Yesterday – Saturday – was a day of no quilting for me – it was a day spent first touring through an art museum in North West Arkansas called Crystal Bridges and then an evening with family celebrating the college graduation of one of my many nieces.  The museum was built by one of the Walton heirs of Wal-Mart fame in Bentonville – the home and area that most of my family lives at is the home of the founders of Wal-Mart.  The museum opened about 6 months ago – I took a fairly quick tour though it with my sister and brother when they visited several weeks ago but not an in depth look.  Mike hadn’t seen it yet so we thought we would go there first, then pick up mom and head out to the barbecue.

One of the many paintings at the museum – I like this grouping of boys eating

this is a zoom in on a portion of a painting – it reminded me of a scene in the movie “Last of the Mohicans” when Hawkeye, his brother and father come upon a homestead of their friend and  family just after sunset and spend the evening with them.  These two photos are just a small sampling of what the museum has to offer.

Then it was on to the family to visit.  Here is the graduate with her cake.  Culea  (I think my sister found this name in a romance novel or something it is pronounced Ka-Lee) has a degree in elementary education – she was recruited by a school in South Western Alaska and will be teaching for a year at a remote Alaskan village called Alakanuk.  She is so excited about going on this new adventure in her life – we all wish her well and hope she enjoys it.  She barely looks old enough to be a teacher now and a college graduate – but she will be 23 in October – she just looks like she is still in high school!

Now on to getting that binding done this week – maybe make another smaller tote bag from the pattern I used last month, scrap organizing and work on Joseph’s Coat!  It is supposed to be hot all week – I think afternoons will be in the house.

Now to get back into my regular routine! I am exhausted.  I got home around noon – it was such a busy four days.  I have sat down for awhile in between laundry and other routine and not routine chores – like unpacking.  A little stitching was done and more will be tonight.

Mainly I had to get the plants watered.  I watered before I left on Thursday and Mike did it once while I was gone, but they needed more – the rain has skipped on by us today.  Do you always notice if you are gone a day or more that plants just seem to take off growing.

The little container garden.

When I left the blossoms hadn’t even opened on this yellow summer squash and now they are forming and I do believe I counted 3 or 4 growing.

Roma tomatoes – I have two containers of these, this plant is far ahead of the other though planted at the same time.

Another variety I don’t recall the name – bigger!

The other plants are two containers of green pepper and red peppers.  Blossoms, soon more I’m sure.

Thanks for all the comments while I was gone – I didn’t keep up with responses.  For some reason my e mail was not sending messages out most of the time but I was receiving. It is working fine now so maybe it had something to do with the hotel internet?  I didn’t keep up with reading blogs either and way too many on my reader to go back and do it now! It would take forever – I read a few here and there – I will get back to my routine tomorrow – early to bed tonight? Clean house tomorrow and now I will get busy doing some relaxing and stitching this evening.

I am posting some photos of family for the family that looks at my blog, so just skip it if it doesn’t interest you –  Aunt Bev this post is for you   The new babies in the family.

Kristy’s baby – Jesse – 5 weeks old – the quilt next to him is one I made for Kristy’s brother John when he was born 23 years ago?

John’s baby Zoey – 3 months old – next to her daddy’s baby quilt

(my mom) Adelyn (Natasha’s daughter) with her Great-Grandma – Addy is about 8 months old I believe.  Mom had 3 new great-grandchildren in the last 8 months.

Little Jesse and Little Zoey – Zoey’s dad and Jesse’s mom are brother and sister

Cousins on a bicycle built for two – Seth (Meranda’s son) and Peyton (Jennifer’s son) Seth’s dad Sheldon built this bike!  No training wheels required   I thought this was so neat when I saw it – the kids love it.

Well I am back home once again after 2 days up at moms.  I had time to work on the triangles but not a lot.  As you might remember my mom had surgery recently.  It has been a hard recovery for her as she also has Rheumatoid Arthritis and severe Osteoporosis.  She had a very bad flare up of pain recently and came to the conclusion that she needed to finally move to assisted care living.  We have been trying to get all that arranged for her.  We have tons of paperwork to fill out of course but it looks like we have a place for her and will be able to move her in a week or two if all works out well.

I will be going back and forth in the meantime to spend more time with her and start to go through things weeding out her her clothing and all the things we tend to accumulate over the years that we do not need.  The assisted care facility has much smaller apartments for the tenants than her current apartment so much has to go.  I will be back up there on Friday and/or Saturday for another day or two. One of my sisters will meet me there and we will help mom go through things.  The triangles will most likely go with me

I managed to get a little done in between things -  the triangle quilt grew!  Not a lot but a start.  I was able to take the templates out for the center 3 triangles.  Someone mentioned that she had used glue and that her fabric “warped” and to be aware of trouble.  I don’t know what that persons glue choice was – maybe it wasn’t fabric glue?  I don’t know.  I used Fons and Porters fabric glue stick and I had no problem with it.  I gently peeled the fabric seam away from the template and it came right off.  After I had loosened all three sides I stuck my fingernail under the template and it came right out – no “warping” I’m not even sure what warping meant to the person that left the comment.  No distortion?

The back—I have not heat pressed the seams or the little “points” where they all come together though because of the glue and also because this will be such a long work in progress that it would keep getting wrinkled anyhow.  I have never used heat on fabric glue and intend to rinse the whole quilt top several times before it would be quilted to remove glue. The “points” can be trimmed slightly at that time.  If any of you have experience with heat and fabric glue let me know.

I have used fabric glue for many years and have only had a problem once or twice with a dot or two of Roxanne Glue Baste It glue leaving behind a spot or so on the fabric that didn’t come out.  I have never had that problem with a Glue Stick have you? The glue is different.

These are 3 inch triangles, I hope to use up a lot of my many many scraps with this project – but I bet I won’t notice a dent in those scraps for some time to come – I really think I have enough scraps for several queen size quilts using all those little bits and pieces.  Today I will get some more pieces ready to have in the box for the next several weeks of running back and forth as I imagine another night or two will be spent at moms until her move.

I am off to my mom’s for another visit.  I have a brand new hand piecing project that I am bringing with me that will most likely take years and years of work.  I will reveal it on Monday

I needed something small for bring along projects when I visit my mom.  I discovered last visit that the apartment is just too warm to quilt even a small quilt.  The lighting isn’t great so I am bringing my sewing light this time.  Joseph’s Coat is getting too big to bring along as that gets draped all over me as well.

So no photo today – but I will post on Monday and show my progress on my brand new project.

We had good news today for our family. My mother who had surgery for cancer several weeks ago was told today by her doctor that she is cancer free-pathology came back clear. Surgery took care of it.  Also we have a new addition to the family.  My nephew John and his wife Kandy  had a baby girl this morning – C-section 4 weeks early.  She had a difficult pregnancy and they had to have the baby early.  It was feared that she would be under 5 pounds and possibly have to go to the ICU but little Zoey weighed in at 5 pounds 6 oz. and in excellent health!  Much bigger than the doctors had thought.

My 87 year old mother now has 27 grandchildren and 25 great grandchildren ( one more is due in early April) – wow we just keep growing and growing and some people ask if I make baby quilts for family – no way – too many to keep up with!!

Work on Joseph’s Coat, I am sewing the circles down this evening on that last diagonal row that I was going to do yesterday and didn’t get around to it.

Dizzy is coming along but I didn’t get done with as much of it this afternoon as I had hoped to, I got off to a late start on it – I had to get the grocery shopping done, then there was laundry to do also.  One thing after another and I was delayed.  I will try to finish it up tomorrow.  Right now the 2 rows on the end in length need to be sewed on and then the border fabric.

Several have asked about the Double Wedding Ring quilt hanging on the edge of the photo.  It is queen size, a Judy Niemeyer pattern.  It came with the paper piecing patterns but at that time I had no sewing machine working and I didn’t do paper piecing –I hand pieced it all!  The applique is needle turn. Hand quilted as always, I got best of show with it at the county fair in 2002, here it is.  It took me 410 hours to make from start to finish – and that isn’t the longest I have taken to make a quilt

Now I think after NCIS is over I should have all the circles appliqued on Joseph’s Coat and I might move back into the sewing room and put the tv on back here and get more quilting done on Star Crazy. I haven’t put as much time into it lately as I had intended to.

Only one thing left for me to bake and that is my coffee cake that I always have for Christmas morning.  I made the dough yesterday – it sits in the refrigerator for a day and then I bake it in the evening.  Here is a link to it from several years ago.  It is called Potica, there are a lot of recipes for it.

If you do a search they are all going to be different.  I believe it originates in the Scandinavian countries.  I found my recipe for it over 35 years ago and have made no changes to it and grateful that it has turned out every year.  My daughters love it so much that they make it also for their families if they are not here for the holidays.  EDITED:  Not from the Scandinavian countries – more from central Europe – here is a link

If you are like me you have finished your shopping ages ago and can sit back and relax – do a little cooking and preparation and be ready for family.   Today other than getting some food ready for this evening – finger foods – I need to give the house a little cleaning and I’m relaxing.  I have some more of the melons cut out for Joseph’s Coat ready to put on the design floor so I can pin some pieces together.  I want to have some hand work for off and on the next couple days for in between visits.  I will also get some more quilting done on the Star Crazy quilt.  We do not have a lot of family around for Christmas so it is a quite holiday.  Our daughter that lives in North Little Rock and her husband will be with us for part of the evening.  Then they will go visit with his mom down the road from us and be back in the late morning for some visiting and late lunch then back to his mom and home they go from there.  Melanie is in retail and needs to be back for the bright and early day after Christmas sales.

I hope you all have a great holiday and get everything from Santa that you wish for

I don’t make a lot of cookies anymore for the holidays – I used to make dozens and dozens and probably 12 different kinds at that.  I started to bake cookies back when I was about 10 years old!!  My mother was not into baking, she made bread and an occasional cake, but cookies was not something she enjoyed making a lot.  As soon as my sister Vicki and I were old enough we took over the kitchen at Christmas time for making cookies – shortly after when the two brothers that were directly under us in age were old enough they started to make them too – we were stair-step ages about a year and a half between all of us (12 total, one set of twins).

When I married and had children of my own I continued making cookies and candy for Christmas time – forgetting that we only had a family of 4 compared to the family of 14 that I grew up with!!  I made way too many cookies, they would be in the freezer for weeks afterwards until we ate them all up.

Before the recipe though here is a photo of my grandchildren after they made a snowman in Wisconsin (where they live) this morning.  Just enough snow to get the front yard cleaned up!

One of the favorite recipes that my girls always liked and they both make them now that they have families of their own are called “Golden Thumbprints”  we all love them.  I am not a Martha Stewart type of baker, my cookies are not equal sizes the jam in them is not the same amount – you can tell they are homemade!

The recipe (I have no idea where I ever got this recipe, I have had it for years)

Golden Thumbprints

1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 egg, separated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cream together the first four ingredients.  Save the egg white for later use in recipe. Stir in the flour and salt. Refrigerate for an hour or two.  Roll the dough into little 1 inch balls (or close to).  slightly beaten the egg white and roll each ball in it and then and roll in the chopped nuts.  Bake for 5 minutes, take out of the oven and quickly indent each center with your thumb, fill center with a small spoonful of jam of your choice – I usual use raspberry.   Bake again for 8 minutes.  Cool on wire racks.

This recipe doesn’t make many – I usually double the recipe and I got 3 dozen cookies.

Ready to get started on the second baking sheet of cookies, as you can see you do get sloppy after awhile, I get chopped nuts in my egg whites, but that is ok – it all turns out right in the end!

Fill with jam and put back in the oven to bake.

Another tray ready for the oven.

We have each sampled these already of course – now I am putting the remainder away for when our daughter and her husband get here on Christmas Eve.

While I have been visiting we made a trip to the zoo, something kids and adults can like.

My grandchildren and I.

Kids getting along and having fun!

Although slightly more than 2 years apart in age they have been nearly the same size for a long time.  Utah being one of the smallest in his class and Ciera being one of the tallest in her class.  I’m sure Utah will hit a growth spurt soon.  He will be 11 next month and Ciera won’t be 9 until fall.

Jessica and the kids.

The baby lion at the zoo with it’s mother.

Leaving the park and still getting along!

What a wonderful ceremony was held yesterday for the graduates getting their black belts.  The students put on quite a show full of skits and demonstrations.  It was a proud moment for all attending to see what hard work was put into their training.

Utah with his new uniform and black belt

One of the parents wanted the kids from the school to go to the ceremony in style and splurged on a limo ride for the kids taking them to lunch first then on to the auditorium where they got ready for the afternoon events.

Excitement in the limo of my grandson and karate friend:

with friends after ceremony – now it is time to relax!

with one of his instructors – he has looked up to this young man for 4 years now and he got home from college in time to participate in the testing and the ceremony.

This is it from the karate activities – today is my last day here visiting.  The kids are staying home from school today and we are going to be busy doing things today – not sure what – but I’m sure we will be busy.  I’m so glad I was able to be here for this important moment in my grandson’s life!  Next time he tests for the next level – black belt 2nd level – will be 3 years  from now – he intends to stick with it at this point of his life and says he will be a karate studio owner when he grows up.  I will have to put May 2014 on our calendar to plan to be here again for the event and make sure Mike is off of work so he can come too.