Welcome to Our Mad Hatter Tea Party

Now, now, you mustn't lurk in door ways!  

Oh wait Wrong Movie!

March Hare: (in an encouraging tone) Have some wine.

Alice: (looking down the table) I don't see any wine...

March Hare: There isn't any. And you're too young.

Alice: Then it wasn't very kind of you to offer it!

March Hare: It wasn't very kind of YOU to sit down without an invitation! This is a PRIVATE soirée...

Alice: Well, I know it wasn't polite to barge in when I know I wasn't invited. But the table was laid out for a great many people.

  Now I've gotten it, shall we get on with our party?

Who needs caught up?  Here we go.

Remember when I was like this?

Then I came up with the beautiful scrolling border for the Lone Star it felt like I'd discovered a whole new world.

And when I finished the last glow block and felt more like this!

Now Drum Roll Please - Oh wait, we forgot to pass out the TEA!!!!

I have cups for everyone!  Grab yours before the Cat gets it!

One for you.

Here's another!

No grabbing, I'm getting to you! 

Now see you weren't patient and the cat got yours.

Do you have one yet?

Nope?  Guess we'll have to share.  (leaning back in over sized lime green chair and crossing legs)  Now the way I see it is this, if you've made it this far it's either because you adore me, or you want to see the Lone Star center all put together.  Or I suppose you're a huge Alice in Wonderland fan and Google dumped you here on accident as that does happen.  No matter we must get on with our party.

Remember now this is just my star, I haven't purchased the fabric for the scrolling border yet, so we might have to have another party...  Ta Da!

Now leave a comment, and by all means, whatever you do, don't tell the governness you were here!

All products made and produced by the exclusively by and for the Walt Disney Company and can be purchased on their website.  And in case you were wondering they had nothing to do with this post.

Lone Star Stitching Together Tea Party

In honor of sewing my Lone Star together:

Be sure to fall down the rabbit hole!

Kids Say the Darnest Things

Tonight at dinner my six year old told me that 20 years ago there were cave men and dinosaurs alive and walking the Earth.  Needless to say her daddy felt very old.

Inside a Box

Now tell me who learned it from who?  Did DD learn it from the cats or the other way around?

How Can You Tell...

How can you tell if a hard-boiled egg is cooked inside without opening it? Now let me preface, I can cook, at least I think I can, I don't burn dinner, and I don't get any complaints, and compliments mostly come in the form of requests for seconds, or even thirds, and of course burps.

That being said, at lunch my daughter told me when she was done she wanted an egg. That means a hard-boiled egg, and as it was her second request in two days I went ahead and started them while I made grilled cheese (have you had it with oregano?). Then we ate our lunch and I went back to my work on the "What Would you Look Like if you Where a Quilt Project," and forgot about the eggs.

My gas stove carries on like a cat in heat if something is boiling, and I have those Lifetime Pots that make the water seal. That being said the eggs didn't hold their water seal (mostly because they were ignored on med-high heat) so instead of how you would normally make eggs by bringing to a boil and then reducing the heat, I never reduced.... Okay truth be told with the water tight pots I could just turn them off and let them sit after they boil but dd always wants them faster than that...

As my thoughts turned to dinner, I'm guessing about a silent 45 minutes later (silent because I'm in the kitchen a mere 7 feet from the stove all this time!) I thought, oh I'll make pasta. Nope, can't do that I boiled all the eggs. Crud. Racing over to the eggs I can see the water had boiled down quite a bit... I added more water and took them off the heat, and I'm going to make DH eat one after dinner. Wont he be thrilled.
They do look okay. One egg has a hairline crack, but that happens sometimes. Other than that they look fine... I am not a fan of eggs. I'm sorry, I know they're great, a complete food and all, but they make me hurl, no kidding, even the smell makes me heave. So trust me the kitchen was silent and smell free. I don't really understand it.

As for the challenge, I'm missing just one fabric I think, and I need to selectively bleach one I bought already. Why in the world did I buy fabric to bleach? Well I figured it would be much to hard to find the white bleached out areas where I wanted them. So instead I found a fabric that was the proper color most everywhere...

My theme will be a single appliqué paisley, for reasons that may or may not become clear to you while I work on it, as the paisley will be on the bottom left of the quilt. I found a beautiful hand detailed heart to balance. The trouble is the heart isn't fabric, it isn't embroidery, and it isn't a pattern. Instead it's a rubber stamp. As I want the final heart to be about 18" square I doubt the stamp comes that big.

So I was working on redrawing the imagine into Illustrator when Mcafee lagged out the entire system with an update and then everything concerning Illustrator and the file I was working in vanished. I've yet to determine if that was the best path anyway so I haven't gone and dug the file (or what is left of it) out of the temporaries.

As for the eggs, aside from a bit of browning on the outside of the white that dd didn't notice they must taste fine because she ate it right up. As for the egg smell I found it trapped within the egg, as soon as I pulled the shell back…

Sunshine Award

My long time friend Heather over at Miracles Momma Designs gave me the Sunshine Award for my blog.  Here's what she had to say about me:  Liz is a crafting dynamo! She’s always got projects going and her quilts are absolutely fabulous. I want to sew like her when I grow up.

Isn't it surprising to hear something like that?  So often I think we live in our own pool of creativity, going outside to learn but yet, not ever seeing ourselves the way others do, looking from the outside in.  Thanks for the pat on the back!
 
Now The Sunshine Award has rules:  I'm supposed to pass this on to 12 other bloggers.  Now I'm a big stinkpot because I'm not going to do that.  If I have ever posted a comment at your blog I surely think you're amazing because if I didn't I would have moved on without posting.
 
Funny thing about that phrase "stink pot".  My dearly departed Grandmother used to call me that, it was sort of special just for me.  But my own daughter...   Now she doesn't like to be called Stink Pot.  It reminds her of smelly toilets, and she is convinced that no matter what she is NOT a smelly toilet.

Sweet Tea and Next Year's Lemons

Here get comfortable and have a glass of tea with me, while I tell you what I went through yesterday for my tea. I drink about a gallon of tea every two days. The doctors tell me this is good because of all the antioxidants in tea. Personally I just like the way it tastes. 

Here's how it goes.

2 Quarts (give or take) of hot water, heated just prior to boiling,
Add 3 family sized tea bags of Luzianne Tea (other tea like Lipton's has less tea in the bag and requires more bags which somehow seems to make the oily tea skin that I HATE)
1 cup of sugar added to the hot water
Stir
After 4 or 5 minutes remove the tea bags. (The box says 3 minutes but I'm usually to busy to get back to it that fast)
I used to fill to the top of my gallon pitcher with ice, but now I save energy by adding cold water
1 entire fresh picked fresh squeezed Meyer Lemon

Now here's where I run into trouble. The Meyer Lemon is the best part of this tea and I started adding it right about the time Rob told me that the tree was wrapping up it's season this year and I'd better hurry up and use what was there. Oh my how refreshing tea is this way!

So now it's been at least two months and I'm still picking lemons off my tree (I love my Lemon tree!) Except now the tree is working on next year's fruit, and is in full bloom, oh joy to the lemons we will have next year.

Do you know what adores citrus blooms? Honey Bees! Having lived on a farm for part of my childhood, I have a very aloof way of dealing with honeybees. I'll leave them alone and they leave me alone. It's a very good relationship this way. Except now... The tree has what I want and it has what they want... So how to grab those Lemons and leave the bees be?

These pictures are pretty aren't they? They smell good too, as just yesterday I told my friend Vicki, there was a beautiful delicate perfume in the air and how thrilled I was not to be allergic so I could enjoy the smell. But do you see that butt? That bee butt? There are really two in this photograph, but who's counting?  This tree is covered with many such butts, and for every bee butt there are 10 buzzing bees in the air. Seriously girls can't you give me just a minute with my tree?

So now that I've told my story, my darling Lady Bird has arrived with her boyfriend I'm going to enjoy their company. Would you believe they visit so often these days - every one here recognizes her on sight?

Cat Trouble

This is a typical Sunny face. See the vacant expression? Now here's what happened: Sunny went to the water bowl to get a drink and stepped into this bag. When he tried to walk away the bag went with him. Quickly so not to alert the bag he played it right off his foot. As the bag sat there doing nothing Sunny had to investigate the bag further as though to attempt to learn how he got stuck in the first place. After a time it becomes clear he cannot discover the bag's secrets so he tracks down his super smart sister. Can't you just hear Tiny mumbling, "I don't see anything?"

Of course once I snapped the photo Tiny took off like a girl afraid of the world knowing she likes her brother and was last seen trying to smack him.

Good Blogger, Bad Blogger

Seriously what makes good bloggers vs. bad bloggers? Is it our ability to stick to whatever subject that our blog is about? Because if that's the case I'd still be talking about my 2 year old and not quilting at all. Thank goodness I'm a bad blogger. Because I really like what comes out of my sewing machine. Not to mention I love it when others share a bit about themselves while sharing their choosen medium.

What sets us apart? Is it great photos? (because you're not getting any today I feel like my allergies hit me right on my honker) Is it how often we blog? Our giveaways? When I don't blog for a while I think gee "bad blogger me", yet it's our lives that make our blogs interesting...

Or perhaps it's just that it's an outlet for others like us to find each other in our own creative environments? If that's the case then I'm as happy as a lark.

I have an opps of the week. I'm certain if it was a contest I'd win this week. The Student Council at Jessica's school is having their first bake sale. I wanted to contribute (and baking sounded like fun) so I pulled out the best Sugar Cookie Recipe I have (I've perfected dozens and dozens of cookie batches - believe me or not). This time I made three batches. I was certain all of my cookies would be gone as they were especially cute pumpkins, ghosts, and leaves. Then when I was 90% baking all of them I tasted one of the first. Something was not right at all.

Jessica loved them and ate 4 the first day... But still I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong with them. Around dinner time it hit me. I FORGOT to put sugar in. Oh yes the only sugar in them is the sugar on top of them. So much for that. Rob is out buying nuts so we can make cashew clusters and peanut brittle as I'm burned out on cookies for the time being.  At least Jessica thinks they're great.

It's a Parent Thing

Today I worked on the replacement row. It's turning out quite pretty if I do say so myself. I really like the fabrics I picked, they feel nice as I work with them. Of course it's always nice that the colors look good too. That of course had very little to do with me, mostly to do with Amber who picked the colors to begin with. I have five of the first 7 blocks one. The goal is to spell PEACE. I started with the P, and then moved on to the E. Anyone who has quilted before knows there it's easier to make two blocks that are the same at the same time, so I made both the first "E" and the last one as well. The hearts were the last two I did and while a different heart block than I am used to, it still sewed together easily. Little did I realize my day's worth of sewing had spelled out, yep you read it here ladies and gentlemen.

It has got to be a parent thing! We really want PEACE! But all we get is PEE!

From my home to yours I wish you a very peaceful Easter Holiday. May your chocolate be milky, your babies be happy, and most of all your heart filled with love.

Brain Farts?

I hate having brain farts. It reminds me of the time in college when I spent an hour bird walking with a pal and at the end he says "how did we get here again?" causing us to spend the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how we got to where we were in the conversation. Heck I thought we were just shooting the bull...

So what of that brain fart you ask? Well, I thought I was BOM for April. Nope I'm block of the month for May. Lovely. I felt this huge pile of stuff weighing on me and it turns out I was the one to making the pile heavy. Eeegads, I must be a camel let's just pile it on.

The good news is that I'm heading out of town a little weekend girls getaway. I can hardly wait, and of course I will have plenty of new reviews for "trying a bit of something new" when I arrive back home. Hopefully I can leave my brain farts here where they will dissipate never to be seen, smelt, or heard from again.

Brown Pizza

My daughter loves art. Painting, chalk, crayons, you name it she's done it.

So she is working on coloring a Pizza when the following conversation takes place.

Me: A Brown Pizza? What goes on a brown pizza?
DD: Mushrooms
Me: Mushrooms, does daddy eat mushrooms?
DD: No mushrooms belong in the ground.

What a silly girl I have. Of course at this point Daddy chimes in, about good mushrooms or something, but I was already laughing.

The things my 3 year old says

DH takes DD's nose. She yells "don't eat it don't eat it, there's boggers in there!"

DH say's "well then I'll just have to blow the boggers out and then eat it."

"I need my nose back," she says.

"Why do you need it back?" DH asks

"So I can put it back on my nose!" DD retorts.

At this point I can't help but ask, "how do you put your nose back on your nose?"

What a time of it!

Good Morning Folks! This morning I was awoken by the ringing phone. My favorite sound in the morning not! Just when I was trying so hard to keep my eyes shut tight against the day (in spite of all that Jessica was doing to get me up). And who should it be? Well there's no telling, because the phone in the bedroom is dead. I race to find another phone throwing off the covers and chasing down the hall. Oh crud it's the Sears Repair guy, "HELLO!!?!?!?" Nope he's gone. Drat. I hurry to get dressed and pull a brush through my hair that has gotten annoying long. Then my eyes aloft on the rest of the house. ACK! The kitchen is covered in last night's trial of the New Mexican place down the road.

Bell Peppers make me sick and so I put myself to bed shortly after dinner. Rob's old boss asked him to come back, so he was off to work (overnight, ugh). The toys where a mess, oh it was just awful. So I race to dress Jessica, I race to pick up her toys. Oh no it's 8:30 AM when I call my mother. "Hello? Mom?" More racing to clean the goo off the dishes and hide them in the dishwasher. Race, Race, Race. Kitchen is okay, living room is okay, bedroom - we'll just close the door. Oh but what if he comes in through the front door? ACK! Oh well can't help it now. Off to the bathroom, YUcky, there's poo in the potty. UGH... Dealing... Talking on the phone... The things we do.

It's 9:00AM and I'm off the phone, no husband yet... Check emails... Do I have that book? Ummmmmmmm.... So I head off to Jessica's room. It's nice in there karmic precision has been obtained. Serenity now! Oh it's marvelous. My hair that never made it up is hanging in sweaty strands. Oh there's the book... That's nice, oh there's a bit of a breeze, I can feel it now. I love this room... I'll just sit here until something happens. Of course that was when the Sears guy drove past.

Why did I even need him you ask? Well they over torqued the cover on the water filter at the factory when they put the filter in, best get the part now, while I can still say it arrived that way.

Perhaps I forgot to mention? Sears tried so many times to fix the old fridge they were out 6 times in 3 weeks. After they changed out the compressed things went from bad to awful, and the entire fridge stopped working. Everything in there that hadn't already been lost by the freeze/thaw things that the freezer was doing was completely ruined when everything completely melted mere hours after the repair person left. Somewhere along the line, thank goodness the lemon clause kicked in and I got a completely new fridge. I feel a bit like Vana White. Look at the beautiful new REFRIGERATOR.

Which brings you up to the broken little cover thing at delivery. Hopefully that will be the end of the big bad fridge story. Currently we are all calling the new one the Big Cold Monster, as it it quite a bit bigger than the old one. The length and width measurements were the same, but somewhere someone fibbed, as it's taking up at least an extra inch or two of the hall way. No matter it's so cold I've turned it down twice. The seal on it is so strong you have to use two hands sometimes to get it open! EEEK!

After Rob got home and went to bed I fell twisted my ankle (the good one) on the last step into Jessica's room. It was a book completely hidden under her little rug that caused it. Hopefully it wont effect my luncheon when my mom on Friday.

Quilts? Oh you want to talk about what I did yesterday after the post? Well I told you about dinner. Before dinner I had Trusty Gem out. That's the name I've been auditioning for the 2001 Brother ULT. And I put the prettiest little butterfly near the basket of roses that I hand pieced for that blue quilt. So pretty. I'm going to do another in slightly different colors on the other side. Good thing everything I want to do today has me sitting, hu?

This Morning's Humor Train

Perhaps you recall how I am doing a bit of repair sewing for my sister? Well today I was working on them when my daughter says:

"Her butt is naked without her pants!"
"No honey she has more than one pair of pants, just like you wear a different pair of pants everyday."

She didn't see fit to comment about that. From the mouths of babes!

Bridging People and Places Charity Perinatal Quilts

Oh boy oh boy, I'm so proud of myself, I just wrapped up another three perinatal quilts today. Just one problem with that... Two of them where the size I'd already made! Yep, so for a set it is But my set is like this
3 Extra Small Preemie (10x10 to 12x12), 0 Extra Small
3 Small Preemie (14x14 to 18x18), 5 Small (14x14)
2 Medium Preemie (20x20 to 22x22), 1 Medium (20x20)1 Large Preemie (22x22 to 24x24), 0 Large
1 Term (26x26 to 28x28)... 0 Term
I suppose they'll be getting two sets from me then. Because these are done and ready to go. I'm hoping to have them all done before Christmas. I don't know why it just seems like a good deadline for myself.

Tonight when I was putting Jessica to bed I had the last one, a Noah's ark theme all pinned and ready to sew the binding on. (I pinned it while I waited for her to fall asleep), so when I got up and gathered everything together to leave (yes I remembered the pins) I reached for her door and the pin box hit the door and pins flew! So there I was all haunched over picking up the darned pins in the dark hoping like a maniac that I picked them all up. That's the last time I take pins with me without the pin magnet thing! :D

The 16 Point Red Star Quilt Sneak Peak!

So today I SMACKED right into the window of my own limits. Seriously. I doubled the Wintergraphix pattern, and in retrospect that was a huge no no. I had never made the pattern before so I didn't know anything past the stars I've made in the past.

Here's what happened. Doubling the pattern, doubled the seam allowances on everything. This star has so many seams it has put me "out" by nearly three inches. So now while my brain screams "HELP" I know the real answers. Answer one seam rip all the points I've already made (8 of them as I have done half of my 16 point star) and make them smaller, or go with the over sized and let the points run into each other that 3 inches at the upper intersections thereby allowing the outer most points to be free and perfect. The latter has the most appeal to me as it is the "simplest" fix, and because I know doing this will help blend away a few places where this same problem manifested itself. From the photo seen here the quilt will grow from it's current 70" square 34" as I add a row of blocks also known as the "points" all the way around.

My daughter loves to tinker with my sewing machine. I keep an eagle eye on her the entire time, she is just so cute to watch, as she does everything with the thread I do. Or at least I'd like to think I look that cute sewing! ;)

This morning Jessica was roaming the house in her daddy's boots. This is not something he relishes, but something I felt needed to be photographed so in years to come we can all talk about how cute she was.

I took this last photo out of the sheer silliness of it, I bet you have never seen anything quite like this. The cat in the bird bath is Bobby the neighbor's little boy, my guess is it never occurred to the man to leave water out, but I could be wrong, I try not to go snooping on other people's porches. The standing cat is an extremely shy little boy, a half brother of my dearly beloved Sunny. I had just been thinking we haven't seen many birds using the bird bath! I suppose it's time to wash it out.

Crazy Weather, Dumb Puns, and Little Girl Cute

Okay, so I was wrong about the log cabin block, it only needs five of each color with a center fabric, for a total of eleven. I've now made both that were required.... One big problem. They should measure 12.5", the first one I made was just over 13" (to big). So I adjusted from a scant 1/4" (1/8" on my machine) to a 1/4". The second one I made is a 12", so it's to little! Now I figure I have to adjust my sewing machine 1/16th of an inch to fix my trouble. Yikes!

We're having CRAZY thunderstorms here. You wake up in the morning to a beautiful day, but there is thunder all around that goes on and on, like an upset stomach! Then after clouding over, it will think about rain, sometimes for hours, eventually pour, and around 1pm we were back to pretty sky and upset stomach! But now it's VERY dark (at 2pm) and heavy rain that came up all the sudden. I can't help but shake my head and think it's the Florida rainy season, as they say don't like the weather wait five minutes.

At least we're not in the north and Midwest with all the flooding! It brings to light (as I sit in the light of the pc it's gotten so dark) what my mom told me once, you have to pick the natural disasters you're willing to live with. We get hurricanes and hot temps, It hasn't snowed since before the hail storm in June when I was pregnant with Jessica in 2005! hehee. oh when it rains it pours. Is that two puns in one paragraph? I have to quilt that (oopps I meant quit that). To much typing about quilts I suppose.

Let's see let's have a different note. I love this state. I do, really I do. I love being in a cold grocery store in June and walk out into the HOT (some would say sweltering heat) of the parking lot and the feeling you get as your nose warms back up. I love that even though I'm not quite warm I'll feel like a lizard on a hot rock by the time I get into that hot car.

LOL, did I mention the thermostat on my air conditioner broke? Yep, it either RUNS,'n,RUNS,'n,RUNS, or it's off. Lovely hu? Lucky for me this crazy weather doesn't have it to hot today, though yesterday before we knew what was wrong with the ac it was up over 87 inside when we were putting Jessica to bed.

Now my daughter is a joy. Just yesterday her daddy was giving her trouble about her wanting help in the bathroom, mostly she just wants you to sit there and make sure everything comes out okay, hand her some tp, etc. A big part of the time she doesn't even want you there, just sometimes, it's a comfort thing. So daddy didn't want to supervise the bathroom, and I was busy with who knows what. So he's razzing her to get her to do it alone, when she interrupts him in the most darling voice and says "Daddy, I'm just a little girl!"

I nearly busted a gut right then and there! It makes me want to squeal with delight over her zest! She has more personality than most adults smushed up in her little body.

Oh but wait! There's more. So her daddy gives in and helps her, and says "yes, honey I know you're a little girl." Finished my daughter walks out of the bathroom and runs to me, "daddy called me a little girl!" Oh my, what a world, what a world!