Updating finally on new computer

I have a new computer and have been struggling to learn how to use it so I have neglected my blog so you will have to check my Facebook page to see other activities going on in my life without the pictures.  I have finally learned how to post pictures from this new computer.

 Our remodeling job has been going well.  This is the way it looked before the tub came out.  This tub was pretty useless to us and it was time for it to go.,

 This is  much better picture of the way it looked, complete with all those mirrors.  I hated cleaning the tub and the mirrors. 

 Just another view from the bathroom.

 Bud did a little work getting ready for Kevin.  We are also replacing the glass on the shower behind Bud.  That whole enclosure needs a little TLC without actually replacing everything.

 The walls around the tub came down.  It was pretty securely constructed.

 Lots of work

 Still another view.

 The mirrors ware taken down

 The wall needs a lot of work.

 Just a different view.

 

 A couple of views of the new space.  We are putting tongue and groove pine on the walls and painting it to match the rest of the room.  We have a remnant of carpet left to fill the space and maybe we will put the rug that was in our living room in this space.  We saved the two recliners from the living room and a table to put in there so we can watch TV in that room.  We will also put Bud's desk in that space so it won't be in our living room.  The other desk that is now in our living room corner will also be removed now that we don't need a desk for our computer.  Changes are happening here, slow but sure.  We started this whole thing over a year ago when we bought new furniture but slow and steady wins the race here.

 

Speaking of slow and steady, Bud finally took the tree down today.  I think this is the latest we have ever waited to take down our Christmas tree but it has been a cold winter.  Behind the tree you can see the white of the bay frozen from shore to shore and clear out the end of the bay so YES it has been a cold winter.  Today the temps are finally above freezing and we are having some melting but we still have a long way to go.  
Now on to Facebook  I have been posting in both places on and off.  I haven't decided to totally give up the blog and just do Facebook but am thinking along those lines. 

Thankfulness

Sorry, no pictures today.  Rather, I am feeling a little philosophical.  You will just have to put up with this post and spend a little time thinking or maybe just hitting the x button now and leave this page.

We Americans, humans, women, members of the Lewis family, etc. all seem to lack an ability to take time to measure our 'wealth' in this world.  I decided to list  just a few of them.  If I missed you in this post it isn't because I am not thankful for your life but because I am composing this at my computer and am not always able to remember all my blessings and blessed people in my life.

• I should start with my parents who raised me in a way that enabled me to go out into the world and seek my fortune and become ME.
• That one was pretty 'heavy' as we would say in the 60's but not all of them will be so 'deep'
• My youngest brother is cancer free after yet another scan
• My husband is the most wonderful man for me.  He has allowed me to blossom as a woman and I am thankful daily for his love and companionship.  (Maybe I should have put that one before the one about my brother but once again, I am just composing as things pop into my head.
• The sun is shining today even though it is below zero outside.  I have a warm house to shelter me from the cold.
• My TN nephew, niece and their children survived the ice storms and were able to keep electric power the whole time.  
• My niece, nephew, and babies still have a sense of humor out on Cape Cod even though they are being dumped on by snow almost every other day.  
• My niece, her husband and cute little baby in Grand Rapids are precious to my heart.  I am a sucker for little babies that smile ALL the time.
• BOOKS!!!!  I had a rough patch of finding good books right after Christmas and then Diana recommended the book Zippy and the follow up book of She Got up Off the Couch.  That broke my curse and I am just finishing All the Light You Cannot See.  I don't want it to end because I will have to find a new book after that and even though I have a stack of them I'm not sure the next one will measure up.  
• Tomorrow our friendly builder will come to our house and remove that LARGE tub in our bathroom, the one that we never use and is too big for our hot water heater and we can't fill it anyway.  I think the last people to use it were Sara and Jessica, in their bathing suits many years ago.  Since then it has just collected dust and I hate cleaning it out.  I will send pictures of that remodel.  

OK, I am rambling on and on and on now and that book is calling to me.  I only have a few pages left to read and want to finish it before The View.  

Remember to be thankful for something today, even if it is small like that Latte' you get at the coffee shop.  

Divas for lunch and sewing

This past Thursday was a FUN afternoon for my lady friends and me.  I invited MaryAnne and Kathy over for lunch and an afternoon of sewing.

I made my wonderful vegetable soup (just like my mom made it, thick and full of just a few vegetables) and then after lunch we were off and sewing.  

I have been wanting to make this little purse/wallet that everyone in my quilting group has been making. (It is called the DIVA wallet if anyone is interested in making it and that kind of explains the title too.) It is so cute but sometimes the directions for such projects aren't so clear. So we thought that 3 minds would be better than one and decided to do it as a group project.  As it turned out, the directions were a little 'sketchy' at times and the 3 of us had to talk through a lot of parts of the project.  

 MaryAnne is a friend from way back, we taught together and have keep in touch.  You can see that we were concentrating a lot while working.  Sometimes we were talking out the steps aloud to each other and then sometimes just to ourselves.

 Kathy and I go way back too.  We were in AAUW together and of course she is my Ann Arbor Art Fair companion.  We share a love of sewing and rings.

 Then there was me, trying to keep up with these women.  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and my dining room table was a flurry of activity.

 MaryAnne had to leave early so she charged ahead but didn't quite get the 'hardware' on hers before she left.

 Kathy and I soldiered on and finished after she left, screwing on our hardware and completing the project.

This little purse/wallet is really quite cute.  It has a zipper pocket (it had been a long time since I had put in a zipper but I managed to get it done)  It also has several 'card' pockets for credit cards and such.  Finally it has this cute little bar closure on the top.

We had a wonderful time and hope to do something like this again together.
I strongly recommend getting together on a cold winter day and having some fun with friends.  It is nice to have a project completed when you are done but not necessary.

Quilt show

I guess it has been a LONG time since I posted but it seems that I don't have many viewers and maybe not enough to say or captivate an audience.  

 Anyway, the quilt show started this weekend.  I had 5 pieces in the show.  I made many of them since Christmas so I guess that is what I have been doing in my sewing room.  It was fun to get ready for this show, knowing that they would be viewed by many people in the community.  They are for sale but I put pretty high prices on them and will be VERY happy if the big ones don't sell.
This one above is called Wildflowers.  It was a lot of fun to make.  I especially like the checkerboard border on this piece.  It adds a bit of color to the piece although it was pretty colorful before.  I will hang this somewhere in my house if it doesn't sell.

 This is a little piece I did before Christmas.  It was a project in my quilt group.

 I did this piece several years ago with my quilt group.  I was the teacher with this project.  It has been hanging in my quilt room for a while and wouldn't be sad if it sold.

 I did this piece as an experiment after seeing a local artist working on a piece for his shop.  I wouldn't be sad if it sold either.  I would just use the money to buy more fabric.

This is my final piece and I LOVE it.  I really hope it doesn't sell but I could make it again if necessary. I am planning to hang this in my dining room when I bring it back home.

The "Opening Night' of this show was this past Friday night.  I took cookies and stood around explaining my pieces to friends that came to the show to 'Meet the Artist'.  Fun Fun Fun.

Hey, let me know if there is anyone out there??????????

Weekend fun

The weekend started early for Bud.  Friday was a perfect day to take the ice boat out on a nearby lake.  Since he is trying to work less and have more fun, he took the opportunity to take the day off from work and enjoy the ice with some friends from the Ice Yacht Club.  I headed off to volunteer at the school and he headed off to Crystal Lake with his boat.  

 As you can see the ice is pretty smooth.  There were a few rough spots but mostly they had smooth sailing.  It was cold though so everyone had to bundle up.  The orange thing you see on the left side of the picture is a cone used to mark a course.

 Here we have a close up of Bud getting ready to sail.  The orange thing you see around his neck is an inflatable life jacket so you can stay above water and hope someone gets to you before hypothermia sets in.  They sail in groups so it is pretty safe.

 Just another view of the group.

 And another view of Bud.

 Saturday we headed down to Coleman to celebrate Leo's birthday.  I took vegetable soup, bread, crackers and cheese for lunch.

 Eva and I insisted on a few pictures.  We are VERY thankful for a chance to get together.  It has been 2 years since Leo  began his treatments and we are thankful that he continues to be cancer free.

 I wouldn't let this opportunity of having Eva as a captive to take one of my 2 remaining boxes from the farm down to go over.  Mom had many photo albums of family and travels over the years.  We sorted through all the photo albums and made some piles for other family members.  If you (family) get an envelope of pictures in the mail, you are responsible to do what you wish with them.  They are out of MY house and there is only ONE more box in my closet downstairs.  That box is filled with really old pictures of the family and little remembrances.  I don't know how we will go through them.  Maybe when Glen comes next time I will "trap" him and make him go through them with us.

 Leo did look at them a little but left the job mostly to us girls.

 I did take a birthday cake and candles.  You only turn 59 once.

 I bought him this display case for his shot glass collection.  I didn't even know he had a collection until some time this fall when he mentioned his collection and wondered where he could find a display case for his house.  WELL, never missing an opportunity to find the perfect gift, I stored that information and found one for him.  His comment was, "I can't ever mention something I am looking for around you" and he is right.

He also told me he needed a matched set of glasses SO, I passed that information on to Eva and now he does.

Bud and I stayed the night in Coleman.  (Eva had to go home not because I made her work on the pictures)  We decided to extend the celebration and take him out to dinner and a movie.  We joined the millions of people who saw the movie American Sniper.  It was either that movie of Selma and I thought the boys would rather see American Sniper.  It was a good movie or as good as a movie can be about that topic.

SO, fun and celebrations!!!   We do managed to pass the time here.  LOVE spending time with family even if I do make them sort and clean out pictures.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Well, I haven't posted in a week or so but I DID post 3 different postings on my last one so I thought that might carry over for a while.  

What have I been doing???  Just my usual nothing and a little more.  It seems that when I go to bed at night and am waiting for sleep I go over my day and think about what I didn't do and remind myself that tomorrow I will do all those things.  I am trying to decrease that list of things I didn't do but sometimes it is hard.  

Last week was kind of a 'wash' as we had a LOT of snow and various storms that came though the area.  We are all covered with white again.  I did manage to get back to school to volunteer but not on my usual days of Monday and Friday.  They cancelled school on both those days so I went in on Tuesday. I did manage to get out of the house most days though.  We are pretty skilled at driving in difficult weather here.  

Yesterday I decided I needed to get going on something other than my sewing projects.  I made myself reconcile my checkbook, go over the Christmas Visa charges AND clean the house.  I did get all my Christmas decorations down last week while the snow was falling around us.  However the tree is still up on the deck outside the window.  You may remember that we often leave that up until Valentine's Day as it leaves a nice glow in the neighborhood that brightens the winter here.   

What I HAVE been doing is sewing.  I am getting ready to put some pieces in a show the first of February.  I didn't have many items I wanted to show and put up for sale and I couldn't use the piece I made for last year so I just had to go to work and make something new.  This piece above is a pattern I had in my collection.  I don't remember where I bought it but I decided it would look very nice.  It is long (about 70 inches) but very nice looking I think.  This is a depiction of the leaves falling.  The first tree has lots of leaves and the final tree is almost empty with all the leaves on the ground.  I think it turned out very nice.  

I thought a closeup would be nice so you could see all the work involved.  I had to stitch around each of the circles that depict the "leaves".  I had a lot of fun making this piece even though it was a lot of work.  I did this piece all myself including the quilting which is the stitching of the backing to the front using my sewing machine and my own skills.  I usually send the quilting part of my work out to my quilter who does this professionally.  Since these pieces were a little smaller and more manageable I thought I could do it myself.  I have a little experience with the 'free motion quilting' and am trying to get better.  It looks good as long as you don't look to closely and check the 'stitch length'.  I like this piece and will put a high price on it so that no one wants to buy it or if they do I will be rewarded nicely for my work and I will have to make another one for myself.  I would like to hang it somewhere in my house.  

Then I started this one this past weekend.  I have been looking at this pattern for quite a while and decided to go for it.  It isn't finished yet.  I have just finished stitching the flowers on the background fabric. I will start putting borders on it today.  It is quite big too, about 40 inches long right now without the borders.  I have enjoyed using various gray fabrics for the background.  This too will look great in my house since we are decorating with gray shades.  The fabrics in this piece and the tree piece all came from fabric I had around although I must admit I have visited the fabric store a couple of times to add to my stash of batik fabrics. They work very well for wall hanging pieces.  

Just another shot of the same piece.  I think I will put some bright borders on it and get it ready for the show.  

This is a smaller piece that I was just experimenting with some things and made this piece.  I will put this in the show and not worry if it sells although it is cute.  

SO, that is what I have been doing, playing and working and trying to find a balance.  I would rather play than clean but must do both.  

Part 3 of my Christmas in Grand Rapids

 SO,  If you are checking my blog, you should go to the first installment and start at the beginning as this is the THIRD and final installment.  OR, you can read them backwards, what ever you wish.

 I just thought this was a cute picture of the twins warming their toes by the fire after a cold walk.

 Gram made cookies with her grandchildren.

 Maybe this is her first experience.

 We went to the Grand Rapids Children's museum one afternoon.   Everyone had fun playing with the balls.

 and the cars

 and grocery shopping

 and spinning wheels

 and spending time with Gram

 It is hard to get a group picture of these little ones.

 Exhaustion was the feeling at the end of this day.

Gram did manage to get everyone into one picture   This was one of her goals for the weekend.  Aren't they a nice looking bunch???

 New Years Day was my day of Joy.  This little one slept on me for a couple of hours.  I was in heaven.

 Gram did manage to do some cookie decorating with the littlest grandchildren.  The older ones left on Tuesday and were a little to contagious with colds to decorate cookies while they were there.

 These guys had LOTS of fun.

 We really didn't taste the cookies but they had a lot of sprinkles on them.

 This is one very happy lady with her grandchildren around her.

One more puzzle came out.  This one was a little harder so Lara took it home in sections.

THERE IT IS all my many pictures of my Christmas in Grand Rapids.    I had a wonderful time.