Happy Thanksgiving!

1 week of pre/deep-cleaning the house, followed by 6 plus hours of cooking, then stuffing your face with high fat, sugary tasty foods, lots of visiting with relatives then as quickly as it begun...it's over.


This past week week I got the coolest new cleaning tool it's the Shark hand held steam pocket cleaning system. I was able to do more cleaning in half the time using just steam! I washed the walls along my stair case, knew that the kids dirty hands over the months had made the wall dirty but did not know just how dirty until I started using the steam pocket to clean, almost imediately the dirt just melted away and the wall looked like it was freshly painted. I was hooked on this new tool...I was able to steam clean my kitchen chairs with out having to scrub them, my stove top was sparkling with little effort...who would have thought cleaning could be so easy! About 6 months ago I bought a stam mop to do my tile floors and love the job that did so when I saw the portablehand held version of it I had to get it...definately one of the best purchases that I have made this year. Now if I can just find a vacuum cleaner that I like I will be good to go!


So getting back to Thanksgiving...we hosted it, all went well, food was great and after all the relatives had left my kids started itching to put the Christmas tree up. The kids put the tree together and while I am typing this Chris is untangling the lights for the tree. It's amazing how one holiday can easily start/mesh into the next. Actually, time is really tight over the next month ( I have to do 22 quilts in 3 weeks)  so basically if the Christmas decorations didn't get put up this weekend chances of them getting put up at all  would be pretty slim.


This pass year has been pretty rough on us financially, Chris had to take a mandatory cut in pay which took its toll on us, so Gecko Quilts has really been a life savor to help bridge the gap in our finances this year but it came at a price, since I had to do more quilts this year than in the past to make ends meet, I have had less time to do the special things around the holidays that I normally like to do...so Chris asked me why don't you just take off the last part of November -the end off the year. It started me to think, why don't I do that? I mean it's my company, and the best part of running your own company YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN RULES/ HOURS! So starting in 2010 after 5 years in business I am going to start a new schedule...no customer quilts or appointments from the week before Thanksgiving-the end of the year. This seems like it will be the best thing for me, so I will be able to do all the things that I love to do that make the holidays special for me and my family. Like baking all those cookies for the cookie trays that we give to family, friends, schools and the pierogies that I make from scratch each year with my daughters (it's tradition and this year I may not be able to have time...Saturday after Thanksgiving is usually when we make them but this year Chris volunteered me to teach our neighborhood friends how to make them, last year they all wanted several dozen of them and we barely had enough left for our own family...so this year Chris figured it would be better to teach them to make their own than to have to make them some every year. 


I will try to post pics of the pierogie saturday.    

Cleaning, To Clean or Not To Clean...That is the Question!

This week I have no appointments or customer quilts to do, I am officially on vacation, if you can call it that since I am going to be deep cleaning my house. I have to get the house in order to host Thanksgiving. My allergies are also acting up (I have household allergies tied to dust, dog hair etc..) so cleaning is making my eyes itchy/watery and a dry scratchy throat. 


Any ways cleaning a house that have 5 kids and a DH in it, is not an easy thing. Because as soon as you get the kitchen clean someone goes in there and bakes cookies and makes a mess. As soon as you clean a bathroom, someone goes in there and takes a shower and leaves dirty clothes, wet towels all over the floor. Just when you think you did your last load of laundry, someone empties out their duffel bag of dirty clothes and the cycle starts all over again! 


With Thanksgiving just a few days away, all the people comming to "make a mess" and be merry at the Holiday...I ask this, what's the point in cleaning before the Holidays? shouldn't we save ourselves all the hassel and stress and wait until AFTER the holidays to clean, this way we only have to do it once :0)    

Life is Busy

I have quilted 14 customer quilts this past week, this is the most I have quilted in any week since I started my business. I don't know how I was able to manage to get it all done, but by the grace of God I was able to do it.
So now except for customer pick up/drop off appointments I am pretty much on vacation, from quilting for the next 2 weeks to get my house clean for Thanksgiving (we weren't planning on hosting it but the extended family is a bit fragmented these days so we were the only option).


Here's a little background...I was born in Indiana then moved to Illinois in my teens. Chris (my husband) was born in Illinois then moved to Arizona to go to ASU before moving back to Illinois (which is where we met). Long story short about 15 years ago my MIL/FIL and some SILs & BILs moved to Arizona and we followed 13 years ago. Most of my family are still in the midwest with the exception of my mom who is in Florida. So all holidays are spent with my inlaws, we have always hosted Christmas Eve (a big holiday with lots of tradition on my side of the family that I wanted to past down to my kids) since we moved to Arizona. Thanksgiving was always hosted by my MIL until my FIL passed away 2 years ago (the first year she was in morning and couldn't do it, then this year can't do it because she down sized homes and her kitchen is in no shape to host a big family gathering). Last year Chris' younger sister & husband hosted it and it was assumed that they would host it this year, but plans changed. Then there is Chris' brother who use to host Easter most years (I say most years because if his kids were making First Conmunion or Confirmation then they didn't want to do Easter). Well 2 years ago the brother and the sister inlaw divorced, and brother down sized homes so he no longer host any holidays. Chris has 2 other sisters...one lives out of state and the other is married to a guy that is not allowed at family events (another long story). So here we are the only stable, local family within the extended family. I fear that from now on we will end up having to host ALL major holidays, something that I didn't think would happen for another 8-10 years when we no longer celebrated the holidays with the extended family due to the nieces/nephews being grown and with families of their own & doing their own thing.  


Hosting Holidays are not cheap especially when you host 20-30 people. You are probably asking why not just have everyone bring stuff to keep the cost down...did I mention that most of the in-laws either don't cook, or they live a distance away so they couldn't bring anything that would be beneficial for the dinner. 


Ok, so this is all you will hear me complain about this. I don't want it to ruin my Holidays and it only will if I let it.


So can you believe the holidays are here? It seems that it was just yesterday when the kids went back to school. Where has the time gone? Oh ya, that's right it was spent quilting! ;0)

Unexpected Treasures

All of my customers are a great bunch of quilters. Over the years they have shared with me stories of their families, their joys, their sadness and some have even given me gifts of various sorts. Quilter's by nature like to share, whether it be stories, recipes, patterns, quilts, or other special gifts. I have been given delicious tasty treats that were baked with love, I have been given quilt patterns of quilts that I had admired, I haven been given lessons on how to make authentic tamales with the gift of some of the ingredients. I have also been given an almost finished quilt top shown here...The customerhad this UFO and had it all completed except for 2 of the 6" borders, she miscalculated the amount of fabric needed and ran short, couldn't find more of the fabric so decided to throw it away. I mentioned to her that she should never throw away a quilt in progress that she should just pass it on to another quilter to finish. So she did, me. It was an easy fix...

I took off the 2- 6" borders, cut them down to 4" borders and using the 4" scraps that were also sent with the projects I was able to get it too what it looks like above.

I decided I wanted to turn this Queen size quilt into a King size so I was able to locate the same fabric line and purchase these fabrics to add more borders to it. It will be a great quilt and used alot, instead of it ending up discarded. I have a great Kokopeli pantogragh that will look fantastic on this quilt, so it will be finished some time in 2010, stay tuned.


But these are not the only special gifts I have received, yesterday I received an unexpected and thoughtful gifts too......

These were wrapped up in this great bag that my customer made (all things quilty!)...There was a new rotary blade, a 50% off coupon for Michaels, 2 homade gift bags (large and small and a beautiful pendant that she made, in addition to making quilts she also makes jewelry.....this other pic is a close up of the pendant she made for me. How cool is this? Anyways I have also been given cash tips over the years as well. It just goes to show you that quilters are one of the most generous and creative groups of people out there in the world...they give with their hearts :0) 

When Did This Happen? The Middle Age Denial

I was that girl that was able to eat anything she wanted and never gained an ounce. Even through my child bearing years I got back down to my prepregnancy weight within 6 weeks of given birth without even trying. After the twins were born in 2000 I decided that I probably should start working out to tone up (having twins in your mid 30's wasn't like having a single baby in your 20's). So I started a program called BFL (Body For Life) it is  a diet exercise program that combines cardio, weight training with healthy eating in 12 week challenges to reach your goals. After 12 weeks I wanted to kick it up a notch so I switched to a program called Leanness Lifestyles, a more detailed approach than the BFL program. When I was on it I got some good results, I had nice lean muscle definition especially in my biceps and I was even starting to see my 6-pack abs emerge. I felt good, and I looked good. But as life got busier chasing after the twins as they got older, I had less and less time to workout and eventually stopped exercising and eating healthy. Eventually I stopped altogether, I made excuses for not exercising and tried to convince myself that as long as I was able to still get into my same size clothes that everything was fine. But then I noticed that the scale was adding a lb here, a lb there all the while I was trying to convince myself, no big deal I could loose those few extra lbs just like before without much effort. But soon the 1 lb here and there reached 20lbs above my old base weight (base weight= the weight your body gravitates to on a regular basis). What was a real eye opener though and what has motivated me to do something about it was about 2 weeks ago I decided to try on some of my dress clothes (I don't where these much since I work at home as a professional longarmer) so it has been awhile since I needed to wear them. But since the holidays are comming up I wanted to decide what I was going to wear. I could not deny the fact that my clothes were very tight and did not look good on me. Then I took a real good look at what my body now looked like...."When did this happen?" What happened to my body?" At that moment I decided this was it, I needed to make some changes. Going out and buying larger size clothing was NOT going to be an option. So I decided that I was going to loose 15 lbs by the end of the year with doing cardio and cutting out all junk food and keeping my calories to 1200 per day. This averages out to about 1 1/2 lbs per week. Not too hard to do as long as I can avoid stress eating. Once the new year hits I plan on adding weight lifting to my weekly routine, and then my fitness goals will change.


Anyways I have this computer software program (I had it for the past 8 years or so) It's called "Diet Power" http://www.dietpower.com/ it is a personal weight & nutritional coach program. Basically how it works is that you set a diet/goals where you set your start date, your current weight then your goal weight. Then every day you log in what you eat, your exercise etc... and it helps you stay on track. It is easy to use and I find it that it helps me be more accountable than without it.


I started out doing 90 mins of cardio daily but I have cut that back to 60 mins instead. The hardest part is trying to fit it in during the day. On the days I am meeting with customers I don't get to exercise until later in the day, I prefer to exercise in the morning but since I am not an early riser this is not always possible. So I try to make do with fitting everything I need to do in a 24 hour time frame.


I will give regular updates on my progress, so far I have lost 4 lbs in 2 weeks.

My Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt...A Work In Progress

I started a GFG quilt back in the spring while I was recouperating from my surgery. It was truely scrappy and it was going as well as could be expected. You see I was using the mylar 1" hexagon templates along with the diamonds and triangle pieces as well to go in the pathways of the quilt (I love those GFG quilts) but soon found out that those little 1" triangles and diamonds were a big pain in my a** and was going to cause me some problems later when I wanted to add a white border so I could add some applique to the quilt. Anyways to make things worst I wanted to leave the hexagons in the quilt until it was all finished (I am making a king size quilt) but the mylar pieces were not cheap and was getting kind of costly. :0( Plus I decided I wanted more of a controlled scrappy quilt.  So what would any quilter with a creative impulse do? Yup that's right I started over!

Thanks to a fellow quilter/longarmer on the APQS chat who posted a link to a website that allowed you to create hexagons of any size then print a sheet of them off on your own printer using card stock! Yea!!! Bought some new fabrics (moda's "Oh Cherry Oh") and I was set. Here's some pics of my progress so far. 

This is what I start with, card stock hexagons with holes punched in them for easy removal later, embrodery scissors, Superior "Masterpiece" thread, acrylic hexagon template with seam allowance, cut fabric hexagons, and various stages of a GFG flower on progress.

These are the 5 color combinations I decided to go with. They will also have a round of white Kona Cotton hexagons on each of them and then they will be connected with off white hexagons as the pathways. I decided I wanted to go with a "stone" pathway instead of a traditional "green grass" pathway. 

 

And then this is how much I have already done. I have a ways to go in order to make it big enough for a king size bed, lol! I want to get all of the flowers done first before I start adding on the white hexagons or even the stone pathways to connect them together. The nice thing about the card stock hexagons is that I can print out as much of them as I want, and I am able to use a steam iron on them with out fear of melting the mylar! This is just one of my many UFO projects that I have started...I have alot of projects in various stages, maybe I will share them with all of you by posting pics of them here over the next month or so.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average Closed Above 10,000!

For the first time in over a year the Dow Jones Industrial Average has closed at or over the 10,000 mark at the closing bell on any given Friday!!! This means that my Depression Prevention Special is now officially over! I was starting to think that this day was never goimg to come ;0)


And just as luck would have it, the moment that the stock market closed today... the phone rang. It was a customer with 3 bed size quilts hoping that she could drop off her quilts for the special price. I had to inform her that she was a day late and a dollar short. She sounded a little dissapointed but hey the rules were the rules. Besides I gave her a little heads up on a special I am planning to run all of next year for my 5 year anniversary special and she was a happy customer once more.    

Changes

Today is my birthday!
So of course like most people I didn't want to work on my birthday, which is why I wanted to get all my quilting jobs done by last night, which I did. So the only thing I had going for today was to do 1 customer drop off appointment. After that was over my day was pretty much wide open :0) 


My husband has been off work all week so I put him to work making changes to my website and I have been tweaking my new blog. Since Gecko Quilts will be 5 years old in just a few months (2010) I decided some updating is long over do. Of course the over all look to the website will still be the same but we are adding some new things to the site that I think will make it more fun. For instance a little change will be adding the new "customer quilts" pages for 2010, and while doing this we decided that we are going to condence the older years to 1 link (2005-2009) then when you click on that it will break out the individual years just like they are now. And the new year 2010 will be left as is, click on it and it will take you to the 2010 pages of quilts. Another little change was we centered the home page of the site better...it was driving me crazy for awhile.


For the big changes we are adding this blog. This will give an open journal of how one woman, wife, mother of 5 juggles life, family, and a home business. It will be amusing, chaotic at times, and definately interesting as I blog my random thoughts and personal projects with pictures and text.


Another big change is that we are adding a forum to the website...for now it won't be used for networking with each other but a place for me to share my personal recipes. Over the years I have given several customers copies of my recipes when the topic came in conversation during pick ups or drop offs. I love to cook and have a lot of great recipes that I would like to share.


I am also going to have my personal quilts on their own page so people can see what I myself am doing quilt wise.   

Customer Quilts/ Making Time to Quilt My Own

You can always tell when the snow birds come back to town, the phone rings constantly and my turn around time gets longer. This week I am taking in a dozen customer quilts and I am booked up through December now. I have 6 customer quilts scheduled to be done this week. It's Tuesday and I have 3 done and 3 more to do. I would like to get them all done by tomorrow so they can be picked up Friday or Monday next week. If I can stay on schedule I might be able to work on some of my own projects.

I get asked alot by my customers "Do you ever have time to do your own quilts?" Yes I do, sometimes it is hard to find time but if I don't try to squeeze time in for my own stuff I tend to get resentful. I look at quilting as a form of therapy, a stress release, a way to reconnect with my creativity and forget all the troubles in the world. I have always posted my personal quilts in the customer quilts and charity quilts sections on my gecko quilts website, but part of the changes/ updates that I have planned for 2010 for my website will be to have an area just for my quilts to be displayed.