Bear Cabin

Once a year, my quilting group goes to Show Low, AZ for a quilt retreat. Last week was the week! It is called Bear Cabin and it is so much fun. Carol is the best host and makes everyone feel welcome and cared for. We did alot of sewing, alot of laughing and alot of eating! My friend, Julie and I drove together because we both had to work half day and weren't able to leave as early as everyone else. It takes about 3.5 hours to get there. After saying hello to everyone, we set up our machines and started sewing. Here are a few pictures of the activities around the room.
It's a wonderful place for sewing. The light is wonderful and the atmosphere is friendly and warm. The weather was beautiful.. just a little chilly but sunny and perfect.

Maggie, the Bear Cabin Mascot

We took Maggie for a couple of walks out in the forest to stretch after sitting for too long and Carol fed us 3 wonderful meals a day (Carol is a great cook!). Who could ask for more?!?

This is the group. We were there from Thursday afternoon to Sunday noon. It went by so fast, I can't wait till next year!

My Quilts

I've posted 117 of my quilts on Flickr. Here is the address if you're interested!

New Tree

We're just full of projects! This summer while Landon was visiting, the boys put steps on the side of the house by the greenhouse. For years, there was just a rickety old board with steps on it to climb that little hill. More than one person fell on that 'ladder'. So, now we have beautiful steps there. A couple weeks ago Damian got a backhoe and dug out an area on the side of the steps for a tree and a little seating area. He planted the tree today and now I can see some real potential for the east side of the house.
It's a mimosa tree so eventually we will have a nice shady area. There will be pavers around the tree and block walls around the dug out walls... some nice flowers and bushes.. I'm lovin' it.

Office Remodel

We are remodeling the office! YAY! We haven't done much with the building in many years so it's about time some things change. So.. we're adding another massage room and we moved the front desk to the middle of the room. We also made the kids room smaller so we'd have a little more space in the waiting room since we made it so much narrower by moving the front desk. Alan built two small walls on the east side of the room as a divider for a little more privacy for the massage rooms. All the wall changes are done and the drywall and texturing is now finished. We are doing different lights in the ceiling (getting rid of those ugly flourescent lights) and the popcorn ceiling has been scraped. Electrical/lighting is next, then painting and flooring. I'm SOOOOO excited about the changes! It already looks better, doesn't it!

County Fair 2009

Well, It's that time of year again. County Fair! When the kids were little, we spent lots of time preparing for the fair. We always submitted tons of stuff from artwork to photographs to quilts. The kids always made some spending cash to spend at the fair and complained about having to look at EVERYTHING in the exhibit rooms before I would let them go to the rides. But.. they have some great memories about the county fair.

It really isn't the same now as when my kids were little. The fair has moved to another building that isn't even close to Prescott. In fact, it's kinda out in the middle of nowhere.. probably 15 miles from Prescott but only about 5 miles from our house. Anyway, I think people just aren't as excited about the fair as they were 20 years ago and there are way fewer entries in all the exhibit halls. However, I still enter quilts in the fair and for the last 4 or 5 years, my friend Jennifer and I do the quilt display in the Homemaking department. So, that's where I was today.

We took this pile of quilts......
And put together this nice display of quilts.
I entered 3 quilts. See if you can guess which are mine. They all got blue ribbons.

This quilt won the Rosette for best quilt and I think it deserves it. What a gorgeous quilt!

I made this little quilt and donated it to the fair for them to raffle off for a little extra money to buy upgrades on the displays in the Homemaking department. All of the tables and racks are at least 25 years old and very worn. We donated a quilt last year and they were able to get some much needed poles to hang quilts on this year.

Summertime Mini Quilt Received

I received my quilt from the Summertime Mini Quilt Swap. It was from a lady in Wisconsin. I think it's very cute. There is another Mini Quilt exchange going on now for a fall quilt but I haven't signed up for it yet. I'm still thinking about it, but I always like fall quilts... the colors, the leaves.. it's such a nice time of the year. Ok... I think I just talked myself into it.

Labor Day on Mingus

This Labor Day, Alan and Doc and I decided to go on a bike ride on Mingus Mountain. It's only about a half hour from our house, so we just packed a backpack with lunch and headed out.
There had been a fire there recently so there were some trees that hadn't lost their needles yet, but very few dead trees. It wasn't a bad fire and just burned the underbrush mostly.. so still a nice place to ride.

Doc found some mud puddles to run through, too.

After our ride, we didn't really want to go home yet, so we decided to explore an old forest road we'd never been on before.

We passed a really nice view of Jerome from the top of Mingus. You never see Jerome from this angle, so I was happy to get this picture. You can see the red hills of Sedona in the background.

The road started to get pretty bad... no wonder... it ended quite abruptly at a big dirt pile. Good thing though.. because there wasn't a road on the other side of the dirt pile.

There was also no place to turn around so Alan had to back the truck up a LONG ways. Doc and I decided to get out and walk awhile.

We passed this smiley face rock. I SOOOO wanted to bring it home, but it was just too heavy. Besides probably being illegal to take it out of the forest.

Alan let Doc run all the way back to the highway. He loved it..

Almost home and Doc knows it. He could probably smell our house from there.