The Locusts...alll about food!

My little sister Virginia, describes our family gatherings like locusts. You put out the food and they come, they devour, and all that's left are crumbs that would barely feed a mouse. If you come late, somebody had better saved you a plate or you would starve!! LOL

They look kind of calm in that picture, don't they? That's concentration. Trying to decide what chow to put on the plate. We had a Mexican food feast for our Christmas celebration on Sunday.

That good looking young man in the yellow t-shirt is my nephew Greg. I'm surprised he got in line for food. He loves, LOVES, L-O-V-E-S a certain cookie I make called Santa's Whiskers. Every time I went in the kitchen, I would see him over at the baked goodie table and he'd have three or four in his hand. So cute.

So, there were no pretty dishes or fine china. There was however, tamales, enchiladas, enchilada casserole, rice, beans, carnitas, a couple of pasta salads, lots of salsas, guacamole and dip. Oh, and we went through 120 deviled eggs! Unbelievable.

This was a little table we set up to put some baked goodies on. One sister and her family came over the night before we got together and she kept wanting to sample cookies. I kept moving them and telling her "no" because I was afraid I was the only one providing sweets. That was not the case, thank goodness.

I did my baking at my sister's house, as I mentioned yesterday. We did the Santa's Whiskers (top plate on the left), sugar cookies, english toffee and peanut butter blossoms. We also made dough for gingerbread cookies but didn't bake them there. I cut out little bears and put red hots for buttons. I was running on empty by the time I had to bake them and that was all I had left in me.

The day of the party, I dipped strawberries in white chocolate and they were delicious!
This wraps up what I wanted to share about the holidays other than a cool gadget I got for one of my presents. I'll chat about that later. Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful New Year and are blessed with good health, lots of crafting time and that you have a prosperous year (so you can buy new fabric!). :o)

Lake Casitas, CA

My hubby's company shuts down every year for two weeks during the holidays. And every year he has big ambitions to do things around the house or on his hot rod but usually ends up kicking back watching tv and relaxing and *poof*, the time is gone. This year he said he wanted to do something with his time off and he wanted to rent an RV and go camping with the kids. I'll be honest, I pretty much freaked out when he said that. I like to do holiday baking and I try to make a Christmas gift or two, I don't buy bows for my gifts, I make my own. I love Christmas for so many reasons, but lets face it, leaving the house right before Christmas to go camping threw me over the deep end. I tried to remain calm though. After the shock of the idea, it started to sink in and I thought it might be fun to sit by a campfire with the kids or go for a ride on the lake in a little fishing boat.
Well, these are a few pictures of our trip. This was the view walking from the little overflow lake area to our campsite. Pretty gorgeous, huh? :o)

This is the dock that we tried fishing off of. "Tried" fishing because we didn't get one little nibble. Not one tug on any of the four lines we had in the water. Me, my hubby, my daughter Ashley and her boyfriend Dave went on Saturday after we checked in. We stayed out there a couple of hours. Richard had to put the worms on the hook because none of us could bear to cut one in half with our fingernail and then 'hook' him. Bleck! But you can see that the scenery was beautiful so there are worse things than not catching a fish. And besides, we had plenty of groceries. lol

This was the view towards the lake from the RV. Not too shabby a spot.

This is us fishing off the dock. See those short sleeves? It was around 73 degrees, sunshine, blue skies. A typical Southern California December day. My hubby's a pretty smart cookie to have us go camping before Christmas! We might have to make this an annual tradition.

And the baking? Well, here is my solution to that.
This is my sissy, Isabel in her gorgeous red kitchen. She lives about 15 minutes from the lake. When we talked on the phone about my dilemma, she said "Why don't you come over and we can bake together." She loves to bake but usually only makes pumpkin bread because she doesn't ever want to do it alone. It worked out perfectly. I tell you, it was all the best the both worlds. While sitting at the campsite playing dominoes one night, Isabel said, "Can you believe we're sitting here relaxing and having fun and there are people fighting crowds and parking at the shopping malls." Ahhhh, it's a wonder I'm not smarter since I'm surrounded by all these geniuses. :o)

Merry Christmas

I hope you had a wonderful and blessed Christmas. Ours was wonderful. We went camping (in a rented RV) on Saturday and came home Tuesday. That created a great big mess of unpacking but I was able to get everything done before Christmas Eve when the kids came over.

I think our girls (and guys) enjoyed everything they got for Christmas. I got some small homemade goodies done for the girls, like potholders in their kitchen colors and got a simple quilt done for my boss.
My daughter Kelley, the starving artist :o) also got some homemade gifts made for everyone for Christmas. This first one is for her sister Stephanie, who can't have enough pink!

She drew little outfits on decorative paper, cut them out and put them on a clothesline. Adorable, don't you think? Me too.....and Stephanie LOVED it! I told Kelley she should get some things like this made and put them on etsy! I don't think she would be starving anymore. I might need to be her agent. Agents nag their clients to get things done, don't they? LOL

This was my gift and it almost made me cry. I just see so much potential in Kelley, and creativity. I am in awe with what she comes up with. Maybe I'm a biased momma.

I don't know if you can see it, but the button that the little girl is bending over to pick (or smell) is a rose.

Below is Richard's gift. When they were younger, he coached all of the girls when they played softball. That always makes a good subject matter for a picture for her Dad. Kelley's spitting seeds, Stephanie's drinking from a sipper bottle and Ashley's got her glove, ready to play. :o)

Kelley also drew two other pictures for our other daughter Ashley and her boyfriend, Dave a little portrait but the pictures were too dark or out of focus. I'll try and get a picture of those and post them.

My family of about 30 are coming over tomorrow to celebrate Christmas and give our mama lots of presents. She's 82 now and time with her is precious. That will be the last of our Christmas celebrating. I've got to go finish baking a few batches of cookies or cupcakes to add to the baked goods I've got done already. And those that my husband hasn't eaten!!! :o)

Little Snowbuddies

About a week ago, Neena, my friend the Stampin Vixen, sent me a link to this blog with the cutest idea ever for a little favor or classroom gift! And that blog mentioned this blog with the free download in a pdf. I guess she downloaded it at some point and shared it. How great is that! So off I went to print, print, print. I just used regular paper, not cardstock. I figured anyone who got one was just going to rip into it and eat it so why waste my good paper. :o)

Neena and Sherrie came over last night for a little TNT and these are the result of a little production line.

Cute little dudes, don't you think? Of course, besides the printing and cutting the paper, I also had to hit Costco for Hershey bars (about $17 for a box of 36) and dug in my stash for a piece of fleece because I didn't have any little kid socks. My kids aren't little anymore! Had I seen this pattern a while ago, I could've hit up a thrift store or something but the fleece worked good enough. Thank goodness it wasn't camouflage or something worse than the red and purple I had. Although, I don't own anything camouflage so I don't even know why I mentioned it. LOL

Here's a close up of the graphic. I just cut a strip of fleece for the scarf. On some of them, when we pulled it tight to tie it, it curled right up.

Each of the girls took about 10 home and I'll put the rest in a small basket on the table when my family comes over for Christmas next Sunday. I think they'll either take them and keep them or tear their cute faces off and gobble them right down. hehe

And if I didn't post this, I would be living up to my Ogre name. Neena got a new doggie. I guess you wouldn't say he's a "used" dog but since he's not a puppy, maybe he's a hand-me-down. :o) His name is Charlie but she wants to call him Chopper. That's this week. She's already come up with a couple other names she likes. Her hubby thinks Charlie's name is just fine since he's had it for about a year. He's a good boy and Neena is smitten with him. I don't get it. LOL

We are off to RV for a few days and come home before Christmas. My hubby is renting the vehicle as we speak. I still don't know what he was thinking by kidnapping me a few days before Christmas. The man obviously has no idea how much work is left to do before we celebrate the joy of Christmas. But we're working it out. Our kids will join us for one night and I'm going to my sisters to do some baking. I might live through this!! :o)

Swap-a-roo!

My daughter Kelley was going to do a "pay it forward" on her blog in October. She had seen it on another blog and liked the idea but she only got a few responses and two of those were people who didn't have a blog (a requirement). So she decided to cancel it but still do an exchange with the interested ladies. There were six of us - Kelley, Stephanie (my daughter and Kelley's sister), me, Isabel (my sis), Neena the Stampin' Up! chick and a friend of Kelley's, Jackie.
Kelley swapped out the goodies last week but I'm just getting around to post about it. Tis the season to run around like a headless chicken!!! :o)
These are what Kelley made. Little kids dressed up like Humpty Dumpty like one of her drawings. The only thing missing was a crack in the shell and a little bandaid. I thought she did really good especially since she doesn't sew that much and they had little tiny arms to get turned out!

These were some of the other treasures I received. Jackie has a Yulu printing machine so she printed us a tote bag to drag around our unfinished projects. (Hopefully to get them finished!) Isabel was on the ball and made little Chinese take-out boxes. Since this swap was announced in early October, she made some out of Halloween fabric. Who knew they'd be swapped out in December?

This adorable little ghost was tucked inside the Halloween take-out container. Isabel crocheted it from a free pattern from Lyon Brand Yarn website.

And Neena made these fabulous personalized stationary boxes for each of us. They contain a post-it note, a spot for stamps, three greeting cards, gift tags and gift cards. They were all so pretty. The decorative paper she used was gorgeous and they were all different.

A little close up. I turned the flash off of my digital camera because it was too bright and overexposed. Without the flash, the pictures look orange but believe me, the cards and box are a gorgeous cherry red. Yummmy!

Aren't my friends talented. My daughter Stephanie's project isn't shown here. She needed to finish up one last step so I told her I'd photograph it later but wanted to share these for now.

I went to my friend's house last night and quilted a quilt for my boss. I just did a big meander all over. It's just a piece of fabric with borders on it. I showed a picture of it here from the trip to the condo. It's the one with deep red borders. Anyway, I just did a big meander all over it and will get the label made tonight and sew on the binding. Sooooo much to do, so little time!

Christmas Cards

My friend (and Stampin' Up demonstrator), Neena, invited me over for card making today to get a start on some Christmas cards. There were just four of us there, another friend Nora and Neena's daughter Meghan. I guess I wasn't on top of things because I didn't think to take pictures of the cards the girls got done. Nora did a beautiful red tree with glitter sparklies. These were the three I did, trying to keep things simple but a little creative.

The decorative paper and ribbon I used were from Michaels and everything else is Stampin' Up!
Nothing fancy but at least I made an attempt for a little something homemade.

Off to check my list, make up some labels and check my stamp supply. I guess I better find my store bought cards too because I only got 12 cards made. Another thing to check of the to-do list. :o)

Body parts and Lookey-loo's

My daughter Kelley....the artsy-fartsy one, Kelley Bo Belley, was over last night to work on some projects for a little swap we are doing. She saw a "pay it forward" swap and was going to do that on her blog but didn't have enough people sign up so she just asked friends and family to do it. She had her 'body parts' cut out and borrowed my sewing machine to sew them together.

I came in the room with my camera because, well, we HAVE to have pictures for blogging, right? After I snapped the above photo, Kelley asked to borrow the camera for a minute. Her little partners in crime (an unfinished Halloween project) were watching her sew from the pile of paint bottles.

Kelley didn't tell me her little friend's names. They're awfully cute sitting there so PATIENTLY waiting for a coat of varnish and some stain to dirty them up a bit. Maybe they'll be next in line after the body parts get put together. Sheesh, I sound a little grusome talking about body parts and vampires. :o)

It felt like we fed the masses!

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving. We served 30 at our house! We were busting at the seams but we got to visit and laugh and enjoy the family. All reasons to be thankful!!
I started the morning with these two buddies. :o) They went into the oven at 8:45 a.m.

The family showed up one group at a time. Little by little we had a houseful from San Diego, Orange County, Ojai, Lancaster.....and nobody was empty handed! I do the dinner and they bring the snacks. Oh my, as if the big birds and ham weren't going to be enough, we had a cheese ball, veggie platter, fruit and dip, chip and dip, nacho cheese, salami/pepperoni and cheeses. I'm glad they had all those cheese dishes. It helped me to not overeat that day. Cheese = blech!!!

THE BIRD IS DONE!!!! Don't you just love that last hour before the meal? Stuffing out, check. Rolls in, check. Taters mashed, check. Gravy made, check. Let's eat!!!

With 30 people, there is no way we were having a sit down dinner. We set the food up on the counter and lined up for buffet-style. Hey, we're a big family and nobody would be impressed by a sit down dinner with china. Just put a plate of food in front of them and they're happy campers.

Of course, after all that food, we took our annual walk. My streets are kind of long and we walked around two of them. Would you be scared if you saw us coming around your corner?? hehe

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Maybe some of you spent a nice quiet day at home. (Lucky dogs!) LOL

Me and my hubby were slugs all weekend, watching movies and eating leftovers. Working so much on turkey day wore-me-out!!! I did have him help me get the bins of Christmas decorations down from the rafters. I don't get many volunteers from my girls to help with the decorating. They complain that I'm too picky about where things go. Can you imagine? hehe I can't help it if they put stuff here or there and when they come back to visit, it's in a different place!

Trip to Lake Arrowhead

I know I've been missing but as usual, there is a good reason. Besides the fact that I'm trying to clean and shop for Thanksgiving, I let my girlfriends talk me into a trip up to Lake Arrowhead for a little retreat. (I'm sure glad they did!!!)
Here we are looking like some deer looking at headlights while waiting for the camera on the timer to take our picture! lol Neena, me, Sherrie and Susan had so much fun. We laughed and carried on and ate and ate and ate. I guess we were gearing up for Thanksgiving. LOL

I was able to keep my nose to the grindstone and get some projects done. The first one is a panel you might've seen in your local quilt shops. I've seen it everywhere. I trimmed the panel just after the holly leaves and added the red and cream checked border. Susan did the same thing on her top and gave me her leftover fabric. She shares very nicely. :o) Now to quilt it. I might just stitch in the ditch and meander the main part and border so I can get it hung up this Christmas. Nothing fancy for this little hanging.

Then I got four sets of potholders done for Christmas gifts. It was nice to be able to get some of that fabric that's been sitting around made into something useful. They are various sizes depending on how much fabric I had. The fat quarters didn't give me enough fabric to make very big potholders but they're good enough and I think they're cute.

Then my boss asked me for a quilt for Christmas made from this Hoffman fabric with motifs from Fullerton High School. She bought an entire bolt of the fabric since it is her and her husband's alma mater and now her daughter is going there. I didn't want to cut up the fabric because it's kind of a big design and I thought I would lose the designs so I just put 6" borders on it. I will have to check my stash and see if I have some flannel for the back.

I got this little quilt (that I worked on the last sewing day at Curves) squared up and put the rickrack on it. I think I'll give it as a gift but not sure yet. I got the backing at the quilt shop on Friday when we stopped on the way to the condo. I had filled my frequent shopper card the last time we were up there so it was nice to spend it this time.

The last thing I got done was to work on four cherry tart pincushions for an exchange my daughter is hosting. There are five ladies who will make some craft item and she will swap them out on Thanksgiving day when we're all together.

I might not get another chance to check in before Thanksgiving. I'm having 26 of my nearest and dearest family over so there are lots of things to do to prepare for that. I hope that you have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Stitching and a finished quilt...but not mine!

I got my kit for block #4 of my BOM. It's kind of a big one and Thanksgiving, cleaning, cooking, and decorating at the end of the month for Christmas, it'll be interesting to see if I can get this one done. It sure is cute though!!

I got a total of four flowers stitched at Thursday Night Therapy (TNT) last night. Hey, it's a start. And I am trying my disappearing marker for marking my blocks. The pencil didn't come off of the last block that easy. I had to soak the block and that's a pain so we'll see how this works. I got this suggestion from a couple of ladies and I've never had problems with this marking method in the past, so we'll see.

And Sherrie popped in after her bunco night with her 'other friends'. ;o) Her husband is a USC alumni and she made this quilt, kind of for him and kind of (mostly) for her. lol It's a beauty!

She got the pattern from our Alabamie friend, Carolyn, who made this same quilt but for OU. These girls are kind of over-the-top football fans. Sherrie satin stiched the SC's in the corners as well as the Trojan in the center of the quilt. She grid quilted through the star and chain blocks, and made her first attempt at trapunto by doing the words "USC" above the Trojan and "Trojans" below him. She had four coaches sign it. It's pretty awesome. I didn't think to get any close ups. I was just happy her and Neena stood still long enough for me to take the picture. :o)

Machines and Mom

I took two machines for service to try and get them from the storage stage to the 'use' it or 'move' it stage. This first machine is a White from `61 or `62 according to the internet. My nephew had a friend he helped move a couple of years ago and this was in the 'pitch it' pile. He asked me if I wanted it and of course, I couldn't see it get sent to Goodwill. I didn't want to invest any money into this machine, not knowing if it even worked so I just bought a new belt. I brought it home and cleaned it and oiled it according to the manual. It purrs like a kitten now. I dont' think there's much value for this machine but it stitches nice so hopefully one of the girls in the family will want it and if not, one of their friends. We know lots of girls so it shouldn't be too hard to find someone to take this little workhorse.

I did an online search for White machines and there were some pretty cool ones made. Pink, turquoise, silver, you name it!

This next machine belonged to my grandma and then my mom. The cabinet isn't in very good shape and could be refinished. Someday I'll get to that. :o) Since the machine has sentimental value, I paid my service guy to clean this Singer up. I picked it up today and put it back in the cabinet and took it for a spin. It ran really nice. It had a bit of an oil smell but heck, the machine hasn't been run for something like 20 years so I'm surprised it even started!

And this is my mom working on her little Christmas tree. Yeah, I said Christmas tree. I guess it's okay to mention Christmas now. Before Halloween, I think it's kind of taboo but now, I think it's okay.

My mom came for a visit and since I work, I thought this would be a nice project for her to work on while I was gone. The only problem is I gave it to her on Saturday night and she worked on it all day Sunday. It was done "before" the workweek even started!!! But it's so cute. I think I might have to go get myself one. LOL

I got it at Michael's for 40% off $39.99. It comes with a wooden base, the little skirt and all the ornaments. There are about 20 little resin shapes like Santa, an angel, Joseph, toy soldier, etc. There are also big pearl ornaments, little pearl ornaments and candy canes. So darn cute.

And here is my mamacita with her finished tree. Both are kind of cute, eh? :o)

BOM Block #3

I finished this just on time this month. I went online and saw that my checking account had been billed for block #4 so I'll probably get it this week sometime. Yay!

This block is called Sweet Cream. It wasn't too bad but this was the biggest block so far. So far being the key here. I checked and block #4 is a big one! Kind of the center block of the quilt. I'll be hard pressed to get it done this month with it being the biggest and squeezing in a holiday and cleaning but I'm gonna give it the old college try. (Even though I only took two classes in college; drawing and weaving!) I guess I didn't want to push myself too hard. haha

I used a quilting pencil to mark the pattern for this block and had a hard time getting the pencil off. You might be able to see some shadows around the neck of the bottle. I used everything, white eraser, eraser that is on the pencil, a little soap and water. Nothing really removed it but now that the block is sewn, I think I'll put it in a shallow bowl and soak it in a little detergent. Hopefully, that'll do the trick.

We've had beautiful weather here in Fullerton. The skies are blue and it's been in the low 80's during the day and cooling off in the evenings. You can feel Fall in the air. I don't know how I feel about this time change though. It's dark early and by 9:30, I feel like I should go off to bed but that's not gonna happen. :o)

Happy Halloween!

I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween and don't eat too much candy!! :o)
We don't get very many trick-or-treaters but we'll see how this year goes. Maybe it'll be an all time record of handing out candy. With our kids all grown up, I enjoy seeing the little ones in their costumes even more.

This pumpkin is a craft I made a few years ago. I think I saw it in a magazine. Then I shared it with my sister, Isabel and we made one for everybody, some with Halloween fabric and some with Fall fabrics like this one. They are styrofoam balls divided equally in six parts. Fabric sections tucked in the balls with a knife. The tops are corks painted brown and a fabric leaf with a little batting.

Hey Cupcake!

This is my daughter Ashley in her cupcake costume we finished up tonight. She saw a picture online so we tried to copy it but I think ours has better "sprinkles".

She's not wearing these gray pants with her costume but I was afraid if I didn't get a picture of her tonight, I wouldn't get one.
So if you decide to make yourself a cupcake for Halloween someday, we used 4 sheets of poster board and folded it every 2" accordian style and then glued the sheets together. We used 1" elastic to add straps for over the shoulder because that's what we had on hand. The "frosting" is polyester stuffing that we glued and pinned onto a white shirt. The "sprinkles" are these styrofoam crafty things I found at Joann's called Magic Nuudles. They are so cool. I thought they were just styrofoam pieces for crafting but according to the directions, you can dampen an edge, and stick pieces together to make all kinds of fun stuff. I guess we'll have to play with them later because tonight they were giant cupcake sprinkles. :o)

You can't really see it but we wrapped a piece of foam with brown fabric for the "cake". Ashley thought she should have cake in her cup (hehe) And it was a good idea because it kind of covers up where her cup ends and her frosting begins.

Did you notice her slippers? At least her feet will be comfy.

Pictures Posted

I posted pictures or my trip to Winslow on my webshots album. There are some great quilts that were shared by the group. If you'd like to see some nice projects, check them out. Some of those ladies are such over-achievers!!! :o)

I've got to cut out some costumes tonight for my daughter and her boyfriend. If I get something finished, I'll post a picture. We're talking about an Indian and a cupcake. Not exactly a "couples" costume. Well, I guess this tribe of Indian likes cupcakes! lol

Winslow Retreat

I went to Winslow, Arkansas for a quilting retreat this past week. The weather was a bit chilly and it rained but it was nice. Some of the group there I had met before and know them from my online swapping. Others were new to me so it was nice to meet some new people.

I had a great time but got a bad sore throat and a lovely headache and chills. I tried my best to not let it get to me. I just wasn't able to stay up and sew marathon nights like I usually do. I came back to work today and found out my coworker had the same thing since last Wednesday. We must've caught it at the same time and shared the nasty germs.
Winslow was so pretty this time. The last time I was there, it was 2003 adn it was later in the year. November, I think, and very brown. This time, Fall was in the air.

For two and a half days, I worked on this little wallhanging. I got the strips and muslin in a kit I bought at the quilt run this summer. I added the green for the star points and 1" hst's. After I quilt it, I will cut the border to have scallops. I love the fabrics they provided for the nine patches. That's why I bought it. It was $20 and I think that's the best twenty bucks I ever spent!

I left there on Sunday morning and this was the sunrise a little after 6:00 a.m. shining in our cabin window. What a beautiful thing to see first thing in the morning. CA probably has sunrises like this but I don't get up early enough to see it! :o)