Ancient History

This is sooo funny and maybe a little embarrassing but I thought I'd share it with you.

I was at my quilting group tonight and Shari said that she had joined Facebook (I have yet to do that) and she was telling us that she had entered her name in google and found her name in a few places and how much fun she was having. Well, I just thought tonight while I was reading some of the blogs I follow in my google reader that I would do the same thing as Shari and enter my name.

Well, I was really surprised to find some of my ancient Tole Painting books for sale on Ebay and other places. How funny is that? I've linked each picture of the books to the seller if you want to have a look at them. It's funny to look back to 1992 and see how much you've changed and definitely how much the color palettes have evolved. I really dislike BLUE and PINK now but I loved it then. It was the popular color of the time. Do you remember?


Of all the books I did for Provo Craft this has got to be one of my favorites because it brought together my love of sewing, crafting, quilting, and painting. It was my last book for Provo Craft and it came out in 1995. There are two of these books available HERE. You will have to scroll down until you see the picture above.


"Tie One ON" was one of my favorite books and I can't believe I forgot about it. I probably still have some of the samples somewhere in a box in the basement although I did give a lot of things away to friends and neighbors when we moved from California back to Utah.


This particular book was my FIRST book with Provo Craft. I was so excited when I got the call from Provo Craft that my designs were accepted and would be made into a Tole Painting book. Provo Craft was as big a name in the Craft World as Moda is in the Quilting World.

It was a really big deal back then (at least to me) and in a way I felt very inadequate to be able to associate with my Crafting IDOLS. You could say I was a bit intimidated. I was able to travel to Utah at one point for the photo shoot they did for my FIRST book and it was SOOOOO much fun. I was kind of AWESTRUCK to say the least. Even after all of these years I am so grateful for the experience and it was such a blessing in our lives at that time. We had a young family and lots of school debt so this was the opportunity that helped us pay that off. What a blessing.

You'll probably laugh but, I remember sitting on the floor in the livingroom of our little apartment with my scroll saw between my knees cutting out the designs that I had just drawn on paper (I'd have to vacuum up the sawdust quite frequently) and then I'd take the cut wood and sand it. Then I'd paint it and then seal it. As I would paint and design I'd have to make sure that I was writing down the dimensions and the paint colors along with the techniques. It was a very long process putting together a book.


This book was funny and I can't believe that it was even half as popular as it was. But, everyone loves containers and these were fun. They used canning jars and the small ones were baby food jars. They were fun to make and I saw them everywhere at different boutiques and crafter's malls in California. It was fun to see other people like my designs.


I was in several other Books that included many of the Designers for Provo Craft. They often refered to these as combination artist books. These were a lot of fun to do and to be included with all of my painting HERO's was a fulfillment of a dream. I still can't believe it.


I hope Lori Holt from "Bee in My Bonnet" won't be too mad at me but I found one of her books while I was digging up some of mine. I have to tell you she's been my inspiration for a VERY VERY long time. Lori, I want you to know that I have this book still to this day. This book was printed in 1992 the same year as my first book and the same year my Mom passed away (the one pictured above isn't mine) and I even made the little boy and girl on the front cover. You are still an inspiration to me TODAY!!! Thanks LORI! I wish you the very BEST in all of your endeavors!


Oh Love Chunks! Do you remember these? They were everywhere. Lots of Laughs and sweet memories. Mine is the Cat on the top row in the middle. Too funny! Remember all of the Cookie Jar books, well, I was in a few of those too along with Hangups, Christmas Ornaments and other books that I can't even remember without finding my box of books.

Thanks for going with me down memory lane and I hope you enjoyed this post. It's been 17 years now since that time of my life. I have to say I do miss my mom and I wish that she had been able to see some of my accomplishments. I know she would've been proud of me but I was always a little sad that she didn't get to see my first book. She did know that Provo Craft had accepted my designs but the book came out soon after she passed away.

This is hilarious, but . . . I just found my book "SEW Much to Paint" on AMAZON. Go figure! I'm getting a kick out of this.

Well, it's 12:30 a.m. and I have to get up in six hours. I was falling asleep in class today so, I will sign off here.

Have a great day today!

The Wizz Ripper Gripper

Do you remember when I talked about some of my favorite tools, HERE?


Well, I showed this picture of my favorite seam ripper and many of you were interested in how you could acquire one.

Well . . .

The Good News is: I found my original packaging with the web address.

The Bad News is: I put the web address in and it came back with some other website.

The Good News is: I went to google and put in the NAME of the seam ripper and it came up.

Yippee!!!

More Good News is: You can go HERE to buy one of your own.


Here's their Contact Information:

R & L Machining Inc.
17000 S.W. Friendly Lane
Beaverton, Oregon 97007-9875
Phone: 503-590-5619
Email: RLQM@aol.com

Cost $14.95 plus $2.00 S&H

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is my current favorite book. It didn't take me long to finish it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm kind of sad though that I have to wait until September when the sequel comes out. Yes, it was that good.

Here's a fun site promoting the book. The website is done by Scholastic. You can also read the first chapter on this website.

Also, Here's an excerpt from the book. . .

COULD YOU SURVIVE ON YOUR OWN, IN THE WILD, WITH EVERYONE FIGHTING AGAINST YOU?

Twenty- four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

The Sequel "Catching Fire" is coming out September 1, 2009

New Project

I'm starting a new project and it's because Spring is FINALLY here. Thanks to the coming of Spring and to all my quilting friends! . . .

I feel inspired!

I've been wanting to make a Spring quilt and when I saw this fabric I knew I had to use it. I'm not going to say too much right now but I will say that it uses lots of Half Square Triangles with a bit of applique thrown in.

I'm using 13 prints from the Bubblegum Basics Collection by Quilt Soup for Henry Glass Fabrics. It's a bright, happy, and whimsical collection. Just perfect for Spring!

I hope Spring has Sprung in your neighborhood!

Spelling Test

Are you ready for a Spelling Test?

Yesterday in class we had our weekly spelling test. We have less than 25 days left in the school year so each week the words have gotten a bit harder. Some of the kids are still struggling with sounding out some of the words and often misspell a word with too many vowels or prefixes or suffixes.

You don't often think about how difficult the English language is until you try to teach a child how to read. My daughter Natalie is a writer and I'm always impressed with her knowledge of the English Language. Of course, she did graduate with a degree in English Language so she knows what she's talking about way more than I do. You can link HERE to read an article she wrote about Why English is Weird.

I was correcting the said spelling tests in class yesterday and was blown away by how many of the kids got this word wrong. Infact, over 1/2 the 2nd grade class spelled it incorrectly, that's 15 out of 26 kids to be exact. So, I decided to write down the different spellings then put them up on the whiteboard for Miss N. to review with the class.

Anyway, back to my original thought for this post. It's actually in the form of a question.

How many ways can you spell the word EASIEST?

I want you to think phonetically . . .



Are you thinking?



Do you have a number in your head?



Well, here's the variations my class came up with for the word Easiest:.

1. easyest

2. easist

3. esist

4. eseaist

5. yesyist

6. easyiest

7. easyist

More Quilt Festival Pics

I just had to make the time to take more pictures of my 1st Annual Blogger's Quilt Festival Quilt because it deserves to have better pictures. You can connect to the 571+ quilts HERE at Amy's blog. Thanks Amy for sponsoring this wonderful event and to all those that participated. All the quilts I've seen thus far are wonderful! You won't regret taking the time to have a look see!!

If you click on the pictures throughout my post it will bring up the mega-sized version of each picture and then you'll be able to see more detail in the machine quilting.




This is the oldest known home in Highland and resides in our Highland City Park near my home. I thought this would be a nice spot to take pictures on my Civil War Reproduction Quilt.

Here's a closeup of the Marker.

I loved this little fence across the street from the park and as I was getting in my car I saw it and thought this would be another great place for a picture.

I played around with photoshop elements to give this picture a more antique look and then I added one of my favorite thoughts.

Here's the simple label I made for it.

I marked the blocks for those who've been trying to figure it out. I hope this helps.

Quilt Festival

Amy at Park City Girl is sponsoring our First Annual Blogger's Quilt Festival from April 17th through April 24th, 2009. Stop by and take some time to visit all of the marvelous entries. You will be inspired.

Here is my entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Civil War Stars

It's a kingsize and is one of my most treasured quilts. The picture really doesn't do it justice and the awesome quilting was done by my friend Helen who also taught the class. She saw the quilt in a book about antique quilts but there was no pattern so she reconstructed the design and made the quilt. It took me a long time to get this done.

Check it Out

Amy at Diary of a Quilter is having a Giveaway.
Go Check it out here.
CONGRATS on Your 96th Post!

After Easter Parade

I almost forgot the Easter Dress Parade that some of you have posted about and I had every intention of joining in but I got so busy I forgot. Thanks, Lori for reminding me.

I thought I'd start out with this dress that I made my girls 13 years ago when my oldest was 12 years old. I think now that I was pretty lucky to get her to wear this dress. I was even luckier to get her 10 year old brother to wear pants made out of the lighter blue fabric from the dress. I have a picture of the three kids but it's a print and it's in a box in the garage and it would take me too long to find it. I can't seem to find the smaller dress that my 6 year old wore that matches this dress. I hope it's in the closet that my son put a dresser in front of, again, I'm too tired to move it and have a look. Trust me! It's even cuter in the smaller version and they all looked sooo cute!!! What sweet memories!

BTW: It's been so long since I made these dresses I'm not even sure if I still have the pattern anymore. Sorry!






The remaining pictures are some that I've scanned into my computer a while ago and they're very special to me since, I don't seem to have too many pictures from my childhood. I'm not sure if any of them were from Easter but, I think that at least one of them had to be close to spring time from the look of the dresses.

1961

A great picture of my me and my Mom.
My older brother Tim is standing by us.

1963
Kimberly

1965
Sisters: Leah & Kim

1967
Me and my siblings:
Tim, Robbie, Kim, & Leah

Before It's Over

Before I put things away at the end of the month I thought I'd share pictures of some of my favorite Easter & Spring Decorations. I hope all of you had a splendid Easter with your LOVED ones!!

We spent the afternoon with our family. Including my husbands brother's family and my dad. We had our Easter Egg hunt the day before with my kids and grandkids.

I love all the colors!

The green plant makes me happy and reminds me
that SPRING is coming, soon!!

These cracked glass eggs I bought several years ago at JoAnn's and they've always been my favorite decorations. They are really heavy and the colors are beautiful. Click on the picture if you want to get a closer look.

My friend Susanne gave me the lovely green potted plant.

Table decorations on the island in my kitchen.

Closer look at my my daughter's Easter basket.

This is my kitchen table with one of my favorite spring quilts along with more Easter baskets on top of the table.

Here's my dining room table.

It's been a crazy busy month so I haven't sewn or done much of anything creative other than making Retro Mama's Easter Eggs. I did get some of them made but not quite as many as I wanted too.

Here's the Easter Eggs I made.

I had grand plans of making several dozen and giving some to my family and friends but, it didn't play out and Easter came and went. I do have them ready to go next year if I can remember when Easter comes around again.

Here's a closer look!

The eggs were really fun to make but did take a itty bit of time clipping all the curves and stuffing. I stuffed them fairly tight to give them a more dense feeling.