Beach

 No tiny Midget progress, but I did get flower inspiration this week for my borders. The beach and walking in Shalom Park near my house gave me lots of ideas.

89 degrees last Thursday.  Terri and me. No, we are not twins. She is 7 years older than me.

A weekend at the beach

 My sister Terri is down visiting and we escaped to St. Augustine for the weekend. A little windy and overcast but it was lovely.

Yesterday was a few nature walks, beach time in the afternoon and mini golf and a soft serve in the evening. Lots of pretty flowers.

This was our balcony view.

A little crochet and reading got done as well.

Wacky Wednesday crochet?

 Ok, I'll work on a title for that one. 

I added 4 granny squares last week and I did the same since Sunday's post. It was a crochet type of week I guess. I did one in country blue, which is my medium and 3 lights. 

I was very excited this morning when I woke up and saw the sourdough starter finally behaved and rose last night and fell a bit this morning. I decided to try making a bread. It is in the oven right now. I'm just so excited it finally rose. Not sure if it was the warmer temps (it's been in the 80's all week) or that I switched to a bottle of water a few days ago when feeding it, or the new flour from Sams's club I just got into. Anyway... baking bread smells yummy.

I just need to find a recipe where the Dutch oven is not in the oven at 500 degrees for an hour. I pulled it out when the smell bugged me with 20 minutes to go. It was still plenty hot when I added the bread on the parchment paper to bake. I think the next batch will be in my Stonewear bread pans. 

We will see how it tastes for breakfast with some eggs.

Bringing back Tiny Tuesday.....

 In this case, I pulled out the midget applique that I hand pieced and hand appliqued into a quilt top. The borders need more flowers added to it.... and maybe some leaves?  I made these while sitting in the car line at the kids elementary school. It looks like I started it back in January 2015!  Probably time to get the top finished this year since they are in high school! Who knows, maybe I'll get it hand quilted before both are out of college? He he he

These blocks are so vibrant! Some of my favorites are in this photo.

Slow Sunday Stitching.

 I'll be doing a little applique today on 2 projects. This dresden plate circle, needs a little repair to secure it to the top. I'm hoping once Aidan is home from his ACT testing this morning, I can finally get my quilt holder up on the wall so I can hang this quilt in the kitchen/living room area. I need a tall person to help me!

My other applique is to get this body of the butterfly stitched down and then I'll add some embroidery for the antenna. I've got 8 more of these blocks to get onto their background and get finished off. 

Four more granny squares were crocheted this week to add to the pile. 

Yesterday, Emily's riding partner called out sick so our trainer asked if I wanted to ride with her. I've been sick all last month so no riding since early December. I just did a little walking and a trot a few times around the arena, then I was content to sit on my recliner... I mean Goody the horse and watch Emily deal with an ornery Doc who was not understanding to pick up the canter.

After our lesson, there was an estate sale about a mile from the riding place that I wanted to check on a Singer sewing machine. Alas, it was gone but Emily wanted to walk through the house. Everything was marked as they were going to gut and remodel it. In a punchbowl box of cut glass there was a cut glass platter. Ours dropped and shattered a year ago, so I pulled the platter out of the box and asked the price. It got washed last night and is all clear and shiny now and very heavy!

 It came home with us along with this pretty quilt rack. I was thinking I would paint it, but I wiped it down and polished it and now I am not sure. I'll think on it.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Rsc in blue

The chickens are finally all doing their job and we are getting 4-5 eggs a day! We are making sure that my MIL's friend is kept in stock with eggs as she is on a tight budget and goes through a lot of eggs. I did a couple of egg dishes for dinner on Monday night. I need to hard boil some tonight for deviled eggs. Greg used a few today making the birthday cheesecake with raspberries for the birthday boy.

Today, (Thursday) Aidan turned 17! How did that happen? We went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse on Wednesday evening for his birthday. I was surprised how busy it was around 7PM mid week. He has had a great week, with a 2nd place Academic Team win at Regionals on Tuesday (North Central Florida). Not too shabby after the surprise County win last month. 2 Nice trophies for the School case.

My FIL was finally moved to rehab on Tuesday. He is doing much better today when we visited after getting a good nights sleep. He has quite the cold, but it appears they are doing a good job with medicines for it. He was taken off to PT as we were getting ready to leave today. 

That gave me the afternoon to do a little sewing. I had planned to make the 'alternate' bird in the air blocks in blue, but I guess I made the actual BITA blocks by mistake! Oh well, 4 less to make. I think I am down to needing 17 now. 

I made one 16 patch with 2.5 inch blocks. I dug deep into the blue bin and found some fun prints I had forgotten I had. 

I'll link up Saturday with the RSC.

Weekend roundup

 I'll start off with the crafty things. I attached two butterfly's to a 13 inch background fabric- buttercup Kona I believe. I used interfacing on the pink and tried to wing it on the light blue. I know to use the interfacing for the rest of them! I'm going to use the cut outs of the black hexagons for the bodies of them and then will embroider the antenna on. Hopefully that will be today's project.

I forgot to grab a photo of where I started this granny square yesterday. I had a little time between sessions and stitched this on the porch of the store at camp in a comfy rocking chair, listening to the birds tweet and the sounds of nature all around me. I'll finish this one off today and add it to the pile.

Linking up with the RSC and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

I was going to spend the whole weekend at Sisters Retreat this weekend - Friday night until Sunday morning, but I opted for the day only on Saturday. I'm so glad I did but it was a long day. I live about 25 minutes from camp, and got there a bit before 8AM. I left a bit after 8PM last night. I just got up for the day around 3PM Sunday! I did get out of bed a few times but managed to go right back. I know I drank a lot of water and some electrolytes but a headache started this morning, and I probably just overdid it after being sick all month! It is a good day to rest!

This was the group photo taken right after opening ceremony on Saturday. That is the porch where I sat in one of the rocking chairs and got some crochet stitches in. 

We were split into 3 groups to go around and attend the sessions. Unlike an encampment with the girls, as adults we have options to skip sessions if we want and walk around camp or have turtle time. I believe it is around 600 acres. 

 I started the morning at the big firepit where we learned some camp songs. The minions (teenage girl scouts that volunteered to help out this weekend) led us in some songs. We noticed that some from different areas of the country have slightly different wording in their songs. 

We moved onto a newer event we provide for the girls they called a courage quest. We got a little plastic container with a lid and decorated it up as we wanted with scrapbook papers, stickers and whatever else we wanted. With the little kids, the idea is to write something good that happened to you each day. You can share with your family once a week or month and just find the positive. For the older girls, they can write down a worry/issue and then at the end of the year or month, they can choose to revisit or just have a burning party with their family and get rid of those worries. 

Then we moved outside the lodge and to the Pixie Habitat. We made terrariums. Using plastic containers (like large chinese take out soups come in) and made our own to take home. The girls had made these in November at the Harry Potter event, and we adults wanted to play too!

Things fell over in transit. The elephant is taking a nap and the light post needs to be reset along with all the animals.

We had a little store time/wandering time built in and then had some table talk discussions. That was when I visited the store and got Emily's badges and had some peaceful crochet time.

Lunch - our cook is the greatest! Lynne does a wonderful job feeding us. It was potato bar, and the potato was huge! Some were the size of a dinner plate! Your choice of toppings, broccoli, melted cheese, chili, beans, peppers and onion and of course sour cream, butter and bacon bits. Lots of fresh fruit was out as well - apples, oranges and banana. 

The afternoon activities were hour long sessions instead of 30 minutes. We started with the Pheonix Fire Circle. Each of us gathered twigs and made a fire starter and then used a match to light our fire. We each got to roast a marshmallow over our fire to make a smore.  Perfectly cooked!

We next headed to the archery range and did some shooting at targets. I did hit it once! I guess I need more practice but that is always a fun one. 

Then we headed back to the lodge and did some enchanted pages. The older girls had done this a couple of years ago at the Harry Potter event with the word Always and we adults wanted to do it. We got to use the cutting tools, so I think ours was a little easier. It involves marking pages at certain parameters, cutting a little notch and then folding it back. This is the one we are making, and one person has finished theirs already! They worked on it a lot yesterday. I am at the beginning of the g in girl scouts!

Then we had dinner - pasta bar. Three kinds of pasta choices, choice of meatballs, sausage, chicken and then a white or red sauce, garlic bread and salad. Desert was cupcakes! Did I mention our chef's camp name is cupcake? She makes great ones. 

I had the chocolate raspberry one. Delicious!

After dinner we did a weaving your story session. It was 15 prompts to journal a bit and then turn it into a painting. I was too tired to think, but painting is fun! I'm too lazy to go out to the car and get it for a photo, but I was thinking a yellow sun, for a positive vibe. Well, it turned into a sunflower with a bright blue background on the top and some darker blue (water maybe, as I am a water sign, and it is my calming thing) at the bottom. Simple and easy. 

After helping to put tables and chairs away, I checked out with the lead person at camp and headed home a little after 8PM.

The dog was very excited I was home. I left before he woke up for the day so I guess he missed me! The cats were oh so happy Mom had a long sleeping time as well, and were cuddled up to me.