AUCE Crab Anyone?

Do you know what AUCE crab is? I drove by this restaurant every day and saw that sign. One day I had DD1 in the car and remarked about the sign saying AUCE crab every Thursday. Now I watch Deadliest Catch faithfully but could not figure out what kind of crab this was. She looked at me with this "OMG you've got to be kidding me" face and said flatly, "All You Can Eat, Mom!" I think the "U" rather than a "Y" threw me off (that's officially my story!) So last night we all went out for some AUCE crab and it was fantastic!!

Do I even need to mention that I will fail tomorrow at the scale? I know I gained several pounds this week. It has been so hot I am pretty sure I am retaining water very badly and the salty crab legs didn't help but man were they delish! I will take the hit at the scale. I had pizza for lunch today too so I will just have to suck it up and know it will be my biggest gain since beginning this. It just means I need to get back on track next week, right?

Anyway, the other morning when I was leaving for work I happened to glance back at my house and saw how beautiful the front yard looks right now so I snapped a few pics to show you too. As you face my front door these are first to the left and then to the right.

Think the morning glories like my house? I have them everywhere! Pink and purple all over!!!

You all know that I am always working on several things at one time right? Well I am going to LTW's farm this weekend (most likely tomorrow) and will be learning how to use her Gammill to quilt a quilt that I will be giving as a wedding gift. She has a Statler and wants me to babysit it while we work on my quilt. I am a little nervous about all this but excited too. She has a GO cutter and I am bringing some things to cut and try it out. While I was digging around for the fabric I wanted to take, I ran across some Curious George fabric I had bought a long time ago. Now you remember my friend's daughter that I asked you all to pray for, and she has the baby I asked you to pray for too. She LOVES George and several years ago I made her a CG quilt. I think I will use the left over fabric, I even have a book panel, to make a quilt for the baby. It should go fairly quickly. Photos later this weekend.

I got a few more things done but will share those later, I am really tired and think I need to go to bed soon. Weigh in and VIVE in the am. More later...

Another Finish and some progress

I forgot to tell you that I finished another RPE block the other day and so I took a photo of it to show you too.

I am enjoying my embroidery work and have also finished another of the children for that quilt. That makes 2 down 7 to go!

I love how she turned out too. I was going to do the dress in red, but I think it was too harsh for her so chose a deep pink. This is the next one in that series that I will be working on.

You know that bird just has to be blue right?? He will be on hold until I can work on the mermaid embroidery for the doll quilt I am making for the auction is done. I have her all traced and ready to stitch but wanted to finish my little girl first. Now I have no excuse not to work on her. I think she will take some time but am excited to work on her. Then I will figure out how large to cut the fabric she is on to make the quilt I want to do. It will be her on some white for about 3/4 of the quilt. Then I am planning on making 2 lines of various blue zig zags to simulate water with some more white on top. I was inspired by this quilt I saw on Flickr. I thought I had shown you the mermaid but I guess I have not! Will take a pic tonight and share soon.

I got the chenille blanket cut and handed off to PTM for binding last night. This is what it looks like after it is cut and before it is bound.

I have had several of you ask about how to do this. If enough people express an interest I can put a tutorial together to show you how exactly, to do it. I have already written up the directions for several of my friends IRL, so let me know and we will see how to make that happen if anyone is interested. Apparently I did not show you the other blanket all finished so here is a photo of my friend Yuki and the blanket.


Lastly I will end on asking you if you use Mary Ellen's Best Press and if you like it? I really like it and so does my DH. He was at the store the other day and found this Niagra Spray Starch version:

So he thought what the heck, why not try it. It is sooooo much less expensive. Well, I like it just as well as the MEBP!! You may want to give it a try. It even smells like lavender. I don't know if there are other scents because I haven't looked for any yet. If you have and there are let me know.

Meeting a Fellow Blogger

Yesterday I had the pleasure to meet up with Pat from Bell Creek Quilts. We met once before when she was in Michigan visiting her mom. She let me know that she was going to be in the state and so Monday was the day her family "opened the cage door and let her out". She wanted to meet up at the local Joann Fabrics. So I called her on my way home from work and she left her mom's house and we met at the fabric store.

Doesn't she have the nicest smile??

We were stopped, talking when I heard my name. I turned around and who should be there but none other than Cori of Crazy Quilt Girl's quilt shop! You all know that we have been friends forever (or so it seems). It happened to be her birthday! Just so you could see her too I figured out the self timer on my camera and captured the three of us.

I look kind of like a chipmunk but hey, at least you can see cheek definition!

After a short chat Pat and I were off to Hobby Lobby. That's where she wanted to go so that's where we went. Next stop was dinner. I had a coupon for the Red Olive so that's where we went. I did think to take a picture of our food this time too. Pat got a Gyro and a salad and I had their Bistro salad, YUM! (Although I brought half of this home for my lunch today)

The food was good and the company was even better. Pat and I talked like old friends. Funny isn't it that we may not meet in person for a long time or ever but we make strong friendships!

Thank you for a wonderful evening, Pat and thank your family for sharing you too!!

Chenille Number 2

I was productive yesterday. I got the chenille blanket sewn, cut and squared up. Now I just need to get it bound and labeled! PTM here I come! I need to sew the binding tonight. Here is a peek at it before I cut it.

Remember when I asked for your prayers for a friend that was struggling? Well some of the issues have resolved and I can tell you that her daughter has a new son. He was premature and was born with a congenital heart defect. They did surgery and installed a pacemaker and he was supposed to have been able to go home on Friday, as least for a trial to see how it goes. I haven't heard anymore yet but will update you as I hear more. There was an Rh incompatibility too so the mom had to take Rogam (not sure of the spelling). They did learn that when a baby has the particular defect this one does that the mother has one of 2 auto immune diseases, either Rhumatoid Arthritis or Lupus. That was not good news either. They are focusing on getting the baby home and settled and then will see what they need to do to take care of his mama. Please keep them in your prayers!
Oh I bet you want to know why I posted all that right? Because the chenille blanket is for the new baby, of course!

I am going to meet up with Pat today from Bell Creek Quilts. She is in Michigan visiting her mom and that is so close to me! We will meet at JAF and then go to Hobby Lobby and maybe IKEA too. Then we will have some dinner! I am so excited!!! I will bring my camera and take some pictures to show you too.

Birthday Gift and Monster Quilt

I received a wonderful, and very thoughtful gift from my friend Annemiek (along with her friend Corrine) in the mail yesterday. Annemiek lives in the Netherlands and she and I have become very good friends even though we have not met...yet.

The mug says Learning Dutch while you're drinking.

And those were the words with pictures on the mug too.
She also sent the most adorable "cupcake" pin cushion. The "whipped cream" on the top is spectacular and the strawberry has stitched "seeds" in it.


So today I have been busy righting all the "stuff" that had been moved. I put some of it back, am selling some of it and have found yet MORE UFO's to work on as well, *sigh*. Of course no weekend is complete without starting something totally unrelated to finishing anything, right? It's OK right? Well I had bought this adorable monster fabric to make a rag quilt with and so it is all cut out and I am going to finish it this week. Really, come h--l or high water I am. I am going to make a huge push to get some of the other UFO's worked on over the next few weeks too. This may mean less time here though. We'll see. Oh yes, here is the monster fabric cut up and ready to stitch.

Now if you had monsters that were this cute wouldn't you want to play with them too??

Yesterday we went to LTW's farm and got some more farm fresh eggs and a TON of produce, thanks LTW!! You and Becky are the BEST!! DH, DD1 and I went to the tractor supply store then to the farm. We had a really nice visit too. I did skip my class on Sat for the farm visit, but I am trying to spend more time doing things with the family, so it was a trade off. I did weigh in and gained .6 this past week, but in reality, after the weekend I had actually put on 5 so I worked really, really hard all week and lost all but .6 of it. I'm OK with that! Birthday's are once a year so I guess it is ok. I am back on track and hoping for a good week this week.

Hope you all had a good weekend and that you managed to stay cool. It is so HOT and humid here!!

More De Stashing

I thought I would finish listing what I have gone through so far so here goes
One and a half yards of this adorable goose fabric. $3 plus shipping
SOLD

Assorted greens totaling 3 plus yards $6 plus shipping
SOLD

Six yards assorted green batiks $12 plus shipping
SOLD

This pretty pointsetta fabric really needs a new home, there is about 60" x 42" width $3 plus shipping


I made some Christmas stockings with this homespun. 64" by 42" width, $3 plus shipping

Purple batik 3 and a half yards $7 plus shipping
SOLD
I know this looks blue but it is really purple stars, ~2 2/3 yards $5 plus shipping

Green thirties fabric ~48" by 42 width $3 plus shipping

More thirties fabric ~60" by 42" width $3 plus shipping

That's all for now so again, thanks for looking and let me know if you are interested in anything.

De-Stashing. Fabric for sale

OK, I had to bring stuff (fabric mostly) up from the basement to clear out a spot for the guy to fix the A/C last week. I thought I should go through it and see if there was anything I could part with and guess what? There is! I am going to list it here and if you are interested please email me at
mamaspark@gmail.com

Here goes:
Now these first few things are not fabric alone, they are pot holderish kind of things. I got them from my mom's house after she passed away so I know they are quite old, older than me, which is older than dirt. They are about 6' x8" approximately. $5 for each set plus shipping.
ELEPHANTS ARE SOLD
PIGS ARE SOLD

Now on to some wool (blends maybe?, not sure)
Tan and navy are 46" x 60" and the blue check is 44" x 68" So that's approximately 4 yards. $8 for the lot plus shipping

Corduroy now who doesn't love that?? I bought this when my kids were little (they are 19-25 now) and you just can't find cute stuff like this anymore. I have no grandchildren and probably won't for a long time so if you are interested let me know.
Both pieces are 27" x 60". $5.00 plus shipping.

Here are the girl prints the bunny one is 40" x 60" and the flower one is 60" x 60"
$10 plus shipping .

This one is like a cotton twill but softer. Adorable little dinos. There is about a yard and a half here.$3 plus shipping

Yard and a half of the fairies $3 plus shipping

Six one yard pieces $12 plus shipping

Five half yard pieces $5 plus shipping
SOLD
Eight quarter yd or FQ pieces $4 plus shipping The third one from the left came from France!

40 6.5" squares $2 plus shipping
SOLD

I have some more to list but will do so in another post. Please let me know if you are interested and we will work it out. I appreciate your taking time to look.

Charming Girls Quilt Club

Ok, I've decided to join the Charming Girls Quilt Club online. Kelly is the hostess and it looks like she has a lot planned and it should be a fun year! I put the icon on my side bar and it will take you to the blog if you want to check it out. You have to have a blog to join in the fun. You have to post 2 months (July and August) worth of goals and then post new goals every 2 months. Deadline to do this is tonight. With all that being said here are my July and August goals:

1-Keep going to the gym and keep following the WW plan to stay on track for my weight loss.

2-Continue "Date Night" with my DH on Friday nights

3-Keep up with my 2 quilt a longs, 12 Days of Christmas and Jelly Roll QAL.

4-Finish the chenille blanket I am making.

5-Once I get the quilt back from LTW, get binding and a label on the quilt for the August 14th wedding.

6-Work on the Children embroideries to try to get them to a place to make into a quilt.

7-Finish the embroidery for Rabbits Prefer Embroidery

8-Try to go through my stash and re-organize it one bin at a time. Sell or give away what I no longer want to use. Then commit to using it more before buying new fabric.

9-Spend more time enjoying my family and doing fun things with them this summer.

10-Get the boat out of the garage and into the water to help with #9!!

11-Let my friends know how much they mean to me by being more thoughtful and considerate.

OK, I think this is probably MORE than enough for a 6 week period. Some of these things will probably carry over several more months and/or be a yearly ongoing thing.

Have you set any goals for yourself in your life? I would love to hear them and support your striving to achieve them too!!

Lots to Tell

I had a very eventful day and night. First of all the a/c man came and we are now the proud owner of a brand new Carrier air conditioner. We are poorer, but MUCH cooler!! DH went into work for awhile and after he got home I went over to PTM's to play. The first thing up on the adgenda was for me to teach her how to post to her new blog. I think we spent about an hour working on her blog and getting her set up to use Bloglines. If you have a minute please go over to her blog, Quilting, Friends and Family and welcome her to Blogland. I know she will be thrilled to have someone comment and to know that there really are some wonderful new friends she has yet to meet just waiting to be a part of her life. She is a sweetheart and you will not be sorry to make friends with this amazing woman!

I also received my new shoes only to realize they are a size too big,*sigh*. So I re-ordered them in the correct size and am sending these back. On the up side, I REALLY like both colors!! More on that when the new ones arrive and I can show you them on my feet.

So that being said, I also traced my mermaid onto my background (I forgot to take a photo to show you this, I will do tonight). This is the beginning of the doll quilt I am making for the Belleville Arts Council Auction. More on this later. PTM and I went out to dinner and I had an amazing salad and so did she. We were off to pick up our friend, Cori (Crazy Quilt Girl) and then headed to quilting. Cori ended up basting the chenille blanket I want to make, thanks for that Cori! I bet her fingers will be sore tomorrow!! I worked on the next embroidery in my little kid series, again, I will have to take pics later. Then I took Cori home.

This morning I woke up to a new addition in the house. A baby peacock (or hen). Isn't this baby so adorable??

It is a Silver Pied Peacock and when fully grown will look like this:



In the second photo you can see what the females will look like. We have no idea if ours are male or female. My DD1 bought some hatching eggs and so far we have one baby with 3 more in the process of hatching out today. I'll keep you posted!





I need to post again later for the Charming Girls Quilt Club but since I am at work, I need to go and do some work!

Baby It's HOT Outside

So the other shoe dropped and we need an entire new air conditioning unit. I was not overly happy to hear this as it means several thousand dollars out of the bank account. At least it was not as much as another quilter I know had to pay so I am thankful for that anyway! The installation is going on right now, they were here at 7am. I have to stay home all day (bummer, huh?) while he is here. DH has to go into work for a little while so I am trying to get him to go in before lunch. Why? Well 2 fold really. If he goes early I can work in the cool of the day then go over to PTM's and show her how to blog (It's supposed to be around 90 today and she has functional a/c!) and when it is all done, DH can write the check! *evil grin*.

Yesterday my friend, Yuki, and her hubby gave me a wonderful few gifts for my birthday. First these adorable salt and pepper shakers. Better yet? They were wrapped in the cutest Red Riding Hood fabric! In addition, they gave me this adorable little bunny dish, and inside was a cell phone charm. I love this dish and can't wait to put him to work on my sewing table! Thank you Yuki and Hiro, you guys are the BEST!!


This am, around 6:30am I was on my way to the gym and decided that PTM really needed to join me so I called her up and told her to get her butt to the gym with me so we could be done for the day. Guess what she told me? No not what you might think, she said OK and joined me at the gym!!! We each got our work out for the day done. We also met up last night and she gave me a wonderful bag of goodies for my birthday too.

Some shower gel and lotion (she knew I was out), a LONG tape measure (where does she find this good stuff??), a Heath candy bar (YUM) and my favorite? Two rolls each of the black and red embroidery Cosmo floss from Bunny Hill!! PTM, you made my day. I think we will be going out for dinner together tonight also and then off to quilting.

I joined the Charming Girls Quilt Club so need to think about my goals and post them tomorrow. We will be posting goals every other month. Very reasonable. If you think you might like to join in a fun group with some fun stuff happening go over HERE and check it out. You have to have a blog (which is why I will be helping PTM with this little chore today!!) It looks like a fun bunch of people.

I am going to leave you here for the moment and try to get some destashing done. I had to move a LOT of stuff out of the way for the new A/C unit to go into the furnace and I decided to go through the fabric and sell some of it. So I will be listing some of the things here on my blog. If you are interested just let me know and I can get the new to you treasures on their way to their new home! Stay tuned!

Giveaway Time at Litte Miss Shabby's Blog

If you are a fan of Swell, pop on over to Little Miss Shabby's blog for a chance to win some of her scraps from this line. AWESOME. You will love her blog too, so take a minute and visit!

Block 2 of 12 Days BOM

I was so excited to get the second block of the 12 Days of Christmas BOM from the Fat Quarter Shop yesterday. I sat right down and made it them. Yes, I was able to get 2 blocks out of one kit yet again!

I LOVE the block and I love working with this fabric. Such nice quality! If you haven't joined in this BOM you really should before you miss out.

On a completely different note, we lost our a/c yesterday. It has not been working well, and it is an older unit, but I don't want to have to pay a lot to get it fixed. DH called the number on the a/c unit of the people that installed it and they are still in business so they are coming today to take a look. Please keep your fingers crossed for me that it won't cost too much.

As DD1 and I were leaving for work this am I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. I looked up on the roof of our garage and this is what I saw.

Hallie, just hanging out. She was looking at us as if to say, "Hey guys, don't worry I've got this." Just after I took the first pic she started moving. You know when that "witching hour" comes on when the cats race through the house, sometimes they kind of hop sideways and then run? Well she did that across the top of the roof. It was hysterical. She was so pleased with herself at being able to get out and on the roof. (My son had opened his screen window and it opens up onto the garage roof top. She is a funny cat and it made my morning start off with a chuckle.

I hope you all have a wonderful day too!