Happy Halloween!

Although it's not my favorite holiday, I do enjoy seeing the kids dressed up and our Kindergarten class today had quite a few cute costumes! My favorite had to be the little boy dressed in a hammerhead shark costume. His mom had made it and the headpiece was just amazing! It was a fun day in Kindergarten. :o)

Tonight will be a great night for trick or treating...it's clear with a light breeze and it's about 70 degrees outside. Very unusual for this time of year! I don't have to follow the trick or treaters any more...as my 12 year old told me, "Mom, if you take me out trick or treating, I will have NO friends!" So, I can stay home and watch the parade of pirates, monsters and goblins.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween!

Care Bags

A few weeks ago I posted that one of my goals was to make some Care Bags for
kids to go to the organization of the same name. I finally accomplished that this week. The four larger bags have different Hawaiian fabrics on each side. The three smaller ones have the same green Hawaiian fabric on both sides. I received these fabrics in secret pal swaps on AOL years ago and could never decide what to do with them. I finally decided. :o)

Since I've moved into my new sewing room, my cat has decided to spend lots of time with me. Maybe because I put my table in front of a sunny window? So, here is Cheyenne, coming to help me with the care bags. I received her as a gift for my 40th birthday and she is a sweetheart. She's 5 now (yeah, you can do the math!) and I just love her. We have two other cats who share their house with us, Misty, who is 9 and Calvin who is 3. Along with Sam, the dog and Stevie the bunny. They own us!

Pattern Busting

Over the past few months I've been playing around with eBay, trying to see if I can sell a few things that we no longer need. I've managed to sell a few items, including a karate chest protector, a set of exercise bands and most recently, 3 pairs of size 0, almost new pants!

As I was listing a couple of doorknobs we had laying around, I was thinking about stashbusting. I don't feel that I'm ready to make a committment to the one year no buying group...I don't think my stash is big enough to need that. AND I would miss getting my monthly Sweet Treats too much! So I've decided to do a little pattern busting! I know that I will never get around to making quilts from these patterns. All were gifts from secret pals of old and as much as I like them, I have so many other projects in my little head that I won't get to these. So, I've listed each of them on eBay and will see if they sell. If not, I guess that means I'm MEANT to make them...someday!

Now, if I could bring myself to get rid of some of my magazines, I'd be in good shape and would make some quilters very happy. But I'm not ready for that yet....little steps!

Thank You

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and good thoughts for my daughter. The biopsy yesterday went well. She is in a little discomfort, which the pain medication is helping with and she will be out of school for a few days. Now we wait...the results won't be back until sometime next week. The surgeon did say that he didn't see anything that indicated a problem, but we still need to see what the results say.

Lazy Sunday

Yesterday was another beautiful Saturday, just perfect for Homecoming at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. Years ago when I attended school here, it was a 'school of last resort'. Few actually chose to go to then Glassboro State College, unless, like me, you wanted to go to an excellent teacher's college. Since I planned to be a teacher, I lived at home and went there...and loved my time there. My only regret is that I couldn't live on campus and have the full experience of "college life". Fast forward 23 years to now and Glassboro State College is now Rowan University. It is now a "first choice school", especially if you plan to major in engineering. My son applied to 2 schools when it was time...Clemson and Rowan. Accepted at both for business (now he's a PR major), he decided that Rowan was the school for him...it was closer to home, less expensive and gave him the old time college campus feel that he was looking for. He loves it there too. We drove down for the Homecoming Parade yesterday and had a wonderful time with him. His fraternity (TKE) built a float, so after a parent's reception in the new Education building, we watched the parade from our son's porch. The picture above is of Bunce Hall, the first building built at the school. Ironically, it was built facing with its back to the main street...they thought they would build the rest of the campus so Bunce looked out over it. But when land became available it was behind this building...so it looks at a college green and nothing else. I loved sitting on the steps of this building on fall days, talking with friends...

Since many of you have expressed a continued interest in my "Women of the Bible Quilt", here is this past week's block. It was for Rachel and I paper pieced it. This week is Leah and it is applique. Thank you for all of your kind words...these blocks are more of a challenge for me than I thought they'd be! You're all helping to keep me motivated.

If you are so inclined, please say a prayer for my 16 year old daughter. She's having a biopsy done tomorrow of one of her inguinal lymph nodes. The doctor doesn't feel it's serious, but wants to give us peace of mind over it. Thank you.

Oh...I've been trying to leave comments on blogs, but blogger won't let me...so please don't think I'm ignoring you if you haven't heard from me! :o) And thanks for the tomato suggestions. I left them in a bowl on my counter and they're ripening faster than I can eat them!

Green Tomatoes

It was a beautiful fall day here in Southern New Jersey. Temperatures in the 60's, a clear, blue sky and a gentle breeze blowing...perfect to spend some time in the yard. I put the garden to bed for the winter. The smell of basil was delicious as I pulled out the plants...I hated to see them go! I picked the last few peppers and we're having them and some tomatoes in a pasta salad I made to go with dinner. But...since I planted the garden very late this year (the neighbors did some landscaping and as a result my garden flooded and had to be replanted) I've wound up with a lot of green tomatoes. Since I don't like them fried, what else can I do with them? If I leave them on the counter, will they ripen? Should I put them in newspaper inside a box to help them ripen? (I found that online.) I know that so many of you have gardens, farms, etc., I thought you'd be able to help me.

Here are a few other pictures from today...the view from my front porch and one of my husband's little bird houses.

More blocks...

Here are the two latest blocks for my Women of the Bible Quilt. The first block is for Lot's Wife. I didn't like the block that was assigned for her, so I chose a different one. I thought a Contrary Wife block would be appropriate...if she wasn't so contrary, she wouldn't have been turned into a pillar of salt! I took the easy way out and paper pieced this block.







The second block is for Rebekah. I just loved making this block...I made templates, marked my quarter inch and hand pieced it while watching the coverage of the plane crash in NYC yesterday. As a Phillies fan and a Yankees fan (I lived in NY for almost 9 years, I was so sad to see that Cory Lidle was on the plane.

It's a beautiful day here...and the temps are dropping into the 30s tonight. I'm not ready for Finn's snow yet, but I love the cooler temperatures...Fall is my favorite season. You'd think I'd have an autumn leaves quilt, wouldn't you? That may have to be one of my next projects, once all my quilts are quilted. Another "maybe someday" project... I'll bet no one else has projects like those! :o)

Sunday Afternoon

This is my latest Women of the Bible quilt block. It is for Hagar and I did it with reverse and needleturn applique. It was a challenge trying to get those little points pointy...unfortunately, I wasn't too successful. But, it was fun to do applique again, I haven't done it in ages. My next block, for Lot's Wife, is paper pieced, so I hope to have that done tonight.

Not much to blog about here. It was a busy week, it seems like the time flies and I don't get on the computer as much as I'd like! I quilted two customer quilts this week, so next on the machine will be Judy's last one hour a day quilt. I'm not joining in right now with the new one, although I'd love to...I've always wanted to do an autumn leaf quilt. Maybe I can jump in later...I'm going to print out the instructions for the leaf blocks. I love the variety of fabrics everyone is using....these colors are just my favorites. I like Jeanne's too, I never would have thought to make the leaves green! (Sad, isn't it?? LOL) I tend to look at patterns and think, "Yes, it's great in those colors," and then make a quilt that is somewhat similar. I don't think outside the box often, unless the colors of a quilt are WAY outside my comfort zone. Then I just use the colors I love and make the quilt that I'm comfortable with.

My goals for this week are to quilt one of my quilts, and make a few CareBags. I have some Hawaiian prints that would be great for these bags and I bought some drawstring last week so I can make them. I'll post photos when I finish. Other than that, I have a run of doctor appointments this week...this is the week my daughter returns to the surgeon and he decides if they need to do a biopsy on her lymph node. Since the swelling hasn't gone down, I'm thinking he'll want to do one.

Thanks to Cher, who has offered to share her 49ers fabric with me...isn't she sweet? I'm so very excited!

I've moved!

Across the hall, that is! My youngest daughter went away for the weekend. I went into her room to put some books on her desk, and my goodness, was it a mess in there! I came to the conclusion that she had too much space. so she just threw everything around. I called my DH in Chicago and asked him what he thought about switching my sewing room with her bedroom. He said to go for it, so I spent the weekend moving!

Her room turned out great, and she loves it...especially since I left my little TV in there for her. When she came home and saw the room, she confided to me that she really didn't like having such a big room, it was too hard to keep clean. Well, I certainly saw that! :o)

So now I have a larger space to spread out in. It's far from being finished, but here's a sneak peek. The walls are a dark, sage green and I'll eventually sand the trim and paint it a cream color. The carpet will go at some point too.

Front corner of room, design wall will go on the blank area of the wall.

My new closets, the left end has a built in book shelf, the right end has 3' x 3' shelves built in, which is where I'll store my boxes of strips.

Looking from the windows to my sewing table. I was able to put 2 tables in an L shape and now have a nice space for my laptop.