So much to do...

Yep, there's a lot to do before Bob's surgery next week for his hip replacement! Today we had pre-admission testing and drawing of his blood for blood typing. They also asked lots of questions and we all laughed through most of the process. Funny story, Bob had to give a urine sample, which he proceeded to go into the room and do so...when he came back the tech said she need to draw his blood and started to look at his arms for a vein. She said "you have a big one"..of course, Bob and I just looked at one another and then she said "I bet others have told you that too". I asked if they had two way mirrors in the bathroom and of course we all laughed so hard the poor tech almost couldn't draw his blood. We had lots of laughs before that but that was the most we laughed. She did say as we were leaving "you two are funny". So after that we picked up Bob's walker and some other items he'll need upon arriving home after surgery. Next up was our flu shots and Bob was lucky enough to get two! He had to have a pneumonia shot as well.

I had a phone call last week regarding one of my SOTB quilts in the MQAI show. Seems somehow it got some type of candy or something on it from another event they had at the gallery..this is a before pic.....
and these are some pics I took when I picked it up today....these are just two of the 14 pictures I took..that's at least 14 spots that I found. Front and back.

You know...these things happen and when you put your artwork on exhibit you lose all control over what can happen to your art work. I'm not upset...I just don't like to 'repair' things...it's like hemming pants! I hate to do any mending at all..maybe I'll just make another one!! OK, so I won't..the stitching alone took me forever on this piece (you have to click on the original picture to see all the hand stitching). So no big deal...I'll get it done but there are other things I want to play with...for example....
This is a small section of my Sept. BJP
And another small section of the beading...
And this little guy is on it as well! Guess you can figure out it's an underwater theme, right! Geezzz I hope so!! It's coming along and I hope to be finished before Bob goes in on Tues. for surgery.
I have made a beaded needle case and started on another one and I'll be working on my October BJP as soon as I firm up my design. Figure I'll be in my sewing room lots when Bob gets home and while he's in the hospital, I'll need some hand work (beaded needle cases are perfect hand work!). I get all my wooden needle cases and beading patterns from Beth at UntilWeBeadAgain. Beth does some beautiful beading as well as making Raku beads. Make sure to check out her work!

After all our running around today, Bob hooked up the receiver to the TV and DVD player. This is a pic of Mandy who was very bored watching us. She barely fits on my chair! But she sure does love sitting in it. And yes, we still pick her up and put her down as she still isn't doing the jumping or stairs yet.
Bob plans on golfing tomorrow and I'll be picking up kids from school. That's all for today..whew..glad it's almost over.

More gifts

Gifts come in many forms, don't they. Yesterday I met my friend, Mary, at the Farmer's Market in Grand Blanc. This seems to be a weekly event for us, unless the weather is extremely bad! I'm a fair weather farmer's market gal! This pic just shows some of my 'buys' from that trip. Drizzles of rain were starting to fall along with the wind yesterday so our marketing was quick. I also picked up a great cherry pie for Bob and I..yum..I made roasted Leek potato soup that our friend Carol T. put us onto (hence, my leeks aren't in the picture - at this point they were in the oven!) and a Massaged (yep, that's right!) Kale and Mango salad that Mary gave me. Surprisingly, this salad was really good. Bob loved the meal but now he wants my 'famous' cheese chowder soup, which I haven't made in so long..wonder why? Lots of fat! Maybe when Bob's surgery is over I'll treat him.
So another gift I had was watching Nick's flag football game on Sat. Time with family is a gift we take for granted. Must be a 'getting to be old' thing, nevertheless, I feel it's a gift.
Nick and his team were also given a gift by Mike Lodish a fromer NFL player who came to talk to the kids and show them one of his two Super Bowl rings! This might not mean much to the kids today but years from now one of them will remember this visit.

This is Nick's team (Nick is 2nd from the right of Mike).

Nick is on the far right in the back. The little guy up front holding the football in front of Nick is so cute. His mom says he sleeps, eats and lives for sports. He wakes up in the a.m. asking where his mouth guard is! What a hoot these little ones are!
Now for a few more gifts!! These are two gifts I won via the blog! You can read Susan's post here on this giveaway. This is a pair of Gingher scissors I won from Susan Brubaker Knapp's, Blue Moon River Blog. Susan wrote the book Applique Petal Party and of course is well known in the quilting world. Thanks, Susan!!
So my next gift is from Kate at Kate Boyan's Gallery. This is Kate's book, The Blue Bead.

I've posted about Kate and this same book talking about her beautiful bead work. I purchased this book a few months ago and read it to the kids when we had 'date night'. The kids loved the story and were even intrigued by the beading. Kate created a beaded piece for each journal page in the book and her pieces are spectacular. One of Nick's comments were "grandma, it probably took that lady a day to make one of these" (referring to one of the beaded pieces). I told Nick I'm sure it took her more than a day! The story is about a bead given as a gift and its travel from years ago to the present day gift. This is a really nice book for both the story and the eye candy. So thanks, Kate!!! This will make a nice gift for me to give! Kate was so kind she actually gave each of us a copy that entered a comment!! How sweet is that! I did make a fiber postcard thank you and mailed to Kate. Make sure you check out Kate's beading!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK!!

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Can't believe you're 7!!! Have a great day today!! And thanks for a great day of flag football yesterday too!! I took lots and lots of video of the game and other than the wind!, it was a fun afternoon with all the kids. I even got to see Katie and Ginny which was nice. Katie and Ginny are the kids cousins and each babysat one summer for Amber and Nick along with me on Wed's and we always had a good time. Well, grandma Robbie had a good time with them!

Nick's having his BD party in October since he likes to have a costume party at the same time. Grandpa and I may not make it as it's the weekend after Bob's surgery.

More gifts!

This past Monday our friend, LA who is visiting from Italy, spent the afternoon with our Aussome fiber group. LA is a fantastic artist and her quilting designs and workmanship are wonderful. While in Italy, LA has been working on one of her loves which is watercolor drawings.
I'm showing some of the cards LA let us pick out of her collection. These are the 3 I chose. Look at this one too....
And I love this one!!!
LA had her original drawings printed on cards while she was in Ontario visiting her parents. The printer did a great job on the color and the paper stock he used. She is going to be selling her art work and I'm really excited for her. LA is leaving for Italy next week and it's so good she's enjoys working on her art while in Europe. She said she'll be sitting waiting for the bus and will sketch out a drawing! What talent!!! And she's also a runner!! She has a marathon coming up in Amsterdam next month!

So another gift I received this past weekend....my daughter, Dawn, made homemade salsa and tomato sauce!!! YUM!!!! You have to read the top labels to see the different types of salsa. I just might have to take a jar of each to Florida with us. Dawn is a good cook and she's been working on canning the past few weekends. Isn't she a good 'Betty Crocker' for being such a business professional!
The last gift, so to speak, is our gift to each other...it's a new plasma TV...the following pics are actually after Bob had picked up all the wires...
This is the console Bob put together and the TV on the right is no longer at our house. Bob gave it to a friend and I hope they are enjoying it.
More wires...and these are cleaned up! Ha Now we're in the process of looking up the DVD, CD, receiver to the new TV. Thank goodness Bob is good at mechanical things.The new TV is big (65"!) but it doesn't look as overwhelming as I thought and interest free for 3 years! I'll post pic once everything is in 'order'.
It was really fun to watch Survivor on it last night!! I didn't realize how blue the water was or how dirty the people really are! UGH..between not having coffee or a bath/shower, I wouldn't make it on Survivor..ok, even if I had coffee and a bath I still couldn't make it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARY JO!!!!!

Yep, another BD today. This is our DIL, MaryJo, Kayla and Ian's mom!! Have a great day, MJ!!!!! We're there in spirit (as we are throughout the year!). Kids live in Indiana and we don't get down their way much at all which is sad. I sent MJ her BD gift last week, one present was her Starbuck's card! We do love our Starbucks and now she can enjoy a cup of 'joe' without the guilt!! Enjoy!!!

I love MJ's smile on this picture! We met the kids in Florida last winter on their spring break and took pictures by the water. It was SO windy that day and trying to take a group photo which was funny in itself, just led to lots of laughter..you can see my post on our visit here.

Again, Happy Birthday, MJ!!

Happy Birthday Baby!!

Happy Birthday, DAWN!!!!! Yep, one of my babies is having a BD today!! 44 today! So hard to believe as I still can remember going to the hospital and giving birth! Dawn was born with (and still has) this full head of hair that was jet black! All the folks at the hospital couldn't get over how black and thick her hair was. She sure was the talk of the baby ward.

Hope you have a great day today!!! Love you!!!!

Yesterday, all the kids were up for an early brunch to celebrate Dawn's BD. I do love having them all here at once. You just want to sit back and watch them. The picture above is Amber helping auntie open her gifts.

Uncle Jeff got Dawn a massage which she was having yesterday afternoon and Kris and Darrin gave her a coupon for another massage. Dawn does love her massages!
I showed the pin I bought for myself from Lynn Hartley on a previous post and this is the one I bought for Dawn. i did give her earring to match, which Amber preceded to tell her she didn't like them! Talk about 'out of the mouth of babes'! I don't have pics of the earrings but they match the pin and I thought they were cool!

I also made Dawn some notecards since she still does hand write notes. Dawn has made her own Christmas cards several times which are really nice. Of course I keep them all!

These are the front of the cards I doodled for her.

I hope the kids had a nice visit as I had! It was a really nice weekend with the little ones spending the night Sat. Amber did most of the prepping of the food for Sunday brunch and they got to play pool, which they've wanted to do for so long! I'll post pics and movies later this week. Until then, enjoy your day, Dawn!!! Love you...
Happy BD to 'J' too.

Just play time

While in Florida last winter, my friend Carol P. and I would always hit Michael's and JoAnn's several times a week. Of course, I head to the 'sale' aisle first off and I found many Golden products over 1/2 off. I happened into my 'cabinet' the other day and spotted some of my 'buys' and thought, heck, let's play! Yes, I talk to myself often but I enjoy the conversations!

I've been doing lots of Zentangles lately and wanted to try creating some doodles on canvas rather than paper and just playing with what art I can do on canvas without drawing. Since I trace all my drawings (I can't draw at all) I thought of some type of transfer process. So, I printed out on transparency film a picture of a Valentine fiber card I made a few years ago. Here's the printed film (I used my HPDeskjet D1430). Hard to see but it's there!

This is the film on top of a small canvas piece I've already stenciled on with some acrylic paints. The first transfer I did was onto a larger canvas (11" x 14"). I applied the gel medium onto the canvas then applied the transfer and rubbed with my finger and then used my brayer.

Here's the transfer onto the larger canvas. Looks pretty good I think!

I really like the look of the transfer so thought I'd add some 'doodles'. I'm not that thrilled with my doodles but it's a good practice piece. I found the canvas substrate to be really rough to draw on due to ridges (I had applied some gel medium to the entire piece hoping it would fill in some of the ridges). I have a project in mind so I want to try and get this technique down pat. Just a work in progress for now. I'm going to use acrylic paint onto the background before I start with my doodles next time.

This was the 2nd transfer I did with the transparency and it came out pretty good. You can see the stenciled areas quite well. I did color in the entire piece using watercolor pencils. I had a pic here but deleted it and it's too hard to move pics around so...the colored piece turned out quite nice. This is 5"x7".

While waiting for my transfer to dry, I fused some batting onto a piece of fabric and painted it with fabric paint. These will be used for fiber postcards.

So, off I go to watch Nick at flag football practice then both kids are coming back home to spend the night with grandpa and I. Kids are all coming up tomorrow for a light brunch to celebrate Dawn's BD (which is Monday). It will be nice having all the kids around!!! I'm excited and looking forward to the weekend. Lots of cooking and love!!!

Just being busy...

Mandy watching her 'dog friends'

Cody (far left) & Logan! He's new to the family next door. He's a Labordoddle!

Speaking of 'doodles'..you have to put down the glass of wine (ok, or whatever!) and rotate your head to the right..I forgot to rotate this pic. This is the small canvas piece I'm doodling on. I still have lots of areas to fill in...just whenever!










I also updated Ian's stats for Cross Country on my widget. This article was in the local paper & I removed all the kids last names for 'security sake':

Andrew W. came in 13th with a time of 18:20, while Brett M. was 17th (18:43) and freshman Ian P. rounded out the scoring for the Jackets with a 20th-place finish in 18:51. This was Ian's best time (grandma added note!).

“Ian continues to run better with each race,” said Jones. “He and Blake, the two freshmen, are getting better and better and we’re starting to see that time gap between the top five or six get a little closer.”

You go IAN!!! You're doing just great!!!

Next is update on Nick's Flag Football..these are clips for the family from last night. Darrin was out of town so he didn't get to see Nick play in their scrimmage, which Nick's team won!

Nick is wearing a red top and bottom. I don't remember now which video is which..but he's hiking the ball in one, catching the ball and then running with the ball.

BJP August

This 17th century embroidery piece was the inspiration for my August BJP (yes, August, I'm one month behind). Because it's August, I wanted it to be HOT so I changed from my first choice of colors.

My finished BJP for August

Hot, Hot, Hot Summer

I added beading on the edges (as I have with each of my BJP's this year) but I changed from pale peach to yellow to mid orange. You can click on each picture to see more detail of beading and quilting.

Now to work on my Sept. BJP! Today I'm picking up kids from school, we'll have dinner ready for mom and then off to Nick's 1st Flag Football scrimmage then home by 8 to watch Survivor!! Love that show!

Good News/Bad News

The good news/bad news came from our grand son Nick..good news - he lost his first baby tooth! Bad news...as Nick was coming out of the shower, he told his mom he doesn't believe in the tooth fairy! AND, he also doesn't believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny! Sigh....guess that TD he got in Flag Football has erased all baby thoughts! My DIL said he did try to recant as she was putting him to bed...guess he had 2nd thoughts about the $$'s!

Back to artwork..I was 'doodling' this small hard canvas piece and decided to put some watercolor on it..which of course removed some of the gel pen doodles I had done. I just went over some of the areas again. Actually, didn't turn out that bad. Good practice..

Yea...just like if I find a blouse or T-shirt I like I buy multiples..when I find a zentangle design I like to do, I do lots of them! That's a good thing as it makes it easier to remember how to do them. I keep a journal book and put in the designs I like as a reference. This is the front of an envelope I did.

And another edge to an envelope...

I mentioned at the MQAI opening there were some vendors so I wanted to share two of my 'buys'. This is a great purse made by Cindy Geist from Scrap Happy . Cindy and Mary Bajcz make some really cool items. Check out their web site.

And this is my artwear I purchased from Lynn Hartley. Lynn doesn't have a web site that I can find. I'll have to email her to see where she displays or sells her jewelry. I purchased a pin from her about four years ago and I keep it on my muslin coat. Now I can switch pins. I also bought a pair of earrings but forgot to take a picture of them.

Yesterday Bob and I attended his presurgical conference which I have to say was really informative! They covered everything from pre to post operation..what to expect, what to do and what not to do. As a 'coach' I even got a giant pin! They really gave us some food for thought as to what chair to sit in and how to get out of bed. It's obvious they'll cover that after his surgery but better to know some of that ahead of time. The room was packed and we were shocked at the number of people having either knee or hip surgery...actually, there were more knee surgical patients than hips.

Today, running errands. I'm finishing up the beaded edge on my Aug. BJP so hopefully i can get pics posted tomorrow. Then on to Sept. to try and catch up!!