A Little On the Job Fun

I guess things have gotten back to "normal" as opposed to insane, which is what the last month seemed like. I won't get into all that, but normal for me is insane enough.

So back to the batcave finally, and I get to stay home for a while and unwind.

I got all my flowers potted yesterday and today, but didn't get any pictures yet. They make me feel happy though and I will try to get some pics to show off tomorrow.

I hosted a Pincushion Swap at my RQQ group this month! It was so much fun! I drew the names for who was sending to who and then when I started sending out the emails to everyone I got it all screwed up and had to change them around until it came out right. I started making a pincushion for Stephanie when I realized that she was sending to me and I had forgotten to assign myself a swap partner.

I finally figured out that it was Barbara. She is a really cool single lady who lives in Houston. She owns a house that keeps her busy all the time doing yard work and cleaning up trees from hurricanes and fixing the leaking faucets. She is a CCL and shares her house with a number of rescue kitties as well as caring for the outdoor feral cats that come around. I read her blog and have tried to figure out how many friends she has staying with her but I am not sure if she has mentioned them all. Buddy is one of her black cats that she talks about alot in our group and on her blog so when I figured out that I had her name I had to make her a pincushion out of the scraps I had saved from the black cat bag I made for my other favorite CCL and sister in law. It was a tiny cube pincushion that I thought was so cute, but of course I forgot to take a picture of it. DOH! Barbara also makes some awesome quilts and tote bags and blogs about them as well as her cute kitties.

But I also made her a proper size pincushion that I copied from this one that I found in Grandma Brune's sewing box years ago. I am not sure how old this one is, but it has been around for a while and I have never seen anything like it on all the pincushion patterns I googled.

The one I made for Barbara was done with a Debbie Mumm summer strawberry print. I am going to do a tutorial on Up the Rainbow Creek for this pincushion. Might get it done tonight.

I added a pair of thread snipping scissors that are tied to a ribbon and bow that is velcro'd on the back of the hat. One time Barbara lost her scissors and posted that she had been looking for them for several days with no luck. Then she got an email one day from a customer who wanted to let her know that she had found a pair of scissors in her package with the quilt she had bought from Barbara!

I also finally got this beach bag finished! The print is called Aviary and it has a canvas bottom and handles. There are 6 outside pockets and one big inside pocket. I think I have finally perfected this pattern and will be making a bunch of these in different fabrics to sell soon.

I was feeling pretty upset about my sales being so bad this past month, then suddenly in one day I sold 7 quilt kits. I wanted to get them all out today so I can get back to making beach bags, but didn't quite finish putting them all together. Those will go out tomorrow and then I can have more fun.

Birds and Baby David, We Can't Be Bored?

With everything that seems to be going on around here you would think I would have posted some pictures and updated you about our busy life. But no, we are much too busy with our new hobby, Birdwatching. It has become quite the obsession here lately. I have been trying for 4 years to attract hummingbirds with little success until this year when we seem to have hit the jackpot. I wanted to get my feeder out early this year and decided to go on the cheap (cheep?) and make my own syrup instead of buying the powdered stuff at Wally's. It was an instant success and before we knew it we had hummingbirds lining up like it was the MickyD's drive thru out there. They became bold and started buzzing past our heads and if we happen to be standing in the way of the feeder they will just hover in front of your face with that "excuse me?" look. Then in the evenings we began to witness hummingbird wars, with one hovering off the deck guarding the feeder to dive bomb and chase off the competition. So we invested in 2 more feeders and it seems they multiplied. Matt and Krissy are into this in a big way too. They are keeping track of how much juice is consumed daily and Matt has the camera at the door trying to catch one perched on the tree branch. Yesterday he discovered this yellow bird, which we don't know what it is and he stalked it all day today to get this picture.

Well that keeps our little minds busy when we are not watching the baby.

Who loves Oreos?

Not quite ready for Guitar Hero, but we'll see what we can do with the Fisher Price version.