Scouts and Popcorn!

would you like to support this adorable cub scout and his pack?

it's the time of year where scouts come out and sell delicious popcorn to raise funds for camping and other scout activities, pay for uniform supplies and awards and give them an awesome experience to remember and grow by. this is their one and only fundraiser for the scouting/school year and we try to make it count.

popcorn treats offered includes kettle corn, microwave bags, chocolatey delight, white chocolate pretzels AND one of the greatest things - the military donations. trail's end, operation popcorn and the BSA offer two levels of donations that send popcorn treats to our troops overseas. take a look at the pictures of popcorn in action!! orders of popcorn for yourself is shipped out in a few days directly to your house.

so if you would like to support scouting and possibly our military at the same time, visit the trail's end site and use scout ID 8480080. the deadline to order is october 1st.

many thanks from all of us!

happenings around my house

it's hot. it's stinkin' hot here in houston. and it's dry!!! although, as i type that, the sky is getting really dark and i'm crossing my fingers for desperately needed rain. we've had over 215 days with less than an inch of rain (if ANY rain). where i live, we got a soaking rain about 2 weeks ago and haven't seen any since...that rain was the best i'd seen since last year in about october. how sad is that?

the heat and a failing A/C unit have made us all sluggish. no one wants to do anything but blob. i want to sew, but just don't have the energy to sit under the lights or use an iron or have fabric draped over me while i bind things. at least our entire A/C system should be replaced this weekend or early next week...i'll find out more on that tonight.

snappy got a few of his stitches out last thursday.

we actually got to see his hand and wrist unwrapped from all the massive amounts of gauze and the surgical splint. poor thing with his bruises. he's a bad patient... would keep trying to do lots of things with both his hands instead of letting me do it. you should go with a man to the store to buy a new printer/scanner and try to carry the box. hah! ok, so my shoulder still doesn't quite allow me to pick up a lot yet, but he had all this stuff on his hand and stitches! we were both broken, but at least i didn't have thread holding me together.

it looks a lot better now. the incision is healed up so much more and he gets the remaining stitches out tomorrow morning. i know he's looking forward to that. then the mean PT lady can work her torture on him...

that same day, i also received my super lovely mini quilt from DQS11.

how gorgeous is this?!

i watched pattiann's photostream as she posted pictures of this one - from the drawing stage, to the little blocks pinned for placement to the final quilt. it's amazing. her binding is even pieced - that's not printed fabric. this was one of my absolute favorites in the bunch and i'm SO thrilled and surprised to have received it. she couldn't have made a more perfect mini quilt for me.

ok. it's a lot darker outside. the sky looks like dusk it's that dark. so, where's the rain!?! and if it's not raining here at my office, can it pretty please be raining at my house? that direction of course is where the weeeeee bit of light is showing, so i doubt there's rain there right now. the ground is so dry that if you look in a crack in your backyard, you can see down it a few feet. and if you step on one of those cracks, it breaks apart and falls down.

oh oh! there's a mist! it's a start and we'll take what we can get!

"roman rainbows" for dqs11

i'm participating in this round of doll quilt swap (dqs) over on flickr. you may have seen it around on other blogs... i haven't made a mini quilt in a while now and wanted to jump back in now that the shoulder has healed up enough and i'm taking a slight break/slow-down from all my QOV making. last night, i finished sewing on the label and boxed up this little beauty so it can arrive soon at it's new owner's house:

this one is called "roman rainbows" since it's the roman stripe block and done in a scrappy rainbow fashion. it's perfect for summer, even if houston isn't having any rain and the forecast for the week is all over 100 degrees. ugh. with the heat and humidity and no rain, i felt like keeping things simple.

my secret partner's mosaic and favorites showed that she likes triangles, bright and happy fabrics and often in the scrappy fashion. so do i! and i love the way the roman stripe block looks...gives the perfect opportunity to do a scrappy quilt without being overwhelming.

i had a hard time deciding on the quilting for the doll quilt. in a way, i wanted to do some tiny freemotion stitching, but i hesitated from working on that for some reason. i knew i didn't want to overdo the stitching, but i definitely wanted to do something other than stitch-in-the-ditch or just straight lines. so i opted to do some lovely little circles of various sizes in yellow handquilting. plus, the handquilting gave me something to do while sitting in the hospital waiting room, waiting on my hubby to come out of surgery last week.

the backing fabric is actually one of my favorite parts of this doll quilt. i'm not a huge fan of pink (and often not of orange and pink together), but after i got my partner assignment i had some ideas in mind. i saw this fabric at a LQS (sadly going out of business when i was shopping the last time) and knew i needed to use it somehow for my partner. if i had chosen one of the other designs, it would have been on the quilt top instead of the backing, or maybe the binding. it reminded me of summer. not sure why, but it did.

the past week has been a little nutso in my house, but i had something to work on while taking care of my loved ones. you know - the soothing repetition of handstitching binding and quilting stitches. now i can get back to working on the next QOV and try to finish knitting a pretty baby blanket for a dear friend.

hot flash.... a book review...

i'm scouring amazon.com for their newest free kindle books when i come across #11 on the top 100 list... it's called hot flash and this is the review:

"After her husband decided to become a woman, sous-chef Jill found a lover who not only dumped her for a comely young college student but also kept Jill’s perfect, well-seasoned skillet, an important tool of her trade. Her father is in prison. Her mother’s behavior is more than slightly crazy. Jill’s son, Stephen, rarely speaks to her, and when he does, it’s usually in French. The only positive thing about Jill’s life is her faithful group of friends. They decide to help Jill find love—and in the process, a way to finance Stephen’s art school. With Jill, they put together a “Marriage Satisfaction Survey” and send it to couples featured in the newspapers on their 25th and 50th anniversaries, hoping to discover the secret of these long unions. Unfortunately, Jill discovers the one thing they have in common: the husband is never home. The road to true love has many twists and turns, and Jill stumbles across all of them in Carmichael’s delightful romantic comedy. --Shelley Mosley "

it had me at "her husband decided to become a woman" and just continued to make me smile on a day where i NEED something to smile at during work. it's been purchased (for free) and now i have to wait til tonight before i can download it to my kindle and check it out.

happy birthday to me...

birthday flowers, a photo by greeneyedsilversmith on Flickr.

and happy 50th to our president and happy 221st to the u.s. coast guard!!

dqs11 and other happenings

i'm still here folks!! really, i am! just busy around the house with all the summer activities, work at the office and work at home and everything in between...

but i am happy to announce that i was picked in the lottery for the 11th round of doll quilt swap over in flickr-land.

i've started my ideas and i think i'm going to stick with one of the three that i've posted already to the group. all three ideas would have a narrow border, which i've left white in the pictures for now.

idea #1:

i would make this one in a scrappy rainbow of fabrics or possibly a set color scheme (see fabrics below).

idea #2:

this on would be like it is in the picture. varigated colors in each of the roman stripe blocks, making a rainbow. i don't know what light color i would use for the other half of the block, but it may or may not be a solid. i just know it would be light for good contrast.

idea #3:

quarter square triangles!! i love these. and the colors would be similar to the ones in the drawing, just not so electric. the fabrics below are the ones i would use, with the dotted fabric as either the binding or the border.

i like this combo together. it's bright, yet soft and subtle at the same time. and the little oval dots are just really cool.

here's the mosaic i made for inspiration for my partner:

it's pretty eclectic. i should think that my partner realizes she/he could make just about anything and i'll love it.

along with planning dqs11 little quilts, i've been working steadily on the next QOV that i have the help of the FB "quilt block swap group." this is my second QOV put together with their 6th blocks and it's looking great so far. no pictures yet... sorry... but i should have some this weekend for you.

and on a completely non-quilting topic... i got a new car a week ago today. i LOOOOOVE her.

happy 4th of july weekend!

happy independence day!!! after the usual firing up of the grill, i'm going to settle in for some strawberry shortcake now that the biscuits are out of the oven. yum.

thought i'd be doing a lot of sewing and other household projects during the weekend. unfortunately, something thwarted those plans. this is what you get after 5 hours in the ER:

you know you want one too. it's really that awesome.