5:30 am sucks

Yep that is right I think that time sucks. Why, well because my husband and I decided to start working out and that is what time we have to get up in the morning to do a 30 minute workout and be able to leave for work on-time.

So last week we started this whole thing. I do have to admit I am not as sore after the workouts and they are getting easier but I am so so tried. It isn't even 8:30pm and I am already in bed because I am too tried to sit up.

I have 3 quilting type projects that need to be done by tomorrow, but it would be dangerous to sew or cut anything right now. So I will head home right after wrk tomorrow and hopefully get at least two of the three things done and in the mail.

Night all because 5:30 am is going to come way to quickly and I have to workout tomorrow morning. Thank goodness my husband because if he wasn't doing this with me I would be sleeping in tomorrow!

FNSI

It is time for Friday Night Sew In  and I have tons of projects to work on so after dinner it is off to the sewing room I go!

some finished tasks, a broken lens, and a very busy week

This has been an eventful week. I have made a lot of progress and have been super busy at both work and life.

However, Saturday was our Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild meeting and something terribly bad happened. I jumped out of the car, put my camera strap on and started rushing in. And then boom, bam, roll... My DSLR camera broke off the strap and hit the asphalt.

The lens broke, the corner of the pretty Nikon D7000 cracked, a mirror scratched, and my heart sank. I can send everything in and see how much it is going to cost to fix it, but I have a Nikon photography class that I signed up for, for this weekend. So I am going borrow a friends lens and wait until next month to send it in. I am lucky that they are even going to trust me.

So, until I can afford to send my camera in, most of my pictures will be from my phone and my ipad and will probably suck and not be very true to color. I still have my 50 mm lens, but it quite as versatile and since it is a fixed lens I have to be at the "right" distance. Plus the little scratch on the upper mirror is annoying.

So on to the week of progress, which by the way many of the pictures are being borrowed from other SacMQG members flickr accounts since I was too devastated to take any pictures.

I finished the top for my zig zagged quilt.

by the way I am the girl in red making a horrible face

I finished my low volume block for Sunday Morning Quilts Bee.

I finished my slab for Sunday Morning Quilt Bee.

I started my challenge for Modern Quilt Guild.

I have been working like crazy and have spent very little time in my office, which means that I feel like I am not accomplishing the task that need to be done.

I went to the snow.

Made some homemade cinnamon rolls. 

Even the dogs had their own dogvacay, with this really nice lady that had some property for them to play on and a boy that loved on them.

I started working out today and I am so sore I am surprised I was able to write this. Time for a bath, water and sleep.


posting all my finishes to finish it up Friday , finish a friday, TGIFF

Charming Travelers Winner

I am so excited to be passing along the charming travelers to Tonia J. Congratulations. I am emailing you now and you have 72 hours to respond so I don't have to pick a new winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway



This charm square swap started at from blank pages in April 2012 and has since traveled across the United States and landed here in CA (the map hasn't been updated yet). This pack happens to be the red pack. Look at all the places it has been.

And then there was progress

Thank you all for the well wishes. I am feeling much better now. I have made a whole bunch of progress in the last couple days.

I finished a bee block for the Sunday Morning Quilts Bee. One of this months leaders asked for a Candy Coated block in low volume. I hope I hit the mark. Not sure though :)

Then I finished the top for my zigzagged quilt.

Of course it needs to be quilted now, but I am going to take the celebration for finishing the top since it has been on my to do list for every!

BTW sorry for the bad lighting. My lightscoop broke and since the only time I am home during the week is when it is dark the light is just bad. Hopefully I can replace my lightscoop soon and with the newer model and then I can solve the poor lighting issue in my house.


PS Don't forget to enter for a chance to participate in the charming traveler's swap

Chraming Travelers Giveaway/Swap

I am so excited to be passing along the charming travelers. This charm square swap started at from blank pages in April 2012 and has since traveled across the United States and landed here in CA (the map hasn't been updated yet). This pack happens to be the red pack. Look at all the places it has been.

There are so many different styles of charm squares in the charm pack now. Out of the 56 squares I saw modern fabrics, novelty prints, civil war reproduction prints, and traditional fabrics. Just look at this stack. 

 

Here are charms that I took out.

For the ones I added back in I let go of some of my: Kate Spain prints both Verna and Central Park, Basic Gray print, Tula Pink Parisville, Chez Moi, and My Mind's Eye All Star. All the charms that I added are out of print and were difficult for me to give up, but I hope some one will love them as much as I do. 

Now here is the fun part. Do you want to participate in this swap?

First you have to know the rules from the charming travelers page at from blank pages

In order for this to work I'm hoping everyone will abide by just a few rules. (really, who likes rules? but they keep it fun, so let's all play nice). ;)

• winners must be active bloggers
• you must reside in the US 
• before sending the charm pack off to the next winner, there must be 56 - 5" x 5" squares of fabric inside - please no yucky fabrics
• to help keep the map updated, winners will fill out the quick and easy form to let me know where you are!
• if the charm pack arrives full of unwanted charms, let me know Diane at from blank pages know so she can fill it back up. 

That's it! not too scary right?!

So if you are up for the this swap use the rafflecopter widget below to enter. I am giving you lots of chances to win. There is no need to leave a comment. The only required entry is that you need to make sure you agree to the rules  above first. I will be announcing the winner shortly after January 24, 2013.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Been in hiding

Don't I wish! Instead I have been sick. I was out of work for over a week. I didn't accomplish anything but laying on the couch. I did try to work on some blocks for my zigzagged quilt, but even that was too much. I couldn't even look at any technology. So I watched a lot of TV.

Luckily the last two days have been much much better. I even went to work yesterday and I worked on my quilting.

I finished both the big and little zigzags for the quilt I am working on.

I hoping to get it made into a quilt top very soon.



Sharing my progress over at

 and  

I am almost done with this first finish and that is making me super excited. 

We have been cooking

Earlier this week I posted about my goals for the year. My goals are very general, like choose happiness. Others may be a little more specific like workout. And may of them actually work well together.

Cooking at home meets almost all of my goals. It helps us stay on budget, we can be creative, it is a healthy habit (rather than eating out), it is something that is finished in one night and when I take pictures of it I am capturing life and since the hubby and I are doing it together it really does led to happiness.

These last couple nights we spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking. Our culinary adventures traveled from Italy to Japan and today will be Mexico. Both my husband and I love to make food especially foods that take a bit of time and effort.

First we made homemade pasta with bolognese sauce.

I made the sauce from a pioneer woman recipe.

Randall made the pasta dough from Making Artisan Pasta: How to Make a World of Handmade Noodles, Stuffed Pasta, Dumplings, and More

Together we made pasta with our Pasta Maker. Trust me it is a two person job!

We had a lot of fun and I would recommend all the recipes. The only change I would make to the pioneer woman recipe is that I would crush the whole tomatoes first. It never calls for it, but when you look at the pictures on her site there aren't whole tomatoes flopping around.

Then we enjoyed a delicious dinner together at the table.

That was until the sulfites in the wine caused me to have an allergic reaction. Bad Bad Wine! I do have a sulfite allergy, but it usually takes a lot more than four sips of wine and a little wine in a sauce.

I know it is hard to tell from the picture but I should not have a red chest and a bright red nose and a couple sips of wine should not make it hard to breath. Luckily I knew what to do. A couple of benadryls and a couple puffs on my inhaler (asthmatic here) and all was better (that is once the drugs took effect). My husband commented that I never have this reaction to "expensive" wines. I of course retorted that I don't have it to two buck chuck either (Charles Shaw at trader joes).

The next night we continued on our cooking adventure by making homemade gyozas with a ginger garlic dipping sauce and sunomono salad.

The gyozas, also know as potstickers were made using this recipe.

Sunomono is my all time favorite food. Cucumber salad rocks. I mixed a few recipes to make my sauce and it is still not perfect. If I get it perfect I will share.

I also mixed a few recipes for the dipping sauce. Also not perfect yet, but I have four more serving of the gyoza left in my freezer, which that will allow me to perfect that recipe too.

Fun couple of days. Now back to working on quilting!

January Goals

I am joining a new link up this year called A Lovely Year of Finishes  being hosted by Fiber of All Sorts and Bitter Sweet Designs. They great part about this link up is that the goal is to finish one this a month. It can be something big or something small. You just have to pick it and finish it that month.

I am also going to continue to participate in Just Three at Tracy Jay Quilts, where you pick three things to work on each month.

So rather than being redundant I am going to combine the posts. My first goal will be what I want to finish and the other two are the projects I am going to try to work on, but that I don't expect to finish this month. Luckily I went through all my projects yesterday so I now have a good idea of what I have hanging around here. 

My goals this month are to:

1. Finish my zigzagged commissioned quilt. I am almost done with all the flying geese. Once those are done it is time to make the rows. 

2.  Cut out Patchwork Prism Quilt. There is lots and lots of cutting to be done and so much fabric to go through but I need some of the fabric for goal 3.

3. Finish all bee blocks. I joined 2 bees which are both doing 2 people a month. So that means I have 4 blocks to make each month. At least that means I will be visiting my sewing room quite often. I am super excited about what we are making this month. The only one I am worried about is the low value block. If you have any suggestions for low value fabric I would love for you to share. I can't seem to wrap my head around how to do that. 

Linking up to:
 

Projects galore

Since this is a new year I am decided to do this week's work in progress post a little different. For this week's work in progress post, I thought I would take some time to figure out all the random projects I have around here.

First up all my unfinished objects:

1. Zigzagged Quilt 2. Geese in the Park Quilt 3. Halloween Wall Hanging 4. Patchwork Prisim Quilt 5. 4x5 Modern  Bee Quilt 6. Scrappy Bear 7. Embroidery 101 Quilt 8. Hexagon Christmas Table Runner 9. Kona Wonky Star Quilt 10. Prairie Claw Quilt 11. Makeup Bag 12. Modified Benito Box Quilt

Now on to all my unstarted projects:

1. Bliss Schinbbles 2. Swoon Quilt 3. Kaffe Fassett Hexi Quilt 4. Madrona Challenge 5. Halloween Pop Quilt 6. Easter Wall Hanging 7. Bag 1 8. South Hampton Whimsy Quilt 9. Fandago Quilt 10. Paul and Nikki's Wedding Quilt 11. Ladybug mini quilt 12. Bag 2 

Oddly I seem to have 24 projects around here. I am sure there has to be some missing. I mean really an even number! But, this was all the projects that I could find.  So I am going with it.

That means in order to complete everything in 2013, I would need to make 2 projects a month. I really don't see that happening.  Some projects are on a deadline, so those will be finished on time (I hope). And I know other things will come my way that I just have to make. Those have to make projects will take away from me finishing the projects above, but that is OK.

It is good to know what is hiding in my sewing room. Plus, this looks like I have a fun creative year ahead of me(even if I accomplish just a few of these projects).



Linking up to: