Precious babies

They get me through the tough times and the happy times with a steady tale thumping and puppy kisses.

I read somewhere

that in 2012, one of the quilting trends is going to be scrappy quilts! Who knew I was a trend setter?

Here is my scrap bin quilt (all the squares came from scrap pieces I sorted, ironed, cut and sewed up). The row closest to you is sewn - hence it's short stature.



Here is my scrap bin quilt being wrecked by a rabid wire-haired dachshund.  Good thing she is so dang cute.

What I learned this weekend

That dogs are part monkey. They can actually climb trees. They must also be part cat because they can kill birds too.



Who knew they could be so agile? Between the squirrel she had cornered or all the avocados I bet within a week she'll be up a level trying to get higher.

We're now worried about her falling so we need to figure that out.

Chicken Lovin' Hot Mama's Apron Swap

Well, today I got my apron from Kathy. It is so nice. My entire swap box was just so incredibly well put together. Kathy sent me wonderful vintage buttons and a cross stitch doilly- I just adore them. She included some beautiful tatted ribbon and log cabin chicken pin cushion! Oh my goodness that chicken has stolen my heart!


Wait it's gonna get better - she made me a chicken MUG RUG! with a beautiful chicken mug!



I'm holding back here a little because you see Kathy understands what it is like to own Dachshunds! She and her husband have had doxies and me and my husband have doxies! I don't have children so my two puppies are my kiddos. Given all that, Kathy sent me this beautiful dachshund pin and some wonderful dachshund earrings!
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I know you're all jealous now right! Or your wanting to know about the apron. I always like to save the best for last, so here is the great apron Kathy made me! I love the big pockets with the gingham trim. It reverses too, so I get two looks out of one apron - the reverse side is some great egg fabric! It just cracks me up!





Thank you so very much Kathy. You made this swap extra special for me and I really appreciate you kindness and talent.

FAS 12

Originally uploaded by amysgreatadventure

This week at work has been mentally challenging. Decisions made by upper management weren't and still don't make since. Deadlines for customer requests, politics, technological challenges have been jus a part of the chaos.

So when I got home yesterday it was after an especially roller coastery day at work, and I found the FAS apron swap box on my door step. I instantly cheered up.

When I opened it I was so happy to see this perfect apron covered in dachshunds. It was just perfect! The polka dots are adorable. The tuckins included a great copper star hanger, a thanksgiving cookbook, and canvas magnetic picture hanger - all very cool.

After oooooing and ahhhhing, I had to head to this month's Junior League general meeting. There was a guest speaker from Susan B. Komen for breast cancer awareness. I actually, made it through without tearing up. It's a hard subject for me to "re-live" as my mom passed away over 10 years ago from breast cancer. As much as I love this time of year, it's a hard month with all the pink everywhere.

I miss my mommy so much. I know I'm a grown up with my own family, but not being able to call her and feel her hands is the worst.

Ironically, my sister was hosting an event called Bras for the Cause last night in Texas with all her real estate people. They had some of the Dallas Cowboys there and pink fire trucks. It's a great event and I'm so happy my sister is doing so much to fund research. I am very luck she is my big sister.

Sweat Shop

Originally uploaded by amysgreatadventure

So I am trying to use up this quilt panel I bought a while back. I want to make a quilt with cutting the blocks out and then into some other sequence. I've been playing around with a Bella Red jelly roll and some yardage of red with white polka dots. I still haven't figured out my layout.

However, here in Amy's sweat shop I have some helpers. As you can see they think the polk dots are the way to go. Anything I'm working on becomes they're play ground/nap area/I'm just going to star at mom spot.

I love them little weiners but am never surprised when I find a hedge hog squeeky toy in my scrap bundle where they buried it.

Saturday's Sewing

Originally uploaded by amysgreatadventure

I tried making a quilt on Saturday. It came outgreat except I sucked it on the binding. So I'm going to cheat. I'm going to rebind it over the bad binding. I got some red fabric yesterday to cut into binding to go over the narrow red binding and do it the right way this time.

I took a quilting class last year and never made another quilt (or finished the class quilt either). I am so bad.



I have this little square, that I kept from the class, showing the steps of binding. I dug it out of a drawer and did some trial runs on some pot holders. I am now confident I can get it done right - the second time.





I then decided to finally sew up this Moda Halloween Jelly roll. I attempting to do free motion quilting on it. Free motion quilting harder than I thought, but all the blogs say free motion takes practice and this quilt will be my practice. I will bind it in this cute brown with orange polka dot fabric.

I'm learning to quilt by practicing - trying to get all the kinks worked out before I assemble the dryer sheet quilt so I don't ruin all that hard work.

Panic at the Disco - I mean Vet

I almost had a nervous break down today. My baby, Dott the Wonder Dachshund had a biopsy at the vet. She has 2 tumors that have "sprung" up rather quickly. Our vet is great, but she really freaked me out when she checked out Dott. All worried, and didn't say much just kind of broodish and highly concerned. I had to wait for the biopsy. I had tears of worry. This is my baby, she's my best friend (or one of). She sleeps against my hip each night. She's in my lap when I'm stitching away. Her head rest on my feet when I'm at the sewing machine.

She is very important to me. Some people may find this silly, but she gives me such joy and happiness with her little kisses and tail wags.

So for now one of the tumors is a wait and see if it goes away on it's own. If it doesn't then she'll have both removed and hopefully put this all behind us.

Gorilla Gardening

The routine has become that the house cleaning is done on Saturdays and on Sunday's a I attend the holy house of dirt worms and the almighty flower. My husband allowed me to go to the local gigantic home improvement store alone and in his truck. A combination that should be avoided at all costs.

When I returned home, he looked in the bed of the truck and shook his head saying "you just had to go an over-do-it". I explained that he was at a fault for setting up the this paradigm that gave me the freedom to select large flats of annuals at one time.

The flower bed outside our bedroom door was a bit of "hodge-podge", so I decided to redo it in a style similar to the adjoining flower bed. A handful of Gerber daisy, some double inpatients and miniature cup flowers created this easy wild flower look that mimic the other bed.

Now the front of the house received two full flats of marigolds and flame flowers. My idea is to start to integrate the fall colors in so that come October all I'll need to do is drop in some gold and red mums where the current petunias are slowly fading out at to tie it all together. Throw some pumpkins on the steps and a wreath on the door and I'll be ready for those houndling trick or treaters.

I was excited to see lady bugs in the garden yesterday, this means I am attracting the right kind of bugs to the yard. The worms seem happy in their compost bin and they are enjoying the constant supply of fruit and vegetable scraps from the kitchen.

Parking Garge Angst

For the last year my parking place has a stalker. I am a bit of creature of habit and I do appreciate a car with out dings or scratches. I park in the lowest part of the parking garage and had for the longest time the same spot.

I did ate least until the Red Honda with Texas plates showed up. He would get here before me and take my spot. This irked me. Some days we would arrive at the same time and I would take the spot. This dance went on for months. Then the wacko kiddos as the online video company next door started skateboarding in the parking garage. I then moved my spot further out. End spot third row from the wall. Our dear property management went and re-striped my spot out from under me. Another sad day. So I moved to the far back wall where NO ONE EVER PARKED.

Then I moved further away and now I get here a little later than before and MR. Red Honda took that spot too. Flipped me out.

So today I went to lunch with a couple co-workers. One of who also is a "away from everyone" else parker and has seen this saga going on with me and Mr Red Honda. We walk to his car and I notice that Mr. Red Honda has gone to lunch. I instantly moved my car into his spot.

If that Aholeyol keys my car, we are going to throw down.

I did nothing to him, other than want to park far away from him AND EVERYONE else. I did not single him out as he did my friggin parking spot.

Loco Moco Choca Laca

I am finally downloading the pictures from all my trips this year. My poor camera had 200+ photos on the disk. It's taken forever to get everything in the same place after moving.

It seems strange to see the pictures and think this was just from this year, and only so far this year. There are still a few more trips to do. We are planning two vacations between now and the end of year - one to Yellowstone and one to Vancouver. Both will be full of fun and finally some relaxation.

Tonight at dinner we talked about how people do not travel. That some guys that work with my husband have never left the area and they are in their 20 and 30s. To me this is just weird. How can you live in one place all your life and never want to see the rest of the world. There is so much to see, smell, taste and experience. This just boggles my mind that they have no desire for anything different.

For me the world has so much I haven't seen yet that if I am home too long I get out of sorts.

If I can figure out how to post the pictures here on the blog I will - Puerto Rico, Brazil, Seattle, Oregon, and of course the new house.

Worms Scraps Food and the mighty dollar

I am a bit of wanna be gardener. I mean, I spend time playing in the dirt trying to make things grow. Flowers are my preference, but I enjoy consumption item too. Our new house has allowed me to expand from being a "container" gardener to a more of "landscape" gardener. The catalogs of all the odd and unusual plants; will in fact, be my down fall.

I spent 20 minutes this morning watering before I left for work - that was only for what is around the patio. The upkeep will be time consuming. But the payoff of seeing things bloom is priceless.

With all that I want to become in regards to my Armadillo tendencies of burrowing into the zone of dirt and potting soil, I was researching where in our area that we can drop off old paint and found out that our city subsidizes a program to residents to buy compost bins at a very nice discount. I went with the deluxe model. It will arrive in the next two weeks. I hate to pay for compost when I know we throw away the ideal mix of odds and ends that could be decomposed down into some sort of glorious soil elixir.

I strive for glorious blooms at every niche and cranny.

I wait in anticipation for the yellow lilac tree to arrive from the mail order catalog.

A Stanley Thermos full of hot new england dinner

My life is taking all these twists and turns lately. From happily exploring the world through glasses fogged by jet lag in business class business trips to birthing a new house for us to live in.

The craziness continues as I read through other blogs - blogs with a certain culinary flair and wonder if I can tap into my inner betty crocker to to add in my own flair of recipe undertaking.

My lunch today was prepared by my husband. He made New England boiled dinner last night. To me it is kielbasa soup. To him it is comfort. A throw back from being at home. It was combined with corn bread sticks - back in the the little corn molds even. It has fresh corn stripped from a cob left over and new potatos. It's hearty and fills the soul with far off winter feelings and chills.

Pre-Fourth Office Dog

So we got over the whole home buyers remorse - took a knock down drag out but we cleared the air. Today was a new day so to speak. A truce was set to have us both were our "be nice to" hats. I think perhaps we have burned ourselves out on the new home owner ship thing and begun to take out our frustrations on each other. Several people have advised that this is normal. However, my husband is OCD and and I mean every capital letter of that. Our pantry has all the can goods alphabetized and labels forward. It is a bit like sleeping with the enemy but he has good points too - like bringing me coffee in bed every morning.

Today was Dott the four legged wonders first day to work with me since we moved to the new house. She enjoys all the attention she gets from the guys. The world was right for her = the ball was thrown constantly.

Our fourth of July will hopefully be relaxing and finding some sunshine and finish putting the bulbs in the ground.

While the idea of blogging for me is not new, it is hard to see how best to make it a readable space.

I will get wittier I'm sure. Perhaps I will do some flash backs to the past while removing the names of the parties involved. It could become an erotic mess of submissive panderings from a middle aged sex addict but then again it could only be more dog stories...

Home Ownership

After spending 5 years living a cramped apartment we finally bought a house. Yes, in this crazy southern California market, we bought a house. It's a buyers market for sure. He picked this house, I was ok with it. I'm happy with it but I did like one or two of the others we looked at much better. They required less work and had a look and location I liked. He however, liked the one we ended up buying. That is until today. He works hard and long hours. But for the last two days he's been home - alone. I received a text message from him saying "i'm very depressed and unhappy right now" . This cause great concern for me. This is not something I get from him unless I"ve done something wrong. So I call him and he says he's just depressed and sad about the house. That it's not perfect and that he can't turn the TV on and every where he looks he sees things that need to be fixed or changed or something. I can only say that I"m sorry I don't make it better for him only worse. I had hoped with the house that he would be happy or at lease happier with me. But it seems it is not better but worse. I am not equipped to for this. I do not understand this. The house is nice, it's clean and good shape, in a nice neighborhood. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT.