Pets

Over the years I have owned quite a few pets, mostly dogs but also a few birds, fish, and the most recent a Tucson Banded Gecko. The kids found him a few months back hanging around in our garage and they thought that I needed a mascot for my business. So we gave our fish to friends of ours and moved the Gecko inside.

Here are a few pics of him...the kids named him Tiger because of his stripes. He is very active in the evening hours and sleeps most of the day. He loves to eat crickets so we try to keep him well fed with a box of them from Pet Smart.


He also loves to climb on the side of the broken ship pieces left over from the fish (the crickets also like to climb all over the ship as well). 


He still hasn't figured out however why there is alot of people staring at him through glass.

We have 2 dogs as well as this Gecko.
A black Cocker Spaniel who is almost 10 years old. Her name is Misty (Superstion Mystic is her official AKC name) we named her after the Superstition mountains that are near by.

Did I mention that she loves quilts!
She seeks them out when she wants to take a nap, like here, LOL!

We also rescued/adopted a short haired chihuahua/ Daschound mix several years ago when she was just a few months old. We named her "Sandy". Here she is with one of my daughters, Rachel (she thinks Sandy is exclusively hers....but Sandy begs to differ). Sandy also loves to wear bandanas, Rachel started putting them on her when she was a puppy and she use to trip over them because they were bigger than she was. Sandy is the more friendlier of the 2 dogs and is the one that is the most vocal during the customer appointments.

Progress

I was able to finish piecing 1/2 of the Rainbow Log Cabin blocks (15 out of 30)! These measure 14" sq when finished and are very BRIGHT!!! But hey rainbows are suppose to be bright and full of color :0)

I am planing on doing the other half of the blocks next weekend. If I stay on top of things this week I should have another 2 1/2 days to piece as my reward.

Sew many projects, sew little time...

I have to admit I sure love my me time. Friday afternoon after my last customer for the week picked up her quilt I started cutting my fabric strips for Hailey's Rainbow Log Cabin quilt. It is made with 2 1/2" strips and the blocks are 14" square (finished), 6 color combinations (5 blocks of each combo) for a total of 30 blocks. By Sunday night I will have half of the blocks pieced (will post pics then of my progress). This is comming together alot quicker than I originally thought. I should have all of the blocks done next weekend and in 2 weeks will have the quilt top put together and ready to be quilted. I will let Jess pick out the panto that she likes. 


I have been thinking about other projects that I want to work on this year as well...here is a list.
1) finish the Christmas stockings in time for Christmas 2010 
2) quilt the tree skirt that matches the above stackings (I am a bit rusty at custom, haven't done it in a couple of years and I want to do some McTavishing and some feathers on it so I think this summer I will just go for it!)
3) piece a Judy Niemeyer "Desert Sky" quilt (I have the pattern and the fat quarters already)
4) continue to work on my "Grandmother's Flower Garden" quilt
5) "Spring Loaded" quilt, it's a small kids quilt (48" sq) that I intend to use as a wall hanging. The pattern was in a magazine and it uses the Lake House "Day Z" fabric, very bright, bold and fun!
6) I also want to do another king size quilt for my own bed. Can you believe I only have 1 quilt for my bed? It's a Thimbleberries "A Quilter's Garden" and I am getting bored with it so time for a change...I am thinking batiks, or I could just finish the Moda Chocolate Sunshine quilt I started last fall. It's a moda university pattern called Chocolat that I enlarged to fit a king size bed and substituted moda "Sunshine" fabrics instead of using the chocolat fabric that it was intended for. 


I also recently purchased a "mini bow tucks" purse pattern that I am itching to do. Already bought the fabrics for it (using the metro neutrals) but still need to purchase the fusible fleece and the matt board. 


Oh and I also want to make a sewing machine cover and a serger cover for my machines (also have the fabrics for these, purchased some time ago just never got around to them) :0(


    

Projects

My work week is almost over!, I only have a few pick up appointments scheduled for Friday then I am off until Monday :0) This will be the first weekend that I am able to take off this year. And I am going to sew!

I am going to start a new project, it's a full size "Rainbow Log Cabin" Quilt that I am making for Hailey (a special 5 year old daughter of our friends). Here's a pic of what it looks like so far... Yes I have to cut most of that fabric into 2 1/2" strips and the dot fabric on top of the stack is going to be the outer border.

I will begin cutting strips on Friday and start piecing some blocks on Saturday...I can't wait!

Remember the Gramother's Flower Garden Quilt I posted about? Well this is my progress so far...

 And this is a side view of the stack of flower blocks. I have been working on these every morning before I take the twins to school and in the evening after I am done quilting for the day. The yellow flowers (all 14 of them) are now done. Next I will finish off the pink flowers. Suprisingly these are going pretty quick. I want to complete all of the full flower blocks then the partial flower blocks. Then I will start working on the background hexagons (the white ones) and the pathways (thinking of making these beige/taupe).

New Week, New Outlook

The first week of the year was gone, I was glad to see it go. Now a new week is here with a new outlook for me. 


I decided a healthy lifestyle is sure to fail if I fail to plan ahead. So changes have to be made so I can fit everything in in a day. I am sure I am not the first person that realised that 24 hours in 1 day is just not enough hours to get everything done and I am sure I won't be the last either. But if I want to succeed in my goals this year I need to prioritize my days. I decided to change my appointment schedule so I am able to exercise in the morning after I drop the twins off at school. I have found out that if I don't get my workouts done in the morning before my shower chances are I won't get it in that day. This was becoming to be a challenge because I had been starting my customer appointments at 10 am, this does not give me enough time to work out for an hour. So I am pushing my appointments back later in the day to fit my schedule better. 


This way I will be able to workout after the kids go to school and before I have customer pick ups/drop offs and since I don't actually start quilting until 2 pm it just makes sense. 


I am also going to try to make sure that I keep my weekends for family this year, it's no fun working the weekends while my family is having fun without me. Balance has gotta be key this year. Juggling a business, family and a healthy lifestyle won't be easy but it will be well worth it in the long run if I can pull it off.


Today I restarted my diet (my healthy lifestyle) I want to loose 12 lbs in 12 weeks. I started off the day by burning 684 cals in 1 hour on my recumbant bike and I am pleased to announce that I stayed on my meal plan all day! 1 day done, 83 days to go for goal.


   

1st Week Back

The first week of the year was suppose to be a great start for 2010, I was going to get back to eating healthy, my exercise plan and get back to quilting customer quilts. Of course I should know by now when you want things to go a certain way, they rarely do. This week was no exception.


I did manage to work out and eat right 1 day, yup that was it, why? Well because life kicked my butt, that's why. Monday was good, Chris went back to work, I tried to get back to work but the kids were still home until Wed. and I had a hard time getting motivated, then I had a couple of days where I had back to back drop off appointments all day!! So when I did finally try to get some quilting done, my machine started to act up. The begining of Dec. I broke a needle on a customer's quilt because of a very bulky seam...this seam was so bad that it actually knocked my hook assembly loose and damaged my hook by creating alot of burrs. Chris got it back together and thought he timed it the right way, and I was able to finish my customer quilts for Dec's deadlines. However when I started up again my top thread was shredding something aweful. So I asked  Chris to buff the hook to get rid of the burrs...no problem, he did a great job but when he tried to put it back together he couldn't  because we were missing a important piece of info. My machine is a 2005 APQS Liberty and the manuel that came with it is lacking in detail info in this area. So I called APQS and Christy e-mailed me detailed instructions to get us back up and running. It turned out that the missing piece of the puzzle was that we needed to file the hook shaft before sliding the collar & hook back on.


Once the machine was back together (the right way this time) I was back in business, however I was now running behind schedule, so I had to work through the weekend to get caught up again.


I was hoping to do some sewing. But it was not going to happen. So needless to say between the stress of the job, falling behind, and having alot of drop off appointments I was not able to exercise or eat healthy. I am so bummed!  

Pics from Pierogi Saturday 2009

This is my daughter Rachel, she is par-boiling the pierogies once they are made so they can go into the freezer.

This is Ralph & Jess, friends of ours learning to make pierogies for the first time.

Karen & Greg make a great team, they got creative and decided to add jalapeno slices to the pierogie filling to kick it up a notch or two.

Here is my oldest Victoria playing with the dough as Jess looks on.

Greg is cracking a few eggs for the pierogi dough.

Here is Victoria rolling out the dough.

This is Lee, he didn't make any of the pierogies that day but he made a great supervisor! We had a great time that day and, we made 2 batches of pierogies and drank several blender fulls of margaritas. We decided that this was going to be a yearly thing for us and that next year we are going to experiment more with different fillings. Should be fun.   

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Back To Work I Go

I finished my first customer quilt of the year today, I loaded it yesterday but didn't actually get it finished until today. Why is it that after a holiday or vacation it is always hard to get back into a groove? It didn't help either that the kids don't have to go back to school until Wednesday. Every time I went to quilt, a pair of eyes where starring down at me from the stairs waiting until I finished a row to ask me a question, usually resulting in me having to defuse an arguement or to fix a problem they were having. During the summer months they aren't like this but I guess they are starting to get antsy and are looking to get back to their routine (I know I am!!) :0)


Anyways for some reason I was lucky enough that no customers wanted appointments Monday or Tuesday of this week it has given me a chance to ease back into my work schedule. Wednesday however is another story, I have appointments scheduled all day from 10 am-2 pm then I need to get at least 1 customer quilt done hopefully 2 before I call it a day.


I started back to healthy eating and exercising on Monday after a not so healthy December. I lost 6 lbs by Thanksgiving then the holiday goodies derailed me for the month of December. But surprising enough I only gained back 1 1/2 lbs during that time, and that was with bad eating and no exercising! So Monday I started exercising again, I want to loose another 10 lbs (a total of 15 lbs from when I originally started before Thanksgiving). I am going to just start off the year with cardio for now then maybe in a few weeks I will add some weight lifting to my plan. When the twins were babies I started lifting weights to get back in shape, it worked really well and I discovered I liked seeing definition in my biceps, I even was even starting to see faint lines of my ab muscles too, that's how much I was into the whole weight lifting/ cardio thing. Chris even got into it for awhile as well. Then 9/11 happened and well, we went into mourning with the rest of the country and some how bad eating and lack of exercise became the norm. 


So why did I decide to get back to a healthier lifstyle you might be asking yourself? Well because my clothes were shrinking, lol! and with the ecconomy as bad as it is, who has the $$$ to go out and buy new LARGER sizes of clothes. I would much rather keep my current clothes and add new items here and there to expand the wardrobe not my waistline. Plus since my Hysterectomy last spring, bad eating brings on more hot flashes. Plus I read somewhere that weightlifting promotes stronger bones and since "mentalpause" (as we call it here in our house) weakens bones/osteoperosis (family history with this) I figured I need to be on the offense instead of being on the defense later. 


My goal is to get to my desired weight goal by the end of March, not difficult to achieve if I stick to it. And then to maintain my weight while I continue to lift weights and do cardio to lower my body fat % some for the summer. since we have a pool (most people do in AZ) we tend to be in it on a daily basis come summer so must look good in that bathing suit.


Oh and I decided to stop coloring my hair and let it go back to it's natural color (which is dark brown) but now it has more grey in it. I am courious to see what I look like with the silvery highlights. Should be interresting. I also ditched the bangs.     

Happy New Year!

Isn't it amazing how 24 hours can make a bad year into a more optamistic one? 2009, well lets just say was not one of my favorites, here's a recap...
Jan.
Got bad news about my grandmother, her cancer spread and was only given 3-6 months to live. I was having a lot of pelvic pain and I had a mysterious numbing on one side of my face (thought it might be a stroke) but thank God it wasn't.
Feb.
Went to see my gyne doc and found out I had to have a hysterectomy...did lots of lab testing.
Mar.
Had the surgery (never had surgery before, was scared to death) but all turned out fine.
April
in recovery/healing
May
still recovering and the Twins made their First Communion and Confirmation
June
Summer begins
July
Summer continues, Vicki gets her first job.
Aug.
Chris is told he has to take a mandatory 10% pay cut, air conditioner 1 breaks down, Vicki starts college, rest of kids start school, was told an aunt was loosing her battle with colon cancer, and 2 tires need to be replaced.
Sept.
Struggling to pay bills because of pay cut, my dad comes to the rescue, and made some financial changes to survive said pay cut.
Oct.
2nd air conditioner breaks down, a great uncle dies of pancreatic cancer, my aunt dies from her colon cancer and my grandmother dies from her cancers, very hard month.
Nov.
Had to help front $ to Vicki for college due to one of her student loans she was approved for never made it in her college account. Lost 6 lbs, hosted Thanksgiving last minute.
Dec.
Watching every penny, hosted Christmas Eve, found out DSIL left husband and is in custody battle for the kids.


So you see a bad year :0( however the new year brings hope :0)
Starting with Chris' pay going back to normal in Jan., the phone ringing off the hook with appointments for the first week of Jan. for quilts. (2010 is Gecko Quilts 5 yr anniversary so started a new special to celebrate). 


I don't know what 2010 will bring but Jan. 1 always brings hope, and right now hope is pretty good :0)