Beach house retreat

I went to a retreat with my sister, some of her friends from Quilt Ventura, her local quilt shop and some other ladies who wanted to sew the days away. It was tough to do when this was the view outside the window!

We had a little friend stop and visit the beach in front of the house so I went down to take a picture of him. He was basking in the sunlight until I got down there and then it seemed as though he posed for me. How accommodating, huh? :o)

These quilts were just a few from show-n-tell. Melanie's scrappy pineapple...

My sister Isabel's block of the month quilt she uses on her bed. We slept under it and it was so warm and cozy.

This is what I worked on while there. The nine patches were from a swap and are done in 30's fabrics. This quilt will be put away for s-o-m-e-d-a-y when I have a grandbaby!! I hope the fabric doesn't disintegrate by then. LOL It still needs borders.

And as the sunset, it was time to go. (We actually had to check out by 1:00 p.m. but this was much more dramatic. lol)

Off to go unpack my bags.....

Living up to my name....Busy Liz

Monday night I was going through some UFO's and bags of blocks, looking for a project or two to take to my retreat this coming weekend. One thing lead to another and I had this charm pack in my hands and then up on the design wall and then under the needle of my machine. :o) How does that happen? I pulled some cream on cream fabric from my stash (it was perfect) for the setting triangles and a small border. Then I went to a drawer I don't visit often, full of old Robyn Pandolph fabrics from about five years ago and I might be able to use a couple of them for borders or backing. The big rose border seems a little off so I might not use it. It'll just be a little throw for the couch for the holidays. The charm packs were small so I had bought two of them but could've used a few more fabrics to make this a bit bigger. The line is called Fancy Hill Farm by Robyn Pandolph. We'll do some shopping at the shop that is hosting the retreat so maybe I'll find something there for the outer border. I'm loving this "use it up" from the stash!

But I can't jump to Christmas just yet. I saw these adorable little mummy Halloween cookies on this website. I HAD to make some so off to Calico Cake Shop I went after work. I got all the supplies I needed. I might've been able to get some supplies from Michael's but I knew they wouldn't have the "eyes" and the cake shop has DELICIOUS white chocolate!! :o)

While I waited for my daughter Kelley to come over after work, I used my double boiler and melted the chocolate.

Got the sucker sticks ready...

And got my cookies ready. I bought both regular and vanilla Oreo cookies. You heard me, vanilla Oreos!!!! Who knew? I could take or leave regular Oreos but these were really good, kind of like Vienna Fingers but crispier. Yum! Anyway, according to the directions, you're supposed to open the cookie, dip the stick in the white chocolate, put it between the cookie layers and let it set. Well, my chocolate Oreos kept breaking. Every single one. And there were a lot of them broken in the package. So frustrating when you're trying to do a project. Oh well, what are you going to do? While watching the little video on the website, I heard the girl say to use 'double stuff' Oreos. Roh-Rroh-Relroy!! For some reason the vanilla cookies were a little sturdier so I made more of those than the chocolate ones.

Once they were set, they got dipped in the white chocolate and got their eyes on. hehe

The cake store only had two packages of big eyes so I bought some small ones too. Kelley and I liked the smaller ones after the cookies were done. She put her eyes farther apart than I did mine and I liked the look better. Her little guys really looked like crazy little monsters. :o) We wrapped the cookies in cello bags for giving away. I'm taking mine to the retreat as a little 'favor'. Kelley used some tags I had punched out and tied them on her suckers. She's going to give one to her little sis (they work together) and will give some to co-workers. I saved a few for my middle daughter too. We did Nutter Butter cookies too. They looked like little ghosties. We didn't cut them off like they had them on the website.

The little box in the photo (above) is a free download from the HowDoesShe website so sign up. They've got some cute free printables.

They were fun and even though the ones on the website were cuter, they were fun to make and had I gotten those double stuff Oreos, it probably would've been fine so it's all good. I think I've gotten my fix for this Halloween. (If I stay off the internet!!!) lol

Finished Berry Picking top!

I finally got the borders on my Berry BOM project. I thought and thought while it was on the design wall.....whether or not to add a pieced border to it to make it big enough to fit a bed but I finally decided to just finish it as is. Actually, I did add a little green border before the pink outer one. That was an idea from my sister, Isabel. She said the pink was nice but separating it with a small border might look better. She liked the blue in the baskets but I didn't have enough of anything blue but did have enough of the green.
Here's a close-up of the borders.

Now to check the collection of backings I have and see if I've got anything I can use. If not, I'm off for a retreat this weekend and might find something when we go to the quilt shop. :o)

Pumpkin cake and adorable Frankies!!

Thursday night was TNT (Thursday Night Therapy) and it was just going to be me and Neena crafting. I whipped up a Pumpkin Bundt Cake. You can get the recipe here. Let me tell you, it was yummy with those streusel layers!!! slurp :o)

And this is what we made. Aren't they the cutest little favor boxes ever?!!! You can find the directions to make your own here. They are super easy. The 6" box takes a 12" piece of scrapbook cardstock, some wiggly eyes, glittery felt (which I had never seen before) and a couple of punches. They are so much cuter in person. I hope you can make some for your favorite little ghoul or goblin. My ghouls are grown women but they loved them just as much as a little one. :o)

I used retired Kiwi cardstock from Stampin' Up! For the eyelids, I used a 1 3/4" circle punch and cut it in half. I used my bone folder to 'curl' the eyelids. Neena said our little Frankies needed a scar so we put a few stitches on him.

After making the three big boxes for my girls, I made 4 little ones for friends. For the smaller ones, I cut my paper 9 x 9" and scored them at 3" and 6". I think these were almost cuter because I used the same wiggly eyes and they were sort of big on the little faces.

And now that I did all that playing, today I have to clean the house. :o( I should get time off for making such cuteness but the cobwebs have a different idea.

A finish, a beginning and some cards

I finished the binding on the other two table runner/wall hangings for my girls. I'm going to put a simple little label on the back just to note the date and that this gift is "from Mom". :o) That was all the sewing I got done this weekend. I was busy, busy.....


Hubby and I went to Jessica & Kevin's wedding. There was a little bit of drama because the "preacher man" was running way behind but it just so happens a member of the groom's family church used to do wedding services and stepped in. I think the wedding started about 45 minutes late but it could've been so much worse had they waited for the bishop to show up. It was a sweet ceremony (nice and short) and the bride just gleamed, she was so happy.

This was the wedding that me and my friend Neena helped make the favors for so I didn't buy a big gift. I made this card using polka dot paper from a Joann's stack, ribbon from Michael's, cardstock and stamp set from Stampin' Up! I just added a little yellow to the "brides" dress (ribbon) with a watercolor brush and the stamp pad.

And I made this recipe book for part of my gift. My sister and I have already found two recipes that have "parts" missing like no bananas listed in the ingredients for banana bread or no chicken listed in the ingredients for my mom's Chicken en Mole recipe. LOL Gotta blame the typist!!! (That would be me!) Guess I'll be sending out a 'revision' email!! My daughter Stephanie made some of these cookbooks before for a swap a while back so I was able to use the same recipes and only had to cut out new dividers and make the front and back covers. I used the Cricut cartridge "From My Kitchen" for the word "Recipe" and then cut an oval shadow shape behind it from the same cartridge. I used Stepanie's bind it machine and added a sticker and matching ribbon.

I used a post card template in Word for the recipes and made a light gray outline around the card so I would have a cut mark so all the cards were the same size. The tabs were made with a Stampin' Up! punch.

Then yesterday.....I made a card for my boss for Boss's Day which fell on Saturday but we celebrated today. For the "woman who has everything", I gave her the card and treated her to lunch at P.F. Changs. Yum! I guess that's sort of cheating to take her to lunch cuz I benefit from that yummy food also. :o)

The card I 'cased' this design from had a big hydrangea stamp on it but I've never used this stamp set yet and wanted to try it out. The flower seemed to go with the decorative paper so I think it worked. The boss like it so I guess that's all that matters, right? :o)

Yaaaarrrrrd Sale!!!!

Earlier this week my daughter sent me an email link from Craig's List that there was a yard sale happening on Friday (yesterday). They advertised a Cricut machine, scrapbooking stuff and craft items so we had to check it out....even though we have no business buying anything. :o) I asked my boss if I could go in an hour (or so) late. Thankfully she said YES because man, oh, man......what a sale!!

Do you see the Cricut machine? No? It's there. It's just buried under the motherload of stuff we got! I looked at some of the used cutting mats and they have images of the words 'school' and ABC's cut out. I think someone said the woman was a retired teacher. She was in her 80's and her kids were running the sale but they kept having to ask "Mom" for prices. I just wanted supplies but she wouldn't sell anything separate. She was asking $200 for the entire lot. I got there before my daughter, told her what the woman said and she hit the ATM before she met me there. I hadn't gotten paid yet and had $60 my hubby gave me to go. The price included the Cricut personal cutting machine, which neither me or my daughter need. She has the bigger Expression and I have a personal Cricut cutter. We'll go through everything on Sunday and figure out what we will part with and sell, probably to my sister. (We're dragging her down with us. LOL)

So here's what we got...

These are some of the cartridges. I have three of these already so the duplicates will go. :o) Stephanie said she lives close enough to share them so we don't need duplicates.

And there were these mini cartridges. There were two Home Accent cartridges, one to keep, one for sale. That one has some cool accents for vinyl wall art. Yeah!!

There was a tool kit, a brand new Alphalicious cartridge, three packages of replacement blades.....

Four new packages of replacement mats (2 in each), 5 slightly used mats, Cricut Design Studio software, a roll of vinyl covering, a paper cutter and a bag full of 12 x 12 decorative paper.

Before my daughter got to the sale, I bought this box of scrapping stuff which included two circle cutters, four paper stacks, jumbo circle punch, etc., etc. She wanted $10 for it.

I can hardly wait for Sunday to play with our new toys!!

I have no comment....

LOL.....stopped to get a hot dog for dinner tonight because my hubby was doing stuff. This was on my Wienerschnitzel bag. :o)

Had to share it. It made me laugh..... :o)