Sunday

I'm happy to say I spent a relaxing Saturday afternoon listening to an audiobook and stitching on this Frosty. I did the pick up of Emily last night from the Fairgrounds. Greg was kind enough to do the afternoon shuttling.

Sunday started at 6AM when my watch beeped to wake me up. Emily needed to be at the fairgrounds for 7:30 to help give Noelle the cow a bath and blow dry. That meant leaving the house by 7AM. I attempted to do 2 French braids for her. Lets just say, Mom needs practice! They held up for her part of the competition which was in the morning. She was in the 6th round and did a great job getting Noelle to walk and show. It was a great learning experience. She was done by 1.... but her partner with the chapter animal didn't have her showing of showmanship until closer to 4. We did not plan on being there the whole day, but we learned a lot watching all the different judging. I liked the second judge who gave pointers and praise to all the competitors and explained what he was looking for and how he judged. Haileigh did the showmanship and did a really good job. 

Bad photo but I was far away in the stands. Noelle weighed in a little over 840 pounds.

During a 30 minute break between the groups, I headed over to see the craft section by FFA and 4H members. 

That diamond print of the boat was awesome.

This needlework was quite well done.

Some embroidery and sewing as well.

and a quilt!

We got home a little before 6:30. A full day sitting on very hard bleachers. At least we were out of the sun, so it was not too hot. I have a feeling the 3 of us will sleep very well tonight. Aidan did great at home all day long - taking care of the dog, cats and even went out and checked on the chickens and gathered the 3 eggs. 

Now I just need to get through the Band competition on Thursday evening! 
 

Saturday in pink.

I'm happy to report I actually went into the sewing area and turned on my machine this morning! I needed to make another kite block and I have yet to do my split nines. Hopefully later today or tomorrow. 

Linking up with the RSC.

I'm hoping that by next week at this time, life should be a lot calmer. This last week was a lot of shuttling the kids here and there.

Sunday - we did a 4 hour cookie booth with the troop and the girls did great. That was after Emily did a booth Saturday night for 3 hours by herself as the other girl was out sick that day. I was at both booths. Monday was a day off.... and yet I did a much needed deep clean of the master bedroom. Cleaning is tiring! I got tapped with bringing the boy to guitar and hitting Sam's to grab things we needed and snacks for the kids for lunches. I was out of coffee.... and that needed to be remedied!

Tuesday, I offered to chaperone the band for the pre-concert for the main event on March 2. I picked up one kid and got him home from school, grabbed a quick dinner and then headed back to school for a bus ride over to the event. We got to listen to 4 other middle school bands preform their 3 songs for the contest and then the bus ride back to school (25 minutes). 

Wednesday - Emily opted out of her normal Wednesday after school club and I nixed Aidan's volunteering that day. Turns out that semi that got stuck under a bridge on I75... yeah, that is the bridge I go over to take the kids to school! Traffic was a mess, so I logged off work 30 minutes early and headed to school. Normally it is a 20-25 minute ride there and 30-40 to get home. I left my house at 2:35PM and got home about 5:15! I made it to the middle school in 65 minutes.

Thursday was a late pick up of the kids as Emily had band practice and Aidan volunteered at the middle school after school program. I got to ride Prism around 2PM and have opted to not ride anymore in the afternoons until fall when it cools down! It was upper 80's and I do not get along well with the heat. (I know, I live in the wrong state!). I'll try 9AM Saturday mornings starting in a month when my Saturdays are not so busy.

Friday, after getting the kids I picked up Chinese for dinner. Then Emily and I took Bear for a second walk. 

Greg and I tend to do a walk with him around lunchtime, but we will need to swap that to first thing in the morning as the pavement is starting to get too hot to walk him mid-day. While I was gone to get dinner, they changed the batteries in the smoke detectors. The high one in the kitchen area started beeping yesterday, so it needed replacing. I hear that the wire needed to get fixed on the one in Emily's bedroom and it might have flipped the breaker! Good thing hubby is handy in electrical and other areas. 

Saturday, Emily has fair things with the cow this weekend.  We are meeting at the school this afternoon for Emily to put her halter on before her teachers hubby gets there to transport Noelle to the fairgrounds across town. I'll follow with Emily and drop her off for the weigh in, meeting and then their skillathon paper test. I think they are decorating the area up after that. I have been told she'll let me know when to pick her up! I warned her we live a good 30 minutes from the grounds. Good thing I have some audiobooks lined up on my phone to listen to.

Sunday - she will need to be there bright and early (7AM!) to prep for the showing at 9AM. Greg and I will go and see how they all do. I have no clue how long that one will last and how long she will be there. I guess we will find out tomorrow!

Monday.

 I am so happy today is a day off! Saturday and Sunday were very busy days.

Saturday we left the house around 10:15 to head to horses. They were running late, so her 11AM ride time turned into a 11:20 ride time. They didn't get off the horses until close to 12:15! Normally group lessons are 30-45 minutes. She was having fun with this group of girls since they can all walk, trot and canter and are really good on their horses despite the wind spooking a few of them. By the time we stopped to pick up lunch and got home it was around 1:30. We ate and then I needed to find the badges and get them pressed onto her Cadette vest. She has not needed to wear it for a couple of years! We had a cookie booth from 3-6 and the other girl was out sick, so Emily ran the booth. So nice that she handled the money and us adults did not need to! 

Sunday we had a booth from 10-2 about 25 minutes from our house. That Publix is near the horse people, and they are very good customers and support the girls well. They got over $100 in donations in that time! They also sold a lot of cookies and were down to about 7 cases of cookies left and out of a lot of kinds by the end. The girls are planning a trip to New Orleans in June so are earning money towards that.

There is a Greek Festival at a church near where the kids go to school every February that I have been wanting to go to for a few years. I talked Emily into going directly there from the cookie booth - it was across town so about 30 minutes away from the booth. We got some lunch - yummy gyro's and one to go for Greg. She looked at the booths and got a pretty pair of earrings. Then I grabbed a few meals to go to try some different things. I got a herbed chicken with rice and green beans, a mousakka with the sides. Baklava was a Greg request. Then I got Dolmadakia and a spanikopita. They were both good. I'll try the mousakka for lunch! After a little eating and a little rest with my feet up (and throwing the ball in the house for the dog) Emily and I took him for a walk to tire him out. It was an early to bed night for both of us girls.

I did add a few stitches to Frosty.

Today - We will take the dog to the trail head for a walk at some point. I do really need to do a deep clean of my bedroom and a clean of the house. I want to drop some bigger items off to the garbage center as well. The temps are to be in the 80's this week and hitting the 90's for a few days as well. Sigh, and so the heat begins in Florida. Way too early for me. 

Might I get a few minutes to sew today? Fingers crossed that I can sneak in there and play a little bit. That area needs cleaning too, but I'll sew instead!

 

Scrap jar blocks

 Since I still had some leftover 16 patch blocks from last year, I decided to join Joy with making some each month. The last time I used a square in the corner but this time I went with a half square triangle. I think it will look neat with a white sashing strip and a solid square in the cornerstone area. We will see how it looks this fall.

Linking up with the RSC quilters on Saturday.

We have a busy weekend. Em has horses Saturday morning and then we are doing a cookie booth for a few hours in the afternoon. Then a 4 hour one on Sunday. Thank goodness we all have Monday off. Time to sew!!!

2023 ABC Table Scraps Challenge.

 The prompt for February is M/V and pink. I decided to use up my scrap strips leftover from Emily's quilt, to make a few placemats this month. These are number 13 on my Winter 2023 UFO challenge. Love checking two items off the list.

Emily's quilt was finished in 2019.

The leftovers.

There are pink bits in these fabrics, including the heart for Valentines day that was gifted to me years ago from my friend Moneik! I played with some straight line quilting on these and then attempted to machine stitch the binding on all three. It is a learning process and I'm happy to say, I'm getting a little better at it! 

I'll link up to the 2023 ABC Table Scrap Challenge later this month.

Embroidery wednesday

 I just finished up the 5th frosty waiting at the school for the kids.

I traced out the 6th frosty. 

I need to print out the next six frostys. We will see how long this guy takes to stitch up.

Weekend wrap up.

A busy weekend in my household again. Friday, I picked up the kids and Emily had a headache all day at school (sinus I think) and went right to bed! Yikes. I checked on her at 8PM and then woke her up at 5AM Saturday. She had a big day ahead and thankfully felt better. She had to be at school for 6AM for the bus to Tampa State Fairgrounds for a competition. She made the Horse Evaluation team again this year in FFA and they made it to States again. I decided to head to the fair this year and enjoy the fairgrounds. While she was with her team, I enjoyed wandering around the fair by myself! So nice when you can see what you want, for however long and eat when you are hungry (and drink lots of liquids as it was feels like 87 for part of the day!) 

This is half of the horse evaluation participants from all over the state - middle and high school FFA and 4H groups. They split them up into 4 big sections around the arena to evaluate the horses. This is 2 sections - Emily is in the group on the other side of the arena. They had 4 horses led into the middle so they could evaluate them through a few different processes. It was a 2.5 hour process of watching riders and then the end was evaluating the horses in the arena. 

I saw a nice display of working steam engines, a great forestry display - it is amazing how many trees have been lost across the state as they are cut down to build. I wandered through the Cracker Village and got to enjoy seeing the old buildings and adults in old period dress doing all kinds of amazing things. I wish I had thought to take pictures of that. I saw weaving, spinning, making brooms, making baskets with pine needles and with other local materials. A blacksmith was busy making some beautiful projects. I had to walk back through there with Emily on the way out before the rain hit and picked up some herbs. She had not seen that area, so I was pointing out all the different things. I guess they stay by the barn areas. Then I wandered through the 'fine arts' area. There were lots of nice displays of photography, legos, plants, aquariums, woodworking, and all kinds of craft items. I took some photo's of the quilts.

This was a rug that was awesome!

This one was amazing! It was hung up high so I didn't get a chance to see all the detail up close.

With all the dangerous choices of fair food, I went with a chicken gyro and boy was it yummy! Add another water, power zero, a few bites of Emily's funnel cake and a small lemonade and corn dog on the way out. We got into the car just as a few drops of rain hit the windshield around 5PM. A rainy drive home but we made it home about 10 minutes before the heavy rain started so it was great timing all day long!

Today I plan to add the second eye and finish off the face of this frosty, add a few snowflakes and then I can call him done. I'll have to trace out the 6th Frosty to stitch this week. Bear has been snuggled up to me this morning in my recliner. Hubby took Em to school for morning feeding of the chapter animals. I get the afternoon trip. I think he missed me yesterday!

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Embroidery Wednesday

 First off - a photo of the boys. They have always liked to curl up together. Peanut is on the left and Ollie is the bigger one on the right. 

Here is the frosty - he is still a work in progress but is a lot closer to being done with a few more stands of floss added this evening. Looks like he needs his face, some snowflakes and the swooshes for the ice skates. Tomorrow is a late pick up so I should be able to get him finished off. 

Sunday

 I was hoping to have a full day of sewing today. Sigh. Not looking good.

Seems hubby has projects due at school today that are not finished. So, shopping, taking Em for a haircut and then to work with Noelle the cow at school take priority. I also have dinner to make and have to figure out meals for the week. One day is a night out for Aidan's 15th birthday...but not on his birthday Monday. Both kids have other things to do that night. We are going to try Red Robin, the boy's choice and it will be a new restaurant for us.

At some point, I'll get a few stitches in on the 5th Frosty McChill. Melisa created 12 free fun frosty's to stitch a while ago. I am slow to the party but enjoying the process at my pace, mostly as car line wait stitching.

Here are the first 4 that I completed. I really need to get to Joann's and pick up more of the blue floss as I should have enough to finish this one and most of the 6th one I think. 

These two have been keeping me hopping, but I did get them to burn down the brush pile yesterday so we can put the new trimmings from the bushes there again. 

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Stitchers.

RSC in pink.

I had an extra set of the wing pieces already cut for the kites, so I pulled a couple of darker pinks (I only have 2 or 3 darker pinks in the stash???) to make one of the kites for the month. It joined the 2 darker blues from last month. I guess I am using some leftover backing fabrics with grey and snowflakes for this set of blocks. 

I pulled out these strips which are extra's from a quilt I made for Emily. I also found a heart gifted to me from my friend Moneik. Somehow these two things will be worked into the ABC (table) scrap Challenge Joy hosts this month with the prompt letters of M and V! It also will check off my Winter UFO #13 to get these scraps into something usable and out of the sewing room! (Don't you love how I keep combining challenges?) There is pink in here too - to hit that Pink checkbox!

While sewing up the kites, I added some more pink flying geese from the parts leftover from Sweet Confetti. I know that had 96 colored fabrics - so there should be 10 pieces in each color with 6 for the last one. I'll have to check the quilt, but I think purple was the six.... so, there should be 4 more somewhere in a basket on the sewing table. These are using a white dot print that I seem to always have in the sewing room for the wings.

Linking up Saturday with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Looks like I just have horses with Emily on Saturday morning. Grandma is taking Aidan out for lunch and shopping for his 15th birthday on Monday! Where has the time gone? His birthday wish is another year subscription to F1. He sure has gotten his money's worth from last year's subscription. We watched a race from 2021 Thursday evening after they had a late dinner.