WIPs With Friends

I hope all my friends had a great Thanksgiving weekend.  

Ours was pretty low key but nice. 

 I made a new recipe using brussel sprouts and butternut squash in a Maple-Soy glaze that 

turned out great!

What special recipes do you and your family make for Thanksgiving?

I managed to get quite a bit of stitching done this weekend, 

but much of it I can't share at this time as it is for gifts, sad I know.

My daughter in NC sent this photo of her and her boyfriend and their dog, Max.

Cole seems to disappear in the lap of my oldest daughter.

I took a couple of photos of my son and Finny and isn't this amazing? 

 I love how this picture came out.

I made a chenille blanket.  

This is what it looked like after cutting it but prior to washing and drying it.

Once in the washer and dryer the magic happens!  

If you want more info on making a chenille blanket go to the tutorial section in my header.

Look how big Cole is getting!!  That is a 24" mat.

Also, he and I play "fetch the ball" every day. 

 He was jumping up on my sewing table all weekend and dropping his ball for me to throw.  

I store batting behind my door so it doesn't open very far.  

I have to "thread the needle" through the space to throw it for him to go fetch. 

 I finally managed to get a good video of him doing it.  

Enjoy

Please take a moment and show us what you have been working on.

Use the linky button to add your current WIP.

~XOP

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Thanksgiving

I want to take a minute to wish all of my family and friends a

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I hope that you all get a chance to spend time with the people and pets that you love.

God has certainly blessed our family this year.  

I am very thankful for all He has provided.

May God bless each and every one of you today and always.

My Best,

Pam x

WIPS with Friends

It is the day before Thanksgiving and 

I have managed to work on a few things this past weekend and this week.  

I'm sure, just like most of you, 

I have LOTS to get done before Christmas.

First thing was to clean up my sewing room after Sew Beachy.  

I just kept putting all the stuff on my sewing table.  

Then when I decided I needed room to sew I realized I  had to clean off my table to do so.

YIKES what a mess!!

Cole was right at home "helping" me clean up.

I joined a swap online that was to trade soup recipes.  

We are supposed to be sending an extra with our recipes.  

It took me a long time to decide what I wanted to send, but I finally figured it out.  

I saw this tea towel pattern on a website here.  

I thought it would be the perfect extra!  

My friend Crazy Quilt Girl is selling the tea toweling if you need to make some too.  

They are amazingly easy and look so cute when finished!

I also received one of my quilts back from the quilter.  

I decided that I needed to sew the binding on.  

I managed to get that sewn down so maybe this weekend I can work on getting this finished.  

I still need to glue it in place, but Thanksgiving is kind of getting in the way, LOL. 

Shhhh this one is a gift.  

Thankfully he doesn't read my blog!

I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts

Cole seems to be the one most interested in helping me in my sewing room.  

Finn is more interested in knocking things down.

 They are getting so BIG!  This is Finn's favorite position.  

In the arm of my husband.  

He climbs up, settles in and shoves his little fluffy face into my husbands face. 

Chris pets him and fusses over him and Finny gives him some kisses 

then he just settles in and sleeps like that.  

It's the cutest thing!

I hope that if you celebrate Thanksgiving you have a wonderful one.  

Spend time with your families.  

You will never be able to get that time back so take the time and enjoy your family and friends.

  If you are going out for Black Friday, be careful.  

Pay attention in the parking lots to cars parked next to yours with people in them.  

If you are uncomfortable, have someone walk you to your car.  

Human trafficking is real, as is theft!

From our house to yours Happy Thanksgiving and 

thank YOU all for stopping by and leaving me such nice comment through out the year.  

I appreciate each and every one of you!

If you have a WIP or 2 that you would like to share please use the blue linky button and share!

We would all love to see what you are working on.

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up

The Final Day In California

This is getting long but I want to share all the cool things I got to do while in California.

My friend Karen and her baby and I had our first stop at a neat little bakery 

for some pastries and coffee.  

Well, for Karen and I not the baby.

She's too young for coffee, silly!

Then we drove to Griffith Park Observatory.  

Here we are!  

Karen wanted LOTS of photos, LOL.

The Hollywood sign was very visible here.

Great view of LA, although there was quite a haze that day.

Everywhere I went there were beautiful Bird of Paradise flowers.  They don't grow for long in MI.

Got to see a Tessla coil.  Very interesting.

Visual aids to see how our sun compares.  

We are one of those teeny tiny yellow dots to the left of the gigantic yellow ball.

Cool painted ceiling.  

 Next up was walking around Santa Monica.  We walked toward the pier.  

Beautiful view.

There were these cool dino topiaries so I took a photo of Karen and the baby by one.

The outdoor mall with no car access was nice.  

If we had had more time it would have been fun to shop there.

 We went back to her house and I got to spend some time with her and the kids. 

 Later her hubby and son arrived home and we had dinner.  

A typical Brazillian meal (she is Brazillian) followed by a surprise dessert.  

She always loved when I made pumpkin cheesecake.  

When they left for California she asked me for my recipe.  

This night she made it for dessert and it was fabulous!  

Such a sweet gesture, from a genuinely sweet woman!

I got to hold the baby fresh out of the tub.  Not much smells as good as a freshly washed baby!

Thank you to all of my friends, both old and new for making this an amazing trip!  

I hope we get to do this again very soon!  

I miss you all already!!

~XOP~

More of My California Visit

Once the retreat was over Traci drove me back to my friend Ana's house.  

We walked to the La Brea Tar Pits.  

I could NOT have been more excited!!!  

Living prehistoric history!!  

My scientific geeky self was in heaven.

The first pit you see is called the Lake.  

The tar is covered with water giving the appearance of a "lake".  

Apparently it is not really tar but actually asphalt.  

Learned something new.

The gas from underground continually bubbles to the surface too.

They have models of Mammoths getting stuck in the pit.

The most commonly found animal here is the Sabre Tooth Tiger. 

They also found many Dire Wolves too.  

One wall had over 400 skulls on it!

There was an active excavation on one of the pits too, but no one was working the day we were there.

I didn't realize there were so many pits too.  Each one was quite different from the others too.

This just looks like leaves on dark ground.  Nope, TAR!

There was one spot where you could see the tar bubbling.

I took this video and you can watch the bubble form and POP!

The skeletons were amazing.  I am fascinated by the cats, of course.

 The soth was over 2000 pounds!

Not a great photo but you can see how large it is next to me.

This is some of what they bring up and volunteers can go in and help dig the stuff out of the tar.

Saber Tooth skull

Mammoth

Sloth

 It was a fantastic day and I was happy to spend more time with my friend Ana.  

The next day I would spend with my friend Karen.

~XOP~

Sew Beachy Part 2

The retreat continues.  There was so much to post I needed to break it into several parts.

We left off with Friday night.  

Now I will go into the rest of the retreat.  

This shows our sewing space in the garage of the 10 bedroom house.

 I was working on some more of my Ocean Wave HST's

Like a dum dum I forgot my Clearly Perfect.  

OH NOOOOOO!!  

So I borrowed some tape and made a poor man's version 

(yes, I hate drawing lines that much!)  

Worked like a charm too!!

We had a little shopping at Super Buzzy.  What a great shop!  Cutting took a LONG time though.

Next up some of us went to Roxanne's (my roomies and me!)

Traci and Mel having fun!

Look at all that Kaffe!!!!

I'm pretty sure if you want Kaffe and they don't have it you are SOL, just sayin'

She also had some cute painted vintage machines for sale

 Of course the green and white one was a favorite of mine.

This was such a cute shop!

Jamie of Made by Jamie was at the retreat and taught us to make the New Clutch Wallet.  

Isn't she so cute?

This is my wallet.  I LOVE it!  Thanks again Jamie for all your help!!

This is the inside.  

Group photo of everyone that made a wallet.  

It appears that we were well stocked with alcohol too as you can see in our fridge.

There was a silent auction and raffle baskets too.  This will go toward next year's deposit.

We played a rousing game of LRC, but I didn't get any photos of us playing or the loot pile.

The sunsets were so gorgeous every night.

The sun reflecting back toward the house we were staying at was amazing on Sunday night.

I wanted to go for a walk on the beach on Sunday night.

Mel and Traci joined me and we met up with Peggy when we were almost back to the house.

Mel, me and Traci

Several of us being goofy.

Later in the evening sunset.

This is 2 of the 3 Pam's that were at the retreat.  We had so much fun together. 

 I wish she lived closer.

Darla, Traci, Mel, Me and Paula.  All my roomies except for Darla.

Darla was the organizer of this entire adventure.  

Thanks for a great time and I look forward to doing this again sometime!