U of M Quilt Raffle/ BIG TEN Quilt

It's finally done! We finished the top awhile ago and then we got it back from Liz, the LAQ genius. As you can see in every block she did a star pattern to quilt the block but the best part is that in the sashing around each block she wrote (using thread) what they cheer at each school. You might think this an easy task but it was not. I did not know what they cheer at some of the other schools so what to do?? Well I went on my facebook account and randomly selected students from the places we didn't have and asked them, of course! The guy I chose from Northwestern actually emailed me back telling me that his mom was a quilter and that what we were doing was great! (I have to say everyone I contacted did get back to me with whatever the chant was from their school). I thought some of them rather interesting. Like for Penn State they say "We are...Penn State". And Purdue says, "Boiler Up!" and Illinois says, "ILL...INI". Interesting, fun facts to know and tell, hahaha.

Then I threw in a few close ups of the corner stone where we used the logo in a 4 patch and when we didn't have enough for 16 (only 11 schools in the Big Ten) I appliqued the Big Ten logo in the square! I love the way the Big Ten block came out too. I appliqued all the logos in the block. I also did all the center appliques for each block and Iowa and Penn state win the prize for being the most difficult to applique! Note the amazing Liz's BIG TEN quilting in the border of the quilt too. She even drew the football in free hand! I would sure love to hear what you all think of this quilt.

U of M Quilt Raffle

It's that time of year again. Time for the University of Michigan department of Pathology quilt raffle. This year we have 33 quilts donated (only 23 are up on the website as of right now but I'm working on it.) The deadline for submission is Thursday so I know I will be receiving quilts that late. They will have to be photographed and the writeups done and then they can be put on the web so please be patient! If you have not seen our raffle quilts before you are in for a treat. There is certainly something for everyone there. This is the website address

http://www.pathology.med.umich.edu/charity/quilts/quilts.html

Please take a minute to go and look at the quilts. Tickets may be printed from the website but money and tickets need to be mailed to the address provided. Tickets are one for $1.00 or 6 for $5.oo Money goes to help patient families at U of M that the social work dept have determined as being "in need". Last year the quilts raised $11,000 and we were able to help out 11 families with $1000 each. So even if you don't win a quilt, you are a HUGE winner in the eyes of a family that benefits from your donations. We will mail quilts to those that are not here that win so no worries there.

Now what are you waiting for?? oh, yeah, me to finish putting up the rest of the quilts, hee hee hee! It should be done by Friday, ticket sales begin on Monday. No time like the present to start looking now though. Please let me know what you think of the quilts we have up and remember us for next year if you are up for donating to a good cause!

Recipe

It has been such a busy time around my life lately. I have been asked for the recipe for the Cat Poop Cookise so I thought I would share it with everyone. I did not make it up but I don't remember where I got it from. See previous post for photos.

Here is the recipe:

Cat Poop Cookies

Chocolate Ingredients:

1/2 c honey
2/3c Butter
1 egg
1tsp vanilla extract
2c Whole wheat flour
1/3c Cocoa powder

Gingerbread Ingredients:

1/4c Honey
1/4c Molasses
2/3c Butter
1 Egg
ginger, cinnamon and cloves to taste

Mix Ins:

Coconut (tapeworms)
Chocolate chips
Butterscotch chips
Peanut-butter chips
Ramen noodles, cooked (round worms)
Corn
Peanuts

For chocolate ingredients:

Microwave the honey for about a minute or until it bubbles, add the butter, egg, vanilla extract whole wheat flour, cocoa powder and mix well.

For gingerbread Ingredients;

Microwave the honey for about a minute or until it bubbles, add molasses, butter, egg, and spices.

Add mix-ins as desired.

Chill dough for 1 hour in the freezer or several hours in the fridge.

Roll dough logs of random length and diameter of cat poops.

Bake at 350degrees F for 10-15 minutes or until done.

Serve in a NEW cat litter box on a bed of grapenuts (cat litter) with a NEW cat litter scoop.

I hope you all enjoy them!!

More from HP-07

These are the last pictures from the party. These first ones are of the Haunted gingerbread house my DD1 decorated. I got up early and stuck all the pieces together (they need an hour between each "gluing" to set) and she did the decorating. I think it came out just darling!




These are my cat poop cookies. Served in the grape-nuts "cat litter" and litter box. Complete with a pooper scooper! Unfortunately no one and I mean no one ate a single one! There were 2 kinds of "poop" chocolate and gingerbread, made with whole wheat flour and honey.

I made this pumpkin, really a Jack-O-Lantern, cake. It was a from scratch pumpkin flavored cake. It is a wonderful recipe!! no one cut into that all night either, so I ended up bringing it to work on Monday.

I made this mummy out of cheese logs. DD1 used the pastry bag with thinned down cream cheese to actually create the mummy. Again no one would eat him!

This shows The whole desert table.

Here is the actual food table. Can you find the "vertebrae" on the platter??

These are some friends from work. Who dressed up like work dorks?? They did!
Ahhh here is me as a vampire with my friend "Cher" aka Shelby (the one my DD! was named after and she is DD2's Godmother.

Ahhh here is me as a vampire with my friend "Cher" aka Shelby (the one my DD! was named after and she is DD2's Godmother.

Here I am trying to feed off of my friend Hiro. He is a visiting MD from Japan. He and his wife, my friend, Yuki, are here for 2 more years.

Karen, my friend from Brazil, and me. She is working on her post doc in our lab. She is such a sweetie and was TOTALLY fascinated with Halloween since they don't have it in Brazil

Karen and Hiro (I wonder who did Hiro's make-up since Yuki was still in Japan visiting??)

Aren't they so sweet? It is Karen again with her boyfriend, Cory.


All in all it was a great night!! The party moved outside into the gazebo in the back yard. My DH put the heaters on the propane tanks and we were quite comfortable in the slightly damp, chilly night. just purrrrfect for a Spooktacular Halloween evening!

I LOVE Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

As most of you already know, I had a Halloween party at my home last Friday. My DD1 was coming in from IN and really wanted me to have a party, like we always did when she lived with us. So, sucker that I am, I took most of the week off work, cleaned up the sewing, I mean living room, cleaned the house, decorated, made food and hosted a party. We had such a good time. I have so many photos that I will post them a few at a time. The first ones are of the decorations.
This is the front of my house, complete with ghosts that my DH and I made when the kids were little.

This is Frankenstein's monster on our porch. He used to light up but that broke a long time ago. When we first decided to put him on the porch, I took some of DH's clothes and stuffed them with leaves. Wayyyyy to much work. Now we use newspaper. The cup by his hand used to have dry ice in it so it would froth and smoke. My DS asked me on Halloween where the dry ice was!

This is the cat on my front door.

We bought a zombie a few years ago. His eyes light up and he sways while he talks. It is pretty cool!

I fell in love with this cat basket. So cute.

This is a votive candle holder, my...Cat-O-Lantern!

I found these pumpkin folk at an apple orchard. They look very cute on my hearth.

I used one of those carvable pumpkins and carved the face and then made a flower arrangement. i put one of those little battery powered candles inside too.

I love the bathroom. Can you see the JOL quilt showing in the mirror?? This is the black cat room!

Here is a large collection of my black cat Halloween things.

These are on the back of the toilet.

We bought these JOLs many years ago along with the little plastic shelf that attatches to the window. That way they look like they are floating in mid air.


This is my favorite ghost. Jumping out from behind the shutter! BOO!!

One more shot of the front porch.


I will put up some more pictures of the food and the people later, maybe tomorrow. Since the sewing machine is put away I have not done anything quilty except some embroidery for a quilt. I have 2 back from Liz and they will need binding. I will probably sew it on tomorrow night so I can turn it while I watch the Michigan-Michigan State game on Sat. I got back the crazy rail quilt (for the boys home) and the cat one for my friend with bone cancer.

I did manage to get to the Methodist Boys Home and drop off some Halloween candy. My CL's and I are working on making quilts for the boys. They have been taken from abusive homes and sometimes have come with only the clothes they are wearing. They have nothing of "their own" so we decided to try to make them some quilts. There are 70 boys 10 and up living there. They were so appreciative of the candy. The director told me that they usually get candy donations *after* Halloween so the candy from the CL's was greatly appreciated. More later...

Hallwoween Party 07

Halloween Party 07

Oh, this might not sound like a big deal ...but around my house it is HUGE! DD1 is coming in from IN and wanted me to host a Halloween Party. Every year for many, many years we have hosted HP's. The kids from all around know about ours and I think the largest group we ever had was DD2's sr year with probably over 100 kids. I had my work people here in the afternoon, followed by my friends and then all the kids. We decorate like most people do for Christmas. There is a lot of spooky food!

So I have to pick up the sewing room. Which, you would think, would not be that difficult to do. Ahhh...but it takes a lot of time to put the LR back to "normal". Then there is the planning and the shopping. And the making of the food. I did the decorating yesterday with just a few things left to do in that department. I am finishing up the last little bit of, not really cleaning, but putting away. Today I will go and get some mums to put around the front porch and then to the grocery store.

I did manage to sew down the binding on the gigantic U of M quilt and label it. I also got the binding sewn down on "Sunny Days" which is the quilt using the embroidered animals that Liz did and that I designed a quilt around. I also got that one labeled. Just before I put everything away, I made the binding for the Crazy Rail quilt, finished the cat quilt, made the binding and label for that, and finished all 42 pumpkins for the swap.

I will post pictures of the decorations and the quilts later when I get some time, maybe tonight. What will you do for Halloween?

Crazy Rail

Update on projects

I snapped this photo quickly before I sent the quilt to Liz for quilting. It is from a pattern I bought in Indiana while visiting DD1. I loved making this and it went together very quickly. I can see myself making this one again. It used 9 one half yard pieces for all the crazy rails and 1 yard for the red border. I just love it! I did the entire thing out of flannel. I saw the bear fabric and fell in love with it so I built the quilt around that fabric. I got the fish fabric as a compliment since it is in the bear fabric. Our church group is making quilts for the boys at a local Methodist children's home. the boys are middle to high school age and have been taken from their parents due to abuse and or neglect. The person in charge spoke at a LQS and told us that these boys often come to them with nothing of their own and was asking if we would help and make some quilts so they would have something of "their own". So my group is adopting a cabin (10 boys) and making quilts for them. We will also be doing little things trhoughout the year for the cabin since the director suggested that they get a LOT at Christmas and much less during the year. I thought this pattern might make a cute I spy quilt too if you made all the rectangles that you begin with from different fabrics.

These are a few close ups of some of the bear blocks.


This is the cutest ghost fabric I found when I went to the LQS last weekend with my DF, Charlotte. See howit is irridescent?

Last but not least, you have all heard me talking about the pumpkin blocks so here is a photo of what mine look like! (All 42 are the same). I like the idea of getting them back and all being different but it is kind of boring to make 42 of the same pumpkins! I hope my group will like them.

Cats N Stuff

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was pretty productive. I got home from work early on friday so I finished my crazy rail quilt top. I will try to get a photo today before Liz comes to get it. I went to East Lansing with my Dh to pick up DD2. We went out to dinner with her and her boyfriend and we had a really good time. Sat was LOTS os shopping. DS needed a shirt and tie for his homecoming dance that night so he went and picked them out and I had DD go and purchase them while I went with my DF Charlotte to a quilt shop. I got the cutest ghost fabric! I will try to remember to get a photo and post it tomorrow.



I then went to the mall with DD, and to Sam's club and then to the grocery store. I was exhausted, but i worked on some of my swap pumpkins. When I got up on Sun am I took a quick picture of my pink Morning Glories for Jeanne at Luv2stitch. For some reason the frost seems to have killed the purple ones. They sure are beautiful at the height of summer!


I was sitting on my couch in the FR with an old quilt (a cat quilt) over me and guess who decided to join in on some quilt action...that's right, Jack. I got up to go and do something and he stayed where he was napping so I took a few pictures. He is so sweet!




On Sun am he decided to help me get my batting ready to send to Liz with my quilt.



Then last night when I stepped away from the pumpkins again, Aiden decided my sewing bag was the puuurrrrfect head rest while she napped on the couch. Oh to lead the life of a cat!