I Like Thursday #16

Thank you LeeAnna of Not Afraid of Color for encouraging us to find things we like. 

I like having memories that I can look back on when I am having a really tough week.

I like frozen custard.  A couple of years ago the day the custard stand opened, Jeff and I took the boys for frozen custard at our favorite place.

Yes it was snowing that day.  Also yes that is a small.

Last year when the stand opened I went and had one in Jeff's memory.  I liked chocolate vanilla swirl.  Jeff liked his with coconut on it.  I am looking forward to them opening again in April. 

I like these plastic feed bags.  

I actually have made a lined grocery bag out of one.  I have several more that Jeff saved me.  Actually I have a closet full of them upstairs.  LOL

I like when I really miss Jeff I can look back and see all the time he brought me roses.

I like when I feel sad I have Bobbin to keep me company.

I like the spray starch the church ladies taught me to make.

Spray bottle with 2 cups of water. 

Add one cup of vodka.  I bought the really cheap stuff.

Add about 20 drops of essential oil.  Shake it up and you have an awesome spray starch.

Now head on over to LeeAnna's and check out the other like for the first of March.

Mish Mash

I have been busy the past couple of weeks.  Just not a lot to show for everything I have been doing.

I took on the charity lead for quilt guild and this followed me home at the beginning of the month after the 1st charity sew day of the year.

Those 4 piles of boxes were all full of guild fabric for charity.

I spent some time one day making repairs to a top that was donated.

I just had to try to match a fabric which was kind of reproduction colors.  I think I did alright.

I shared the charity sewing I have been doing for church also.

1 down and 4 more to go.

Then last Thursday I was contacted and told that someone had donated a couple of garbage bags worth of fabric to the Quilt Guild.  I went and picked it up.  

I think there is between 10-15 of these garbage bags full of fabric.  All I could think of was that I felt like this painting

Something had to give!  It was time to clean out the bedroom that all of the great aunt and uncle's belongings had been stored in. I told the kids I had a plan , and nine big 3ft by 3 ft boxes later, and 2 trips to goodwill the bedroom was cleaned out except for office equipment, and all of the guild charity boxes had been moved into the bedroom and it only took us about 1 hour.

I brought in a banquet table and put painter's tape with measurements marked.  I decided that charity must be treated like a part time job right now.  Organize, organize, organize.  So I will go through the bags, and figure out what is yardage that can be used for backs, what is too feminine, and start to prep it for kits.

I did go sew for a bit with a friend on Friday.  But the only other selfish sewing I have done is my temperature quilt.

And one evening putting together the final parts for my Quiltworx quilt Vintage Rose.

Only 19 more of these to go.

I did grab scraps and tried making a quilt block along the same lines as one I saw.  This was much bigger.

It is marinating right now.  The blocks are 18 1/2 inches; 18 inches finished.  Not a bad size for a simple baby quilt.

The only other thing that has fascinated me lately is our weather.  We went from this:

To this:

I was surprised when I looked up the ratio of snow to water when it melts.  Ten inches of snow makes 1 inch of water.

Finally I needed to share my package that was sent to me by JulieRose of Julie Rose Quilts.  I have been raving how much I love working with wool.  Julie was purging and had decided she really didn't want to work with wool, and so her stash came my direction!

Oh my goodness such yumminess.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.....I cannot even begin to tell you how much it is appreciated. 

I Like Thursday #15

I have had a couple of busy weeks.  But amazingly enough I haven't taken many pictures of anything I can really show.  Oh I have a lot of likes though.

I like ugly fruit at the grocery store--they call them misfits.  They have bags of lemons, oranges, and other things; like us humans they have some flaws, but because of those flaws many people won't buy them.  I like that I can get a bag of lemons for $1.29, which is a really good price.  

No Bobbin is not a lemon. 

I like my nifty rolling cart I found on Amazon.  I had been envying the Raskog utility carts from Ikea that I had been seeing in other people's sewing spaces, the aqua is cute.  Now Ikea only carries a cream, brownish red, and black.  Imagine my delight when I found a red one, and it is 4 tiers!  Since I sew in so many different spots I am always looking for my supplies....jack the ripper, pencil, scissors, glue,  I thought this would come in handy to keep my supplies in one main spot, and I can roll it to where I am working.  I also like that I can have my ruler rack on it, and my chicken pincushion is riding shotgun.   

OK I did have to assemble it, but I love that you can get it in 6 different colors, and of course my favorite color is red. 

Speaking of Amazon have you checked out their "New and Interesting Finds" at the top?  I like the fun things, so every now and then I will take a gander.  I saw this print which is a Day of the Dead Chihuahua which is printed on an old dictionary page.  I later found the guy's shop on Etsy is called collageOrama and I love his fun quirky style.

The face kind of reminds me of Bobbin.

I like my sloggers which are rubber clogs, especially with the rain we have been having.  We went from this:

To inches of rain and mud in a couple of days--to the point where you are sinking a couple of inches into the grass, the ground is so saturated.  My sloggers keep me from having soaked shoes all the time.

I like charity sew day at church.  The Tuesday before last I returned 2 completely sewn quilts (they tie them), and during charity sew day I sewed 3 baby quilts, and started another full size quilt.  There were several others which were ready to be sewn together envelope style, so I brought them home. 

Here is one of them that I finished the last couple of days.  Pay no attention to my pile of paper recycling by the refrigerator or the rogue shoe that Bobbin has been dragging around the house. 

I like to get my milk, cream, or ice cream at the local dairy and I love their shopping bags.  

What is not to love?  The old truck, the load of peaches. 

I like that life is settling down now and I have started to go through boxes and decide what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw away.  I started with 5 boxes Wednesday morning and I am down to these two to donate.  I need to start cleaning up my act and living my life.  Oh I have plenty more boxes to deal with, but small chunks at a time. 

Finally I like my helper.  This is my worker bee.  He helped me put all the Christmas decorations in the attic--from the sitting room and organize 4 Christmas trees....still trying to figure out how that one happened.  We pulled several boxes out of the attic to go through and decide to keep, or donate.  I now know what is in every box in the attic.  Scary huh? 

During the snow storms the past couple of weeks this boy, his brother and step sister moved a lot of snow.  With shovels!!! My porches, walkways, driveway all the way out to the road, and the pathway to the chickens.  When you consider we got about 20 inches of snow these kids were awesome.  As a treat after cleaning the attic we went out to dinner. 

Now head on over to LeeAnna's at Not Afraid of Color to check out the other I Like Thursday peeps.

I Like Thursday #14

Welcome to my 14th I like Thursday.

My last post was about Snowmaggedon and I haven't posted since then.  I find the snow fascinating, just in smaller accumulations.

Remember my post from my last I Like Thursday?  The swing, the shadows, how the snow had stuck to a vertical surface.

I really liked this though.

The swing, still snowing, looked like Belgian Waffles with powdered sugar on top.

I liked the snow how it accumulated on this spruce.  Makes it look like a Christmas postcard, if only it was a bit brighter out.

I like how the now accumulated on the butterfly bushes. 

I like the little pops of color from my flowers from farm implements that Jeff made me with the stark background.

I like how ice formed around the chain links in the chicken run.

It warmed up quite a bit Wednesday, and while I was out feeding the girls this evening it all collapsed at once with a huge crash.

I like the snow on the old oak.  I think about how heavy snow is and wonder that it doesn't topple those old branches to the ground.

I like the fact that Spring is on its way.  How do I know?  Tuesday was Fat Tuesday or in Michigan it is known as Paczki day.

Per Wikipedia:

Pączki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈpɔnt͡ʂkʲi] ( listen); singular: pączek [ˈpɔnt͡ʂɛk]; Kashubian: pùrcle, Silesian: kreple) are filled doughnuts that are typical for Polish cuisine.

Pączki are deep-fried pieces of dough shaped into flattened spheres and filled with confiture or other sweet filling. Pączki are usually covered with powdered sugar, icing, glaze or bits of dried orange zest. A small amount of grain alcohol (traditionally, Spiritus) is added to the dough before cooking; as it evaporates, it prevents the absorption of oil deep into the dough.^[1] The common opinion is that the ideal pączek is fluffy and at the same time a bit collapsed, with a bright stripe around – it is supposed to guarantee that the dough was fried in fresh oil.^[2][3]

 I like the ones with Raspberry filling.  Jeff used to always bring me Paczki from a huge bakery in Hamtramck called the New Palace Bakery.  One of the guys that used to work for the city would go and stand in a huge line to pick up several dozen for the guys at the DPS.  Jeff would always snag one to bring home to me.

I like craft fairs.  I went to one the other day, but frankly the only two crafts were a man and his wife making wire jewelry from copper, and another man that had lots of stones and rocks which he had found, and made into jewelry.  He called himself a rock hound.  I liked what he had, but I saw this and new I had to have it.

It is a Petoskey Stone!

Good old Wikipedia to the rescue again:

A Petoskey stone is a rock and a fossil, often pebble-shaped, that is composed of a fossilized rugose coral, Hexagonaria percarinata.^[1] Such stones were formed as a result of glaciation, in which sheets of ice plucked stones from the bedrock, grinding off their rough edges and depositing them in the northwestern (and some in the northeastern) portion of Michigan's lower peninsula. In those same areas of Michigan, complete fossilized coral colony heads can be found in the source rocks for the Petoskey stones.
Petoskey stones are found in the Gravel Point Formation of the Traverse Group. They are fragments of a coral reef that was originally deposited during the Devonian period.^[1] When dry, the stone resembles ordinary limestone but when wet or polished using lapidary techniques, the distinctive mottled pattern of the six-sided coral fossils emerges. It is sometimes made into decorative objects. Other forms of fossilized coral are also found in the same location.

Finally I like prints in the snow.  I saw this one the other day, and smiled and though my guardian angel has been here protecting me.

Now head over to LeeAnna's at Not Afraid of Color and check out the other I Like Thursday posts.