What to do with UPs?

If you quilt, you probably have plenty of UPs.  And you are wondering what are UPs...they are what I call Unfinished Projects.  And do I have plenty! (just ask Bill.)

I wish I could claim originality on this project but since I can't let me share with you how simple it is.

Take a quilted UP and cut it into a square.  What size - doesn't matter, just so it is square.

This was going to be a purse but now it will be transformed into a hanging bag.  I am using a 12 1/2 square and the only reason for this size is I have a square ruler that size.

If the back is ugly with a lot of stitches then add a new backing.  You will have a top, batting, and backing (or lining).

Then add binding to two sides, and zig zag the edge of the other two sides.

  Then add a little hanging strap to it.

 Tack two opposite corners before bringing up the third corner.

  When the third corner is secured than it is time to whip stitch the openings closed.

And..... this is what you will have in the end!

Now isn't that cute! (and easy).  Instead of having lots of UPs I can see I am going to have a lot of hanging bags!

Happy finishing projects.

 

3 Weeks in South Carolina

One thing you can say about retirement is that you can go visit family and almost stay forever.  Sarah, Joe, and the girls sold their house in Columbia, SC and bought a house in Mountville which is a little over an hour out of Columbia.  This property comes with a house and 6 acres of fairly flat undeveloped land. 

Going through the pictures I find that I did not take any pictures of the front of the house.  But here is the side view.

 The house is huge and comes with a room just for Grandma (okay and whoever else will visit!) The room also belongs to Stormy the cat who has the run of the house.  Stormy and I came to the understanding that he did not get to sleep with Grandma!

While there I helped paint both girls' bedrooms with their favorite colors, planted Sarah's irises that she had dug from the sold house, helped Joe pull holly bushes out, helped with the fencing for the new dogs, got poison ivy, spent a day burning with Sarah, and just plain relaxed with a good book now and then.  Was it a nice visit, you bet it was.

 This is what the 6 acres look like.  This road goes to the back of the house and this is what Joe has to back the boat up to park it.  This is also part of the snake story later.

This is what Joe has to work with!  We did go looking at tractors as the weeds, brush, etc. grow so fast in this climate.  Notice the boots - we all wore them while working outside.  Needless to say I did wear flip flops while outside and not working.  This eventually would have proved to be very unwise as the day I left the kids found a copperhead snake on the road behind the house.  

The new country look is shorts and rubber rain boots.  The girls usually had on long pants also.  If you live in the country then you need to have country dogs.  After 3 hours of trying out different dogs at Pets, Inc. the girls (more like mom) found two dogs with wonderful temperments for each girl.

Kenzie with Bacon.  Bacon will walk forever, chase balls, and just be happy whereever he is.  He is a sweet dog.  On occasion Kenzie calls him Bacon Bits.  They kept the names that came with the dogs at the shelter. Bacon has a lot of energy.

 And this is Kayla with BamBam. This dog either runs or lays down and Kayla has been known to drag the laying down dog behind her!  He also has a sweet temp but is more mellow and will not chase balls.  But Kayla loves him anyway.

The time spent was not all work.  Sarah arranged for a Mother/Daughter weekend out and had booked a room at a lodging in Jonesborough TN for us. 

Jonesburough is a quaint little town with art galleries, theater, and a free concert on the square.  I had a wonderful time with my two daughters.  It is also known for its Story Telling Center.  We attended an afternoon story telling performance and spent an hour laughing ourselves silly.

That evening we took in a show at the local repertory theater which was an enactment of a 1941 USO radio show.  Also very good and entertaining!

  Monica and Sarah enjoying a few minutes of sitting down and enjoying the free concert.  All the locals bring their lawn chairs and Main Street is closed to traffic.  Now is this small town or what.  The town also closes the street on Saturday nights and does a free movie. 

And we all shopped, and then went shopping some more. 


Saturday morning was the Farmers Market where they close off the street again! 

Saturday was the busy shopping day.  Across from the Visitor's Center was the Tenneseequilts.com that was so much fun to shop that we spent two hours there after the morning market.  For those of you who quilt they have a very comprehensive webpage and a wonderful fabric selection.

 There is a clown in every family and this is Dr. Sarah Sweitzer, PhD thumbing her nose at her mother!!!  The good daughter, Monica, wisely just smiled for the camera. Monica also has the only picture of all of us together.  Girls - thank you for a wonderful couple of days (even if you laughed and made fun of the meals you had to eat growing up!!!)


I don't know where the time went to but I am back in OR again and am missing my family time.


Family time is at the top of my list, so is watching the fire flies in the evening, listening to the thunder and lightening storms, and learning what true humidity is.  


Happy Family Time!

Dog Days of Spring

How did it ever get to be six days into June?  

First off I would like to thank my dear quilting friend Chris for her gift of the quilt decal.  I LOVE IT! and it finally made its way on to the back window of the car.  It looks so cool there.... I do many things but quilting brings me a lot of fun and creativity.

 Now isn't that the prettiest thing you have ever seen on a car?

I've been spending so much time trying to finish up just two projects so I can start on new ones and I can't believe the hours and hours that I have devoted to this.  And one of the projects is just a small wall hanging....

How hard can this one be?  There is only four blind dogs and one who is still missing its ear.  The lettering for "red dog" had to be cut twice as the first set is still missing in action.  Then the top stitching is still needed in 2 and a half of the dog squares..... and I still need the last three letter dog word:  Red, Fun, Old, and ???  and all to be hidden behind the toilet room door upstairs!

The dog quilt was inspiration for the 'frequent flyer' dog quilt for Kayla, my granddaughter.  It was first mailed to SC and started there, came back to OR to be finished, and then will go back to SC to be used.  And here it is....

 This one has a lot of hand quilting on it to keep it soft and cuddlely.  Kayla made the decisions of what color for the dogs and what color for the backgrounds.  Not a bad job for a 7 year old!

 DOGS, ARF, ARF.... but it has been fun!

 Okay so there is another quilt on the design wall....and it has a long way to go before being finished so this one doesn't count!!!!  Now how is that for a quilting rational?


Happy Dog Days of Spring (we can't wait till the warm days of summer!).
 

FAMILY!

Families are wonderful groups to belong to!  Families are love, support, fun, sharing, laughs, exploring, talking, and just great to hang out with.

This year we again joined Rosemary and Vern and their children and grandchildren at Roosevelt for their yearly Memorial Day weekend.  The Davidsons have been coming here for years now to windsurf, kitesurf, and just to be together. For the last three years Rick and Judy have picked up Grandma and brought her with them.  Bill and I drive up from Roseburg to join in the fun.

This is the first time I've blogged the event and now wish I had taken lots more pictures.  Maybe Kristen will fill in with more on her blog (hint, hint!) Or Jenny (hint, hint)!

Saturday was a mixed day of wind.  And WIND is what they all come for.  You can't kite surf without it.  So when there is no wind, you get to sit and eat, and visit, and catch up on the latest happenings.

 Wind is down so we visit.....

 ...and visit some more.  The children migrate in and out but the women seem to have the visiting part down pretty well.

 Grandma even had the visiting down!

 Hannah has a bagged trainer kite.  The trainer kite did come out and a few of us gave it a try but the wind was too light to really have fun with it.  There again where was the camera?????

 Rosemary and Rick in a deep discussion .... the red pile and the white thing on the ground behind them are the wind kites.  These things are huge...and take a lot of skill to fly and surf with one.  

Bill and Vern visiting.  I don't think they moved from the chairs all day!  Now that is taking visiting to a new limit.

Thank you Davidson families for a fun day!

Happy Family Day!

Arrival of Spring

Let the tour begin...

 

 And then there is the veggie garden....

 "The Tower" which has sugar peas planted at the bottom of it, the tomato cages have tomatoes, garlic to the right....

 More tomatoes along the fence, Swiss Chard in the front....

 And Bill is determined to eat the blueberries this year...he is still working on his bee friendly, bird proof cage...

 ...the amazing 5' artichoke plant....

 and finally, the magic producers of compost (or so they say!)

Thank you Bill for all the wonderful landscaping and work you have done to make the yard look just great!!!

Happy gardening.

Three Weeks of Southern Living

Fair warning - this is a long post as it covers 3 weeks of visiting with family.

The last posting covered Kenzie and Kayla horse skills and Kenzie's science statewide science award.  

No trip is complete without a trip to the zoo.  And no family visit is complete without a few flamingos in it! The Columbia Zoo has a new feature.  It is a climbing structure which I promised Kenzie I would go on with her.  

It really, really sounded fun.  This thing is 3 stories high.  They have you harnessed in and clipped on to overhead rails.  So hey, there is no way to fall.  It was a busy day at the zoo so Kenzie and I had a long wait just to get inside.  How brave we were.  Of course, Kenzie had done this before and knew what she was in for.  Me, I was just being the brave grandma with a bunch of little kids.  I made it up the stairs to the first set of ropes and even managed to get over the first set of challenges (the one with rope hand holds).  The next set had no rope hand holds....mmm.  By this time Kenzie was already on the second story and here I was getting cold feet and thinking how stupid I would look if I fell and was left dangling in space.  So I turned around and retraced my way back to the stairs and down.  Kenzie played on this thing for almost an hour.  I came back down to sit with Kayla and Bill.

Don't they look happy and glad that they weren't up there!  

 
You would think Kenzie had enough climbing but had to try the palm tree!

After touring the zoo we headed back home again.  
 
Then the time came to head out to Edisto Island and a few relaxing days of walking the beach, bike riding, shopping, playing  games, boating, and fishing for the guys.  This beach house backed up to the marsh so it was easy to know when the tide was in or out.  Sarah and Joe are really good at finding shark teeth and you could spend hours bent over while walking the sand.

 The house had a wonderful screened in back deck so one evening we watched
a thunder and lightening show as it moved in from the ocean, pass over head, and then move on to the mainland.  We don't get storms like this on the west coast so we were in awe of the show.  

We also tried some of the island's food offerings....


All too soon it was time to pack up and head back home again!

Bill and I rented a car to head over to TN to see Monica and family.  Joe gave us his GPS to use and had programmed in Monica and Barry's business address in Cleveland.  So it should have been a quick (5 1/2 hour trip).  The first part of the trip went fine, we passed the signs to Clinton and were still on the interstate highway.  We were following the GPS voice but somewhere along the way we found ourselves in Georgia!  Having no maps in the car we had no idea where we were but knew nobody had said anything about traveling through Georgia!  We had no choice but to keep following the GPS instructions....we did see a lot of back country roads with little traffic on them!  Then we saw signs that we were in NC which we knew we had to go through and finally TN signs appeared.  

When we hit Cleveland we gave Monica a call and let her know we were at their back door of their business.... we still are wondering how we made it there.

They are the proud owners of the Deardorph Cameras.  (oop's the spelling is off on their business name)  What a lot of history they have collected with this endeavor.  There are very few large format camera makers in the world today but photographers are still using them. 

While in Athens we got to tour the Mayfield Dairy which processes milk (of course) and ice cream!  

Aren't we a happy bunch!  We also got to watch a rugby game that Matt, a family friend, coaches.  The game made no sense to me but the girls (yes a girls team) were having fun.


A jump forward in time brings us to the Happy Valley resort where Monica and Barry rented a cabin for all of us to stay in.  What a wonderful, peaceful setting with the cabin on the river.  

 The girls, Muriel and Bobbi spent hours hiking the trails and Bill and Will went fishing.  One day Monica and I dropped them off at a lake to fish while we did a quick trip back to the business as a large format camera was ready to be mailed out and since Monica had done a lot of work on this one she wanted to see it completed before it was mailed out.  


When we came back to picked up the guys we found them at a different spot on the shore.... both of them were still fishing but with no luck.  

This is Bill and Will still trying to catch something!  What they are really doing is teasing a fish that wouldn't bite.  Monica and I were just taking it easy in chairs watching the river flow by.  


At the end of this visit we took Monica and Barry back with us as far as Black Mountain so they could pick up their car that had been worked on.  After they got the car we drove into Black Mountain for lunch and some shopping at the art galleries and other stores.  What a pretty little town.  I just wished we had more time to explore it but it was probably good we didn't as I left with three shopping bags of purchases.  (We had done carry on while flying and were going to do carry on returning also.  These purchases will become a challenge later on!)


I wish I had taken more pictures of our TN visit.

We came back late on a Friday and missed Kayla Half-Marathon run.  She came in a head of a lot of kids who were older than she was.  She does like to run.

 One proud little girl?

While there Sarah and the girls had scheduled a Mothers/Daughters Day while two other women and their girls.  They were going camping at a State Park in Columbia.  It was Sarah's job to reserve a spot and set up the camp site for the other ladies and girls.  I went with her while she and the girls did this.  Nope, I didn't spend the night!  After the overnighter Sarah and the other ladies packed up and came home.  Aren't independent women wonderful!


Joe and Bill got one last fishing day in before it was time to head home again.  

The girls with Mr. Basil.  There is a whole other story that goes with this picture but we will tell that at another time.


All too soon were had to head back home again.  Where did the three weeks go to...they went by way too fast.


Thank you Sarah, Joe, Kenzie, Kayla, Monica, Barry, Will, and Muriel for making our visit so much fun!  We will be back before you know it!!!


Happy Family Time!




 

Spring Break in SC

The sky is blue, the sun is out, and it is warm!  After flying out of Portland, OR on a cold drizzly morning it has been wonderful to be warm again.

Bill and I flew into SC to spend time with the granddaughters on their spring break week.  It has been time spent with lots of 4 square playing time, some quilting time, and horse back riding.

The girls take horse riding lessons through the YMCA and were able to lease their favorite horse for an hour to show off their skills for Bill and I.  They were so much fun to watch.

 Kayla bringing the horse out and taking him (TC) to the barn.

 Kenzie currying the horse before putting the saddle on.  And Kayla on the other side brushing TC.

 More horse care before the fun of getting to ride.

 And finally the time has come to ride.  Kenzie just asked me if I had pictures of her cantering on the horse.  Oop's those pictures were on Bill's camera. After riding for an hour the horse needed to be put away with the same prep process of brushing, currying, putting tack away, etc.  

 The days are flying by.

Happy April Fool's Day!

Bill and I were the last ones up this morning.  We were told that Kenzie's boa had escaped sometime in the night and was downstairs as Sarah had found the mouse poop of the last feeding on the stairs. Everyone was on the search for it.  The cat was put in it's cage so he wouldn't find and eat the snake, Joe had the flashlight and was looking in all the dark places.  I went in to check in the bedroom where we sleep thinking that there was a good possibility it could be in one of the suitcases.... This went on for awhile before the girl's started laughing and shouting "APRIL FOOLS".  They got us good on that one.

This afternoon we go into Columbia to watch as Kenzie receives her science award...more on that with pictures tomorrow.

So far it has been a great stay and we are looking forward to more days of family time.

Happy April 1st!