March Madness Final Four

It's down to the final four at www.fatquarterly.com. Who will make the final two and then take the champion postion.

Check out the results and cast your vote today.

http://www.fatquarterly.com/modern-madness-the-final-four-2.html

I can't wait to see the results!

When I Grow Up, I want to be a Blanket!

Another knitting class and another project. These balls of yarn will someday be combined into a lap blanket. For now, they are a bunch of little squares that are waiting for me to get it together and put them into a small lap blanket. I've been knitting and knitting some simple plain red squares with the crinkly red yarn and have just started knitting some various stitch patterns into the lambswool angora yarn. If all goes as planned, I'll knit the various stitches into squares then eventually sew them all together. Meanwhile, I'm having a great time with the ladies at knitting class. We laugh and talk together while working on our various projects. Our teacher, the amazing Carole Dulitz, is always teaching us something new while we develop our skills with lots of fun projects. I can't say enough good things about the teacher and/or the class. Hopefully, I'll have more to post as this blanket progresses. Next time I'll show a few of the other small projects I have in the works. Wish me luck!

Inge Look Postcard and Postcrossing

So I'm back at Postcrossing and am so very delighted with this adorable postcard from Finland. It's by a very talented artist by the name of Inge Look. Her depictions of these two charming little old ladies is absolutely wonderful. They bring a smile of delight to my face and laughter to my heart. Such simple, sweet expressions of life. What a treasure! If you are at all interested in exchanging postcards with people around the world, please check out www.postcrossing.com. It's certainly been a fun adventure for me.

Catholic Scouting Rosary Patches

Something I wanted to do for a very long time now is to help my children earn the rosary patches offered by the National Catholic Committee on Scouting. However, I had never seen one in person, only online. I didn't even really know where to begin. Although I wish I could say we said our daily rosary still, I can't. We used to be diligent and say it every night as a family then we would go through times of crazy busyness and it wouldn't get done. I wish we still did. Most of the time it's just me saying the rosary as I'm driving or perhaps as I'm about to fall asleep in my bed at night. My husband once asked, before he became Catholic, why we just said those "chants" all the time. Why didn't we just say prayers? Well, the rosary is prayer. Not to say that you cannot pray anytime, anywhere or anyway you want to. However, when you're crazy busy, life is overwhelming, you're exhausted or completely stressed out, the routine, the habit, the repetitiveness of the rosary prayers is amazingly comforting, it builds the habit of prayer and soothes the restless soul. I love the rosary and am delighted that these beautiful patches are available.
Unfortunately, my camera (or perhaps it's the photographer) is a bit challenged when taking close up shots of the individual patches. They are larger and more lovely than I thought. Each one measures about 5" in diameter. There is plenty of gold thread throughout to emphasize different features. I really think they are beautiful. To earn these patches, you have to answer a few simple questions about the various aspects of the life of Christ corresponding to the mysteries of the rosary. There are various levels, for example, the first grader is not going to answer the same questions as the high school student. However, I like to think my first grader could answer most if not all the high school questions. After you complete the questions, you place an order at http://nccs-bsa.org/activities/index.php . It's not difficult, the patches are beautiful, and you can take another step in your faith. Or if you are in the neighborhood, Fr. Gregory Beaumont of Holy Family Church in Hanford is offering a few more presentations on the rosary. I was fortunate to attend one of his presentations, watched a beautiful slide show of the various Joyful Mysteries, met some very nice people, shared a meal together and enjoyed myself immensely. The Luminous Mysteries will be presented on Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 and the Glorious Mysteries on Sunday, May 6th, 2012 at Holy Family Church in Hanford. Hopefully, I can arrange to attend another presentation. Maybe I'll see someone I know there!

Jim Shore Santa's Workshop

I saw this beautiful quilt online a few months back and absolutely fell in love with it. It is from the very talented Chasing Cottons blogspot. I not sure how to link to the blog about it but it is so fabulous. It has taken me quite a while to track down the fabrics and guessimate what was used to make this beautiful quilt. However, much to my pleasure, I have now collected the fabrics from several sources-most notably Auntie Chris' Fabrics and Over the Rainbow fabrics. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with these people in finding these lovely fabrics and I couldn't be happier. Can't wait until my pile of fabric looks like the last photo from Chasing Cottons. Wonder if I'll ever be that amazing with my quilting skills? Hopefully I can do this be Christmas this year. Wish me luck!

Happy 18th Anniversary

Eighteen years later and we haven't aged a bit. HA! Time does take it's toll on a person. That and six children. However, I have to say, it's been a lot of good years. Not always fun and easy but good years still the same. Lots of great memories, six great children, three houses, one apartment, lots of jobs, homeschooling, and a multitude of other things. Happy Anniversary to us. I love you Gary Miller.

Happy 50th Birthday, Gary

Happy 50th, Gary. Gary turned 50 years old today so we celebrated with just the kids and plenty of cake and ice cream. He didn't want a big celebration and since it has turned out to be a wet, rainy day, perhaps that was best. He did get some fun golf equipment to add to his collection and I just know his golf scores will improve now. Happy Birthday, Gary! I love you very much.