Here She Is

My new sewing machine. I made this impulse purchase at the CHA SuperCraft Show last weekend. It is a Baby Lock Crafter's Choice BLCC2 and I got an outstanding deal!
You will have to excuse me for being so excited. My old machine was a Baby Lock as well, but the difference is night and day. You can use this this machine with or without the foot petal! One of the features I have found I love is that this machine has a variable speed switch. Love it. It has many push button features and will auto back-stitch at the front and end of the stitch line! And get this - it has an automatic needle threader! It has 80 different stitches as well. I have spent today working on a new animal quilt and I am getting used to this machine. What a fab machine it is!!

Public Service Annoucement

It is Girl Scout Cookie time!! And you know what that means, order them now - while you can!! Iordered a few boxes the other day. My favorites are the Samoas (I know they aren't called that anymore - but that is still what I call them) and the Thin Mints. I could eat the entire box in one sitting.

What - you don't know any little girl scouts selling cookies and you still want to buy some?? Click here to find someone selling or I am sure they will be in front of the markets in a few weeks!

220

I bowled an all time high for myself last night! A 220!!! Wow !! I even got a Yahtzee - 5 strikes in a row! I ended up with a 517 series - 137 - 220 - 160! I think this is the 1st time I have hit the 500 mark as well!
And what is a blog post without a picture? This is the 1st part of my next little animal quilt. Can you guess what it is going to be? I have decided to try selling these on a small scale, maybe through Etsy (or if you know of another venue - let me know).

Mom's Birthday

Saturday was my mom's 73rd birthday. Since I was at the show/crop all day Saturday, we celebrated on Sunday. Here she is with Anthony enjoying her favorite ice box pie.
And here she is with her owl. It is another of my rag quilts. I am thinking of making these and selling them on Etsy.
A close up to see the texture of the seams.

CHA Show

I spent the past weekend attending CHA, which stands for the Craft and Hobby Association. Friday/Saturday was the consumer show and Sunday started the 5 day manufacture show which is only open to those in the industry. I was able to attend the industry show thanks to my friend Kari, who owns an on-line scrapbooking business. On Sunday during the industry show we got to see all the new product coming out. It was exciting no doubt. And can you believe I only took a few pictures at the Graphic 45 booth. I was actually able to pick up 3 of the new lines at the consumer show on Saturday. I am excited to start creating with them.

I guess I started with Sunday, I should back up to Saturday. At the consumer show they showcased all types of crafts and had many make-n-takes. Kari and I walked the show floor, meeting old friends and participating in many of the make-n-takes. One of the things we sewed was this dog collar. How stinking cute is this?

Another of the sewing make-n-takes I did was this coaster. It is 4.25x4.25 square using 6 pieces of scraps. (I have a few scraps lying around the house). As I have posted in previous entries, I have been reconnecting with my sewing roots, and at the show I purchased a new sewing machine! I can't wait to pick it up later this week!

Between Friday and Saturday, Kari and I hit many of the booths, we made cards, bookmarks and even silk screened a couple of t-shirts and beeded a bracelet.

In addition to the CHA Craft Supershow, on Saturday was World Record Attempt for the largest crop sponsored by Scrapbook Royalty. I don't' think it was quite the world's largest crop, but there were quite a few ladies there and they raised a lot of money!


I only completed one layout - Dinosaur Jack and and half of another one, but I had a blast hanging out with the ladies. The layout was based on a sketch at PageMap.com/blog.php.

Your Smile is Contagious

Aren't these cute picture of Amara and her contagious smile. I composed this layout for a page call at Pagemaps.com.

Dreaming of Beautiful Roses Among the Downpour of Rain

You wouldn't think of if from what you see today, but come spring, there will be beautiful roses here. January is the time of year we prune our roses back here in Southern California. These four bushes line our driveway and I can't wait for spring.

I have been meaning to prune the rose bushes since the 1st of the year. We have rain in the forecast for the next 5-6 days. It down-poured today and I had the day off to enjoy it. While it had been raining most of the morning, they skies opened up fully and we had quite a rain storm around 12:30. By 3:00 we were seeing spots of blue skies and by 4:00 the sun was out! It was a great time to trim them back.
Tonight we will have homemade split pea soup. My friend Scotty gave us a Christmas of pork (and other yummy foods made with love). While over the holidays we enjoyed a ham dinner and then scalloped potatoes with ham, there was still a good handful of ham left as well as the ham bone. So today I made soup. Thanks Scotty, the ham was once again, delicious!
Bailey even got to enjoy the hambone when it came out of the soup. Bailey says thanks too!

A Boy's Life

Jillian's family went to the snow a couple weeks back and she shared the pictures with me. It looks like Mandre Jr. really enjoyed his 1st time in the snow. This layout was inspired by a sketch over at the My Mind's Eye blog. I used My Minds Eye Laundry Line including Wild Ferns , Lined Up, Houndstooth, and Teeny Wishes papers. I am not sure if it comes through in the scan, but all the papers are very glittery.

Scrapbooking with the girls

In early December we had planned to spend the day with the girls scrapbooking. The small group of ladies that I scrapbook with try to get together once a month. We meet up a the Scrapbook Oasis. This is a fabulous store. I wasn't able to spend the entire day there. 1st thing this morning Anthony asked me to take him to the walk-in clinic as he felt he had a sinus infection. Yep, the doctor confirmed it. Then I dropped in at Darleen's baby shower for a couple hours then it was off to the Oasis. What a fun time we had catching up with things that had gone on during the past month and sharing projects we had completed. For this layout I used Bo Bunny papers: Alissa Adorable, Abbey
Road Truffle and Abbey road Stripe. The journalling reads: "What a handsome boy you are growing into. Your eyes are so deep and your spirit so sweet." This layout was based on a sketch challenge a the BoBunny blog.

Turtle Quilt

Today was Darleen's baby shower for the new baby who will arrive on February 23rd. I made him this turtle quilt. I love the way it came out!
I personalized it with his name on the front paw. His name will be Dane.

Cut Card Stock.com

I recently visited Cut Card Stock.com and they were having a giveaway. Guess who won?? Me!! I won a $25 gift certificate to their site! How cool is that! They have all sorts of card stock and on their blog, they are currently offering a free digital word art called Starlight. This word art makes a lovely card or sentiment for a scrapbook page.
Stay tuned to see the creation!

Sand Drawings

Have you seen this?
I don't know if it was the same person, but I saw a demonstration very similar to this at the OC Fair. This is done with sand on an overhead display. Amazing!

Weekend Life

. . . should be relaxing but this weekend has been a busy one for us.

• - Thursday was spent at Disneyland for New Year's Eve.

• - Friday was spent catching up on sleep and then at my mom's house for New Year's Day dinner. She is quite possibly, the worlds greatest cook and always makes a pork roast, mashed potatoes and rice, kale, yeast rolls and black-eye-peas (for good luck) with stewed tomatoes on New Year's Day. Yummy! Jillian brought a home-made pumpkin pie for desert!

• - Saturday morning was spent running a couple errands and a Christmas visit with Patrick's dad and step mom. We had the best visit.
  

• - Sunday was spent taking down the Christmas decorations, boxing them up, getting them put away and finishing up a secret project (more on that later). I have been working on this secret project for the past two weeks when I wasn't doing something else. It turned out soo very cute. I can't wait to show all of you out there in blog land!

Whew! All that and no pictures to show for it (well except for the new year's eve ones in my last post). I am almost glad to be getting back to work tomorrow - almost. Who am I kidding - I have soo many other things I would rather do and soo many more projects to start. A creative mind is always busy!

And just because I don't want to leave you with a picture, here is Arianna with a quilt I made her for Christmas!

Happy New Year!!!

Patrick and I spent New Year's Eve at Disneyland! We have done this the past 5 years now with friends Ching and Ken. Each year it seems, different people have joined us. This year's new-bees to the New Year's Eve excitement were Christina, Scott and Belle. What a fun day it was. We arrived at the meeting spot at 7:30am and Ken, Patrick and myself left the parking garage at 1:30am - the next day! Yes people, that was 18 hours at the park and yes, it was a long day and yes, I guess we are a little crazy.

This is the shot from Buzz Lightyear of Patrick and myself. I whooped his butt (he must have let me win).
This is the shot of Christina and Scott. I beat them too. (Ching, could you email me the one of you and Ken please and Belle, could you forward me yours???)
This picture was taken outside of Pooh Corner! The weather was actually great yesterday for a day in the park. I took my wool lamby sweater, gloves, a scarf, thermals to put on later in the day, extra socks, hand and foot warmers and a leather jacket. I was prepared for a cold day! The highs for the day were about 68 and it got down to, oh maybe 48 by the time we left the park. I only used my wool sweater, scarf and gloves all day. It was a nice day weather wise. By the time we were leaving on the tram back to the garage at 1:3oam did I start to feel the cold.Here is the iPhone picture of us on Space Mountain.
This is the coveted pin of the night. Patrick and I had been to the park a few days before New Year's Eve and I picked it up then - I have a collection from every year we have been. By the day of the event, they had sold out as this was a limited edition of only 500 pins made.
One of the rides we went on was the Jungle Cruise. Sometimes when you ride this, it is just ho-hum. But other times, it is a blast - it really just depends on who you tour guide is. As we were waiting to board the little tour boat, we got a glimpse of our tour boat guide. Christina and I judged her wrong as she was just a hoot!!
Christina and I spent part of the day waving at people to see if they would wave back. Ok mostly it was me just being silly and for the most part, people didn't wave back. We watched the afternoon parade and I waved at almost everyone in the parade and nobody even looked at me to wave back! Ugh! Well one of the princes did - Prince Charming, I believe! Well I have my very own living breathing Prince Charming, so I wasn't swooning over it. But Woody waved at me too (and you know it is all about the wood sometimes - put your ear muffs on Christina!!)! Here is a shot of Woody waving to someone else after he waved at me!
Here is a shot of the fireworks that actually came out decent. It was a long, fun day and I am really feeling the effects of it today. I have had two naps and I am still running on low energy.

2009 was so not my year in so many ways (my Patrick was laid off from work at the end of the year) that I am claiming 2010 our year!! It is the start of a new decade and I am going to make it ours! (Love you my Pat!)