gma snooky's wanderings

Watering the Fish

2009-03-09T10:36:00.002-06:00

Hard to believe that on Friday last week my dear grand daughter was 'watering the fish', we were running around in light jackets and Saturday morning we woke up to it snowing. Welcome to spring time in Colorado. LOL

We have had some really lovely days in the 50s and gotten out and started the clean up of the flower beds for spring. Trimmed our grapes on two separate days, and am loving finding all the little spring bulbs poking their heads up. My lilac is starting to bud and the globe willows are turning into lime snow cones that announce spring is coming.

After pruning the grapes I have all these wonderful lonnnnng vines ready to compost and decided I could make some wreaths. Did I know how? NO! Did that stop me? NO! Got on line and got some information, went out and made a couple wreaths. They didn't come out perfectly round, or perfectly tucked, but they are fine and I had fun proving to myself that I could do it.

Pictures later.

Working away on my LOM class and have sorted tons of pictures, gotten a lot in albums and had fun renewing old memories. I am loving that my pictures are getting more useful to scrap and I have tons of ideas to scrap. Life is Good!

January is gone

2009-01-31T07:18:00.002-07:00

Darn if the rest of the year goes as fast as January has, we are in Big trouble!

Rummaging around, reorganizing fabrics, desk in my office and various other places I found the year long los we did on SG and there on the top of the pile was January lo made my the wonderful and talented Martha waiting for pictures. What a deal! Preparing for LOM class and a LWC on BPS I have been working with a LOT of pictures, why not use those ideas to make a Jan 09 LO. What a concept. LOL That is on my list of things to do today.

On another note, do you ever get involved in projects that you had no intention of doing or even thought of? I do that a lot (Damn Gemini twin anyway). A few weeks ago I wandered into our local fabric shop and my friend that works there insisted that I look at all the Wonderful purses that the crew there had been making. According to her making purses is the latest and greatest thing to sew. This lady is a talented seamstress and a ton of fun, so yep I walked out of there with a pattern, interfacing's (all special kinds) and a magnetic fastener. I insisted if I was going to try this silliness I would use scraps out of my stash. Well as you can see from the picture, 4 purses (gave one to my daughter for her BD) later I have tried several patterns. LOL

I haven't done this type of sewing for years as quilting has taken up most of my sewing time, but these have been fun and they might make neat gifts.

Back to sorting and organizing pictures and doing some los with all the pictures I have ideas for.

Everyone has to eat!

2009-01-12T05:14:00.002-07:00

I can't seem to find time or inspiration to keep up with this blog thing! Too many other fun things to do.
This little guest to our back yard came by to see if he/she could catch a quick snack, and yes she did! We spent almost an hour watching her hunt and finally capture her prey. She brought it to the edge of our ponds little creek back to feast. She is a Cooper's Hawk and really beautiful. Dear husband took several ( like a LOT) of pictures and we enjoyed learning the many neat things my new camera is capable of. This was taken outside our living room window.
Hard to believe we are 12 days into a new year! I have spend time cleaning out, throwing or giving away, cleaning and rediscovering wonderful things in my various stashes. Very cleansing and satisfying over all.
I am not one to set New Years Resolutions, but have set some goals. Get more physically active, take time to be creative, have fun doing it all.
One of my dear friends who works at a local fabric store talked me into making a purse. Now I don't do much of what most would call sewing, but I bought a pattern, the interfacing, etc., brought it all home, dug out some scraps and wala!!! 4 hours later I had a purse! Had so much fun I bought another pattern on a trip with my sister to her local quilt shop and made another one! Having fun and will take pictures soon. I figure my trip to get a spool of thread has cost me several dollars and if I had needed a new purse I could have probably bought one for a lot less!

I am taking two classes from BPS this year - A Life Well Crafted and Library of Memories. Both are pretty intense, but I know I will be more inspired to scrapbook if my pictures are easier to find and Kollette Hall is one of my favorite instructors, so both will be fun.

A mile stone in our family. My Mom turns 83 this year. She is the sole surviving one of our parents and we treasure every day we have her. She is in relatively good health and still able to live on her own, so we are truly blessed.

Another quilt done

2008-12-04T07:15:00.002-07:00

Just a pic of another of my own quilts that I have completed. Not a great picture, but it is done so it is my current favorite.
Thanksgiving came even though I am stuck some where back in July or August 2008. What happened to this year??? Time seems to fly by with or without us. LOL
Our Thanksgiving was busy. We had some 28 or so for dinner and the weekend was rather confusing with people coming in and leaving. Work schedules caused some of the kids to leave on Friday, others to arrive on Friday and everyone headed out Sunday. Our son and law and grandkids and our nephew and his family all got caught in the winter storm that hit the Rockies. Both families ended up spending a great lot of Hours sitting waiting for roads to reopen. Thankfully they all got home safe and sound!
A good time was had by all and everyone pitched in so there was no overload for anyone of us 'older folk'. We were all tired, but figure we will all be ready for Thanksgiving in Colo next year.
Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful and now we can all look forward to a busy Christmas season.

Is it really winter!

2008-11-22T06:13:00.002-07:00

The weather has been really mild for it being nearly Thanksgiving! Hopefully it will continue until after the holiday as many of those coming for the feast will be traveling long distances. Always nice if they aren't fighting the weather.

Took a picture of my inspiration area to show the neat idea I got from my friend Becky using a curtain rod to hold some of my punches. Cleaned out a drawer with this neat idea and most of the punches I use all the time are right over my work area! What a concept!

My friend Bonna and I just completed a project she got us into (LOL) this fall. A lady had many, many t-shirts that she wanted made into quilts. We did 8 of those little wonders, she pieced tops and I quilted. We are both a bit tired of 57 Chevy theme about now. But they are done and our client loved them, so job well done.

I finished the Giving Well class from BPS and have made several of the projects. Great class and now have a folder full of neat ideas for when I want to put together a neat gift for someone.

Off to do my least favorite thing, grocery shopping, and then see what the rest of the day brings.

Have a great day everyone.

Thoughts from the zoo

2008-10-22T07:14:00.003-06:00

Got this picture of our neighbor's beautiful Great Dane puppy, Fergie. You gotta love that face. They also have a black Lab, Bodie that is the same age as Sarge. We have 'doggie play dates' real often as the three get along so well. Fergie loves to come over and will often stand at the gate and wolf to come in. Welcome to my zoo!

Fall is hitting for real these days. Tomatoes got frosted about 10 days ago as did some of the more sensitive flowers. We cleaned up the tomatoes over the weekend and I work on the flowers as time permits. Some of the flowers really love the cooler weather, and put on quite a show. Snapdragons are one of them. They are beautiful right now.
I have been quilting a lot the last week or so. My dear friend took on a project for a lady that involves making lap quilts out of some 100 or so tee shirts. Bonna is so good at cutting the shirts up and making the blocks all fit together into beautiful quilts. My job is to quilt the little darlings. They are fun and not the usual quilting, so is a nice change.
I am trying to keep up the momentum of the BPS Have More fun class and work scrapbooking into my 'schedule' regularly. It really isn't that hard to do since I don't make such a big deal out of the process. Have a great day!

2008-10-07T05:10:00.002-06:00

I imagine we are all wondering where the summer went! Where ever it went it went in a rush. I have ignored my blog in favor of working on BPS class Have More Fun, and keeping up with the yard and my darling Sienna. I had forgotten how busy a 2 (almost 3) year old can be, potty training and how big this place is.

We spent most of September digging and dividing the Iris around the yard and redoing 6 flower beds. I know in the spring it will all be worth it, but my back and right hip reminded me that we don't use a digging fork as part of a regular routine. After cleaning, trying to keep colors separated, sharing and replanting the Iris I have, I wondered why we bought 22 new colors. LOL

The BPS classes have been fun and certainly given me a new outlook on scrapping. Stacy Julian is a wonderful teacher so will likely take her LOM class in the spring.

Don bought me a new camera and I love it. Still figuring out how to use it but am loving it.

We inherited a new family member this summer. DD had gotten Miss Murray the Murdoc Bunny for Sienna, but her 4 dogs wanting to lick the bunny made it a little scary to have her in their yard. Hence Murray lives with Gpa and Gma now and she is adjusting well as are we. Sarge and her have taken to rubbing noses through the bottom of her cage, but she doesn't trust him when she is out. Go figure.

To those who tagged me earlier this summer my apologies for dropping the ball. I figured out that if I spend less time on the computer I have a bit more time to create.

Hope everyone takes time to enjoy this beautiful time of the year.

Summer

2008-08-12T13:46:00.003-06:00

Summer hit with full force with wilting temps and me behind in all my yard work. I picked up the iris we ordered in May for the iris farm. What a beautiful job they did preparing them for planting. Course while I was out picking up the iris, the day lilies were bloomed out and 4 new of those lovlies came home with me too! LOL I am such a sucker for new flowers.
A picture of my outside kitty Miss Feathers. She came to us after someone moved off and left her, she was but a kitkat and has been here about 3 years now. Such a beautiful and sweet friend and my best helper in the yard. She took the opportunity to nap on a rose that Sienna left in the chair and I thought it was so sweet.
I have stayed busy with BPS on line classes this summer. As I don't do well outside when the day gets to warm, I choose to play inside. I finished completely The Art of Becoming More and did most of the projects in 28 days. Fun classes both. I am now working on Stacy Julian's Have More Fun class. Have not done all the projects to date, but the ones I knew I would enjoy doing. We are working on Photo Album Scrapbooking this month and I am liking this part a lot.
I also bought her book Photo Freedom in hopes of getting my boxes of pics organized and usable. I am such an optimist!

New Great Granddaughter

2008-07-17T04:53:00.002-06:00

Finally a usable picture of my new great granddaughter Emery Sydney Rose. She is a little doll. My son is pretty excited about being a gpa after lamenting that he wanted to wait to be one until he was 40. LOL Darn kids just didn't cooperate. Made a LO using this picture, but haven't gotten it photographed for posting yet. Also have some not so good pics of Joey and Miss Emery that I am working on a lo with. Time seems to fly by without me getting to what I want to do. Whine, whine whine.

The summer has really hit sw Colorado and keeping things watered is a full time job. The weeds, seem to be doing better than most anything at this point. I would love to find a way to market vine weed, as I could be financially very well off. On that note off to turn on the water and make a plan for the day.

SU collection

2008-06-26T05:47:00.003-06:00

Remembered that I had promised Geri I would take a picture of my SU stamp collection. Well here it is, at least in part. My daughter also has a collection and we pass stamps back and forth all the time. I recently 'purged' my stamps and gave them to a friend who likes to make cards but hasn't yet gotten a collection going. Poor dear has no idea what she is getting into. LOL I am so excited! I finished my BPS class The Art of Becoming More, on time, bound with my Bind It All and even did most of the extra projects! WhooHoo! I also ordered the pics for the 28 Days class I did at BPS and have those projects most all done. I found that the altered things went much faster for me than the layouts, but have all but 3 of those done so once the pics are in the little album I will have finished that one too! I liked both classes and creating something or working on something every day really helped me get off my duff and do something. All in all I've been busy!

Summer is finally here

2008-06-18T05:15:00.003-06:00

Summer seems to finally have arrived in SW Colorado. We are seeing temps in the 90s now. And to think we gripped about how cool it has been! We finally (crossing fingers here) seem to be done with the blue herons for this year, so we took the netting off of the pond. Miss Sienna took advantage of the situation and hitched a ride on the garden cart Gpa was using to move the stuff out of the pond that was holding up the net. She is such a ham!

I have spent every spare minute working on the classes from BPS. I have about 4 more projects/los for the 28 days class and am caught up on the Art of Becoming More until Thursday's LO comes along. Only one more week for this one. It has been an interesting journey.

may Flowers

2008-06-07T15:03:00.003-06:00

Pics of evening primrose going up the side of the pond. Really beautiful right now. The flowers in general have been beautiful this year, probably the cooler, wetter weather. My Iris have really outdone themselves. Good thing I like the things as we took a trip to the local iris farm late last month and come August I will have 20 new iris to poke in around this farm. LOL

I have stayed really busy the last month or so doing two classes with BPS. The 28 days class was a picture and a project every day. I am a bit behind on the projects, but Gretchen said not to panic, just put them to the end of day 28 and carry on. I find that the LOs were a bit harder for me than the projects, so have mostly those to do. The Art of Becoming More has been a wonderful class and I have stayed pretty much up on that on. All LO's and pages are done 6 X9 so that has been a bit of a change, and I decide that I would put the album together with my Bind it All, since I have learned to use the thing.

Have to take pictures of the stuff I have been slaving away on and post.

2008-05-14T13:48:00.002-06:00

First off I wanted to share the beautiful clipboard frame I received from my SG PMUSS swap. Kylie was my ss and this just blew me away. As soon as I opened it I knew just what picture wanted to live there. This is a picture of my Mom and Day on their wedding day. Looking at this it is hard to imagine that had my dad lived they would have celebrated their 62 anniversary in March! Such a beautiful couple.

I have been working furiously to keep up with two (what the H*** was I thinking) BPS classes. I signed up for the Art of Becoming More and the 28 Days classes. I didn't look closely at the dates. DUH! Oh well the idea of 28 days is to get you in the habit of being creative every day, and the projects have been simple and the photos you are to take every day has been good too, gets me used to keeping my camera handy. The Becoming More class is fun with a lot of looking into yourself and seeing who you are. As I feel I have kind of lost myself in the last few years this has been challenging, but fun. Good news is, I am caught up on both classes ---- until tomorrow! The bad news is I am falling behind on everything else. LOL! I have decided to take the summer off from quilting for others. I have a quilt of my own on right now that is going pretty slow. I will quilt for a couple of my very productive and loyal gals, but with time spent chasing Sienna and running with Mother's things I am back in that 'sandwich generation' thing and I am tired.

All that said the weather has stabilized and Sienna and I can get outside and do her favorite things, play in the sandbox and find worms and rolly-polly bugs where Gma is digging the grass out and preparing beds for planting. Life is good!

Lilacs for Geri

2008-05-03T06:41:00.002-06:00

I have been waiting for my lilacs to bloom out for a picture for my SG pal Geri. The weather has not been very cooperative and they have been slow to burst forth. These are right outside our bedroom window and the fragrance is heavenly!

We are in our annual contest with the Great Blue Herons. They seem to think that those lovely gold fish in our pond are put there for them to dine on until the Colorado River clears up from spring run offs to fish closer to home. We have had one particularly persistant bird that managed to grab one of my 2 pound ladies out of the pond the other evening. Okay that does it! Don went and got a net designed to put over fruit trees and we netted the pond. Looks a bit odd with large white blocks of stryofoam with pvc pipe stuck out of it to keep the net off the surface so the fish don't get caught up in it, but if it saves my lovlies, what the hey. These birds are beautiful and very large. If they weren't fishing they could hang out here all they wanted to. However they are really starting to tick me off! We are trying to get a good picture of them so that I can make a scrapbook page about them. They are a bit camera shy!

My little Princess

2008-04-16T05:12:00.002-06:00

So windy today that Sienna and I decided to be crafty. I have been gathering 'stuff' in my travels that she might enjoy making. The craft foam crown and stickers turned out to be just the thing to entertain us both. Sarge snuck into the picture too as what ever Sienna is doing he wants to be a part of. Did I mention that I have two toddlers here? One just weighs 105 pounds and has four legs!

We are experiencing Spring Time in the Rockies for real this year. It was 75 degrees and windy as heck yesterday and they are calling for 47 and possible rain with snow in the high country for today. I am ready for a string of good days in a row, to play outside and in the greenhouse. I worry that my lilacs will freeze and we won't get the lovely blossoms and sweet smell that is such a part of spring.

In the mean time I have plenty to keep me busy inside and what I can't figure out, my Little Princess will!

Bind it all Album

2008-04-04T06:06:00.007-06:00

At the request of one of my SG sisters I am adding some pics of little 6X6 mini album I made in a class at my friends lss. The neatest part for me was using the Bind It All tool that I bought several months ago that was out of the box once. How fun is this little gadget! Not near as difficult as I thought it would be and we all had a grate time using it. Of course the fact that the pp is Basic Grey didn't hurt either! So Joyce, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Spring is here?

2008-03-29T07:16:00.002-06:00

These two lovlies have burst forth to reassure me that spring is mostly here in Western Colorado. It seems to be rather late arriving this year. That's okay as I am late getting out to clean up the ravanges of winter in the flower beds. We have had some lovely spring days that have allowed Sienna and I to get a lot of our spring cleaning done and we have had a great time doing it. Seeing spring through the eyes of a 27 month old chatterbox has been so much fun. Actually seeing the world as a whole through her beautiful blue eyes is a wonderful experience. I am seeing things that I have forgotten are wonderful!

I took a class this week making a 6 X 6 mini album that featured the use of the Bindit All. I bought this handy little gadget last fall and took it out of the box, punched some holes and told myself that I would tackle learning to use it later. Why did I wait so long. It is really pretty easy and a lot of fun. I can mark one off my list of gadgets that I own but never use. Great time was had by all and I can see so many neat things that this little wonder can be useful for. Life is good!

Finding Joy

2008-03-11T05:51:00.002-06:00

It has been a very hectic few weeks. My mom has had some health issues that put her in the hospital for tests. Good news is that they found a meningioma that has been causing many of the odd things that we have all noticed over the last several years. She is on anti-seizure meds now and seems, at last that they have found the correct dosage for her. We took her home on Saturday and she is doing great. One side affect of this whole thing is that she will no longer be able to drive. At 82 and being able to go and do what and when she wanted to, this will be a huge adjustment. My job is to help her make this transition as easy as possible. I am so grateful that she had an 'event' in the doctors office and we could finally figure out what is going on.

The pictue is of my darlings making brownies for Valentine's Day. Those two are so darn cute both individually and together! With my word for this year being Joy, these two make it easy to find joy in really simple things!

2008-02-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is close up and personal! DH thought it would be a good idea to get close up and part of the quilt that I worked on all 2007. I was really only looking for a picture for Ryann's You challenge..

Completed all the SG swaps I was in and am happily waiting for the March kit to come. I am so excited to have SG continue on in any format, as I look forward to new techniques and ideas every month. Now I need to go back and dig out some of the old kits and use them up and try the techniques. On my list of goals for 2008.

Decided on my 'word' per Ali Edwards Blog. I am using Joy. Kept coming back to that word so that is the one. My mother also told me the other day that my middle name was almost Joy. How considental is that! So I am not lacking for projects, just need some time and energy

Progress

2008-01-24T04:50:00.000-07:00

I have finished all current SG swaps and will mail the last one out today! YEAH! Love doing these swaps and seeing what everyone does is so much fun. Such a talented group of ladies! I have to admit this last one, creating a mini album for someone I only know through the SG forum was really intimidating, and not really my style per say, but was fun and will hope that she enjoys the results.

Time to get back to quilting. Have a couple quilts waiting and one of my ladies called yesterday to see how backed up I am. LOL Thank goodness for patient friends and customers.

What am I doing here

2007-12-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

If the third time is a charm, this should be a charmed posting. I have established a blog to keep in touch with dear ladies on SG site that I could not bear not to hear from. Aside from that purpose I am not sure what will appear here. I don't discuss politics or religion, mine or anyone Else's. While I certainly have opinions in both areas I find that these things are best left alone.
At this point until I am sure this is going to work, I think I will save my energy for the next post. LOL