Last weekend of 2018.

We took a trip yesterday. We drove to St. Augustine FL to visit the historical town. Aidan was to go last year with his 4th grade class but it got cancelled by the superintendent as it would 'interfere' with testing. Personally, I think the kids would have been better to see the history they learned about all year rather than try and 'test' their knowledge for state standards. Emily does get to go this year..... they scheduled it for February instead of March. They have been learning about the city and it's different 'owners' all year in 4th grade.

We were disappointed that the fort was closed due to the federal shutdown but we were able to walk around outside of it.

On the sea wall.

We also visited the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum and did a red train tour around the city.
Aidan loved the keyboard made shuttle and Emily liked the jeweled house.

We walked in the historic district and ate some great cuban food for lunch. We did a round of mini golf on the bay and watched the bridge open up and let some tall yachts through.... which Aidan loved. We topped it off with a Ben and Jerry's ice cream on the way back to the information center and car. All in all it was a good day. We'll have to go back to see the inside of the fort and I want to go on the island and see the light house. It was a 2 hour ride in all back country roads to get there and back.

Today..... is all about sewing! and..... I'm going to cook a standing rib roast for dinner tonight that I did not do last Sunday. We also need hair cuts.... so a quick trip to Great Clips has been done already. Might drop Emily to a friends for a play date.... or have them here this afternoon. We will see.
A nice walk will happen too.... as I got 12,000+ steps yesterday (including 4 hours in the car driving) and want to hit my 10K today too.

For machine work - I want to quick machine quilt the 16 patch little quilt and attach a binding, and make progress on Aidan's quilt parts. Oh, I need to trim Emily's quilt and make and attach her binding as well.

Hand stitching.... will be binding! I have one side done on the baby hearts quilt and will have that 16 patch binding and Emily quilt to choose from as well. I do see a movie in my future this evening.

See Emily's machine quilting.... not bad for a 9 year old with a walking foot!

Maybe tomorrow I will prep the little basket quilt 32x32 for hand quilting. I think I hand appliquéd these baskets in the summer of 2017 while up in Vermont for part of the time.

I stopped at Joann's and got some hand quilting batting since it was 60% off. I might even take a look at the frame and see what damage to the batting the cats did a while ago and see how much work it will be to fix it. I do need to work in the morning tomorrow but the other 3 are off..... so hubby can take the kids to his Mom's for the evening. She is letting them stay up so they are heading there for the night. I plan to sew =)

Maybe my new year  challenge will be to add 2 strands of quilting to the frame each day and see if I can get that 90x90 trip quilt moving.

Off to sew so I can hand stitch later =) Linking up with the other slow stitchers at Kathy's Quilts. Come back tomorrow for a yearly recap post.... it was not a very productive year quilting.... but there is hope that next year will be better!

I also plan to learn some new things and have been watching a video tutorial from Craftsy on Embroidery. I have a nice book on redwork designs that I would love to try out this next year. I also had a nice package waiting at home yesterday. When I got my year subscription to Craftsy/Blueprint earlier this month it came with 4 $25 gift cards one each quarter. This quarters got spent on this little bundle. A fat quarter bundle of this pretty red and cream line, a charm pack of the line and a charm pack (5 inch squares)  of a pretty purple stack of fabrics. The way I see it - for the $99 I paid I get that money back in these gift certificates and I also have gotten my choice of free classes to save off. I have used 1 of the 3 so far. The kids have been streaming the baking and cooking classes and having fun. They also looked at some drawing ones... to help with a couple of their Christmas gifts they made for us.