Merry Christmas from the West ( Wet) Coast

It has been incredibly wet and rainy here. I'm not sure if it is wetter than normal or if one wet winter blends into another wet winter.  Since I haven't left the house for three weeks I am certainly not the best judge of the weather anyway.

I am still trying to figure out the bet way to upload pictures and post to my blog from my iPad. I am still finding the most comfortable spot for me is in the bed with my foot elevated higher than my heart.  Within a few minutes of my foot being down my toes turn the same shade of purple as my cast and then the more they are down the more tingling and burning I suffer by the end of the day.

This is a picture of Jenny on a walk to Whyte lake in West Vancouver. My neighbour and walking partner took Jenny and her dog Django for a walk last week and took photos all along the way and sent me the Picasa photo album so I could enjoy the walk as they did.  That was such a wonderful thing for her to do. I go through the album often and I think every time I view it I cry.  But I know that this will end and I will be back!

A couple of pictures of Hunter and Phoenix

I am on my laptop - trying out the Picasa Blog This - which I used to use to post all the time - so I will see how it is working.  I have my laptop upstairs now and I have moved to the reclining chair in the living room - sort of -- I still get a lot of swelling in my foot and my cast is quite snug and I don't have a lot of room for swelling so my foot really needs to be elevated most of the time. 

These a couple of pictures of Hunter and Phoenix that were taken this fall at a farm close to where they live. 

Hunter is doing great.  He is so sharp - he just doesn't miss a thing!  He turned 4 years old last April.  He just had tubes put in his ears the beginning of December.  He is just a sweetie and Jessica says he is really growing up.   He wears the glasses to correct a bit of cross eye - and he used to just pull them off and throw them as far as his little arms could throw.  He has lost a pair or two.  When I was there in July we were running around a park in Jessica's neighbourhood and she said -- Where are Hunter's glasses?  I panicked and spent 20 minutes searching the ground where we were playing - and then decided to look a little higher - and there they were dangling from an inside branch on a bush - thank heavens I found them!!  But now he is keeping them on more often than not.

 

Phoenix is such a cutie - and she looks a lot like her mother!  And she is chatting up a storm!  She is a very determined little girl - much like her mother - and her brother.  She just turned 3 in November.  Her and Hunter will only be one school year apart.  I think it is so wonderful they are so close in age. 



This is a small quilt - I can't remember the exact size - 24inchs by 20 inches or so.  There was a challenge in my quilt guild - "In the Gloaming"  We were given two fat quarters of fabric - the black batik and the blue batik.  

" A Wound with a View"

 

This was a challenge for me.  I used a photo ( the photo below) that I had taken with a photo app on my phone.  The photo was taken from our deck one evening - as I had been on the deck with my broken ankle most of the summer - 2011.  Hence the name. 

I used all of the batik fabric as one piece for the to foreground and then the blue fabric plus a lighter blue fabric for the sky.  I had to make a line drawing of the photo and then enlarge it in sections and then I traced it on to fusible Steam a Seam.  I did a bit of thread painting for the moon and then used my friend Dianne's Shiva Paint sticks to blend the blue sky and add a bit of glow to the orange sunset.  I think if I did it again I would change a few things in the sky and the sunset but otherwise I was pleased with the result - and I won a ribbon for the challenge!  Yay!  

 

I am going to try to do a bit more blogging - as I don't really have much as to do! 

The Lion Finally Sleeps Tonight

So now I am testing the blogger app for my phone - which apparently doesn't work on the iPad.

Today is Jim's birthday. He is 56 today. And today is my parents 56 th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary mum and dad!!!
Poor Jim is stuck spending his birthday with me - in my state. I can't even go out and buy him a card. :((. He says its alright but...... Anyway there is nothing I can do about it. He has invited a friend over for a Ploughmans lunch and a pint of his home made English bitter. He has been saving a nice piece of Stilton just for today.

He has been working very hard at all the various household tasks. He took the first two weeks of my recovery off work as I was basically on bed rest. Although I found it didn't hurt as much as Holly had exclaimed! Thank goodness for that. Holly - the orthopedic surgeon's receptionist had scared the stuffing out of me. Although it did hurt a lot and now my big toe is numb and tingly.

I am going to try to post a couple of quilt photos. The quilt is "The Lion Finally Sleeps Tonight". It is a quilt I made for Eric. I upload the pictures from my phone but I can't see where they have gone. So I am not sure what will happen when I publish this post.