California Fires

I live about 10 miles from the fires that are taking place in Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills (CA).

These pictures are from my front porch looking across the street. The last photograph is the same direction as in photograph #1 but 3 hours later.

Still seeing lots of blue skies. The Santa Ana winds are good for one thing. Cleaning the air. Not a good time for fires.

Directly across the street from me.

This photos (below) is behind my house at the same time I took the other pictures. It's about the time the fires in Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills were starting. This blue sky didn't last long.

This is at about 3:00 p.m. today.
This is at about 5:00 p.m. The air is thick, smelly and the ashes are everywhere. I watched the news and saw some beautiful homes burn down like match sticks. It is so sad. I can't imagine people leaving their homes, sitting in a hotel and watching the news to maybe see their home burning. It's got to be awful. God bless the firemen fighting these fires and the families who have left their homes and don't know what they'll go home to.

Coffee and Cream

I hosted a swap on Backporch Friends this month. It was a small group of ladies that participated but the swap was a success. These are the pretty Bear Paw Variation blocks that I swapped out. Aren't they yummy?

Have you been to a quilt shop lately? Well, for some reason, I haven't been shopping in a while. I guess if you read some of my prior posts, you know things have been a little crazy. Well, I headed over to my local fav shop, Cozy Cottage and picked up some goodies. I want to make a few more bear paw blocks to get a 4 x 5 setting so I picked up these two fabrics. And I saw this great pattern for a chubby charmer! They had a sample in the store and it's such a nice big bag, I guess I'll have to make me one......someday!

The beige fabric is a Thimbleberries but I don't remember who makes the brown fabric. But it has little cherries on it. Who could resist that!??

I guess I better go through my charms and see if I can come up with enough to make that bag. I don't think the charms will be the problem. I don't know if I have enough fusible fleece. Well, I better get. The girls are coming over for sewing night. I gotta clean off a space for somebody else to play. (I kind of hog my space that way!) :o)

Catching up - crazy busy weekend

First things first. Thank you to anyone and everyone who ever served in the military of the United States of America. Thank you for my freedom! Thank you for your bravery. I wanted to make sure to say something in appreciation before I got to yackin'.

Now onto my very busy weekend.......

My mom was at my house for a few days before she went to make her rounds with my other two sisters. This gives my kid sister a break. My mom will be back for Thanksgiving....which will be here WAY before I'm ready! lol

This is Sara on the left and my mom on the right. Sara is my friend, Nora's mom. I met Nora in the 2nd grade so we've known each other for-e-ver which means our mom's have known each other for some forty some odd years too! When Nora heard my mom was coming over, she thought it would be great for them to see each other and visit since it's been years since they've seen each other. You never know when you'll get another opportunity to get mom's together again so it was a photo op. :o) Sara is 74 and my mom just turned 80! We should all be so lucky to look this good, huh?

After my sister left with my mom and Nora and her mom left, little Ashley, my surrogate granddaughter, came over. I barely had time to wipe the crumbs from lunch off the table! Ashley and I made home made playdo from the cookbook I've had since my 20-something year old daughters were in preschool! It's got some good "food" recipes in it too but I like having a place to look for recipes for fun stuff like playdo and goop. Ashley loved it and it helped me have some sit down time. Man, she wears me out!
Okay, so all of that was on Saturday! I KNOW!!! LOL That's how I felt too!!! Ashley stayed the night and her parents picked her up on Sunday. Thennnnn, my oldest daughter, Kelley came over to play! We got Kelley a gocco printing machine for her birthday in May but she hadn't made time to play with it. (I tried to find a link but they were all sites that had them for sale. If you're curious, you can google it.) Well, with a little prodding from me, she brought it over, unpacked it and drew a little picture to print. Here's the machine and her little elf drawing.
Go check out Kelley's blog to see what they look like printed. They're so cute! Once you draw your design or copy something from clipart, you can ink up the mat and print about 80 copies. So it's something she can use to make cards and maybe sell some of her designs.

Then I came back to work on Monday to rest!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :o)

New Dishes and more....

Does this mean I have to cook now??? lol I got new jumbo glasses for the man who likes "manly" sized diet Cokes. And look at these littel ramekins. They were on clearance at the Crate & Barrel outlet.

And I got generic white dishes. I just haven't been able to find anything I really LOVE. Well, let me clarify that. I have found dishes I love but I'd have to sell my house to own them so I went the budget way. I found these "cafeware", also at C&B outlet.


You see, the mister likes to go to the Indian casinos and gamble and the misses likes to keep her money for more important things like fabric, or um, dishes! lol So, I got these and a cute cup cake stand, cooling racks and a few other goodies. And he got to gamble. Actually, he did very well and paid for all my purchases. All I can say is it's a good thing there's no casino close by! I'm sure his habit would be much more dangerous if that was the case. Kind of like me living within five miles of six different quilt shops. Oh yeah, I do!!!!!

And just so you don't think all I do is shop, I did sew a little "thing" together the other night. My artsy daughter Kelley, asked me about printing on fabric. We talked about several options and she grabbed a bit of artwork from her computer and we printed it on a Printed Treasures label page. And just so the little artwork didn't go to waste, I put some borders on it and stitched in the ditch around it. Cute little...um, I dunno, coaster? Hey, it's an original bit of art. :o) I told her she should draw a little Christmas elf or something and we could do small ornaments for Christmas. Good thinkin' huh? :o)

Happy Carving!

We're at the 'tween stage. We're 'tween grown daughters and no little grandkids yet so we do what we have to do. Here we have our youngest daughter Ashley. She's usually a sweet girl but in this picture she looks like a "Slasher". lol (Can you picture that sound from the shower scene of Psycho? Eee Eeee Eeee)

We don't even have a cool carving kit at our house. We just used old paring knives. "Slasher" carved her pumpkin to look like a little vampire. Our middle daughter Stephanie shared the good deal she found at her grocery store and brought over four pumpkins last night. That was sweet of her, yes? :o) But there's no picture of Stephanie because she had to bake cookies for work and stop at Target, etc. She practically threw the pumpkins in the house and left. She's one busy young lady.

Here I am emptying the ooze out of my pumpkin. Ewww...pumpkins are so squishy inside.

My photos are always out of focus when I turn off the flash but here's the front porch. Now we're just waiting for the little trick-or-treaters.

Hope you have a safe and chocolaty Halloween!

Cards n' stuff

My buddy Neena and her granddaughter came over to make cards and little spiders for Halloween. It always looks like such a mess when we get started. Eeek.


Neena has gone Frankie-crazy. Below is the little guy she made on a Milk Duds mini candy box. My oldest daughter loves Frankie so Neena left this for her. This guy is only about 1/2" X 1". I wouldn't have the patience for a small candy box. A small quilt block yes, a small candy box, no. Guess we have to pick our poison huh? :o)


Here are all our little goodies. The little buckets are from Target's dollar spot (2 for $1.00). They were fun to make so I think I'll send one to my mom and a couple of sisters, my surrogate granddaughter, etc.

Wicked....third time's a charm!

I thought going to the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood earlier this year to see the play Wicked was a chance of a lifetime, so I don't know what it means that I've been fortunate enough to go see it three times! This last time I got to go in style! My boss Donna, treated me and our part-time gal Becca to the play, plus we got to take our daughters. Now, having Becca's daughters and my boss's daughter go was great for them, because they're young ladies, but for the boss to include my daughter's, who are adult women, was above and beyond. They were so excited!! It was pretty amazing. Donna rented a Hummer stretch limo similar to this one. We met at her house. Wow!! Pretty cool huh? Here are Kelley, Stephanie and Ashley checking out the limo.

They don't let you take pictures while in the theatre but how am I supposed to post a blog without pictures??? So I broke the law and snuck this shot of the stage curtain. This picture is how close we were to the stage. Not only did we travel in style, but we were in row F. ROW F PEOPLE. lol That's 6 rows back from the orchestra! It was awesome!!

The show was excellent and we walked around the corner to get out of traffic and give the limo driver a place to pick us up. I took this picture of the Capital Records building to show you how nice a day it was. It was a beautiful day in ol' Hollywood. Ahhh, what a day! Check out the Wicked website and see if it's playing somewhere near you. You won't be sorry.