I went shopping for fabric....

 

 I went shopping for fabric and this nice man helped me bring it home.

I saw this on Pinterest and it made me smile.  It's sometimes difficult to track down the origin of photos on Pinterest to get permission to post them.  I think this originated with reginasworld.com.

I hope you are all enjoying the last few days of 2013. 

Quick Cookie Idea

Need to take something to a gathering over the holidays?  Need it to be yummy AND quick? 

This is a re-post of a recipe I posted last year.  It's worth telling you about it again.  These yummy treats start with crackers sprinkled with almonds.  Add some gooey sweetness and you have a real conversation starter.  The crackers are the buttery kind, so it just tastes like the base is a butter cookie.  You WILL get requests for the recipe and you WON'T have any left over.  You'll find the recipe HERE.  Enjoy!

Memories in a Box

 Isn't this lovely? (NOT!)  If you were to see this old jewelry box in a garage sale, chances are pretty good that you wouldn't even pay a quarter for it.  It has virtually no monetary value.  But value isn't always monetary.  This is the little jewelry box that started it's life on my dresser when I was somewhere around 4 or 5 years old.



In recent years, I've been going through the "things" I've collected in my 6 decades of life.  This is the season of my life when I am cleaning out, paring down, finding new homes for things and deciding what I really want to keep.  But it's so difficult for me to just toss something that has so many memories.

As I go through the boxes from the attic, if something makes me smile, I'm trying to incorporate it into my everyday live.  If I don't want it in my house, if it has no resale value, and if nobody else wants it--- then it goes.  But in the case of my jewelry box, I just couldn't get rid of it.  Plus-- as I said-- it makes me smile.

 SO.... I got the perfect idea!  I put all of my Christmas jewelry in it!  I did this last year, and after the holidays I packed it away with the Christmas decorations.  When I started decorating this year, out came the jewelry box, and you guessed it... it made me smile.  :-)

I've been looking for ideas like this one to re-purpose old things with good memories.

Oh--- and can you see the little puppy earrings in front of the box on the left?  My oldest son gave them to me when he was 8 years old.  I still remember the day he gave them to me.  He payed $2 of his own money for them.  Yep- they make me smile, too.

It's the little things in life.

The Hooters Quilt

Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.

You read that right.  It's a Hooters quilt.  Quilting (to me) is all about making a memory- or preserving one.  Why else would somebody make a quilt out of old Hooters t-shirts?

A very special family friend married the love of his life a few weeks ago.  In his "bachelor days", he had a rather extensive collection of t-shirts from his many visits to various Hooters restaurants around the world.  I "acquired" his collection and took a rotary cutter to it.  I took special care to preserve the spots on the shirts that were autographed by the ladies.

By the way- it seems I always have a dog around when I'm trying to photograph quilts.  This one is being tested by my son's moose... I mean dog... Nelson.  He's a cross between a St. Bernard and a Great Pyrenees.  Big.

 

As far as quilting goes, this one isn't anything special.  It's just a rag quilt- little sandwiches of t-shirt on top, batting scraps in the middle and flannel on the back.  Sew an "X" through the sandwiches, stitch them together with a half inch seam and stitch all around the perimeter at 1/2 inch.  Then clip all the seams with rag snips (important so you don't get blisters).  Then wash a few times and clean out the lint trap in the dryer a million times.

This quilt is a great memory for the groom.  It represents a time in his life and memories of friends, trips he took, and his transiton from boyhood to manhood.  He LOVED it!  You might be wondering how the bride feels about this.  She loves it, too!  Jealous?  No way!  She says, "I'M the one he married!!!"

Being a quilter gives a person the ability to create a one-of-a kind gift from the heart.  Nothing I could have purchased would have shown his young man how much it meant to me to watch him grow up than this quilt does.

And besides... now I can say I made a Hooters quilt. :-)

A good laugh!

I saw this on Pinterest... it gave me a good chuckle.

Giveaway Winner- Congrats, Wendy!

We have a winner!  Wendy, from Alabama, is the lucky winner of the Apple a Day pattern.  Wendy has several blogs- she's a very prolific blogger and quilter.  Wendy- I'll send you an email and we'll get your pattern on its way!

If you didn't win, and you just HAVE to have this pattern, you can find it on my website.

I'll try to get another giveaway posted soon.






I hope those of you in the US had a nice holiday weekend.  It was Thanksgiving, the start of Chanukah, and the official start of the crazy holiday shopping season.  Sheesh!  I think I need to get started with my shopping.  I'm late this year.  But the fun thing is that I have a grand daughter to shop/sew/knit for this year.  FUN!  So what did I do this weekend?  I started knitting a hat for MY baby (who is a grown man).  LOL  I'll show you pics when it's done.