Finish it Up Friday

I finished a whole handful of skirts!
These two were made solely for the purpose of having a reason to wear these shoes.


On the left is Flora in the Alchemy line by Amy Butler. On the right is Stella 203 by Dear Stella.
The right skirt is inspired by this Pleated Chevron Skirt tutorial by Crafty Cupboard. I say inspired because I follow tutorials and patterns the way I cook from a recipe. Barely. By the time I'm done I've fudged so much it can hardly be from a pattern.  The left skirt is loosely based on a bunch of shirred skirt tutorials from Pinterest. Then I slid some elastic between the top two rows of shirring to make it sturdier. All have pockets inspired by the Chevron Skirt.

This next one is because I LOVE this fabric! Okay really I love all the fabric but these colors are me to the Nth degree.


I made the skirt and the bag which was supposed to be just a simple little project bag....that got a zipper, decorative stitching on the straps etc. Pat W's picture has better lighting.


I have a small square of this fabric left and I'm saving hoarding it for something special!
The binding on this crib size quilt is finally finished! Mary started it a while back, passed the blocks to me recently, I assembled and quilted this project and Val and I both worked on the binding this weekend so she could practice!


It's a group project! It will go to Kansas or Fresno MCC world relief auction.
Another WIP that has been going on for some time has been our lawn. It finally feels like a finished project as I picked up our cute lawn mower today! I kind of want to call her Poppie because of her bright orange coloring! She looks like a beetle all collapsed to go in my car.


Luke came home to change shoes just in time to help me unload her and got to take her for her first run around the lawn.


He did the edges and then I took care of the middle when he went back I work. She drives like a dream!


Maybe someday our lawn will be strong enough to apply weed killer! Yay Kansas weeds!
Dad, Cheri and Cindy are coming out this way so I picked up some grown up soda from the liquor store. (No you can't just buy it in the grocery store here.) I found these fabulous ideas. Has anyone had them before? Am I the las person on this planet to discover them?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it Up Friday!

WiP Wednesday-Skirts Season

The weather is heating up which means its skirt season! Though with all this Kansas wind, I've discovered a need for less full skirts so that I don't "get lipstick on my hem!" as my friend Pat says.
Speaking of hems...


I got creative on my hems! I learned a new skill of shirring.


It wasn't as elastic as I had hoped it would be so I stuck a ribbon in for a casing for wider elastic.


Unfortunately that made it too tight. Off it came. I worked out another way to add some 1/4 inch elastic.


Here's the last skirt in progress!


Non material WiP's include recovering from this poor sunscreen application,


and project garden.


I'm linking up with Lee from Freshly Pieced for WiP Wednesday!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wife's First Golf, Full of Hot Air, Underneath My Car, Growing Up

I golfed my first round of golf on Tuesday!! Sure it was a scramble (you pick the best ball from each shot and play from it) and sure the only two clubs I used were my wedge and putter, but man it was fun!


Many thanks to Wendy, Kathy and Sarah for not only putting up with me, but for helping me have a blast! I see many more "Ladies Night" golfing events in my future!


Wednesday afternoon was my last day of long term subbing for the school year and it ended on a high note with our very last class of hot air balloon flying! It was a pretty fun event! Teachers and students learn so much from practical experience!


Speaking of practical experience, I love how my new car place here lets me watch them work, they explain this while they're doing them and then have answers for all my questions. It's just nice to see what's going on, reminds me that my undercarriage is not indestructible and helps me learn more about science and the way things work which I hope will help me become a better teacher!
On a final note, I'm trying to develop a way for my cucumbers to not take up too much space. This is something I'm working out in my head. Taking some wire fence and staking it into the ground in an arch so the vines can grow up. Literally. Haha.


I'm linking up with Cindy at Live a Colorful Life and Really Random Thursday.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Drive to a Fly-In, Plant Parenting, Etched in Glass

*Disclaimer, This ought to be three separate posts, but with the weekend rapidly coming to an end, and allergies getting the best of me, it is one post with three titles.

Saturday I had a fun field trip to a Fly In with my friend Mary! 

Ironically, we drove. We had an all girl caravan of drivers with unique cars. (I drove my Daisy bug, while she's not old, she is manual and does turn some heads.)

 I love this picture of Mary because it's so her! Her tires needed air so she just grabbed that air compressor hose and hauled it out there. (The part that makes her a kindred spirit is that it didn't quite reach so she had to move her car closer anyway. I totally do stuff like that all the time!)

 I loved that this airplane matched Mary's car buttercup!

The plane below was built by it's owner! His wife even helped with the riveting!

 These top wings reminded me of the kind of planes my Grandpa Jim and Grandma Dixie flew! (And the one Uncle Doug and Aunt Grace took us to Pismo in!)

 On my way home, I called my dad and said, "Have you ever been to a fly in?! It was soooo cool!" He said they went all the time when he was a kid....I guess things don't seem like such a big deal when your parents make you go. Here's Mary taking lots of pictures for the newsletter "Fly Paper."

 We've been meaning to get a picture of Daisy and Buttercup together, so after knitting Saturday afternoon I pulled my car behind hers and took a picture. Daisy looks so much bigger than Buttercup!

 I tried to get a picture of us with the cars, but it was having trouble focusing. Wouldn't you know it the picture takes as soon as I start laughing because its not working and Mary rolls her eyes?!

It was quite the fun Saturday and another new Kansas experience!

I spent part of today, Mother's Day, with "the children."

I had planted some Snow Peas at the community garden a while back, but had long since given up on them due to the snows we had this spring. Turns out, all they needed was for their mother to leave them alone.

 I took 12 plants to live with their siblings in the community garden. One of each variety of pepper/tomato I started from seed. All the shoveling, hoeing, planting and watering gave me quite a bit of time to reflect on my mom, how much I miss her, how much I learned from her and wish I could still learn, as well as how blessed I am with SO MANY, AMAZING role model women in my life to get advice from, be creative with, and enjoy their company. All of these interactions connect me with her in many ways as well.

 My friend Pat gave me some day lilies to plant on the West end of our house. I'm looking forward to them adding some dimension along that wall...and maybe helping that big sprinkler hub blend in. The oregano she divided and shared with me is doing splendidly as well! I never knew so much sharing could happen in gardening! I'm so lucky to be learning from her and hope that I might get the chance to pay some plants forward as well!

 Also... our grass is GROWING!

and the leaves are finally making an appearance! 

(Not for lack of trying but the weather just hasn't been cooperating.)

 Also making an appearance are my allergies. After all that time outside, I've been congested the rest of the day. Time for an inside project. I've been wanting try etching our name into our Pyrex pans for a while now. I got the cream on an adventure into a town with a craft store and used the vinyl decal paper that came with the Cricut we got for a wedding present. Thanks M&C!

 Lo and behold the recommended settings worked perfectly, and I had the letters and place the letters came out of to stick on to the pans and apply the etching cream. I used painters tape to make my straight line borders and protect areas I didn't want etched because it's waaaaay cheaper than Cricut decal paper.

 The directions say leave it on for 60 seconds. I found that this did not do the trick.

 So I reapplied the tape and left it on for 30 minutes. Ahhhh much better. I did a couple rounds for good measure and even crisp etching.

 Here you can see the outer rectangle more clearly.

 This is the second one I did, with the part of the page the letters were cut out of. 

I'm pretty happy with the final product. The other pinners and bloggers were right. 

Now I want to etch everything!!!

Luke Update III

Luke was an exemplary patient yesterday. He took the fluids like a champ and drank drank drank lots of water. He and I figured a way to move his table in front of him to help elevate his arms and keep the swelling down.


Around 9 pm he was finally discharged and We went home.


He's doing well. He's getting pretty tired of having to go to the bathroom so much. In general his body isn't feeling as spry as it normally does.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Luke Update II

Luke is going a bit stir crazy. This is how I found him after school.


Beds are overrated. He said that position helped him keep his arms up to let the swelling go down.
He was on IV drip all day. His tests from this morning his docor said that the "bad numbers," he used the official word, were down by half but were still 6 times what they should be.


They've been pushing the fluids full force to see if maybe he can go home tonight and actually get some sleep. Fluids full force means hourly+ bathroom trips.


In spite of that, he's still drinking as much as he can.
Word on the street was that there was a storm coming in. I had walked to the hospital in a t-shirt and sweats. Additionally, they weren't going to let Luke come home in the storm without a car. After seeing this storm on the map at 6:20 I headed home arriving on our front porch as giant drops were beginning to fall.


This is what it looked like rolling in at 6:20 PM.


And looking at Luke's room:


At 7 it was pitch black. The wind almost blew me forward and down and the hail may have left me with a bruise.


Now it seems to have let up a bit and we can see some sky again.


Luke is IV free and waiting for blood test results which will be the determining factor in whether he can go home or not.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone