Some Finishes and some Farming

Last week my daughter asked me to make some pillowcases for her to give to a friend t

hat she is staying with while on vacation. 

 I always dread this because I always forget how to make them. 

 Every. Darned. Time!  

This time I went to my own tutorial (which you can find here) and 

followed the directions and was successful. 

 I think all the other times someone has been directing me so I really did not pay close attention.  When I had to make them on my own, I actually *learned* how to do it.  

Does that make any sense at all??  

My daughter and I went to a local quilt shop and she chose the fabrics.  

Not fabrics I would have chosen in a million years, but she loved them. 

 She drove me home and the next day I hammered out 4 pillowcases.

The space ones are actually 3D!  

The shop owner gave her a pair of 3D glasses.  When you put them on the space fabric becomes 3D.  That was pretty cool.

Then I got to thinking that I had bought some dragon fabric awhile back intending to make pillow cases for this same daughter. 

 Her birthday was on Wednesday so since she would not be home for it, I decided to make them and gift to her when she came by to pick up the cases for her friend.

I have to say that I LOVE how these turned out.  

The fabric reminded me of the movie How to Train Your Dragon.  

The little black one reminded me of the Night Fury from the movie, Toothless.  

I loved that movie and so did she.

Since finishing the other 2 baby quilts is temporarily on hold, I decided I needed to work on the fish.

I managed to get 2 more fish sewn along with a few "water" improv blocks too!  

It is coming right along. 

Making these fish has been a challenge but they are turning out really cool!

I think I have 3 more to go before I will call it a day and figure out how to put this all together.

We have been on farm duty this week and will be again next week while daughter and SIL are away.

That means taking care of all the birds, the cats, the mice, and the fish.  

She fed the snakes before they left and he will be home on the weekend to do that again.  

I don't like the snakes.  

They would probably die if I had to feed them.  

The pea hens are laying so I am collecting them and putting the eggs inside.  

A friend of hers borrowed her big incubator to see if he likes it enough to get his own, so she asked him to come get the pea eggs to put in the incubator.  

Each day I collect these I write which pen they came from and the date.  

Her purples had stopped laying, but I have collected 3 eggs from their pen this week!

I also collected all the chicken eggs each day.  

Aren't they so pretty?  Blue, green, pink and brown!!

The one I am holding is a purple pea hen egg, actually laid on her birthday. 

 She was pretty happy to hear that they are laying again.

The purple pen is on the right and the blue pen on the left.  

The boys like to try to fight through the wall.  

This reminded me of the Sharks vs Jets in West Side Story!  

The blue male was making his way over to the fence line on the left and 

both males had their "flock" on their sides.  

Humorous how they can mimic us!

She has set up a barn webcam to watch the chicks in the barn and t

he turkey (Jocelyn) sitting on a clutch of pea hen eggs.  

If you want to watch too, (you might see me or my husband in the barn) here is the link. 

 Mostly you will see the chicks running around but it is pretty quiet most of the time.

So that's what I have been up to.  I am going to link up with Crazy Mom Quilts.

Have an eggceptional weekend!  

~XOP~

WIPs With Friends

I have a very brief minute to make this post.  

I will be out for the rest of the week and part of next week for my daughter's wedding.

I stopped out to her farm to visit her last weekend because her oldest peacock, Blu hurt his leg. 

 He had an ankle issue and had surgery when he was young.  

It never really healed well and he pretty much stands on one foot all the time.  

It was bound to happen that something would happen to his other foot/leg.  

She has to take him to the vet today and hopefully we will know more soon.  

He is the very first peacock that she hatched out from an egg.  I

t was while she was living in our home.  Both he and his sister and the turkey Jocelyn. 

 Osirius has passed away but Blu and Jo are still alive and kicking.  

Hopefully it is just a strain and not a slipped tendon, but we should know later today.  

He is such a pretty boy! 

 I am sure you have seen lots of photos of him thoughout the years, 

but just in case these are his last few days I wanted a few more.

Daughter was happy that he has fathered so many babies and that she still has some.  

She will keep one or two if something is seriously wrong with him. 

 She said one had Osirius's face and took me into the barn to see.  

This is what I saw. 

 It was quite dark and I thought it was three peafowl but no, it was a peafowl sandwich with a peafowl wanna be in the middle!  

As soon as I saw the three of them I knew immediately it was the bird on the far right.  

His face looks just like Osirius's did.

So now on to my WIP.  Still the Hallowedding quilt.  Now it will have a haunted house!

I am loving how this came out!

As I said, I will be on a short break until after the wedding, but please do link up.

Link up here and 

tell us all what YOU have been working on too!  

You should know the drill by now.  

Click on the blue "inlinkz" button to add your link.  

If you are only on Instagram use the #wipswithfriends.

~XOP~

Now it's your turn to link up your finishes here. 

 Remember that if you do post in the link up here

 you should post a link back to this post on your own blog too.

So now it's your turn to share what you are working on.  

Please use the linky to link up and share that you linked up to WIPs With Friends on your blog too.  If using Instagram please use the hashtag

#wipswithfriends.  

We can't wait to see what you are working on!

Use the blue Inllinkz button to link up and spread the word by linking back to this post!

An InLinkz Link-up

WIPs With Friends

I have not been working on very much this past weekend as we were out at my daughter's house adding to the existing bird pens. 

 There are three more houses that need to be constructed, sigh. 

 I just want these done so I can work at my own house!!  

First there is making the base.  

You have to dig pretty deep and put down boards to keep the raccoons out.

 Then the framing begins.

Which, apparently needs a lot of supervision from Beep!

Actually, I think she was trying to fight my husband.  

She doesn't seem to like him very much.

You can see her up on the top of the crooked frame.

So I begged off work on Sunday and did chores at home. 

I did manage to paint another batch of flowers for the centerpieces.

 Once those were done a had a wee bit of time to stitch. 

 I did manage to get Shelby's name stitched out.  It matches to the printed letters pretty well.

I did decide to put interfacing on the back.  

Funny story.  

I traced her name and then thought I should put the interfacing on.

  Welllll, I used a Frixon pen and as soon as I ironed the interfacing on, the drawn letters were gone.  Sigh. 

Silly me though, all I had to do was put it in the cold and they would have reappeared,

 but what did I do?  I re-drew them!  

THEN I remembered about the cold.  D'oh!!

The scary one was Hallowedding.  This is a pretty long word and I was nervous.  

You can see how I traced it in this photo.

This one is with the stitching completed.  PHEW!!!

I hate to say it but that's all I managed to get to this past week.  

This upcoming week is not looking any better either!  

Bridal shower is on Saturday and I still have stuff to do for that!

I did buy a dress for the wedding.  Wanna see it?

I bought it at ModCloth.  It arrived and actually fits!  Woo Hoo.  Now on to a costume!

I am linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

What are you working on this week?  

So now it's your turn to share what you are working on.  

Please use the linky to link up and share that you linked up to WIPs With Friends on your blog too.  If using Instagram please use the hashtag

#wipswithfriends.  

We can't wait to see what you are working on!

Use the blue Inllinkz button to link up and spread the word by linking back to this post!

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up

Beep Turns One

That's right!  My grand peacock, Beep turned one on Sunday. 

 My daughter texted me to tell me this and my response was "Is there a party?"  

The response?  "Of course there is a party!" 

 LOL  I was in charge of procuring the cake.

My son did the grilling (with Beep's supervision of course)

The party table was set.

 Beep was awaiting her birthday feast.

If you will notice, Beep had a bowl on the arm of the chair.  

She instead, helped herself to my daughter's food.  That bird loves her some dip!!

We sang happy birthday but I only thought to turn on the video part way though.

My hubby and the birthday girl.

People ask about the farm so here are a few photos of the outside pens.  

This is the main chicken pen.

The pen on the left houses some of the peafowl and the connecting one on the right is just chickens.

You can see how large the chicken pen is. 

 It will eventually be broken into 3 pens so birds can be separated out for specific breeding. 

 FD has some particular peafowl and some very expensive chickens that she would like to breed and know that the eggs are specific to those pairings.

Not the best photo but you can see Blu, her India Blue male resting on the top of that barrel.

All in all the birthday party was GREAT!  

I hope you had time to celebrate with your loved ones this weekend too. 

 After the shooting in Orlando, I feel even more, that it is necessary 

to tell those you love how you feel.  

Spend as much time together as you can and love one another!

~XOP~

Father's Day Weekend

This Father's Day was a little bittersweet.  

I have the best husband and father to my kids ever, but I am missing my own dad...a lot! 

 We did a lot of things this weekend so we kept pretty busy though.

Hubby and I went out and helped on the farm a little bit.  

The peafowl pens are coming right along.  

There is still a LOT more to do though!  

Here is Blu.  He sure is a beauty isn't he?

  Have you seen Jurassic World?  *SPOILER*

The heroine in the story is a Raptor named Blu too!!

This is looking at the pen structure for putting up the fencing.  

You can see the existing coop and their pen.

Digging down to put the fencing in around the bottom of the pen.

Lots of digging!

Soooooooo much digging!

This was Blu and O2 showing off for the ladies.  "How you doin'?"

 The star of the weekend, by far was Beep.  Isn't he just the cutest little peacock?

The neighbors had a party on Saturday night so all of Saturday was a wash.  

Their son has a band so we even had live music!

Then for Father's day we took my hubby to the local airport for their annual pancake breakfast.  

They have a small fly in so lots of planes for him to drool over.  

The two kids that are local came with us.

Son looks a little rough.  too much celebrating the night before!

Then our daughter took us to see Jurassic World, which was awesome.  

One of the folks in the movie reminded me soooo much of my son (Chris Pratt).  

Love it!

I have more to share but am out of time and this is a lot to look at all at once!

How was your weekend?

~XOP~

Weekend Doings

We had a crazy weekend!  It began on Friday when our daughter came in to town from NC.  

We drove her to Gross Pointe to go to a bachelorette party.  

We dropped her off and drove home.  

LOTS of cleaning up from the work the contractor did while at my house.  

Good news is that I got a ceiling light/fan for in my sewing room now!!  

Bad news?  

I can't put my closet back together again until the ceiling light/fan is done in the other bedroom.  Access is through my closet ceiling.  Here is my new light!

Saturday found us at the farm.  We were going to help dig post holes for the bird pen expansion.  

And by we I mean my daughter, SIL and husband, LOL. 

 I was relegated to the basement to go through boxes left there from my dad's house. 

 It was so cold in the basement though that I came up periodically to get warm. 

 I would wander outside and play with the birds, take a few pictures and then back into the basement.  I was paying with Jocelyn and thought you might like to hear her voice.  

We hatched her from an egg when my DD lived at our house.

We rented a post hole digger 

(thank goodness, as hubby is not getting any younger!)

Now you see it...

Now you don't!!  Every time they fired it up the two male peacocks would start calling.

I managed to get a video of Blu when he was calling.  

The slight "echo" you hear is actually Octavain II who would begin slightly after Blu.

These are the posts we got planted (maybe with enough attention they will grow into a bird pen!)

Sunday we had to drive back to Detroit and pick up our other daughter after her partying weekend and drive her to the airport.  

We stopped off for lunch with her and then took her to the airport. 

 We got home and I fled upstairs to my sewing room.  

I really had no business working on anything but the "have to" list but of course I did something new.  I did work on the have to  list too though.  

I am hoping to finish up the market quilt soon and then we can have a QAL if you like.

Being around the birds inspired me to try this little paper pieced pattern I found online. 

 I have a friend that is a little down and so thought she might like this as a pin cushion.  

I have printed out enough to make 3 more that I think I will make a little mini quilt for her. 

 Just not right now.  

The block is about 4" square.

How was your weekend?

~XOP~