell you how your money should be spent?  I read something recently that went like this:

A man goes out to eat and notices that his waiter is wearing an Obama button.  The man orders, and eats and has excellent service.  When it comes time to pay the bill he tells his waiter that while he has received outstanding service, because he wants to spread the wealth he will be giving the tip he would normally have given to the waiter to the homeless man outside.  The waiter is furious and the homeless man is happy.  Is this really how we want our country preserved for our kids and grandkids?  I say no, in fact I say HELL NO!!  

I want my kids to have the same America I had growing up.  The pie we take from is not finite.  Capitalism works.  We have the greatest nation in the world.  Why do you think everyone wants to come here and be like us?  Why are other countries holding us up as what they aspire to be?  Our people are great, our country is truly the land of opportunity.  

It is time to make a statement about what you want, for yourselves and your children and your children's children.  Don't take this lying down!  Go out and vote, make a difference.  (But please remember to vote only once = )  I don't want to hear anyone out there complain about the outcome if they don't vote.  Nor do I want to hear anyone that votes for Obama to complain about getting *exactly* what they vote for.  Joe the plumber is right!  Obama is not right for this country.  

Remember Your Mother's Fancy Aprons?

Well, I certainly do!  My mom and dad would have Christmas parties for their friends and my mom would put on these beautiful (although in retrospect not really functional) aprons.  So the CL's and I are busy preparing for the Christmas Craft show at the Church.  I was at JAF a few months ago when I thought about those aprons.  I decided to check out the "fancy" fabric.  Well some really beautiful fabric was in the clearance section.  It was still a little pricey for me for a craft show where I don't keep the money, so I hatched the fabric until all clearance went 50% off and snapped some up.  Now you have to understand we have a wonderful woman in our group that makes beautiful aprons.  I *thought* I was going to get to it myself but instead handed the "fancy" fabric over to our apron whiz, Janet.  Here are the first 3 aprons she made.  I think they are fabulous!  Wouldn't these be great for a party, like Christmas or New Year's eve or something?  How fun.  Great job Janet!



So Janet asked me how much we should sell them for.  I said $35, what do you think?  She does a beautiful job on the stitching.

Last night was crazy!  I went to JAF to get some iron on velcro (amazing stuff that) and then home.  Machine sewed the binding on to my MSU quilt (no I have no photo of the quilting yet but it is great, LTW put block S's into each block, but you will soon see for yourself!).  Threw it into the car and drove to T.C. Gators for a lax "fun"raiser dinner and 2 meetings.  One was supposed to begin at 5:30 but one of the people was late so we got a late start.  I had promised the lax coach that I would eat with him and his kids and he came in and we were not finished with the meeting (that *she* was late for) after about 10 more minutes I excused myself and went to eat with my son and the coach.  Then the person I needed to meet with for the second meeting came around 6:15 and we went over some more lax stuff (she is the treasurer).  I ordered food, it was not the right food so sent it back, tic toc, what don't they understand about "I'm on the clock!" *Finally* got my food, wolfed it down and was heading out (about a minute to 7pm, when the CL quilt group begins at 7pm!)  As i was leaving one of the lax dads stopped me and asked if he could give me a sign for my yard (he is running for trustee), sure walk to my car with me.  Left for the church and luckily it is close by.  Walked into about 20 women.  By the time I got a minute to catch my breath and looked at the clock it was 8:30 (ends at 9).  Began cleaning up and left the church around 9pm.  Got home, pet the cats, checked on DS and began making caramel brownies (I'll take some photos today so you can see them, they are super easy and super yummy!! )  for my friend's daughter that will be coming in to work today to help me with something.  Checked email, and fell into bed around 11:30.  Jack decided he *needed* some kitty lovin' around 3:27am (yes, I looked at the clock) so he was right on my face biting me and head butting me and purring really, really loudly (no DH was not home so just me and Jack).  Went back to sleep, finally and woke up at 5:50am to begin this lovely day!

Please let me know what you all think of the aprons.  Am I right to think they will be big sellers??

Too much fun

Wow, I sure opened a can of worms with my last post!  Thank you everyone that commented!  I got to hear from some new people and I hope you all com back and visit some more!  I guess we all pretty much feel the same way, that we may not post our fights with our husbands or show the unclean parts of our house but beyond that we are all pretty big on telling the truth!  I think Vicky summed it up well when she said, "lying on your blog is a little like cheating at solitaire, isn't it?"  Yes Vicky, it is!

We had quilt till you wilt at the church on Saturday.  I wanted something I could put together in that time and remembered that I had all these beautiful pumpkin blocks from a pumpkin exchange I did last year.  So I gathered them up, along with some border fabric (loved the stripe) and packed them to work on at the church.  As you can see I got the entire top pieced!  What do you think??
I took this beauty home with me from work on Friday.  It needed the binding sewn on.  (I hate doing binding).  So I decided to machine sew on the binding.  Once I finished that I wanted to watch some of my favorite shows so I thought, what the heck, I'll just do a little more and see how far I can get with the hand sewing.  I finished it.  I even got the label finished!  (I had to rewrite it 3 times, but it is finished and stitched in place!  This is the annual Big Ten quilt for the Department of Pathology quilt raffle.  Tickets are just $1 if any of you are interested!!
Here is the label.  It turned out well too Third time is a charm!!  And it is not crooked, the quilt was draped over a chair and the bottom corner was drooping!
I love how the Penn State one turned out.  That cat was a bugger to applique!
I like how the Iowa Hawk came out too.  His beak was a little difficult to applique too.
I made this block.  I appliqued the Big Ten and all the symbols around the outside too.  LTW did her famous quilting too as you can see.  She quilted in what is chanted by each school around that school's block.
She also did these cool footballs all around the outside border!  Now, if you want to see any of the other schools up close let me know and I will post those too.  I took photos of each block.
Now I am going to go back to Saturday.  Remember the quilt I showed you but told you it was a secret?  Well here it is again with it's recipient, father Mathew, from our parish.  My CL's made this quilt for him (our main priest already has a quilt).  Father Matt was thrilled and asked us if he came every Saturday would he get a quilt each time?  Funny!!  Charlotte and Shirley did most of the work on this and they did a wonderful job!
Wow, who knew that DS would clean up so nicely?  He had his homecoming dance on Sat night.  I made him pose for the obligatory photo before he left.  Handsome young man!
On Sunday, I was working on my needle cases for the Christmas craft show and discovered the wonder of iron on velcro!!!  As I was diligently working on putting velcro on all my finished cases (25 of them) DH asked me if I wanted to go on a color tour and drive to East Lansing and see DD2, in the Mustang with the top down.  He was already making hot mulled cider for us to take with us.  He put it in a thermos and packed a blanket so I would stay warm and everything!!  What a romantic, huh?  Well, we did make a stop on our way to see DD, for any of you that don't live in MI this is a picture from Hell.  I know it is not what one expects from Hell but it is what it is, right?
I'm not kidding, he took me to Hell...Michigan!  Just thought you all could use a little fun in your blogging lives!  (See I didn't lie, I really was in Hell!)
We continued on our way to EL and took DD and her BF out for dinner.  Then drove home in the convertible.  I as a little chilled when we finally got home but I didn't complain!  It was a wonderful day!!

Blog Friends

I don't have any photos to share today but an interesting conversation came up at the CHV quilt group last night and I wondered if any of you have had the same experience. Ruth-Ann (Miss No Blog) and I were talking about a blog we both read and the woman that writes it when one of the CHV quilters asked me if I believe everything the bloggers I read write about themselves and their families. Quite frankly it never occured to me that any of you would lie about yourself or your families. So that's what I said, "why wouldn't I believe what they say?" and she asked me why would you?

It is an interesting concept and just why do we all put so much on our blogs about ourselves and our families and our lives? Why do I do it? I really had to think about that. I suppse I do it to share what I know about the quilting I do, to share what I know as a mom and wife and a friend. I like to make new friends and love to learn new things and to open myself up to hear what others have to say. Sometimes it helps to solidify what I already think or believe and sometimes it helps me refine myself and my opinions and honestly, you guys are a lot of fun!

How many of you have met another blogger and become even better friends? It is kind of like in the old days (when I was a little girl) and had a penpal, but I can have so very many MORE penpals (aka blogger friends) now with the advent of the conputer and the internet. As I spoke about all of this I realized that there are quite a few of you that have become a real friend even though you do not live near to me. I would love to be able to meet you guys in person some day. I have already met 2 of my blogger friends and we had a great time.

I would love to hear what you all have to say about this too.

My Weekend

My friend, Ruth-Ann No Blog was taking me to task for not entering anything new on my blog.  Here is how my weekend went.  I came home from work and changed my clothes. (Dinner was ready because I made white chicken chili in the crock pot).   I really needed dog food so was going to head to the pet store to get some.  Well, DH decided he wanted to tag along.  Why? I asked, Because I want to spend time with you, he answered.  At the pet store??  Whatever.  So of we went.  Then I got home and needed to bring a pen over to Charlotte's house.  I got the pen and some other stuff I needed to give her and went over to her house.  About an hour later I was on my way home.  By this time it is after 9pm.  I did some laundry and a little cleaning and watched Stargate Atlantis and then at 11pm went to bed.

Saturday.  I had to get up at 7am because DS had detention at school and had to be there by 8am.  And DD2 was coming home.  I had to head to the LQS to get the Shop Hop passes for myself and Charlotte.  I went to the shop and bought our passes and our bus passes too for the November 15th Shop Hop.  It should be fun.  I left the shop and decided to stop back at home to see if DD was there yet.  I had a hair appointment at 1:30 and it was 1pm and it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the salon.  She was not there and the door was locked.  Where was DH??  There were messages on the phone, better listen.  DD was indeed home but locked out, and BTW I left my cell phone at the LQS (15 minutes in the opposite direction of the salon).  Called Dd from the house phone and asked her to go and get it while I was gone.  Remember that MSU was supposed to play football at 3:30 too which I wanted to watch.  Ended up at the salon and 3 hours later, yes I said THREE HOURS LATER, a cut and color takes that long.  I was on my way home.  Got home only to find out that DD could not find the LQS (said DD could not find her way out of a paper bag either, but I digress) so this necessitated a trip to the LQS (I made DD go with me so she will know where it is!)  Got my phone and was on my way back to my home.  Walked in the door to the Texas and Oklohoma  game (DS is a HUGE Texas fan).  Had to wait for that game to finish before I could watch the MSU game.  FINE, did dishes while waiting, let the dog out and did some laundry.  *Finally* I got to watch the DVR'ed game.  We had dinner plans with my friend Shelby and her boyfriend, Ray, so I had to stop watching the game and get ready.  It was a *nice* resturant so I had to dress up (or dress up for me).  We left around 6pm and got to his house around 6:30.  We went out and had a nice ( and ungodly expensive) dinner.  Left for home around 10pm.  Fell into bed exhausted.  

On to Sunday.  DD wanted to go shopping.  We ended up at MANY stores until I was ready to cry uncle.  We did manage to find some of the things she was looking for.  Came home and had to begin to get dinner ready.  Ate dinner and bundled her off and back up to school.  Much too short of a visit.  I really miss her!  Now it is about 6pm and I am whipped, but I go to the sewing room and work on the second MSU quilt, which is coming along nicely.  So that's how my weekend went.  I had NO time to blog.  

Monday was a lacrosse meeting at 7pm until about 9pm, Tuesday was quilting with the CL's from 7-9 and tonight is quilting with the CHV quilters until 9:30 (which I may have to leave early to get home and watch the debate, although I don't know why since I already know who I will be voting for!)  Thursday I have another lax meeting and Friday I may take off work to do something "fun" for myself!  I complained about being tired last night and DH suggested I quilt less, pfttt as if!

Anyway, here I am blogging at work (hahaha) no one is here today and most of the things I need to do today are already finished so...

Here is another 5 yard challenge quilt made by...you guessed it, LTW.  Aren't the cranes great??


I don't know how many of you remember this quilt?  Shirley from the CL's made it and her joke was that she would die before ever finishing it.  Well, here she is with the quilt displayed at the CHV Theater.  It is a beauty!

You may or may not remember a few months ago when a really nice man, Jack, dropped off a crap ton of quilting "stuff" at the church.  His mom had passed away and he was hoping we could use the stuff.  Among the stuff were several boxes of almost completed quilts.  So I decided that I will pull a bag each week and see what we have.  Grace, one of the CL's, is interested in putting them together so Grace, here ya go!  It is interesting to see someone else's quilt pieces and to try to figure out what they intended for them.  Here is the one I did last night.  I think I got it right.  There were 15 main blocks with stuff to make the 16th.  This is all hand pieced too.  I think the colored fabric was from old sheets as there are borders and they are not pieced but all one piece.  Alternatively, I guess she could have cut them length wise, but they feel like sheets.  What do you think?  I think it is really neat.  I know that my friend, Yuki, would appreciate all the flying geese in this one!

So for inquiring minds, there is the update!!  What was your weekend like??

Big Ten Quilt 2008

It was that time of year again.  Time for us to gather and work on our BIG Ten quilt for the U of M quilt raffle.  We gathered at Robin's house (she is in the blue holding up the Purdue block).  You see from left to right after Robin, LTW, me and Judith.  (Yuki was taking the photo!)  That was our group this year.  If you remember I had all the blocks make up in kits so it made things much easier to put the whole thing together.  I think it took us about 3 hours to put the entire top together.  Robin fed us breakfast as we were all there at 9am on Sunday morning.
Here you can see out rows all finished before being assembled into the finished top.
As you can see here *I* am still working on the borders.  They all put their machines away and made me put both sets of borders on the quilt.  They got out the wine and were having some before I was even finished!
Here is what the finished top looked like.  I will have more and better pictures once it is back from LTW.
They let me have a few sips of wine while they were whipping me to finish! LOL.
All in all it was a wonderful day.  Once we finished Robin had made a wonderful spread for us for lunch too.  I am looking forward to doing this again next year!  Having the kits ready sure made it easier and less stressful for everyone.

Friday and Saturday

I decided to try to make a quilt using the 5 yard quilt pattern and since I really wanted to make a MSU quilt for the raffle (in addition to the U of M one I already did) here is what I came up with.

Let me know what you think of this.  I cut and sewed the "focus" blocks on Thursday night in about an hour and did the cutting and sewing of the rest of the quilt on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.  This one is really quick, folks.  This is the quilt I wanted to use for the challenge.  (Swap on the blog if anyone is interested).  This is the challenge the CL's will be doing in January.

Saturday morning I made my DH take me to the Ghoultide Gathering in Northville, MI.  It was a Halloween Artist Spectacular (their words not mine) .  The stuff was so cool, but there were only 14 booths and everything was very expensive (or maybe I'm just that cheap!)  These paper mache guys were in a secret auction and min starting was $500.  They were made by Scott Smith.  He was there in a booth and his stuff was really really cool!
Here is my DH standing by one of the pumpkin people also made by Scott Smith.  There were several of these around the park.  You can see they are really BIG.  DH is 6 feet tall.
This was chalk ware by Vaillancourt folk art.  Her things were very interesting.  I had a friend that used to live across the street from us and she did similar kinds of work (chalk ware) and I think they were competitors.  My friend's company was Walnut-Ridge Collectables.  
I also got to meet the artist Debra Schoch of Hop Hop Jingle Boo.  She was so nice and her stuff was very very cool.  Her stuff was by far the one I liked the best!
Here is a closer up photo of her work.  Isn't it fabulous?  I loved the cat girl, she is on the right.  Get the photo up closer 

Another Pumpkin Guy!
This artist (Murphy Bears, Pat and Tom Murphy) had the most awesome Halloween pincushions.  I met Pat and she was very nice too.
Each one had such a personality!
I think this one was my favorite!!

Just in case you are wondering, I got permission from each artist to take the photos and post them on my blog.  They were all very kind about it so please respect their copyrights!  I hope they like the photos I took too!

I have lots more to blog about as on Sunday we got together and made the top of the Big Ten quilt.  I will show you more of that when I get a minute.