Five Shadows

The last week of July, I went to That Pretty Place B & B with several friends. This is our annual self proclaimed quilting get-a-way. I only took one quilt along to stitch down the binding but I never even got it out of the bag. We ended up doing lots of shopping, eating out, and playing cards instead of quilting. Essenhaus is one of our favorite stops for eating. Yoder’s and Lolly’s have fantastic fabric finds. One afternoon several of us took a card making class at The Calico Frog. It’s a wonderful little scrapbooking  shop in the little town of Middlebury. Scrapbooking and card making is not “my thing” but I thought I’d give the card making a go with my friends. We had a great time! Here are the 4 greeting cards I made.

We just bought a new scanner/printer/copier and the above pictures is my attempt at learning to use the scanner. Hope the quality of the scan is OK. 

I just had my first lesson on importing photos to iPhoto. DH showed me how to enhance and then save them in their proper folder. So here is a test run - with the photos out of order. I’ll have to work on that… The first photo is of two of the guys digging post holes. The second shows the pickets being screwed in place. Third,  the first picket going up. And the last photo is of a vertical post taken out while the post hole is dug deeper. The young man is acting as the “post.” We are such a funny group! The privacy fence is being built around an equipment yard at a camp for inner city children. My daughter wrote and won a grant through Youth as Resources. She used the grant money to purchase the materials for the fence. Each step through the grant process has been a wonderful learning experience for her. She is the young lady in the blue hoodie.

Prom, Prom, Prom. That is what is happening in my life right now. I’m pleased to say it is all coming together nicely. Food, chocolate fountain, servers, flowers, decorations, rented items, DJ, playlist, portrait photographer, chaperones, set up, tear down, security  - check them off the list, all taken care of! This is not a huge Prom by any means, but no matter the number of teens attending, the details are all still necessary! We guessed we would have 100 teens attend, and at the last count I heard we had 108 teens registered. Tickets sold to 100 teens pay the bills, so insert me doing a happy dance here! Today I worked on sewing up 15 black ties to go around the vases of flowers for our table center pieces.  I’ll have to take pictures of the decorations Friday night to post here after the Prom.  I have two daughters attending this year. Part of Friday involved shopping for the right accessories - shoes and jewelry. I still need to fix straps on their dresses.

Quilting - has not been happening here lately. But here are pictures of three of the five  6″ quilties I made for Lenna’s swap.  

Now that is a funny title for a post, don’t you think? I just have to tell you about the fun day we had on Saturday - a continuation of my last post. On Saturday morning the sleepover girls and several more, headed out with us to Cinderella Dress Day. It is the seventh year that The Boys and Girls Club has teamed up with Peerless Dry Cleaners to offer FREE prom gowns to local high schoolers. Out of the 8 girls with me, 2 did not find a dress they liked, but everyone else left very happy. Of the two not finding a gown, one already has a lovely one from a Purity Ball she just attended with her Dad, so she can wear that one to the prom. And the other young lady is graduating this year and really wanted a special gown. So she headed on to the mall with her sister and found a gorgeous black and white gown that fits this year’s theme to the “T”. The Prom this group of girls will be attending is “Black Tie and City Lights” and I’m heading up the planning this year! I’ll have more to share on that as the prom draws near! When my daughter signed out at Cinderella Dress day, she was #188! They must give away close to 300 gowns!

Tears. Have you seen the movie P.S. I Love You? Have a box of tissues handy if you watch it. The girls and I ate lunch and then headed to the dollar theater for the movie. It was good, but several of us needed tissues!

Circles! Here are two pictures of circle quilts from a class I taught a while back. We used the 8″ Rainbow Block Templates from Elisa’s Backporch. I taught the simple version on the left in class. While the ladies sewed up their blocks, I played around to add more pieces to the blocks, picture on the right. When I sent the quilts to my longarm quilter, she loved them so and she called to say she HAD to have them! So we worked out a trade. I just got them back to take a picture of them, as I had not done so before sending them to be quilted. The one I played around with at the class is the one quilted with spirals. Isn’t it cool!? Guess I’ll have to photo the other one once it is quilted. Perhaps hanging at a show in her vender’s booth.

Look what was delivered to me last Thursday! Aren’t they beautiful? And a total surprise! A sweet young couple sent them to me as a “thank you” for the quilt I made for their wedding gift! How about that! I didn’t get just a card but a nice bouquet of fresh flowers!

The other fun thing about getting the flowers was they arrived the day before my birthday! I had gone out to lunch with friends, so the celebrating started a day early!

On Friday my husband and I ate at Flat Top Grill. He gave me a Husky Embellisher and a box of DeBrands Chocolates. Isn’t he a sweet heart!?

My daughter and I made the postcard using the embellisher. We will have more to show later!