OMG Challenge - success!

 My goal for August was to piece all the blocks for the Christmas Cactus Wreath and get it to a top stage. I'm happy to say, despite kids starting school and a hurricane I got it completed today. I don't see any glaring mistakes, either! This project is part of the unbegun challenge on Ravelry. I hope to have this completed by the end of the year. Actually, I'm hoping to have it completed by the end of November so I can hang it on the wall for December this year. 

Linking up to the OMG Finishing challenge for August. 

Now to figure out how I want to quilt this one. Any ideas?

Oh, we were very fortunate in Ocala. Just mild wind and a little rain. No damage or even limbs down near us. Emily and I headed to Lady Lake to check on my FIL - who was fine as was his property as well. My MIL in Inverness was also good with a few limbs down that she already picked up. She lost power for an hour or so Wednesday afternoon. There is a lot of damage and flooding on the coast and hopefully those folks will be able to get back on their feet soon. 

All good here

 Just winds in the 30-40's for the rest of the day where I am with few bands of rain on the tail end expected. 

Got a tornado watch phone call at 7am, but other than heavy rain and wind we had no rotation near me. Still under a warning until 3 for them though.

Have power and internet. All good at my house in inland florida.

Idalia watch

 Just another interesting week in Florida! It is going into peak hurricane time and we have one headed this way. I am pretty far inland and right now, out of the cone in  SW Ocala. However, mother nature does what she wants so who knows. This is also a big storm and effects will be felt outside of the cone. 

We are prepped and are fine. (Well, the kids need to do the final pick up outside and put things into the shed this morning but that won't take long once they finally wake up).  I will be filling jugs of water today and I'll make a carafe of coffee tonight, just in case we lose power. Blocks of ice have been made in the big freezer in Tupperware containers. Car is gassed up and a gas can is filled for the very small generator we have. 

Kids are off school today and tomorrow. 

Might I get a little sewing in tonight? We will see.

It was difficult to concentrate yesterday so not much work got done. I did head out for an early lunch yesterday to top off the car gas tank. I went at a good time. The lines started as I pulled out of the station and by last night when Aidan drove to guitar, there were bags on the handles at the gas station. 

Progress....

 I had the first set of blocks done last weekend. I added this next set this afternoon. I decided to place it out based on the photo.

After dinner I made the last 8 blocks. I laid them all out on the floor for a photo.

I should be able to sew them together Monday night and Tuesday night. I believe this is to finish at 60x60. 

The goal for the month is to get this to a top. I am very close and think it is doable! 

Weekends....

 It has been a long week! It sounds like the one coming up should be interesting with the new Idalia being named and looking to visit mid week. We have pretty much everything we need from previous years prepping so other than pinning down the new chicken cage and taking down the car port to shade my car, we are pretty much set. We are in the 'cone' but live inland a bit so don't really expect any real issues where we are. The kids are hoping to get a day or two off school, but we will see. They can't run the busses on the roads if winds are greater than 40 mph. 

I did a little sewing this afternoon after watching the F1 race in the Netherlands with my son this morning. Lots of rain showers made for a very exciting race. I wandered into the sewing room and cut out and sewed the second block I needed for my OMG for August. 

After running to pick up lunch things for the kids for the week, I hope to cut and piece the third block. Might it get to a top today? Maybe, but if not, I still have a few days before the end of the month.

I had some broccoli and some Cabot cheddar cheese so I made myself some broccoli cheddar soup on Friday night. The boys opted for publix subs. Emily had a sub at school for her dinner as well with a football game to play at with the marching band. Aidan needed some nighttime driving, so he drove to the school to pick her up for 10:30 on Friday night. He did really good! She even let him drive home, after months of complaining she doesn't want to be in a car with him driving until he has his license! A cop actually followed him from the school to almost home - about 20 minutes! He was calm and did good.

I plan to add some stitches to frosty tonight.  I keep forgetting to grab a photo of the knitting in the car. I have needles and some dish yarn in the middle console. I've got half of one done in the car wait time this week. 10-15 minutes here and there add up.

Linking up with the slow Sunday stitchers.

 

Table Scrap Challenge for August

 First - the chickens got put together yesterday afternoon. They each went to their own coop to sleep last night, but we will get the littles into the big coop this weekend. We added a cage area to extend their area but protect them from the hawks. I did let them out this morning for a bit while I was out there refilling up their waters. 

I had a FQ pack that had some yellows in it. It also had some pretty sage greens, corals/orange, blues and brown. I pulled a few out and made this little placemat.

As for the X and O for this month.... if you look at it you can kinda see an X in the nine patch part of the yellows. I'm going with Orange flowers for the O. 

I'll link up with Joy on Friday.

Omg progress

 

I did manage to get the first 16 blocks completed for this quilt. I have 2 more types of blocks to create, but those are a lot less complicated than these. I do have a stack of HST's in red/white and green/white from making all these blocks. I wonder what they will become after I trim them up?

Kids are early release today at school. After bringing the boy for a much needed hair cut, maybe I can cut out and sew up the next set of blocks needed.

The neighbor just came over and showed me a video he took in the middle of the night. A black bear in our back woods, probably trying to get to the chickens. I just went out and there are still 7 as expected, but it explains the skittishness of the littles since I think he was closer to their coop than the big girls coop. We will join them together this afternoon and get them all into the big coop tonight for safety.

Good thing the kids will be home this afternoon so they can supervise while we mingle them together.

Frosty's in Summer

Three of the Frosty's are cross hatched. I did have some issues with spritzing them out. Little bits of the blue kept coming back! I just keep spritzing them and hope they stop reappearing. Despite that... I marked another set of 3 but I don't think they will be left in nearly as long as the others. Worst case, this is for me and will be hanging on a wall and it really is not noticeable from a little bit away from the quilt. I do notice the blue threads from the embroidery behind the fabric. Note to self, twine it around the back better so they don't show through the next time I do this. It is all a learning experience, so all is good. 

This is the one I will be working on today.

First, a few girls are coming over to finish off the work on their lending library for their silver award. They have to finish it off before the end of next month. 

Then Grandma is coming over later to go out to her requested restaurant for her 80th birthday dinner. She is not a sweets person... but does love her salty treats. We might have gotten 80 bags of plain lays potato chips - the snack size version, which Emily was tasked with wrapping. I suggested an empty big rubbermaid container. She got busy with small boxes, duct tape and wrapping paper. Grandma is going to need scissors to open that gift. Don't worry, this is totally something she would have done to us!

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers.

 

RSC split nines

 I got 4 of my 8 split nines sewn up this morning. I then attempted to lay them out for a photo. Peanut and Ollie thought I needed supervision. Peanut kept moving to whichever blocks I laid down to help 'hold them down'. Such a good helper he is! NOT.

No horses this weekend and next weekend as the trainer is on a bit of a vacation visiting her kids up north. It is nice to be able to sleep in on a Saturday after a long night on Friday. The first preseason football game was held at the high school last night. It ran a bit late due to the opposing team arriving a bit late. Emily had fun playing tunes in the stands with the band and had a great time.

Linking up with the RSC on Saturday.

Hand quilting progress on Frosty.

 I have yet to find an empty spray bottle to spritz out the blue marker. I need to pop out to a dollar store and find one later I guess. I'll start on the third Frosty tonight.

As you know, I am always trying to figure out dinner around here. I had pulled some carnita meat out of the freezer over the weekend and never got them into cubans. I made some white rice and added lime juice and cilantro and have been having some of the rice, meat with a nice heap of homemade pico for lunch. I added an avacado today. Yummy.

Last night was a late night for Emily, so I came up with grilled greek herbed chicken, homemade tzatziki, hummus and a greek salad (green salad with feta, kalamata olives, tomato, cukes and scallion) with some pita bread. I have leftovers for lunches once the carnita meat is done tomorrow.

Tonight will be roasted zucchini, mushrooms, peppers and onion with some sweet italian sausage and pasta with that cuban bread made into garlic bread since it didn't get used for cubans. 

Tomorrow night will be lemon chicken and capers with a green veggie. Maybe over rice or couscous, the kids love rice though.

Thursday, I kinda got 2 bags of mini avacado's on Sunday (the first bag was under something and I didn't notice until I got home there were 2! 6 mini's for under $2 was a great deal) and they should be ripe tomorrow and Thursday, so it will be taco meat and they can put it on a salad or in soft tacos with guacamole. I am going to try and freeze the others and see how that goes. 

Back to School

 Yes, school started for the kids on Thursday. No pictures were taken! Silly teenagers. I have a Freshman and Sophomore this year. It is a very early start to the day, since Aidan needed to take his elective Robotics class as a Zero period class - it starts an hour before school starts! We live about 30 minutes from school with morning traffic. The kids did pretty good getting up a little after 6:30 to get out of the house for 7:15/7:20 for the first 2 days. Emily will have some long days this week - with marching band practice after school 2 days (3 hour practice) and then football games on Fridays. It will take a bit to get into the new routine, I think. The kids have been sleeping until close to noon during summer break.  Emily has a couple of friends who get dropped off early to hang out with before school, and she has a band pass that she can be let into the grounds and go there around 8 if she wants. 

Emily had horses yesterday and after being out in the heat for a few hours, my energy was completely drained. Emily and Kyra, who rides with her in their lesson group, decided to switch horses. Kyra is working on getting out of her comfort zone. Emily took it as a chance to try out the Western saddle since she normally rides English. The horse Reba was trained as a western horse. Lance, the horse Emily normally rides, was out of commission for a few days with an injury so Kyra was on a different horse yesterday. They will switch horses again once Lance is healed.  

I plan to tackle the office for a bit of a pick up and the sewing room for the same. I hope I can maybe find an empty spray bottle so I can fill it with water and spritz out the blue marking lines on the first frosty! I finally got his cross hatching finished last night. 11 more to go! I was listening to my audiobook while stitching him last night. I'm listening to The Battered Body by Ellery Adams. I think it is the 4th book in the series.

Since the kids went back to school Thursday and that is my day off, I decided to get a few things done! I finally brought my rings to the Jewler to get resized. Those should be ready for pick up at the end of the week. 3 sizes to expand the ring from 2006 when I got it! Then I headed to get a hair cut. I grew it out in 2021 and it has been shoulder length and then I cut it to a chin bob a few months ago. I've lived most of my life with very short hair..... I decided to go back to it. The hair dresser was so nervous chopping it all off, but it turned out great. She went a little longer than I used to wear it, and I now have some wave in my hair (when did that happen, it has always been pin straight! age maybe?) I went from this.

or when dry

to this!

Washing the hair is much quicker and no need for conditioner!

I'd better go see if the dog wants to get up as his girl is still fast asleep! 

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Stitchers.

Christmas Cactus Wreath

 It does not look like much, but all the cutting is done for these blocks for the quilt. I just need to sew up the rest of them. There are three different blocks in the quilt, so I'm tackling them one at a time.

I just dropped the girl at school for her freshman orientation. The parents and the rest of the student body has their time from 5-6:30.  I think I'll go sew up a few more of these before I need to head back to school.

Weekend

I figured I'd do a weekend post this time since I finally got to play with a little yellow this afternoon. I had planned to play yesterday, but I had nudged the boy to attack, I mean trim the front bushes while I was at horses with Emily. He had started before a quick rain storm went through. I decided to go out and help him in the afternoon by weeding the front triangle bed and then loading and hauling one truck load to the recycle yard waste and the second bed went into the back burn pile. It looks a lot better after a few hours of attention. Still more to do but that will wait for another day. The neighbors will be happy they can see down the road of cars coming since the tree got trimmed of the low hanging branches as well.

Mr. Snow Frosty got a little bit of hand stitching added this week but not much. I hope the lines come out ok, since they have been marked for a week now. 

I needed a spot to lay out the kites I have been making with the RSC this year and went with the bed. Ollie was supervising. 

He did nothing to keep Peanut off the blocks though!

What a big stretch!

Saturday was horses for Emily and here she is rinsing off Lance after her lesson. They were riding without stirrups so that her riding buddy could work on her posture and positioning in the saddle. Emily was able to walk, trot and canter with this big guy just fine!

The trainer wanted a photo of the girls and the horses would not look the right way, so another helper was off to the side jumping up and down and trying to get the horses attention. It got big smiles from both of the girls. 

The boy is off to Grandma's today. I have to go pick him up later... and might have mentioned if they decided on Mexican for dinner to let me know and I'll go down early! We will see. 

Emily has Freshman orientation for school tomorrow to get her schedule and walk around the school a bit. They start on Thursday. It will be interesting to see how they do getting up early again. It has been close to noon for both of them the last week. 

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge where we are playing with yellows for the month of August.

 

One Monthly Goal for August

How is it August already?

My goal this month is to get this Cactus Wreath into a wall hanging top. 

I have had this jelly roll and the directions since probably 2007 I think. Maybe 2006? Before kids anyway.  I think it has sat long enough in the box and is ready to see the light of day!

I had purchased this fun white snowflake fabric as the background. I got out the Accuquilt and my 2.5 inch stip cutter on Sunday and figured out how to cut out the strips needed in white. I had not used that die yet! I'm all set to start the sub cutting now and hopefully by the end of the month I'll have a quilt top. 

Linking up with the One Monthly Goal over at Elm Street Quilts.