Kinsley

My daughter is a secretive one, that's for sure!  She called me the other day and asked if I had any mod podge.  Of course I do....that stuff seems to multiply in the bottle!  I can't seem to find enough projects to use it all up.  While she was picking up the bottle, being the curious mom that I am, I asked what she was doing with it....she said I would have to wait and see.  

So now we all know the name of the newest addition coming in April!  Janessa cut all the wood by herself then painted each block black.  She then mod podged each letter onto the blocks.  She found the letters on flickr.  Some guy likes to take pictures of the alphabet so you can find any kind of letter you need.  

Little Kinsley has a pretty special mommy!

Kinsley's baby quilt is coming right along.  One more border to go with some appliqued wording on it and then it is finished.  Janessa has done a great job!  Reminds me that I need to start thinking of what kind of baby quilt I want to make for this baby. 

Cute Hootin' Owls!

What a surprise we had while eating at Olive Garden last month!  My daughter pulled 3 of these cute owl blocks out of her purse while we were waiting for our food.  So CUTE and of course I was oohing and aahing over them but in my mind I was wondering how and why she kept this new quilt a secret especially since she knows I have a owl quilt pattern she could have if she wanted it.

THEN........

She pulled out an ultrasound picture of a lil' baby and at the top of the ultasound was Janessa's name!  Yea!!!  A new baby for grammie to love!  It is also Baby #1 for the happy couple!  I am so excited for them!  

I asked Janessa several weeks before she told us if she was pregnant but the lil' stinker opened her eyes so huge like "how could you even ask that mom???!!!" that I let it drop......I can't believe she kept it a secret so long!  Of course it makes the 9 months go by alot faster for me this way.  :)  Here she is at 17 weeks.

This was taken December 2.  She is due April 9th so that would make her 5 months along.

AND.....it's a GIRL!!!!  Now I can start shopping!

Thankfulness

On Thursday we will be celebrating Thanksgiving.  I would like to take this time to share a few of my blessings.

My family.  I am so blessed to have such a wonderful family!  I was blessed with 5 great children and as they have married, I have been able to gain daughter's and son in laws.  I couldn't ask for better spouses for my children.  I love each and everyone of these family members!

Oh the grandbabies!  Nothing is better than being able to be around these little people and love on them!  I enjoy so much being a grammie to these 4...soon to be 5 beautiful babies!  They bring so much joy, laughter and happiness to our lives!

I am usually not one to shout my religion but I do need to say how grateful I am for it!  It is a big part of my life.  It helps shape me and hopefully helps me be a better person.  I am thankful for the privilege to be able to worship as I want.  I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  I am also most grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ and all that He has done for me.  

I am also thankful for living in this beautiful country.  

I am blessed with a warm home when it's cold and a cool home when it's warm.  There is no place like HOME.

I am grateful for our lil' cabin...our home away from home...where we can hang out as a family, play on the beach or ski the slopes.  It is a place where hopefully many memories will be made for our family. 

I am grateful for being at this point in my life where I can travel with my husband, even if it means the ride isn't always the smoothest!  We love to travel so I will take it however it comes!

I am so thankful for new hobbies!  Gardening is becoming a passion and I am thankful I am learning how to grow some of our own food.  I was blessed with a bountiful harvest this year, even when I didn't know exactly what I was doing.

I was blessed to have wonderful parents, who have since passed on but are still with me in my heart.  After my mother passed away, my dad gave me some money as an inheritance from one of my mom's saving's accounts.  In honor of my mother, who taught me how to sew so many years ago, I bought this sewing machine along with a sewing cabinet.  This sewing machine made it so much easier to sew and helped develop a passion for fabric and quilting!

Last....but certainly not least....I am most thankful for my dear husband.  We have been together almost 34 years now and I couldn't ask for a better friend.  He has made me truly love.

At this time of the year I hope you also take time to reflect on those things that you are most grateful for. Please have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Fall doings....and a quilt!

I've been absent from the blogging world for a few months. Last post was in August. I was taking advantage of the last few days of warm weather. As of today, we have about 4" of snow on the ground with more to come this weekend. I'm just not ready for it yet!

I have been quilting but the 2 quilts I have finished in the last few weeks are already at the quilter so I will show those when they come back.

In the meantime here are a few pics of what I have been up to..........

Here is Baby Annaly (named after her 2 grammies---one of them ME!---Jana and Lana). It was her blessing day so she is with her proud parents. She is such a good baby and I can't believe she is already 3 months old!

Oh the green tomatoes!!! We had a cold front (with snow) come through and so I picked all the unripened tomatoes. I like to make salsa with the red ones but wasn't sure what to do with these guys. I searched the internet and found a blog that said you could ripen them by placing them in a covered container with a banana. Here they are one day after putting them in the container.

Sure enough it worked! Here is a pic taken only 3 days later showing the tomatoes turning red.

I also searched for recipes using green tomatoes. I came up with ketchup, fried tomatoes, salsa, bbq sauce, etc. The one recipe that really caught my eye though was the sweet one! It was a green tomato spice cake. It was SO VERY YUMMY! I made it several times (I was overwhelmed with green tomatoes!) and everyone that ate it was surprised to hear there were tomatoes in it.

Just finished this quilt and will take it to the quilter later today. This was a pattern that I have been itching to make for 4 years now. When we moved to this town, one of the first things we did was attend a benefit auction for a member of the community. A similar quilt was auctioned off there and I fell in love with it. The quilt had been a BOM from our LQS but the pattern had not been replicated for those of us who were new to the valley. I have been bugging--begging--bugging the designer to make it in pattern form for me to buy. She finally did. I just love the scarecrow! Will add the eyes, etc when I get the quilt back from the quilter.

Geralyn is a wonderful, generous designer. Many of her designs have been our BOM's at the LQS. You can find her patterns here.

That's it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Excitement is in the air!

The stockings are now hung by the chimney with care.....

 

Today I am picking up the out of state kids (who am I kidding?!) grandbaby today from the airport! I can hardly wait to see how the lil' princess has grown!

Going to have a houseful this Christmas with all the kids here and I wouldn't want it any other way!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year from my family to yours!

I hope to get over my slump soon!

http://izzynivydesigns.blogspot.com/ 
Have you seen this pattern yet?  Or better yet, have you made it?  I saw this a couple of weeks ago in a shop in Heber and had to have it.  They had several hats made up but I didn't even think of getting my camera out of my purse and taking pictures.  They are soooo cute in person!   I hope to get one made soon.

Here is my first BOM for January.  Haven't gotten to the
stitching yet.  I use to love to embroider to but now that I am of a "certain age" I have a hard time doing hand work.  My eyes don't/can't focus correctly, even with my reading glasses.  I know...probably time to see the eye doc again.

I am probably the last person on earth that has never had a mp3 player.  But I do now!  It's an early Valentine's gift.  Suppose to be from the Honey but I bought it.  The Honey started talking about Kindles, books of tape, converting his cd's to something, etc, etc, etc, and I started thinking....."Hey!  He is going to get some music player before I do and THAT'S NOT FAIR!"  (Yes...I can be that way at times!)  So I came up with the good idea of buying each of us one and it being our Valentine's gift to each other.  hehehehe!  Smart, huh!?!  Got it Friday and have been trying to play with it.  Wish I had a teenager still in the house....where are they when you need them?!  I don't have the patience to read an online manual.

Today was this lil' man's blessing at our Church.  You can see what he thought of all the commotion!  We had a houseful of friends and relatives this afternoon to help celebrate the occasion!

Hopefully this week I will get back to some sewing.  I have just not been in the mood for several weeks.  Middle child is coming over tomorrow to sew and I hope I can be productive too.  Wish me luck!

Bear Lake Parade of Homes

You will have to click on the picture to see the interesting things we found at this year's Parade of Homes at the lake. Last year's was so good with several extremely expensive and well decorated homes to look at. You never go to these parades with the thought of buying a home but we go to find new or clever ideas to put in our home. It was really helpful to go to these parades when we were building our home to get some great ideas.

This year's parade was disappointing. Most of the homes weren't professionally decorated as they are in years past. I think the builders are hurting but still wanted the show to go on. One home was decorated with the owner's trophy animals. It was a bit strange walking down a staircase with a crocodile staring at you. I didn't like it one bit.

The Honey LOVED the BYU murals at one of the homes. Guess what we are now getting on one of our cabin's walls? We are big fans of BYU football. Doesn't matter if they win or lose, we enjoy the college games. I guess our game room will now be a cougar den. It wasn't quite what I was picturing for the area but if it makes Honey happy....

I did like the colorful tile on the floor in one child's bathroom. It matched the grandchildren's bedroom. So cute and fun to have lots of twin beds all in one room when the whole family comes to the lake!

My favorite house was a craftsman style home. It had lots of crown molding and cabinets all through the house. Loved the bookcases that were lit in the living area.

We had fun being at the lake once again. Hard to believe August is almost done and summer is gone for another year.

 

Junior Miss

When I was a teenager, I starred in a play as Rapunzel....

I also played Cinderella in another play....

My daughter-in-law called yesterday and I guess now I am known as Mary Poppins!

A few friends of my dil gave her a baby shower Saturday night. I have been accumulating some outfits for "Junior Miss" and decided that I would mail them to my son so he could take the package over to the hostess' house so dil could open it there. I stuffed (STUFFED) all the outfits into one of those large(ha--large???) priority boxes that have the flat rate and mailed it off. Couldn't use any of the cute wrapping paper I had. I just had to make do with tissue to keep the outfits clean. When dil opened the box, she kept pulling outfit after outfit out of the box. Some of the ladies said it reminded them of Mary Poppins and her magic carpet bag. Funny. Here's the darling clothes I stuffed into that little box....

 

And look at this! Calvin Klein now uses minkee on his baby outfits! It is so soft!

 

Been awhile, hasn't it?

I've been sewing but can't show them right now. I have 3 quilts to get to the quilter this week and have been busy trying to get them finished. I always make my appointments and then piece my quilt. I knew summer would be hard to keep sewing but I also knew I had a couple of grandbabies coming in the Fall and wanted these done before then. So all I can say is that one of the quilts is PINK.

The Baby came home today because she has a break from school. We have been visiting family tonight and loving this lil' one. He has been away from us for a month and I have missed him so!

Have also been traveling some more with the Honey and been to the cabin this weekend. It is always fun to run over there and just relax. Not that we really just sit, it always seem like we are busy doing things and come home more tired than when we left here but we love it! I love looking out the cabin windows one direction and seeing the gorgeous lake and then looking out our bedroom window when we wake up and seeing the mountains the opposite direction. The best of both worlds!

Is it already the middle of July?

Yet another business trip for the Honey. But it meant that we got to visit the oldest child with his very cute wife who is having our 2nd grandbaby (girl) at the end of September.

Getting ready to eat at Saltgrass restaurant. Was fun trying to find new places to eat!

 

Had to attend a Rockies game. Too bad they lost. And it rained.

 

Downtown. I love old buildings!

 

In all the times I have been to Denver, I never knew there was a blue bear peering into the window of the Convention Center downtown! I know! Where have I been?!