I'm nuts!!

I wanted to take advantage of the 50% off coupon for JoAnn's that was only good today plus another coupon that was good until noon. I wanted the bigger cutting mat for cutting out quilts. The one I had worked but was small and I managed to also cut the table cloth along with the quilt pieces. I also was ready to buy the fabric for the back of the quilt (yes, I have the front done). I very patiently stood in line to get the fabric cut from the bolt, and then I patiently stood in the check-out line. That fabric line was long!! When I finally made it to the checker, I gave her my coupons and she informed me I couldn't use the 50% one on the mat because it was already on sale. Really? It didn't say it was on sale. Oh well. Can I use it on the fabric? I got 5 yards and the coupon would only be good on 1 yard. Rats! OK . . . I'll just use the 20% off your total purchases coupon. Sorry, that sale ended at noon. It was 12:15. Excuse me, I've been standing in the fabric line for 45 minutes!! Sorry . . . the computer won't accept the coupon after 12 pm. Thank you very much, have a nice day.

Ok, on with the show. I'm gonna stop by the church on the way home and check on the tree construction. Wow, there were men there working on it. I got out of my car to tell them how good it looks and thank them for working so hard to get it done and they informed me that they were repairing the damage done to it last night by some neighborhood kids. They kicked out several of the light panels. Put their foot right through the middle of each one. The turds! It took 4 men all day to fix their damage. I guess I'm going to need to find someone who will park their RV there for the next month to deter it from happening again. In all the years we've been doing this, we've never had them bother the tree before. On that happy note I decided I should just come home and take a nap. What could go wrong in a nap?! ZZZZZZZ

Out of time!

My time at Women of Faith was wonderful, as I knew it would be. Then I came back home to face the fact that I am running out of time. Above are pictures of the tree going up. Today they started putting the light panels on the front of the tiers. This morning I was up climbing on it trying to determine how many I can get on each row. I have 86 in the choir if they all show up at the same time. I doubt that will actually happen since someone is always sick or something. Last night at rehersal I brought in the narrator and Mary & Joseph to run through it with the choir. It was amazing! We went from beginning to end without stopping and they sound great! Next Monday night we will record it, the following Monday, which will be 12/3, we will do an on the tree rehersal, and then on the 9th we will give the first performance. That is an unadvertised performance for our church family and friends. Then the 12th through the 16th we will give one a night for the public. In my spare time, I'm running all over town looking for more book lights and it occured to me, as I stood in a checkout line, I don't have a lot of time for Christmas shopping. Every year I tell myself I am going to get it done early. Yea, right! Thank goodness for computers.

Girl's night out!

Girls of all ages need time with their girlfriends. One of God's great blessings in my life are my good girlfriends. Girls need time together to encourage each other and share their lives and to laugh until they nearly pee their pants. It's how we all get through the up's and down's in our lives. Noone understands your kid troubles better than your girlfriend, who's either been through or is going through the same thing. I am leaving for Phoenix in the morning for a 3 day trip to Women of Faith with my girlfriends. We have so much fun! We go up on Thursday morning so we can shop and goof off all day and go out to someplace fun for dinner. The conference actually starts on Friday morning and runs all day Friday with a break for dinner and then Friday night and all day Saturday. The speakers are great, the music is amazing and the whole experience just re-charges me. I go home exhausted, with some great memories, and thrilled to be back home so I can share everything with my husband. Girls ~ I highly recommend a little get-away once in a while. Guys ~ let them have the time, believe me you will be rewarded!

I can sew?

I finally broke out the sewing machine today and set everything up on the dining room table. I got my cutting mat and my rotary cutter and my rulers all ready for action. I dug to the way back of the spare room closet for the machine. I was foresighted enough to buy some remnant fabric to practice on before cutting in to the material for the actual project. I cut strips, carefully measuring, made sure I knew where the 1/4 inch mark was on the machine so my seams would be accurate. I really had this all thought out! Then I sat down to sew. Right, how do you thread this thing? OK, I finally got that right after about an hour. What's wrong with the bobbin? The thread keeps getting tangled and jamming the needle. I tore the house apart looking for the owners manual, never found it. I went on line to the web site for Brother and it wanted my model number. There's no model number on my machine ... anywhere! Believe me I looked all over it. I can see the serial number but no model number. Oh well, I finally got it working. Yipee! I sewed strips together and cut them into blocks and sewed the blocks together. I pressed all the seams just right. Amazing, it looks like a quilt. Well, actually, it looks more like a table runner but hey, it was just practice scraps. John just got home from work. He walked in and looked at the table, now buried under my quilting "stuff ". "What are you doing? You actually have the sewing machine out? I didn't know you still had one." "I'm making a quilt" I said proudly and held up the results of my labors. I got the blank stare. "Why on earth would you do that?" "Because I want to?" OH. He'll see. I'm gonna do this for sure now.

Quilting

Since I bought the fabric to make my quilt, I needed a couple of things to get it started. So off I went to JoAnn's. Let's see, my aunt said to get a mat to cut on, a rotary cutter, thread, needles, a ruler, if I have any questions someone there can help me, right? Oh they can help alright! Now, I have to say the rotary cutter is a wonderful thing. Way better than trying to use scissors. And I can certainly understand you need a mat to cut on with it. But wow, I had no idea how expensive they are. I opted for the middle sized mat since the big one was $45.00. There was a woman in the aisle getting one too, she said she had the smaller one and it wasn't big enough for her. Hmmm....we'll see, after all it's only a throw, not a bedspread. After I had my bare neccessities in my cart I spied a beginning quilters book. I'm sure God directed my vision to that. The total for that little jaunt came to $90.00. I will have to keep this up to get my money's worth out of all this stuff. Let's see, I spent $45.00 on fabric plus the "stuff " and I will still need the fabric for the back of the quilt plus the batting for the middle. I should be able to make the thing for a mere $200.00! I saw a quilt in a shop that someone had made and was selling for $600.00. It was a queen size. At the time, I thought "Are they nuts?" Oh, no, they are just trying to recoup their losses and probably pay for the new sewing machine they upgraded to and maybe make the payment on the quilting machine they couldn't live without. Oh yea, I forgot to add in the cost of having mine quilted. Good news there, my aunt said to send it to her when I get it done and she will quilt it for me for free! She has the super duper, so big it has a house of it's own, lazer guided quilting machine. Oh boy! When I was a girl, no one bought fabric for a quilt. We made them from the scraps left over from the clothes we made. I have a quilt my grandmother made and it is fun to look at it and remember who had what dress made out of which fabric, it is a memory quilt. And I also have one my great grandmother made. Every stitch in the quilt, and I mean every one, was done by hand. Imagine the time it must have taken to do that. I remember my grandmother had a room with this big quilting frame set up in it and chairs all around so people could sit and visit while they worked on a quilt. We had some fun times together doing that. Of course, we only had 2 TV stations to watch at that time so there was more time for things like this. I guess we could save money if we all slowed down a bit.

Daily ramblings

I guess I have Christmas on my brain so much because I am so busy getting ready for the big program. Monday the men at church will start building the tree structure the choir stands on for the concerts. It is 35' high. It takes the better part of a month to construct and yesterday we borrowed the big forklift from where John works to get all the materials out of storage and plant the center pole for the tree. I hope to take pictures through the construction to post so you can see it. It is pretty amazing to see. We now have 65 members in the choir and there are more yet to come. I think I will get over 70 this year again. Last year I had 72. My donkey search isn't going to well so maybe I should abandon that idea. I went to see a burro last week that was a BLM adoptee named Marlo. Marlo was a sweetie but he didn't even lead with a halter yet. I don't think he's ready for the bright lights!
My latest new project for all that spare time I don't really have is ....drum roll .....a quilt. I have never made a quilt in my life but my aunt the professional quilter just left today and yesterday when we were in a quilt shop she convinced me I could do this one and I bought all the stuff. Now remember, I said she left. She's gone, not comming back, I'm on my own. Don't anyone be looking for this one under their tree this year. Don't look for any meals to be served on the dining room table for a while either. Well, where else would I set up my quilt shop?! The good news is John prefers to eat on a TV tray in front of the TV. If the quilt thing doesn't work out, I could always make pot holders.