Shop Hop

I don't think I shared this with you all.  

On Thursday, my daughter called me at work and needed a favor.  

She has a barn cam in her barn and noticed that some of the bigger birds had knocked over the heat lamp and she was worried the straw could catch fire and burn her barn down.  

Would I please drive over to her house and turn off the lamp?  

This was around 11:30 in the morning and I was halfway into a CrAzY busy day at work. 

 Her work would not allow her to take the hour it would take to do this.  

Sheesh!  

So I took her car (I don't drive to work, I take the bus) and drove the 30 minutes over to her house.  

I turned off the lamp and this burning spot was in the barn! 

 I poured some water over it so the embers would not catch fire.  

Crisis averted.  

Drove the 30 minutes back and continued my work day.

My SIL and I went on a shop hop on Friday.  

We had so much fun!  I don't think I took any pictures of my loot but 

I did manage this selfie of the two of us!

This was the final shop we stopped at near Battle Creek.  

It was called Sew Unique Threads.  

My SIL and I are taking a Fiber Works class together and need some florals 

(I don't have much in my stash).  

I was really hoping that one of the many shops we stopped at would have some Kaffe florals.  

This last shop had TONS of Kaffe!!  

It was a very nice shop and the woman working there was so nice to us.  

There was a fair amount of Tula fabric too.  

The rest of the weekend was spent cleaning on Saturday and

 being entertained by these two goofballs.  

I needed a break and to be able to clean for a bit without "help", 

so I put the boys outside in their tent.  

Hallie wandered over to say hello while I was outside.

The garden was FULL of peppers and some tomatoes.

Perfect for making and canning 10 pints of salsa!  I did this on Sunday.

How was your weekend?

What did you do?

~XOP~

Happy Birthday

Every time I say that I always think of Frosty the snowman saying that!

Yes, today is my birthday!!

MANY trips around the sun.

I promised that I would share the spoils of my trip with you and so I shall, right now.

I will post these in the order I purchased them.

That way you get a feel for what each shop had to offer that I liked.

2nd Street Quilts

Already have plans for that xo fabric.

A Little Quilt Shop

This graded fabric will make awesome binding.  I have already cut into that red and white fabric.

I will show you that tomorrow.

Rockin Bobbins

How could I resist that sea glass fabric?  Also, how adorable is that humming bird needle threader?

I saw a humming bird this past weekend at my apple tree!  

I think I need to investigate putting out a feeder.

Mabelena

Most of this is going into the RV quilt.  I fell in love with that Christmas fabric to.  Great colors

Sew Crazy

Found this stack of B & C fabric.  Also those two colorful ones might go into the RV quilt.  

The Charlie Brown and the cleaners are gifts.

Stitchin in the Barn

The top 2 prints were on sale.  The bottom 4 will potentially go into the RV quilt.  

I thought that green would be good for the trees and the word print is abbreviations for all the states!

The Pin Cushion

Again, mostly for the RV quilt but the sciency words are for me and some extra for a couple of my quilty friends!

Backstreet Quilt Shop

I found some adorable cat embroidery projects. 

There was also a pretty nice Love MI home block too.  

I'm thinking I can make a pillow or something for DD2. 

 Then there was that adorable light up lady bug needle threader.  Might need a few more of those!

So there you have it.  

All the great stuff I got while on my birthday adventure a few days ago with my amazing hubby!

I am heading to a retreat this weekend with Crazy Quilt Girl and my SIL.

I plan on working on my son's Detroit sports quilt and my hubby's fishing quilt.

Not really things I usually enjoy working on but I sure do love those two!

Don't forget WIPs With Friends tomorrow too!

Let's see if we can get 15 links and maybe there will be a little giveaway!!

~XOP~

My Birthday Extravaganza

My wonderful husband made a plan all on his own to celebrate my birthday (early) last Friday.  

He asked me to take the day off work so we could go on an adventure.  Well, color me surprised!  

We got up and headed out to a place in Ohio (we live in Michigan) for breakfast. 

 It was called The Speed Trap. 

 I really wanted their amazing sounding breakfast sammy (french toast with ham, turkey and melty swiss cheese), but what I had was 2 poached eggs and 2 pieces of bacon.

  Wayyyy less Weight Watcher points!

Isn't this place adorable?

Then he hands me this hand written list of all the quilt shops he had planned to take me to!

Now some of them were either not there, were a long arm business or were Electric Quilt Co 

(which I was not sure we could actually visit).  

First stop was a Little Touch of Heaven. Which I am pretty sure it was! Very nice owner here.

 I found some great OOP Vintage Modern here and bought all they had!

 Next up was the Door Mouse, in Bettsville, OH.  

This place was majorly overwhelming, but oh so fun to look around at!

I bought a few things here too.  Great neutrals for a quilt I have planned in my head, LOL.

The three solids are part of the above quilt.  The other 2 were "just because".

I could not resist these Scandinavian feel birds.

We were on our way to a park and saw this overflowing river.  The water was moving SO fast. 

The sheer power contained in this flowing water was fascinating.

We stopped at one park and it seemed like a nice one but he had a different one in mind 

so we motored on to it.

On the way there he stopped the car, lept out and began picking some wildflowers like a mad man.  Apparently they were for our picnic table lunch!

This is the park we stopped at. 

 He thought it would be a totally amazing park and where we were, at least, was a gravel road 

with a turn around, a port-a-potty and a "You are here" sign!  

The lunch was amazing and the wildflower view was fantastic, not to mention the great company!

See that cupcake right there?  He baked those from scratch the night before!

OK, on to more quilt shops!  The next shop was called The Busy Thimble. 

 Not much in the way of fabric for me but I bought a few Aunt Martha transfers here.

The Quilt Foundry in Maumee was an amazing shop.  

If you like Batiks they had an entire room devoted to that!  

I found some treasures here too though.

Some Christmas fabrics to make some Christmas stockings for a friend of my daughter's.

A little Marmalade and Scrumptious

I was so thrilled to find these Emma Jean Jansen prints!  Plus that gorgeous Grunge.

There was one more stop here at Quilt Heaven.  Cute shop, very friendly staff!

We did hit the Quilt Patch back in MI on the way home and I picked up some of the 

Christmas fabrics you see above at that shop.  

I picked up some sports fabric for my son's Michigan sports themed quilt.

I also bought a little pattern and template.  I am dying to use that template to cut into my scraps.  How fun would it be to get a little bit from every quilt you make and put it into a big scrap quilt??

So now my birthday celebration has come to an end.  

I hope you have enjoyed my day as much as I did! 

 Maybe you found some new shops to visit on your own travels!

Happy Travels to you.

~XOP~

More Weekend Fun

The fun of my weekend continued on Saturday.  

First thing in the morning Ann and I hit up the Farmer's Market.  

If you ever get a chance to go to this in Muskegon you should.  

It was one of the nicest Farmer's Markets I have been to.

My friend, Windy, met up with Ann and I at the quilt shop in Holland, Pressing Matters.  

What a nice shop!  

Ann was collecting the Row By Row patterns so I got them too. 

 Plan on passing them along to another friend.  

I probably spent the most money at this shop filling out my Scrumptious stash.

I also picked up some Marmalade and Miss Kate

 More Miss Kate

I ended up with this pattern as well.  

I thought it was so neat!  

It kind of reads like the Yellow Brick Road pattern. 

 I'm not sure what fabric I will use in this but I definitely want to make it and soon!

Then we headed off to a shop in Allegan, called Sharon's Quilts and More. 

 I picked up some of my favorite needles, some Best Press and some Full Moon Forest!!!

The next stop was a shop called Dancing Dogs quilt shop in Plainwell.  

This is the shop that Ann wanted to get the lighthouse Row By Row pattern at.

Windy regaled us with stories of Plainwell as we were driving along.  

Next stop was in Kalamazoo at the Bernina Sewing Center.  

I think Windy bought some backing fabric here and Ann got a Michigan Tech pattern.  

We were pretty hungry so we decided to stop for lunch at Bilbos.  

Lunch was good and Windy had both of us laughing so hard with her bra fitting stories.  

I think the other folks in the place were traumatized, LOL!!!

The final stop on our shop hop was in South Haven at So South Haven.  

I believe they are only open seasonally.  

Cute shop and the owner was super friendly!

On the way back we saw this crazy blue cow ice cream place and 

decided that we needed to stop in and have some ice cream.  

It was the Sherman Dairy Bar and the ice cream was fantastic!

We were all pooped with our big travels of the day.  

We headed back to Holland and dropped Windy off and proceeded home to the cottage.  

I did pull out my stitchery and got quite a bit done for the Kitty Mini Quilt Swap project.

I will finish up the rest of the story tomorrow.  

~XOP~