Thursday of a crazy week but a quilt top finish!

I worked today and am off tomorrow, which is swapped from normal this week. I am going to ride tomorrow at noon. The kids are technically off school, teacher work day to finalize the first quarter. Emily has marching band practice 9-4 and Aidan has an annual Dr appt at 1. Saturday - Emily has an all day competition about 1.5-2 hours away towards the Tampa area. Aidan has the UCF Engineering day at school 10-4. It's also a F1 race/sprint weekend, so he will be watching that after he gets home Saturday. I expect to be exhausted on Sunday... with a 1AMish pick up of Ms. Emily from School. Tired yet? I'm so happy one of them drives themselves! It makes life so much easier.

Oh, tonight is a makeup football game for their Homecoming with the dance to follow after. It is outside in their courtyard and it is going to be down in the 50's tonight! Florida people are used to temps in the mid 70's overnight this time of the year, so I expect lots of chilly kids... including my girl. She is a midnight pickup.

Wednesday, I had time after work to sew 7 potato chip blocks together! Then I made the butternut squash, brussel sprout in bacon meal Aidan and I like. Greg was on his own, and Emily was at school for their first practice as a group before their symphonic band concert. They sounded really good. We heard the big band as well and they played some rocking tunes. 

Never a smile from her!

 

The are the Rattlers.... well, we do live in Florida after all!

This afternoon I was able to lay out the 17 blocks I made to expand this quilt top and got them sewn together. I have to say, it sewed together really well, and no fudging of seams was needed. Love when that happens. Each block is 12 inches finished so the quilt top is 72x84.

A photo in the shade with Bear.

Then in the sunshine. We are enjoying a cool day today. Temps in the low 70's! I could handle this temp year round. 

While out back, I checked on the chickens and Buttercup (the rhode island red on the right) gave us this egg today. The others are all in stages of molting. Their crowns are not bright red, so no eggs from them. Hopefully soon, as 3 have not laid eggs in a while.

I saw this quilt on my Facebook feed today and saved the photo off to my phone. This is a cute quilt and would be easy to draft to make. Placing it on here so I don't lose it and someone else might like it as well.

Hockey Tuesday

 I added a thread into this at lunchtime to add another cheese. I hope to make good progress on the next side during the game tonight. Those mice really want their triangle of cheese to get finished off. 

I also got this out - my Accuquilt cutter and my 2.5 inch strip die. I cut some more strips out and managed to get everything cut for the last 7 potato chip blocks.

We will see when I get a chance to sew these up. Probably later this week or weekend.

Emily requested a crust for the ham and cheese quiche so I made one using this recipe.  My quiche recipe is just milk (I used her lactaid milk) 1/2 cup, 1/4 cup mayo, and I use 5 eggs. Beat that until smooth. Then I layered some diced ham and some cheddar cheese in the pie shell and poured the mixture over it. Covered with foil and baked for 45 minutes at 400 degrees. I took the top off, and did 10 minutes more. I also put 4 russet potato's on the sheet pan with a little oil and salt to back at the same time. It turned out pretty good.

Emily is working on making some Macaroons to bring into school tomorrow for extra credit. They are pink and we will see how they turn out.

7 to go....

 I added a few more chip blocks Sunday.  10 of the needed 17 are done.

Hmmm. That light yellow print really shows as a light in the photo.  Not going to change it, but won't cut more of that for the color piles.

Going to be a crazy week.

Monday, both kids late. Band and academic club. Guitar for Aidan. 

Tuesday,  academic meet aidan.

Wednesday Emily fall concert.

Thursday, homecoming football game makeup followed by dance until midnight. 

Friday- off school but.... Emily all day band practice, Aidan dr. Appt.

Saturday, Emily competition on west coast. Aidan engineering day at school 10-4.

I know pork roast tonight with mashed potato and a veggie. Wednesday I'll do the butternut squash with bacon and brussel sprouts for me and Aidan. I took a little ham out of the freezer, so maybe a ham and cheese quiche tuesday?

Weekend update

 I have been making progress on the second border of the cat and mice quilt. The triangles of cheese are tempting the mice and I'm nearly done 2 sides. It was nice quilting last night to a Lightning hockey game. I splurged this year and got Fubu which states it carries the local hockey games on Bally sports. I'm trying it out for a weekly trial to see. There are games Tuesday and Thursday so we will see.

I was able to get 7 of the potato chip blocks sewn up today before the bobbin ran out. I took that as a sign to be done for the day. This is the amount of parts left, so more will need to get cut out and prepped for more blocks - especially the lights. 

The 8th block was in progress. I select 2 colored ones for the middle, then 6 for the lights. Two sets of 2 colors and two sets of 3 colors to finish off the block. I try to get a little of each color in each block. This one has dark blue and orange in the middle. The sets of 2 - purple and green; red and yellow. The sets of 3 - teal, red, green and medium blue, brown and pink. I have 10 blocks to go before the quilt will hopefully be happy with a 7x6 setting of the 12 inch blocks. (72x84). I fear it might be unhappy with that size as well and want to be bigger. Stubborn quilt.

Linking up with the RSC on Saturday and Slow Sunday Stitching.

Greg and I headed over to see his Dad in rehab today. I guess Greg did not call Tuesday like I thought, and Tom was unaware of why we did not stop in Thursday. He knew kids were out of school (from the staff) but did not put that together with the Hurricane and why we didn't go over until today. His house was fine, and the power was back on. We put the storm shutters up and verified the AC was functioning and reset his clocks from the power loss. We will find out on Wednesday about his release date, but he appears to be strong enough to be going home very soon. There were lots of limbs and branches piled up on the side of the road for pick up and lots of gas stations without gas. I was very happy to have a full tank of gas in my car and the truck. One gas jug went to the lawn mower and if the stations near us are without gas, the other one will go in the kids car to get to school on Monday. 

Lets hope that is the end of storms for us this year.ca

My MIL got her power back on last night and did a happy dance. The clean up crew was also able to finish up her yard in a few hours late afternoon, so she is one very happy lady. I'll bet she is tossing the fridge and freezer but all in all is in good shape.

Friday ....

I think I took this photo a couple of days ago. He lifted his head while I grabbed my camera but put it back for the photo.

When I say we didn't get damage, this is what the back yard looked like before Aidan picked it up yesterday. Just leaves and small branches. We were very lucky. He has a nice stack of limbs and leaves in the fire pit.

We need to order a new tarp for shade for the girls. It got a little shredded from Helene. They were happy for some nibble seeds in this photo.

Emily was able to go to horses today instead of tomorrow. This is what I saw when I got home with her. The boy was doing the lawn.

I started on the triangle of cheese border last night. I feel much better after a good nights sleep. 

My MIL is still without power. Gas is still sparce, but the crew she hired had it looking great again in a few hours.  Traffic is terrible heading south, everyone heading back to their homes. Other than Greg taking Emily to horses across town today and me picking her up, we have stayed off the roads. She got to have barn time and helped groom the horses, give them some love and hung out with Kyra who she rides with. They also did their lesson today, since Lori needed to head to Winter Springs to help her Mom. She is mid-80's and just got her power back on, but the sewage is backing up in her house. Yuck. We warned her the Turnpike is closed southbound where things washed out... turns out that is the exit she gets off from but it will be a nightmare with detours! The girls had barn time from a little after 9AM until 2:30. They got all the animals brushed, fed and back out to the pastures. Loved up on the sheep that were hanging out there through the hurricane and the donkeys. I'm sure the 2 barn cats got attention as well. 

The kids complained (Aidan specifically) about my meals this week. Seems they were not happy. Monday was roasted veggie and italian sausage with penne pasta (zucchini, peppers, mushrooms and onion) with garlic bread. Tuesday, I warmed up a frozen bag of brisket and some baked potato. Wednesday I think they were on their own. Last night I made taco meat and fixings for a salad, with a taco salad for Emily (bottom layer is creamcheese/sour cream mixture, then strained salsa, onion, tomato, lettuce, mozzarella, black olives) eaten with chips. Friday is order pizza night. They will like that at least.

All good here.

 We have power and there appears to be no damage at my house. The dog had a long night. It rained all day and night - we got more than 6 inches of rain. I have not checked the gauge since about 4:30 when I was out with the dog. We finally got him to go out but had to go with him during the windy and pouring rain parts. We did have one accident in the front room. Poor guy. A little stressed from the storm.

We were very fortunate but lots of the state has had damage and it still having strong winds over on the east coast.

There are lots of people without power. We are very fortunate to have it.

It sounds like trees and power lines are down in our county so we will stay put until things are cleared. Waiting to hear on how my MIL is and will wait to check on Tom's house until Fri/Sat.

I did get the first white border on the cat and mouse quilted! Time to move onto the triangle cheese border.

Monday update

 Looks like Mother Nature sure is in a terrible mood! Milton is a Cat 5 with 180 MPH sustained winds. It should weaken tomorrow before making landfall as a 3. We will see. I hope it wobbles away from Tampa, but either way the coast is going to have some crazy storm surge. 

We are very far inland, so no worries about storm surge for me. We will get some winds and rain, but we are as prepped as we can be. I will make a few loaves of bread tomorrow as all the stores were out today when I went in the afternoon. 

The gas stations are all out as well. Hopefully a few trucks arrive overnight to refill. The highways headed north are 4 lanes of slowly moving traffic. They opened the left shoulder as a lane as well to move traffic. Millions of people need to evacuate from the coast - Tampa area. There are no available hotels.

Our county changed from having 3 shelters open starting tomorrow to 10 shelters open due to all the evacuations. The shelters are the schools. The kids have school tomorrow and they say it takes 2 hours to set up the shelters. They open at 5 or 6 PM tomorrow. 

Aidan had Academic club after school, and we texted him to pick up dinner on his way home before heading to his guitar lesson. We were picking up Emily at school after Marching Band practice ended at 6 and then heading to Lady Lake to button up my FIL's house. Greg and Emily put down the hurricane shutters and I cleared out his fridge/freezer into a cooler in case he loses power. Got everything put away and secured. They also helped the neighbor put their hurricane shutters down as well. They were quite rusted as they had not been used in a while. We stopped at Carvers for dinner and got Emily home around 9PM. She had about an hour of homework to do. 

The dog has had play time and lots of snuggles. He is not happy when everyone leaves him... which is a good thing I work from home! 

Laundry is done. Dishes will be all done tomorrow night and I'll refill up water containers with water for drinking and the tub with water as well. We do have the full pool as well. We have a well, so no power means no water.  We did grab a generator from my FIL, so we have that for the fridge and freezer if needed. 

That's the Monday evening update.