Thinking About Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

 I have been working on a baby quilt for our little grandson due to be born soon. As I sew the minty green and chocolate brown flannel fabric squares together I keep thinking about mint chocolate chip ice cream , then I gather the green and chocolate brown eggs my hens lay and they make me think about mint chocolate chip ice cream. I love mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I think I am going to have to buy some mint chocolate chip ice cream .

Alice In Wonderland Teacup ~ Tea-Time Tuesday

 When my husband drew up the plans for our home here on Cedar Pond we knew we wanted most of the windows in our home to look out on Cedar Pond. Now we have a view of this pond through our front room window in all seasons, and we love it. Today the view showed me a stormy day.

 A perfect day to stay inside and sew.

 I am sewing a patchwork quilt of fabric one of my granddaughters chose for her bed. I gave her a 4 X 4 inch cardboard square to trace and cut out squares from fabric she chose  for me to sew her quilt. My granddaughter  traced and cut out hundreds of little squares for her quilt and today was a perfect day to sew  the squares together because there was no other work demanding immediate attention after I fed my animals. I could not garden in the down pouring of rain. I made myself a cup of peppermint tea and drank it from this teacup, a gift from my sister Karen, as I sewed many squares of fabric together to make a patchwork quilt for a granddaughter.

 The teacup is from Disneyland , but I think you could have guessed that as soon as you saw the photo. The quilt is barely begun in this picture. The puzzle for me is how to bring the differing fabric squares together to make an over all pleasing design for my granddaughter. I need some more tea and time to think about this.

 I have many friends & family who love Disneyland and all things Disney. I have never been to Disneyland, but I hear tell they love it and visit it as often as possible. My Alice In Wonderland teacup is from one of my sisters who also loves the magical land and especially sharing it with her granddaughter. I am honored she chose to give me a teacup that is a token of her good times in Disneyland.

Peppermint tea in a sweet teacup on a very stormy day spent sewing a quilt for a beloved granddaughter. A very good day for me.

When I look out my windows and see Cedar Pond I remember the many good times here with family & friends I love. I know I am blessed. Sip a cup of tea in your favorite spot at home and remember you are truly blessed !

 

Tea-Time Tuesday is hosted by these ladies , pop in and spend some time with them !

 ~Rose Chintz Cottage *

~ Martha's Favorites *

~ Artful Affirmations *

~ Bernideen's Tea-Time Blog *

~ A Delightsome Life *

 





 

Jeannie's Quilts ~ 'Liberty Or Death'

Jeannie Austin is amazing. Her quilts show a woman who is not only talented in quilting, but design, family history, story-telling, and sharing her skills with the community .Her love of quilting spills over into her family & community in great abundance. Because so many wanted to see her quilts and photograph them , Jeannie brought them to the Lacamas Community Center in our little community and with help, hung them up for photographing. There were a few of us snapping pictures and I missed some very good shots of her quilts, but I hope the pictures I did capture show her quilts in good light. Please click onto any pictures you want enlarged for better viewing. Close-up of one square. Jeannie's quilts are stories told in fabric, and most of her quilts are fabric & thread stitching her family history.I wish I had taken notes on what she was saying as each quilt was unfurled to be photographed, and this post shows only one quilt. I will be sharing the quilts I photographed in coming posts, but really feel her quilts are works of art . I think she could hold a quilt show and easily fill a large room with them. I did not get pictures of the backs and bindings of the quilts, but they too, were worthy of their own display.Jeannie inspired me to sew with care, creativity, and an attitude of sewing for the future generations to come. With the high price of fabric, the rarity of hand-sewn & hand-quilted items, combined with the love invested in a quilt, it is well to consider the design and future of any quilt you set your heart to make, and make it well! * I am thankful for women who freely share their skills and knowledge with other women , thereby passing on the joy of creating a life well-lived and well-loved within the means and abilities God has granted .

Distracted By Bouncing Spots!

I have been reluctant to get to work around here. There is a lot to do, and my husband is preparing a special dinner Friday night for my sisters and their husbands...but I keep finding myself standing by the fence line with Beatrix ( above).....

...I have chicken pens that need a lot of work done in them, wool needing to be spun and locker-hooked, but I am standing at the fence line with Hawk ( above)...

....there are dishes and glasses needing that extra special polishing , table linens to select and arrange, a dessert to be baked, but I find myself standing at the fence line with Willow (above)...what are we distracted by?

Bouncing spots!Little bouncing spotted lambs. They are so much fun to watch, and watch, laugh and watch some more. Sigh.........I am not going to be getting as many things done as quickly as I had planned. And then to add distraction upon distraction,

Miss Alice from Thoughts of Home* sends me these squares of fabric for quilting projects that perfectly suits my color and fabric taste. Now I am distracted by bouncing spots and blue and yellow squares and so much more fun to come. Thank-you Alice!

Distraction: "Confusion from a multiplicity of objects crowding on the mind and calling the attention different ways;" fr. American Dictionary of the English Language

Spot On Some of My Quilts

This is a quilt I made almost 2 decades ago. Obviously I did not finish it. I started it when we lived in Tacoma and worked on it every once in awhile after we moved out here to the country. During our years of building our home, home-schooling our children and all the family events in between I cut and pieced this little bit of a quilt top using used fabrics cut away from old clothes, scraps of fabric left over after other sewing projects, and some new fabrics bought in the sale bins of fabric stores I would frequent. I finally tacked it up on the wall in our spare bedroom, maybe I will finish the top , add batting and backing and quilt this one day. For now there are so many other things I would prefer to do, besides, I have a sister and friends who are very talented with quilting and love to add their quilts to my collection. "Quilters touch the past and the future." I won this quilt!Many of the women in our community made quilt blocks and after entering the blocks in the Lacamas Community Fair, they got together on their sewing day in the community hall to assemble two quilts using the collected quilt blocks that had been judged at the fair. The raffle tickets for the two quilts were drawn at the Lacamas Christmas Bazaar and I won first choice of the two quilts! "A bed without a quilt is like the sky without stars." ( click to enlarge and see the detail in the quilt blocks)) I chose this quilt because of the lambs and the bees. The theme of the fair, and the quilt itself, was "You have to bee here..." and fair type and honeybee squares fill the quilt, with the prize-ribbon fabric being the unifying fabric. "A quilt is a treasure which follows its' owner everywhere."

Don't you just love this happy quilt?"When life gives you scraps-make a quilt."

"Good friends are like quilts. They age with you, yet never lose their warmth." "May your sorrows be patched and your joys quilted."

Happy, Happy Birthday Sistah!

It's my sister's birthday and she, sister Joni and I all got together here for lunch and a good time!We had chicken roasted with herbs, onions, carrots, and red potatoes from our garden, coleslaw, broccoli.., and lately served biscuits. My sisters did not know I could leap off my seat at the table so fast ! We were almost done with lunch and Joni said, "didn't you have biscuits in the oven?" Oh my, I did, and they were STILL in the oven baking away. I rescued them and they weren't burnt...that's as much as I have to say about them. Silly me. ( above: Karen is holding a special birthday goblet given to her from Sister Joni. )

We posed together for pictures, and our thoughts were for our 4th and baby sister who lives in New York and was unable to be with us. Joni on the left, Karen on the right.

I am the oldest sister~shortest, AND oldest.

My sister Karen brought me a gift for HER birthday lunch. She made me this quilt and it is perfect in our bedroom, what is even better about the quilt is that she made it out of fabrics that have special memories attached.

Here is the backing laid over the front. I love everything about this quilt, most special of all that she made it for me and made it with colors and fabric she knows I love.

We had a birthday toast "to sisters!" and included a glass of champagne for our sister Tricia.

"In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter , and sharing of pleasures." Kahlil Gibran Thank-you sisters for this friendship, a true blessing not taken for granted!