52 fridays....week 4

i'm participating in 52 fridays, a self-portrait challenge. for tomorrow's post, we have a theme of being outdoors...i was in my backyard, minding my own business...




when a small pair of eyes was watching me. giving me a strange look of "what on earth?!"





so i invited the small red-head outside.






and planted a big kiss on his cheek.

the first for the year

i started my next QOV - the first quilt of 2010 - about a week or so ago.

these are all the strips that i'm using for this pattern. i bought the pattern when i was visiting family in monterey for thanksgiving. on the first day in california no less!! we hadn't met up with my brother-in-law, nephew or sister-in-law at that point...but my BIL brought my adorable little nephew to the quilt store to meet us for the first time.

so for the last week or so, i've picked at a few strips and stars at a time. it's not a hard pattern. it's just a very tedious pattern to make. the pattern calls for a jelly roll, but i have not been able to find the one they suggested. just as it also says... "any red, white and blue fabric will work great in this quilt!" so that's what i did. but let me tell ya... you have to have extra fabric. the width of most fabrics ends up a couple inches short of what it calls for. drats! be prepared.

i should attach the final pieced borders tomorrow and then i'll take some pictures so you can see. it's pretty. of course, i've got some anchors and a strip of the USN fabric in there. :) but there are sparkly fabrics too. sparkles are good!

a little sneak peek

this is a little something i'm working on during my lunch breaks at work....

do you recognize the fabric? and somehow i managed to get a perfect match on the blue-green thread to the print.

anniversary ideas...

my 2nd wedding anniversary is coming up. soon. i've got a couple ideas, but i'm still thinking... i'm not THAT much of a slacker; i did already give my hubby a gift early:

mokume gane titanium ring by johan

his original ring had gotten waaaay too big for him and i was afraid he'd lose it. i'm not really sure how he kept it on his hand during the day, so before we left for our thanksgiving visit and trip to d.c., i surprised him with it. good time for it too... it was around the anniversary of our first date.

the traditional 2nd anniversary gift is cotton. so many things a person could do for that: new bed linens, pj's, a quilt, etc. keep in mind that i can't really make him a whole quilt for our anniversary. he's home enough to notice what i'm working on. i have one item waiting at home and another that i've got going...deciding still if it's for anniversary or valentine's day (a week and a half later).

so, here's a question for all my readers: what's your ideal 2nd anniversary gift?

haircast

our weather is so good, we have a haircast on our local newstation...

100th post giveaway winner!

here is it folks...what you've all been waiting for this weekend... :)

random.org generated the winner for me and came up with post number 30. so the winner is ann, who said:

"Congrats on the 100th post. Best thing about winter is sledding. At 41 I still love zooming down a big hill with my boys. Second best are the sweaters and luckily I live where I really need them.:)"

thanks to ann and everyone else who stopped by, took a look at my little blog and played along! i'm hoping to have many quilts and other projects for you to see this year. i can promise bunches of QOVs since my brain is on idea overload for red, white and blue quilts. my shipment of 28 yards of glorious fabric should be arriving today or tomorrow from fabric.com that i purchased with some sponsorship. i'm a fabulous shopper... for a mere $125.77, i purchased 28 YARDS of fabric, including 4 yards of 108" wide backing fabric. there's kona cotton, some moda fabrics, an adorable white fabric that has little flags, some robert kaufman and a bunch of others that will be fantastic QOVs.

but for now...i'm back to the daily grind... sewing starts later when i get to work on my block swaps.

happy new year and my 100th post!

happy new year everyone! 2009 was one heck of a year. so many things happened - good and bad. i made new bloggy friends, joined some great swap groups on flickr, made my first QOV (and many more!), bought the house i rented, gained a new nephew, made a wonderful trip to washington, d.c. for the navy and spent waaaaaay too much time in hospital waiting rooms with my family. of course, those events didn't necessarily happen in that order.

yesterday was a long and fun day. i worked a half day, then drove to the other side of houston to meet up with my in-laws, have lunch and then go to the texas bowl to see navy play mizzou.

navy football team entering the field

i got to wear my new navy stocking cap to show my pride.




most of the recruiting district was in the section i sat in. just below us were the midshipmen and the academy band. nose-bleeds, but not too bad. not that i really cared.... i prefer hockey any day over any sport and football is not high on my list.

but just after half-time, we left (whoopee!!!!) and headed back home to get ready for our date night at a fantastic restaurant that we know the chef. we ended the evening at a friend's house and a smidgen of salsa dancing in the garage.

and now on to the 100th post giveaway!

i started this blog just over a year ago. i had been following so many fantastic quilters and had blogged before on my own personal life and quirks...why not a quilty-art blog too? and in the spirit of bloggers, i'm giving away 5 fat quarters to one lucky reader. it's dreary in many parts of the country and cold, so why not some fun and bright spring/summer fabrics to cheer you up?



in order to enter, leave me a comment telling me what you love most about winter. i love sweaters the most, but don't live where i can wear them often...i bring them out as soon as i can. do you follow my blog? let me know in a separate post and you'll be entered in for 2 chances to win.

comment from now til sunday, january 3rd and on monday, january 4th, i'll pick a randomly-generated comment as the winner.