Purdy M&M's and a secret project...

I was at Target the other day and saw these great M&M's! Look at the great colors for Halloween. (By the way, I eat these. Thus, the reason for trying to be creative while I walk on the treadmill!!!!) LOL I'm going to a sew-in this Saturday. If I have time, I'll try to come up with a little goodie to give the girls who go. If I run out of time, I'll just take some to share.

And we're having a Brown Bag swap on our Yahoo site. My BBB (brown bag buddy) is Joyce in NC so I'm working on a little project for her. She sent me burgundy embroidery floss and a cute snowflake fabric. I got about half way through the first "stage" of her gift.

I'm using one of Angela's drawings for the main design. It's going pretty fast so far and I like the way it's coming out. Joyce said she always gives homemade gifts but she seldom gets them because people figure she can make them for herself. But as we ALL know, it's so much fun to "receive" as well. No one knows more, how much time it takes to make a homemade gift than a crafter!

Berry Pickin Block #2

I finished block #2 of the Berry Pickin BOM. This was a little one so it didn't take that much time. It was just a matter of sitting down and doing it. I love these fabrics. They are so not what I normally buy and don't match my house at all. Oh well, I love the designs on the blocks so I'm going for it. :o)

The next block is a kind of big one. I'm not a very good finisher so it's going to take all I've got to see this one through. There are a couple of months that the blocks are B-I-G!! There are a few online friends doing it too so maybe they can beat me to a pulp (via email) if I don't stick with it. hehe

I wrote in an email that I was reading and writing emails while on the treadmill. Somebody thought I was nuts and I thought.....well, yeah. :o) But I saw this idea about a year ago.

I'm about as plump as a pumpkin. It's not very becoming. And I need to get on a plane at the end of next month and would like to lose some of the overflow around my 'seat'. I sit all day at work and then if I'm sewing or crafting, I'm sitting all night. Not so good. So I went out to the garage and grabbed an old shelving board. I put it across the hand rails of the treadmill and wallah! Torture while doing something I like, emailing and blogging!!!

I pretty much read my mail as soon as I walk in the door so now I'm going to try and turn on the computer, and get the feet moving!
Please say a prayer for our bloggy friend Terry. Maybe you could even drop her a little comment for support. Her husband had an accident at work. I'm sure things will be rough for a while. We gals have to stick together.

Lil' Pink Riding Hood

I wanted to check-in to avoid getting mail from no-blog Brenda. Don't you think it's nervy for someone who doesn't blog to complain when you get crazy busy and don't do any posts for a while? LOL

This is something I should've posted about back in May when I got this adorable fabric. My daughter Kelley (who has been so busy with life lately, that she hasn't blogged in a month),
gave me a yard of each of these fabrics for Mother's Day. Yup, back in May. She drew them and sent over to Spoonflower to print.

I thought I blogged about it before but couldn't find the post! Being over 50 isn't pretty girls! :o)
Spoonflower is a site that you can submit a design to print on Kona fabric for a mere $18.00 a yard. Yeah, it's crazy expensive but I LOVE that I have fabric of my very own that my daughter drew for me. She "allowed" my sister Isabel, who is her #2 fan behind me, to order some too.
The reason Lil' Red is pink is there was a problem with the printing. The re-ran it for us and I got another yard (free of charge) in orange. When Kelley pointed out it STILL wasn't right, I got Lil' Red in red but she lost most of her details on her outfit. It's okay though. I'm just trying to decide what to make with it. Do I do a tote, or a wallet, or a quilt???? Decisions, decisions. I'm just going to hang onto it until it speaks to me. I did load up the pieces in EQ6 and played with some block layouts but I don't want to cut it up too small so I will play some more.
Do you have some artistic ability and some extra cash lying around? :o) If so, go check out Spoonflower. There are some very creative people in our little world.

Giveaway Link

Dorothy Baker is starting an embroidery block of the month and is having a super-dooper giveaway. Go check it out for your chance to win.

One more set of pincushions...

Tonight was sewing night and it was just me and my old reliable friend Neena. We are the most pitiful girls. We get together in bad weather, when we're tired, it just doesn't matter. If it's Thursday night, it's SEWING NIGHT!!!! lol Sometimes we miss, but not very often!

Tonight I finished my little irons, my last set of pincushions for the exchange I'm doing.

I made them out of wool felt and silver heat resistant (metal-looking) fabric from Joann's, the kind you use to recover your ironing board. For the handle, I used those 3M Command white metal hooks. When I made the first one, it was too plain and needed a little sprucing up. The girls from sewing night last week suggested a little embroidery.

Now, back to the stitchery BOM I've been ignoring. Sheesh, I'm peddling as fast as I can and just can't seem to get caught up. And that's just for the crafting.....I won't even talk about my house! LOL

Miscellaneous crafting

Before I left for my little Vegas vacation, I made two more little tooth fairy pillows from my buddy Michelle's pattern. This was her post on these little cuties. She is a sweetie and shared her pattern with me and I've blogged about them before. I made the first two teeth for my twin nieces in MO and mailed them back in April.
Then my niece called and was telling me about her daughter, Alivia having two loose teeth and pulling one out with dental floss. I told her about the pillows and she said she would love to have one too. She said she still has her Tooth Fairy pillow but wanted Alivia to have her own. All of these little ladies are six years old. And while I was making one for all of these girls, I figured I might as well make one for my surrogate Granddaughter Ashley. She is also six.

When Ashley called to tell me thank you for her pillow, she read the entire note I had sent along with the package. I couldn't believe how good she read. I guess this generation of tv-watching babies-grown-up is paying off. :o)

And I haven't done any quilting lately but I did play with some crafting toys. Last Thursday night for TNT (Thursday Night Therapy), me and my buddy Neena played with this new cartridge I got for my Cricut machine. The cartridges were on sale at Michael's for $39 so I went looking for one called Tags, Bags and More but they didn't have it. They did have this one though and I loved the vintage kitchen designs so I bought it.

It did not disappoint. Although, I couldn't get my Cricut software to find the cartridge, it was still fun to cut out the retro kitchen items. I think I'm going to cut sets of these and frame them for Christmas gifts.

What do you think? Pretty darned cute huh? :o)

I hope to get caught up with my stitchery projects while watching some of the Fall line up. Boy, they've got some good lookin' tv shows starting this week. I practically need a calendar to figure out what to watch when!

Where have I been and what have I been doing?

I am finally back to check-in and load some pictures. (I've had some complaints about how long I've been gone. Can you believe it? Somebody actually reads this thing!!!) lol
I hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend. We had a trip planned so I just did laundry and packing and spent some time sorting out junk in our storage shed. The girls have been on a yard sale kick lately so we thought it was time to get some stuff sorted out. Boy, that seems so long ago. Where does the time go anyway? And the trip...this is what my wallet looks like...

HA HA....can you guess where we went?
My husband's birthday is September 9th. And this man.....he loves to gamble. He has been planning his birthday trip to Las Vegas since last year!! He can't help it. It's in his blood. His mama and daddy were gamblers. His sister loves to play too so when we go to a casino together, they sit at the blackjack table together. Me? I want something for my money so when he sits to play, I find something else to do. A casino gift shop excites me more than playing slots or 21. Or a lobby or bathroom as you will see if you read farther on. :o)

So starting his LAST birthday, all I have been hearing is "My next birthday is 09-09-09 so we're going to Las Vegas." He even made the reservation, which is pretty big. He usually gives those tasks to me.

But it was actually a really nice trip. He knows how I feel about Vegas so he made it a nice little vacation for both of us. (He's kind of like that, that hubby of mine.) We left Tuesday morning for our four hour drive and stopped at the Nevada state line to stretch our legs. I shopped at the Williams Sonoma outlet while he "played". I got some really cute glasses that I don't have a picture of (yet) and a red bowl/pitcher for mixing up small batches of pancakes or cookie dough. I'll try and post pics later. From there, we headed to the Marriot Grand Chateau to check in. It was a pretty nice place but it is a time share so there is no casino there. Nice for me, not so nice for hubby. We were right on the strip though so it was easy to get around.

Here is the birthday boy on one of our adventures after getting to Vegas. Silverton Hotel has a HUGE fishtank at the entry to the big Bass store that is there. On the weekends they have mermaids swimming around but the only thing we saw were lots of fishies. :o)

We went to the Bellagio Hotel while we were out walking around. Hubby "played" while I went to the botanical garden. If you'd like to see more pictures of that, you can go to my webshots album.

Here's a teaser shot to show you how pretty it was. They have themes for different seasons. They have a little video peek at the Bellagio website here. Click on the lower right corner that says "video tour".

We went to see a show at the Wynn and while there, we walked around to see the ins and outs of the casino. This place is so pretty. Very hoity-toity. I doubt I could ever afford to stay there. This....THIS is the entrance to the bathroom!!! lol

We saw the show, La Réve. Kind of a Cirque du Soleil show but not an official MGM show. You couldn't take pictures during the performance so this is a shot of after it was over. The center is the stage and the entire show is either on the water, in the water or on a platform that pops up. It was expensive (to me) but so worth it. We would spend the money to see it again.

We visited a quilt shop called Quiltique. They are in the BH&G Quilt Sampler magazine that's for sale right now. It's a nice size shop with a nice variety of fabrics and lots of samples all over. And cute little nooks like this one!

After checking out of the hotel on Friday, we went to the Hoover Dam. We had done the tour several years ago so this time we just went to see it on our way home. It's a wonderful thing to see if you are in the area. It's not that far from Las Vegas. Maybe a twenty minute drive.

This is a bridge that is the process of being built. It's going to be amazing when it's done. Heck, it's amazing now!
Now I have some housework and laundry to do.....then to some good sewing! Hope you have been busy playing with your fabric.

Berry Pickin block 1 and pincushion update

We had sewing night at my house last night. My buddies Neena and Sherrie came over. I worked on my embroidery BOM. I finally finished the first block. Yayyy! It's so pretty.....and so girlie. And so not me. That's what all the girls have said that are working on this one but it's so pretty we couldn't resist. :o) I will add the borders and little sashing units tonight (hopefully).

While the girls were over, I asked them to look at the pincushions I had made so far for the swap I'm doing. Earlier this week, my friend Nora came over and she had seen my cherry tart. Nora thought the top of the pie needed a cherry. I dug around in my stash of craft supplies and found floral wire and red bells. I cut out a leaf from a scrap and came up with a little cherry. The only thing is, it looked lonely. The girls last night agreed and asked me to lay two on the pie. Here's the
outcome and I think it just added the finishing touch to my little "tart".

My other pincushion is a little blue bird I made from a pattern. I'll post the name of the pattern later. I don't have it with me. In the pattern, you glue the bird on a small salt shaker. They filled it with little buttons. I couldn't find a small salt shaker for the life of me so I dug around (again in the craft supplies) and found some spools. One small spool wasn't enough so I found some with matching thread and it was the perfect height.

It needed a little more embellishments so I wrapped some floss around a small spool for the neck and pinned on a little pair of scissors. You know every embroidering bird needs her scissors!!! :o)

I wanted to make several pincushions for the swap and I had this bright idea to try and make a little iron. You know how us quilters have so much pressing to do with our blocks. Hmmm, how to make one? What to use? I bought some black wool felt and used some of that silver stuff for ironing boards. I could've probably hit Joann's for some silver fabric now that Halloween fabrics are out but this was cheap and I figured a half yard would be plenty. So this is the first prototype.

I have a list of things already to change and/or embellish. If I can get it just the way I like it, I might even try making up a pattern but who besides me and my crazy collection would want an iron pincushion???

It's Friday of a long weekend. Woohoo! I'm looking forward to playing in my sewing room but I have to clean it first. That's why these pictures were taken in the kitchen. There is not a clean surface in my sewing room! There's fabric, stuffing, crushed walnut shells, fabric, buttons, charms, glue gun, floss...........it's not pretty. lol

Awesome Spa Resort

I have been missing for good reason. My boss took me and my co-worker Becca to a retreat weekend in Carlsbad, CA to a resort called La Costa Resort & Spa. If you have been lucky enough to go, I don't have to tell you how fabulous this place is.

I will only post a few pictures here. I didn't take tons but there are a few more on my webshots page here. I didn't really notice but since I've been blogging, I hardly put any pictures on webshots anymore. Man, what a slacker!!

This picture is my room that I had all to myself. And out that little french door was the sweetest little patio. So very private and serene.

This is my boss Donna (on the left) and Becca on the right. We are all on our way to the spa for our massages. Are you drooling at the thought? We did too. :o)

And this is the spa facility. It was amazing. Just top notch all the way around. Full spa, private ladies area, showers with shavers, shaving cream, blow dryers, hair products. Anything you would need for before and after your treatment.

I had the avocado cylantro exfoliating massage, followed by a body mask, scalp massage and full body relaxation massage. Makes me all tingly just thinking about it again! Ahhhhh

Saturday night, we left the resort to have dinner at the beach. On the way there, we saw all of these hot air balloons floating in the sky. It's common in that area to see them but since we don't live there, we were captivated by how beautiful they looked floating in the sky.

I'm sorry the picture was blurry but my boss was driving and I took the picture while we were driving down the freeway.

We had dinner at a wonderful restaurant in Encinitas right on the beach called, what else, The Beach House. This was our view from the restaurant.....

And this was the view of our desserts!!!!!!!!!!

Carrot cake on caramel sauce with raspberries, moulton flourless chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream and strawberry shortcake. Look at this dessert! It was amazing. The outside was a thin layer of stamped fondant. With the red design, it was just amazing looking. And it was delicious too!

I've been working on another set of pincushions. I'll be back soon to post pictures of my other set. Gee, if I just had a little spare time, I could get so much done! :o)