Getting ready to go to Calgary

I am slowly recovering for this terrible virus that has fallen on our household. I went to the doctor last Monday and got some antibiotics - I seem to have ended up with a sinus infection. I do not go to the doctor very often and I am not a good patient -LOL ... but I am taking all the antibiotics. I can breath again but Jim and I are both still coughing on and off.

We are off to Calgary in the morning for Hunter's birthday. I will take lots of pictures. I also made a little surprise for Jessica but I can't post a picture of that yet - as she is reading my blog. I think she will really, really like it.

I always like to have pictures with my posts - so since I can't post pictures of what I have made recently - here are a couple of pictures of the Moon and Venus from a few weeks ago - taken from the deck.

This is what I have been doing for the past 12 days

I have been sick and laying on the couch feeling miserable. I am not a good patient and I am really, really cranky. I almost feel better and then I start to cough again. I actually tried to work one day last weekend - that was a mistake.




I did manage to sit upright a few hours to finish the binding on the baby quilt. I wanted to have it finished to send for the baby by the end of March.

Here is poor Jenny. Completely annoyed that she has been stuck at home for two weeks with no interesting walks to be had. Although the neighbour has felt sorry for her and taken her out for a couple of nice walks.


Jenny spends most of the day just sitting by the couch or bed wondering if life will ever get better than this -- much like me!

What Have I been doing!

It has been a busy few weeks. At the end of February we had a turkey dinner to celebrate Andrew's 23rd birthday. Andrew, Anri and Eric came for dinner - we also wished Eric a Happy Birthday as we really hadn't seen those two boys since Christmas. I would have posted a picture but the both looked like they needed to stand a little closer to the razor! I always say that it seems with boys - as soon as they are old enough to shave --- they don't! -- anyway we had a good dinner and a good visit.

I finally talked Jim into getting the wall hanging that I made for the dining room up on the wall. That was exciting. It has been finished since the Quilt Show in September. It was hard work though --- new holes had to be drilled and a new piece of wood to be fitted for the sleeve.




I am thrilled it is up! It looks wonderful on the wall - just like it was made to go there. Although in reality this wall hanging was started long before we moved to this house.



I ordered and recieved a copy of Bonnie Hunter's book -- Scraps and Shirttails. I ordered it from her website so it is signed by her as well. It really is a great book and I am so glad I decided to order it --- falling Canadian dollar or not.



I was off on Saturday to a "Quilting by the Bay" retreat and managed to get quite a bit done on the "African Wedding Quilt" I didn't get a picture of it at the stage it is at right now though. I should have but by the end of the day I was feeling like I was coming down with something --- the "thing" was the "whatever" Jim had passed on to me - as he was sick on Friday. So by Sunday we were both very sick and laying around the house coughing and miserable. Today --- the misery continues..... and on top of that it SNOWED today as well. But we are both too sick to go anywhere anyway! I can tell you though Jenny is NOT happy with us... we are not very interesting dog parents right now and she thinks we are just down right no fun at all. I think at this point she is wishing she didn't adopt us.

But on a happy note -- we should end with a picture of Hunter - who is so gosh darn cute. Look at those cheeks.



Here he is with a little friend. Hunter is now pulling himself to a standing position on everything. He rarely is on the floor - only long enough to get himself upright. I can't wait to go there for his Birthday in April.

So... last Thurday.. the phone rings at 6:30 in the morning and it is Jessica's number - but we are half awake and too slow to answer. When we finally do answer it has already gone to the message machine.. I hear this heavy breathing and then all this little chirping and Hunter chatting away. I called for Jessica - no answer.. so we listen for a while and then hang up the phone. After a bit I get up and phone Jessica and ask if she phoned us --- No she didn't.... so I says - well Hunter did then!! What a hoot, he was playing with the phone and I was the last person she had called on that phone so he managed to press redial and send.. So I said ... maybe he shouldn't be playing with the phone anymore. But we still have his little message on our machine... He is just too cute!

Such a long time

It has been such a long time since I posted. Jim has been back from his meetings in Portland since Feb 13th. Jim finally decided to take the desk top computer to someone for a "redo" and it is back and working VERY well!! I am very happy to say that it is running much better and I can actually type whole words without the computer seizing up and crashing -- just wonderful.

This orchid is a plant that Andrew and Anri gave me for Mother's Day almost 3 years ago. It was in the kitchen window for a long time after the bloom had gone - just a few leaves and a couple of stems. A few months ago I moved it to the living room and it bloomed again! Amazing. Such a lovely flower. I was so excited I was able to get it to bloom again after so long.



Here is my fabric from The Door Mouse. I am ready to finish the baby quilt. I love the yellow with the daisies. The outer border of the baby quilt will be the purple with the baby faces.



The pictures have uploaded to the blog in the opposite order that I uploaded them. I am not going to try to move them today - so this will be the finished product.

Jim bought a pasta maker on his way home from Portland.



Homemade pasta with homemade pesto - which is made from the basil we grown on the deck in the summer. Very tasty supper! And the pasta was amazingly easy to make and turned out really well for a couple of first timers. We call ourselves "the Italian Wannabees"







Here is the new machine. There is one sheet of pasta on the cutting board there waiting to be finished. We used semolina and farnia 00 flour and watched a bunch of video's on You tube first. Next we plan to make ravioli from scratch.

Tonight we are having Turkey dinner for Andrew, Eric and Anri. Andrew's birthday is this week and we still haven't sang Happy Birthday for Eric from his January birthday.

Hopefully now that I have a usable computer I will be able to blog a little more regularly.

Another day of winter wonderland!

Again this evening on the News the stories out of Australia are terrible about the devastating fires. I hope and pray all the fellow Australian blogger are safe and I sure wish I could send you some of our weather to help you all out. Maybe if we could just meet halfway with a nice even temperature of 22 C. all the world over.

This is what I woke up to this morning. More snow!!


Poor Jenny, I had promised her a nice walk today as I went off to Costco with Eric yesterday - even though it was nice and sunny and I should have taken Jenny out yesterday. And today it snowed - again - and it was COLD.

Although I was very happy today as I found something exciting!



There is a story to these two bars of soap. Last summer I went to visit my friend and fellow quilter (and nurse from UBC days) -- who regularly travels the world - mostly Spain, Italy and Mexico. When I was there she gave me a lovely little package of writing paper and a bar of soap - from Italy. I put the soap in my bathroom and a few months later I opened it up. I remember the look of the packaging - sort of - and threw the package away and started using the soap. It was the most wonderful soap I have ever used in all my 50 years! Better than any body wash/body lotion soap. It was so creamy and soft and wonderful. And it lasted the longest time - months. Now the soap is gone and I phoned my friend to ask what was that soap and where can I get more. She emailed me the website for the company - Nesti Dante They don't have a great website but I looked around it and I found the soap. Il Frutteto - I can't remember the exact soap - I think it was the pure Olive Oil because it didn't seem to have a real fruity smell. But it was so soft and rich and creamy - ah.... I sent the Nesti Dante company an email through their website asking if they sold their soap in Canada - or if they shipped to Canada and I never got a response back from them. I was very unhappy - almost ready to call upon my blogging friends in Italy to search it out for me.

But -- today, I popped into Caulfield to mail of an envelope at the Pharmasave there and what do I find - but the soap! The Tomato soap smells heavenly - I think I will try that one first. They didn't have any of the pure Olive Oil soap but they had a nice selection of the Il Frutetto - I got the Pomegranate and Black current to try. That made the drive in the snow all worth it!

And now for something quilty.

Jim is away in Portland this week so I have been doing a bit of sewing. I have a few UFO's to work on. I have three UFO's listed with my quilt guild to be finished by June.



This table runner I started in November at the Bowen Island retreat. I layered it and started the machine quilting on it this week. I have been busy with the African Wedding quilt as well. The centre of the top is together and I am working on the rows and borders for it now.

A bit of Quilting this week

I am happy to say that I was very productive at QBTB (Quilting by the Bay) this past Saturday. I even carried over some of that productivity to home and I started on this little baby quilt. It is from a Moda Charm pack. I have a cousin that had a little baby girl and because there is a lot of pink in this charm pack I never used it for a baby of unknown sex.




It is cute fabric with little babies and bottles and stars and such. I had a bit of purple fabric I was going to use as a border but instead I decided to do a bit of a google search for the fabric and see if I could find a bit of yardage to match. The fabric is called "Peek a Boo" I was able to get some on sale for $6.00 yard from "The Door Mouse" I had ordered the Morris Garden fabric from there and I was very pleased with how quickly it was delivered. This time I ordered it and there was a bit of an issue with my credit card - my card had apparently been cancelled - because there was a concern that there had been a breach on my account. The Door Mouse was very helpful and it was sorted out quickly and they have sent out my fabric. So I certainly recommend shopping there. I must say that I really do enjoy this online fabric shopping. Even with the dollar being down a bit. It is just too fun!!

While I was at QBTB I laid all my Dear Jane blocks out on a table and took a picture. This is a terrible picture but it was fun to see them all together. I have 42 completed blocks. That is more than I thought. That is about 20 blocks per year -- I think I started it in February 2007 but I must check on that. Time can be pretty tricky in how fast it goes by......



What I did do at QBTB was finish all the blocks for the African Wedding Quilt -- I think that is what I will call this quilt.

I made 30 blocks all together. There are 3 different black fabrics in there but I don't think they are so different that anyone can really tell.



I have been sewing the blocks and rows together this week and then my next step is to make a row of Dancing Mama's for the top and work on designing the borders.

It snowed again here - the day after QBTB - I took pictures but I am not going to continue posting pictures of the snow - we all know what it looks like by now!!!

Back from Calgary with some new pictures of Hunter Jimmy

I have been back home for 2 night shifts and a day shift already! I had to go back to work as soon as I got home and so I am just finally getting to post a few pictures of the little cutie.




He loves to smile and laugh and crawl around. He loves to eat. He is such a little chatty guy - always "talking" He is very busy and happy -- much like his mother!

Isn't that a fabulous smile!!!





Here is a picture of him with the bunny -- much bigger than the bunny now!





I went with Jessica one day to the Children's Hospital for Hunter to get an RSV shot. My sister just recently started working there so she came by for a quick visit and I promised her I would put her picture on my blog - since she has been reading it lately!! (Hi Shane)



Hunter has a little wandering eye and will be going to the eye clinic at the Children's Hospital next week I think. He is also going to the hospital for an overnight sleep study. It seems he has a bit of sleep apnea. Jessica now has a C-pap machine for him to wear at night but it takes quite a bit of time to get a baby used to wearing a face mask blowing air up their little noses. He is slowly getting used to it but he can pull the nose part off faster than it takes to put the head part around! I wonder if they can ever convince him to wear the thing. While I was there the Occupational Therapist came for her monthly visit. She was pretty happy to see his progress. In December when she was there Hunter wasn't sitting up by himself all that well. This month he is sitting very strong and straight and crawling everywhere. He goes from a crawling to a sitting position and back to crawling. He is grabbing things with both hands. Eating very well - that's pretty evident by how chubby he is! It is sure nice to have the OT come by the house. She referred Hunter for some Massage classes for next month and pretty soon he will be starting music therapy. It was a great visit - babies are a LOT of work! I came home very tired and then had to work two night shifts - had a short turn around and worked a day shift. Maybe I should have a little cheese with my wine ( whine).

I am finally going to be able to go to my Quilt Guilt meeting tonight. The first one in months - I have written out a little list of UFO's I want to finish this spring. Jim is off to Portland for meetings the beginning of February so maybe a little mini quilt retreat while I am on my own will get a few things completed. Best laid plans........................

My Computer is driving me Crazy!!

I haven't been posting much lately as my computer is having some major issues and it is driving me crazy. Every simple task take 3 times as long as it should. We removed the Norton Anti Virus and installed a different program and that seems to have just made it worse. It is so frustrating sitting down to quickly just check some email or a quick look at Google Reader - and it turns into complete frustration and everything grinds to a halt and slowly opens up and then freezes. So I am thinking about getting something done about it before I throw it out the window and into a snow bank!! Yes...... a snow bank!! As the forecast today for rain.. once again turned into 5 cms of snow. I guess you can hear the frustration there too..... think I need a vacation. So that is a good thing because I will be off to Calgary this week for a week of visiting little Hunter, perfect timing.

I have been doing a bit of sewing. A friend is getting married and I promised her many years ago that when she got married I would make her a quilt. She is a lovely girl that started working at UBC just after she graduated 10 years ago. So she is engaged and the wedding is in October. I brought some books and patterns to her and said to go through them as see what sort of pattern and colour she was interesting in.

She gave me this piece of fabric and said she would like to have it included in the quilt.



When I saw the fabric I knew that none of the patterns that I had brought for her to look at were what was needed.

But I had the African fabric and the blocks I had started a year or so ago. I didn't really like the way I had set the blocks and I had put it aside. So I did a bit of changing and took the blocks apart and put it up on my design wall. I like this much better.



I bought some more black fabric yesterday and I am going to make more blocks to make it bigger. The pieces for the sides are not long enough so I will add something to the top and bottom of the side panels and a border etc. But it is a good start and I think I can turn it into a perfect wedding quilt.

I will probably not be on the computer much over the next couple of weeks. I am working the next two days and then off to Calgary for a week. Jim is hoping to get someone to look at the computers while I am away. If they can not be fixed then I will look into getting a new little laptop - maybe a Mac. The desktop is a complete mess and barely functions - it is almost 6 years old now - so it has probably lived a long life in computer years. I will try to check in a bit here and there from Calgary. But I have to get as much "Hunter time" as possible!!

Okay - enough snow pictures!!

Although I could have posted more snow pictures very easily!! Boxing day weather was the worst I have ever seen in my life - anywhere. The highway was a mess - all the buses north of Marine Drive in West Vancouver were canceled, including our one little commuter bus. They had to cancel ferry sailings out of Horseshoe Bay because the cars couldn't drive up the hill out of the ferry terminal after the ferries docked - so the cars were stuck on the ferry. I couldn't even get to work that night - the road out of our village was being used as a tobogganing run by the local kids - that is how much snow had fallen. Can you imagine!! Anyway I think I have gone on and on about the weather enough - but this is one Christmas that will be talked about for many, many years to come.

So - now for something completely different - sort of!

My sister had the family over for dinner at her home in Calgary after Christmas. Jessica and her family were quite ill with the flu during Christmas but everyone was much better by December 27th. Sandra sent me a few pictures that she took of Hunter while they were there for dinner. Maybe next year we will be able to visit Calgary and Hunter for Christmas.

This is a picture of Hunter with my mum at my sister's house. See how young my mum looks - for just turning 70 this year. I hope I inherited those genes.



Hunter all dressed up in a little Santa suit Jessica bought for him. I am sure he won't be too happy when these photo's surface one day when he is 16!!



As you can see - San's quilt is well loved - going along for dinner as well. Gosh -- doesn't he look so cute in that little suit. He looks like he teething I think as his little cheeks are quite red. Poor little guy. I sure wish I could just drive across town and see him and give him a very big hug -- instead of having to drive across an entire province. I am going to book a flight to Calgary for the middle of January for a quick little visit.


I made him a little banner for his room for Christmas.


The first red block is made from Sock Monkey fabric. Each letter block is about 5 x 7 inches - it doesn't look that big in this picture as I cropped the picture. I didn't post the banner before Christmas so it would be a surprise for Jessica - as she sometimes reads my blog.

I also made a couple of little Ipod pouches for gifts this year as well. This is the one I made for Anri. I made one for Jessica as well with little Gecko fabric - but for some reason I didn't take a picture of it.




The pattern is from the Winter 2007 "Better Homes and Gardens - Quilts and More" It has the little hook at the top to hook to purses or pockets and a little pocket on the back side and a loop and a fabric cover button. All very hard to see in the photo. Anri loves the Ami Butler fabric. It was very quick to go together. Now I think I need to make one for myself.

It has been raining here for the past few days but there is still quite a bit of snow on the ground. Oh........... right I said I wasn't going to talk about the weather again.........................

Happy New Year to all!!!

Christmas Day

Christmas morning the sun was shining on the snow. It was a beautiful day. There has never in the history of recorded weather in Vancouver been this much snow on the ground on Christmas day. It was lovely but I sure hope this is a "once in a lifetime" occurrence!








Eric and Jenny.





Andrew





A few pictures from around the house on Christmas day.

Despite of the snow!

We were not able to get out Christmas eve and get the boys. It was disappointing for everyone but despite of the snow Jim and I had a lovey Christmas eve - and the boys came out first thing Christmas morning for the gift opening and French toast breakfast.




The tree with the presents under on Christmas Eve.


Our usual Christmas eve snack -- Port, and Purdy's chocolates. Sweet Georgia Browns for me and English Toffee for Jim.



And watching my favourite movie - "It's a Wonderful Life" "Every time you hear a bell ring an angel gets his wings"




Being housebound for these past few days I have been busy backing. I made two large batches of Biscotti - Pistachio and Cranberry and I made Jim his favourite cheese crackers.