Monday morning ramblings...

Gosh, for a day I could actually sleep in, I was up at 5:40 a.m. wide awake. I've been out catching up on everyone's weekend and figured I might as well drop in a few words myself.

I finished sorting through my magazines; ended up keeping 5 magazines and 42 patterns that were torn out and placed in page protectors in a binder. I will be giving the magazines with patterns torn out to my MIL, maybe later today after the funeral.

I haven't mentioned yet the reason I'm staying at my parents through today (Monday.) My grandmother ('real' Dad's mother) passed away last week. I hadn't seen her in a long time, and I think Dad was quite surprised when I said I would be there, but she's Grandma.

My Dad comes from a family of 18; (my Mom from a family of 16). They divorced when I was 2 years old, and as I grew older, I would often joke about "golly--imagine if we were to put together a reunion involving both my 'real' parents---it'd be half the town!"

I usually don't care to read too many obituaries; too blah and boring and factual--rare is it when an obituary gets written like this one: Grandma. I just found it more personable; almost as if you didnt' know her, you truly got a sense of what type of person she was. Of her 18 children, 14 are still live, with 46 grandchilden, 62 great-grandchildren and 20 great-great-grandchildren. With numbers like that, I'm sure you can well imagine the scene at last night's wake. At one point, many of us joked about needing name tags with the family-tree written on it (ie: Amy, youngest daughter of Ron, 3rd oldest boy of Mary(Grandma))

So---the household is waking up, and I suppose I can hand the laptop over to hubby to check out his online game status (I think it's called Evony??). {{I think he's going through withdrawal}} LOL

Happy Monday everyone

At the Parent's

Hanging out at the parent's house this weekend; we're up and at'em, watching Sunday morning cartoons rigt now; Candace cuddled in next to me in "Grandpa's recliner" and Grandpa is stuck over in "Grandma's glider" while Grandma is on the couch cuddled next to Caitlyn. DH is also on the couch; cuddling with no one :0)

I didn't bring a quilting project, per se. I kinda sorta did, though.
Before leaving the house, I packed up every quilting magazine I could find in a box and threw 'em in the car. Two big boxes full. Yesterday, I started sifting through one box; going through each magazine; ripping out patterns that I HOPE to someday make and organizing them into a binder with sheet protectors (small purchase while shopping at Walmart yesterday). So far, I have gone through one box; half of the magazines are on the "toss" pile (since patterns were removed from them), while they other half are on the "sell on ebay?" pile (since I didn't take a single pattern from it). OH---there are only THREE so far that I have kept whole and will be keeping for myself because they have more than 2 patterns in them that I would be interested in making. LOL. Thank goodness I'm young and have YEARS ahead of me to make all these projects!!! I bought the smaller package of sheet protectors (50), so I DO have a limit.....

On the ride down to my parents, I worked on the May BOM files. I can promise you one thing: all three blocks are nice-n-easy this month!!! Watch for them Thursday or Friday evening....

Yesterday, I also dragged my SIL to Hancock Fabrics because she has requested a quilt in blues and browns. We all know how many blue hues there are, right??! I wan't about to try to figure out her colors, so she needed to come and pick them out. Sorry, but pics will need to wait until I'm back home because I don't want to tinker to try to a) uploads pics to Dad's computer, and b) I don't want to WAIT for the pic to upload to Blogger {{my parents SERIOUSLY have to get something other than dial-up!}}

Then, when we arrived back "home," I had her sift through my quilting magazines to see if she saw a pattern she liked. That poor girl! She's not a quilter, and so when she started seeing all the cutting and piecing, etc... she commented "Gosh--I've never really observed patterns before. I just want something 'floofy'."

Well--THAT comment helped me immensely! She will not want cotton batting---too heavy. She will not want a fancy pattern with lots of seam---too heavy. She will not want lots of quilting done---to stiff and heavy.

SO---we found a LOVELY simply pattern; big square blocks with some smaller strips of sashing...{{again, pic to come later}}

So...it's almost 8:00 am, coffee is done and the powdered-sugar donuts are calling my name!

Happy Sunday!

Sunday enjoyment

WOW! I slept until 8:10 today!!! Mark THAT on the calendar because that won't be happening again anytime soon!
The morning was a bit lazy----went out to check for eggs, fed the bunny "Bon-Bon," breakfast. Around 10:00, we headed to Menards, Walmart and Farm-n-Fleet to get some necessities and an early Father's Day present for Paul. (new drill)

When we got back, we roped off a new part of the pasture to let the horses graze in. In the meantime, Paul did some "landscaping" work to fill in a HUUUUUGE "gorge" that had been slowly getting deeper and deeper with every rain storm this Spring. It is in the horse's main meadow, so we wanted to get it "patched up" right away. I took pics, but am simply too lazy right now to get up to get the camera :0)

After watching Paul on the tractor for about 30 minutes, it started to lightly sprinkle, so I took that as my cue to head inside to check on the girls. Once inside, and after a small snack, I headed downstairs to do a little sewing of the OC rows. I didn't make too much progress; not enough for pics anyway. I'm in no rush---it'll get pieced when it gets pieced :0)

'Round 3:00, I came upstairs and found myself watching Track-n-Field for the next two hours, while looking through many of my old quilting magazines. I won a HUGE box off eBay last Fall; so I'm finally getting to the point where something has to be done with them. I liked the idea I've come across (can't really remember where), but the "rule" was: The only way I'd keep a magazine was if I found at least two patterns I liked in it. Otherwise, it was added to the "toss/giveaway" pile. My MIL will get first dibs at the pile, but then I'll probably either eBay it or offer a give-away on here. Seriously---I only had to pay shipping from eBay back in October because the auction hadn't sold. I contacted the lady on the side; she offered about 90 magazines to me for A DOLLAR!!! As long as I would pay for shipping....which came to a whopping $12.50! That was ONE HEAVY BOX!

At 5:00, I was motivated enough to hit the road running. I only had intentions of running my 3.2 loop, but as I was coming back to the house, I veered off onto my 2 mile loop too, so ended up running 5 miles today. Verrrrrrrrrrrrry EZ; no race-pace; just "found my groove" and ran. My first race of the season in next Saturday, even though it won't be "my" race. A co-worker of mine wants to run her first 5K, so my task on Saturday will be to "bring her to the finish line."