Civil War Ball Pictures

I received these pictures from Veda of their Civil War Ball. The ball was a success and, obviously, they were all very beautiful. Veda photographed everyone and, as usual, did a wonderful job. I wish I could have been there, but having the opportunity to help some with the dresses was such a treat. Enjoy the pictures!

Veda's Family (unfortunately Aron couldn't be there)

Veda

Alyssa

Sara

Ana

Noami

Tomas

The Finished Quilt

By popular demand, here is a picture of the quilt completely finished. It's on my bed so doesn't match my wallpaper very well, but I'm sure Landon and Tracy will create a beautiful room around the quilt.

Christmas Presents

Ok... I can't stand it anymore not to share what I've been working on. I can't post the finished quilt because I'm at the office now and my pictures are at home, but I snagged a picture of the unfinished project off of my quilt groups website. Now.. you have to be quiet because this is a gift for one of my kids.. Landon to be exact. But, the chance of him seeing it between now and Christmas is pretty slim because he and Tracy will be driving here on Friday, so I'm going to put it on here now. I'm so sneaky!



The finished quilt is king sized and came out pretty cool. I finished quilting it yesterday so now I can move on to other things that need to be done before Christmas. It's fun having so many projects!

The Polar Express

I have been very busy lately working on quilts and Christmas presents but I still have lots of shopping to do. However, last Friday night was the Acker Night in downtown Prescott. It's the night where all of the downtown shops have musical groups playing or singing and folks are invited to listen and shop. We haven't been there in several years so we thought we might go this year. Damian was here and we had his kids. The night turned cold and windy and it's always very crowded at Acker night so we had to rethink whether we really wanted to go with all the kids. I don't think it's really something that kids would enjoy because of the crowds and we figured if we didn't carry them the whole time they wouldn't see anything except other people's backsides so we found another event going on in town.





At the Barnes and Nobles in the mall, there was a reading of The Polar Express. We went there instead and the kids enjoyed it. Afterwards we went out to eat and got to avoid the nasty weather and even get a little shopping done in the mall.

Quilt Show Graphics

My eyes are all bleary and tired but I had to show what I've been doing today. I'm the publicity person for my quilt guild's quilt show next year and I was asked to design the logo for the show. I didn't really volunteer to do it so, of course, I put it off till the last minute. I have to present it to the committee tomorrow so I worked on it all day today. I sure hope they like it because I'm really tired of doing this. The theme for the show is "Prescott's Gone Quiltin'".

If you don't live in Prescott, you may not recognize these buildings. They are the famous Whiskey Row buildings where all tourists go when they come to visit. The building on the right is the Hotel St. Michael and the one in the middle is the Palace Bar. I drew everything up in my graphics program, Xara. This is the picture I used as my sample.

Famous Whiskey Row

I also was asked to design the show pin graphic. Keeping with the theme, I drew up my idea using Thumb Butte Peak that is west of Prescott and a landmark for the town. In fact, my guild's name is Thumb Butte Quilters' Guild, so I thought this was appropriate.

The pins will be 1" square when they're made so this will be quite a bit smaller. I sure hope they like it... Ugh.. I'm tired.

Mary's Quilt

My friend, Mary, came over to use my HandiQuilter. She had a little quilt she wanted to finish so I told her she could borrow my machine for a day. She's done a couple of other quilts on it so she didn't need much instruction from me and she got it finished in just a couple of hours.





How Pretty!


While Mary was at my house, I hit my foot on the wood stove hearth and thought I had broken a bone in my foot. So.. after she left I went to the office and x-rayed my foot. It hurt so bad! After 5 pictures (I didn't want to believe it wasn't broken), we decided there wasn't a broken bone in there and I came home to ice. After icing and elevating my foot the rest of the evening, my foot was perfectly fine by the next day. How could something that hurt so bad, get better so fast??

Thanksgiving 2008

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and the Christmas season has officially begun.
We had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister, Carla's, this year. We're all into a traditional dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries and pies. Then we sit around for awhile behing miserably, happily stuffed. Then we split into groups to play games. We had Damian's kids for the holiday and they had alot of fun at Carla's playing outside with the dogs and a nice, grassy yard to run around in.


Alan and Mom showing off stuffed bellies.



Carla and Dad playing Wii. I think Dad decided that bowling with the Wii was alot easier than bowling in real life.



Rhonda, Brenna, Joel, Mom and me played a fun game called Whoonu. It was the hit game of the year.




Later, we inticed Alan, Elaine and Carla to play with us.



For the past 3 years, at some point in the day, we stuff socks with goodies for a group of underpriveleged kids that Carla knows about.

We stayed and played until 9pm then went to Mom's house to sleep. The next day we split into groups again and went shopping. Elaine, Shayla, Jocelynn and I went to Paradise Valley Mall and battled the crowd. I have to say it was not a productive shopping day. The crowds weren't as large as they have been in the past and we weren't very impressed with PV Mall. So.... we still have alot of shopping to do before the big day.

Visiting Veda

I recently spent a week visiting my friend, Veda, and her family of 6 kids... 2 boys (both are in the military and weren't home) and 4 girls.

She lives on 30 acres and has all sorts of animals to keep her and her family busy. They have horses, sheep, rabbits, chickens, dogs and lots of cats. It seems like that should be enough to keep them all busy, but no... they also home school and always have lots of other projects going on.

Veda's beautiful home in the forest.

Feeding the cats...

and the chickens.

Whenever I go there, we try to get in a quilting project, which all of the girls enjoy.. or have enjoyed. This year though, there was another project going on. Sara is having an authentic Civil War Era Ball to celebrate her 16th birthday. So, this years project was making ball gowns (think Gone With the Wind) which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Veda and I did a quilting project early in the week, but then worked the rest of the week to get the gowns finished. Sara's passion is historical clothing and had already made the younger girls, Ana and Noami's, dresses.

Noami and Ana in their dresses.

Alyssa was in the process of making her corset, so I made her hoop skirt and started the bodice of her dress.

Alyssa in her hoop skirt and the trial version of her bodice.

Veda was making her own dress and had it almost finished. She completed it while I was there but I never got a picture of it.

Sara working on the trim of her bertha.

Sara was working on her bertha (that was a new word for me). A bertha is the wrap that goes around the shoulders over the top of the bodice. I think she was designing it as she went and it is going to be very beautiful with her dress. The ball will be December 7th and they still have lots of work to do for it, but I'm sure it will turn out wonderfully.

Alyssa with Lovie, the dog.

The girls had to practice their dance steps. They were very good and had so much fun learning and practicing.

Noami and Ana practicing

Sara and Noami practicing

Alyssa and Noami practicing....


but it soon was reduced to this. They are sisters, afterall.
(I hope this doesn't happen at the ball.)

Veda and me

Veda and I always have a good time when we're together and sometimes stay up half the night talking. She came to St. Louis to pick me up from the airport this year (3 hour drive one way for her). So we had lots of extra talking time this year, which I think we both needed.

Bear Cabin Inn

I just got back last night from my yearly trip to Bear Cabin Inn. It's a little bed and breakfast type place that's just for quilters. It is in Show Low which is about a 3.5 hour drive from here in the White Mountains. We left Thursday and came back Sunday afternoon. I go with the ladies from one of my quilt groups, In Stitches. Our website is: http://www.in-stitches.us/. We had a great time with lots of laughing and sewing and eating. The place is quite amazing with a huge room set up with a dozen tables for sewing and ironing stations and every wall is covered with foam board and flannel for hanging up projects. Everyone works on their own thing and the host, Carol Webb, takes good care of us. We get fed 3 meals a day with wonderful desserts and anything else we need, she takes care of it. There are 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, so everyone is comfortable and relaxed. Going to Bear Cabin is definately one of the high points of my year. Alan stays home and I think he enjoys the time to relax without me asking anything from him. Here are some pictures of my weekend.

Bear Cabin Inn - The original building is a large double wide mobile home but a large room was added onto the back of the house.

Sewing Room - This is the room that was added on with a deck on the back side that looks down into a pine tree valley.

The dining room seats all 10 of us easily. And the food is wonderful.

My friends, Chris and Jamie, having a laugh. We laugh alot...

Me, snuggling.

My friends: (standing, from left to right) Sheila, Carolyn, Karen, Jamie, Chris, Eve, Kathy, Julie
(seated) Sandy and Linda

(no, those aren't antenna on my head... it was windy!)

Kite Flying and Other Stuff

This weekend we had all the grandkids here. The weather was nice on Saturday so we spent the day outside. The kids had discovered that we had a couple of kites that were still in the packages. Someone had given them to me and I had forgotten all about them. There was a little breeze so it really was a good day to try them out. It's funny... after the kites are in the air, there really isn't that much to do, but all the kids had great fun just flying the kites and we did it for a couple of hours.

Jacob was in charge of the bat kite and kept it up for a long time. Until one of the cross pieces collapsed and it came down over the top of the greenhouse, of course. It got put back together a couple of times, but I'm pretty sure that's the end of the bat kite.

Shayla started with the purple kite and I don't think it came down at all until we were ready to put the kites away. They just passed it all around and each kid had fun with it.... even Damian.

Maybe Jocelynn wasn't quite as interested as the other kids.

The kids also had fun riding bikes. Jacob had never learned to ride a 2 wheeler, so we took him down the street to a flat road and he took to it pretty quickly. He'll need more practice before he's able to just hop on the bike and go, but he's learning.

Damian and Alan had to do some practicing of their own.



After dinner on Saturday (Damian made BBQ ribs.. yumm), the kids decided it would be fun to go sledding. This is something I NEVER approved of before, but Alan was in charge of catching so the kids had a great time and, amazingly enough, nobody got hurt. Sheesh.. where do they come up with this stuff.