I am so excited. I hate to say it out loud but here it is. Mike and I are leaving on Friday and going out to my sister in law's. Mike is going to work on the motorhome and Pat and I are going to spend Saturday at the quilt show her guild is putting on. This will be my first time going to this show. They have one every other year. The first time I was going to go my Dad's funeral was that weekend and then 2 years later Raychel was so ill and I could not be that far from home. Well here I am, it is Wednesday and everything is quite.

I really need a quilt show to help me figure out what my next quilt is going to be. I have a lot of different fabrics bundled together for probably 5 more quilts but I have bought all this over the last few years. As I went through all of it last weekend trying to clean things up nothing really got me excited. Of course all the fabric I just had to have and could not live without is not what I want now. I realized I am one that should always buy for what I want to make now because I probably won't want to do it in 2 years. For example I saw this quilt in a magazine and just had to make it for my bosses little boy that she had just adopted. Well I called all over the country tracking down this fabric and finally found it out east somewhere and had it shipped to me. Well now 3 years later he now is 6 and it probably is not appropriate now. I know no one having a little boy. I guess I could make it and hang onto it for that next great nephew that is born. Now that does not sound fun to me.

Just realized I have to get ready to go to work.

Later

I am part of the Cottage Quilting Bee and I have not done well at keeping up. When I got February I did the block and sent it out. As of yesterday I still had March and April. These two months had two people sending out their fabrics so I needed to get busy. This has not been easy for me. I am so use to following someone else’s design so I like that it is forcing me to use my own ideas. Yesterday I did two of them and here they are. I did notice after looking at my pictures that I should maybe spend more of my time washing my floors than sewing and then I thought why would I do that?

Mike is in Council Bluffs IA and I am hanging out at home helping Raychel get back on her feeding tube. She has been off of it for about 2 weeks now and her body is really taking a toll not getting the nutrition she needs. So here is my plan:

I am going to help Raychel, getting back on the tube feedings takes her body a while to get use to and she is already so weak. Hoping by Monday morning she will have a little color in her checks. She is so protein deficient that her hands and feet are very swollen so hoping that will start going down. This is going to take some time to turn around so will just have to be patient. Have to come up with a natural diuretic for her.

Back in Feb I joined a quilting bee and did February's block and have March and April sitting in my sewing room. I am going to drag my stuff up into the living room and find a place to sit down and work on my blocks. That way Raychel and I can sit and watch movies all day and I can get these 4 blocks done and in the mail on Monday. I can also bring one of my machines up so that I can not have to keep running up and down the stairs to sew. This will be a good day, I will post pictures of my progress.

I was wondering if anyone is having issues when uploading pictures. It use to be I would upload the picture from Photobucket and go back to my post to continue typing. Instead of seeing the picture in my post now it will be all the script regarding the picture. I can see the picture when I go to Preview and it is there when I publish the post. Frustrating when I am trying to post more than one picture and I can't see where they are. Any help would be soooooo appreciated.

These are pictures of the quilt top I made for my sister in law, Kris. I took these with my new camera. I have to figure out how to take pictures of the entire quilt and have it be clear. Time and patients.

My new camera comes today I am so excited. Not sure what my first picture will be but what ever it is I will post it.

This sounds like fun. Not sure if I'm going to join but will probably follow it.

My big 50th birthday is next month and I have been debating what I want to do. I would love to go camping but finding a campground to go to in Minnesota on the first major holiday weekend is impossible. Might just have a party and hang out with good friends. I have wanted a camera for a long time and have borrowed my daughters but I want my own. I ordered one yesterday. I had my boss check it out and he thought it would be a good one. It is a Kodak and has 14 mega pixels which he said is really good considering Raychel's is 7 mega pixels. I'm excited. Now to decide what we are going to do.

As soon as I get my camera I will be taking pictures of the quilt I am working on.

My friend, Megan, is having a quilt give away. Check it out.

After work Mike and I are off to get our motor home. It has been out at my sister-in-laws, Pat, since last fall. We had gone out for Mike's brothers funeral. We drove it out there so Raychel would have somewhere to go if she started not feeling well. She had the service at the farm, it really was more like a celebration of life. On our way home we had broke a fan belt and didn't know it and it over heated and ended up having to have a wrecker come out and tow it back. Thank God for AAA, it would have been a $900 tow. Any way we blew a head gasket and need to go out and start working on it. Well I should really say Mike will start working on it.

For me I get to hang out with Pat. I'm going to bring my pinwheel blocks so I can lay them out on the floor and arrange them in order. I should have this all pieced by the end of this next week. I think I should have it done in time for Kris's birthday in May. I will need to find the backing and that won't be to hard. I really like
finding the backing that is already 108" wide. Will have to see what I find.

Till Later

Thought I would post a Raychel update. This is a picture of her with my son's girlfriend, Raychel is the one on the right. Back in the beginning of February she had bottomed out at 79 pounds and yesterday at the doctor she weighed in at 95. This was so exciting. After 3 years of being sick I think this is where she has started on her road to a better life. She will never be healthy as we all know life but this is better than life at 79 pounds. I guess my niece had Gastric Bypass last week and we were told 3 days after she had the surgery. Her Dad was telling us that after what happened to Raychel they were so scared, as they should be. The only thing I wanted to say was "Raychel did great for the first 18 months", but I didn't. I will just keep her in my thoughts.

So this is the pile I started with to make Kris's quilt. This one has been a lot of fun. I am using the Moda Charms. There is 128 half square triangles



And now the pinwheel blocks. I love all the colors. I know that Kris is going to love this one.

I had such great plans for this weekend. Mike is leaving for Council Bluffs IA today and my plans were to organize all my fabrics and my kitchen. Mike has been having some heart issues since we went to Arizona and he is not comfortable going by himself so I am going with him. I talked to the cardiologist yesterday and they want him to take his Plavix at night instead of the morning. Half of the time in the morning he gets a tightness in his chest, trouble breathing, nausea and some disorientation. The nurse was saying that he might have another blockage but it could be the diabetes. Mike's heart attacks were in December and also diagnosed diabetic at the same time. All of this is new to us so it is not easy figuring out what is what. He checks his blood sugars when this happen and some times it is elevated and other times it is normal. Go figure.

I'm not complaining I am thankful that his heart attacks were not very damaging and this is something he/we can live with.

So if you can't sew the next best thing is quilt shops. I have printed out a map of Council Bluffs with all the quilt shops on it so I am hoping to take the big truck and go exploring while Mike is working. There is a few I am very interested in checking out. Will see.

Winter Storms coming again you would never know it is April 3rd hopefully we will get home on Sunday without to much slipping and sliding.

First of all I go to type and always change the font color and the option is gone. So I went out of Mozilla FireFox which I use for getting on the Internet to Explorer. I had no luck there either so I guess I now type in black. I guess if this is the worse thing that happens to me today life is good.

I got all done sizing up my 4-1/2" blocks. I try to do this all on all my quilts I make but sometimes I try to sneak by without doing it. It is right up there with hand sewing. I got the idea of the pinwheel layout from Moda Bake Shop. I love that website. I am just deciding now if I want the 4 pinwheels to be in the same like colors of if I want to mix it up. The quilt is going to be a lot bigger than this quilt shown and I do have enough fabrics to do either way. I will have to spend my day at work figuring out what I am going to do. They will never know I am thinking about this passion of mine or would it be considered a obsession?

Ok so I finished this post and checked it out and it posted in Green. I am so confused.