The last puzzle of 2009!  I looked through a lot of photos trying to decide what to choose — an Alaska picture?  Texas?  People?  Birds?  How about:  None of the Above! 

Meet Sampson, SIL Grace’s & BIL’s Ronnie’s mammoth cat.  I can’t begin to describe how big he is.  Well, I could show you, but those pictures are on another computer.  Trust me, he lives up to his name (plus he lives in Texas)! 

Because this is winter break week for a lot of kids, I’m posting an easier version of the puzzle first, then a tougher one.  If you have a child who’s trying this out, remind them to look for the edge pieces first!

Click on the puzzle of your choice to begin.  Have fun!

–Sue

First of all, I’m not a big resolution maker, because after 60 years on this earth, I find I am still making the same resolutions:  get organized, stay focused on one project, lose weight, be taller…..so my resolutions this year are a little different.

I am going to continue participating in Judy Laquidara’s Design Wall Monday.  I find that helps me take stock of what I’ve accomplished in the past week and think about what I hope to accomplish in the next week.  (If you’re interested in participating, nothing to sign up for — just prepare a post on your site on Monday, go to Judy’s site and add a link.)  PLUS it’s fun to just check in and see what other quilters are working on.

Something new is Vicki Welsh’s involvement in a new site:  3 Creative Studios.  They are starting something new in January, Creative Cue, every Sunday, where they will throw out a word as astarting point for a creative exercise (drawing or sketching), and it’s up to you to interpret it however you would like.  You can participate even if you don’t draw!  Yea!!!  I plan to use this to be more creative in my photography, but I’m sure it will overlap into other areas of my life as well.  Same deal — prepare a post on your site, go to the 3 Creative Studios site and post a link.  Sounds like fun!  Even if you don’t have a blog or photo site or don’t care to participate for whatever reason, check out this site.  Click on all the tabs and buttons and see all the wonderfulness they are offering up!

Work on completing my mountain of UFOs, a project at a time.  (Tab at the top of my page, if you’re interested in tracking my progress.)  By the middle of January, I will be back to having UFO Thursdays.

Work on developing some of my designs into actual patterns.

Keep knitting socks.  I have a lot of sock yarn in the basket waiting for the *magic* to happen and turn them into socks.

AND be better organized, stay focused on one project, lose weight, get taller…wish me luck!

–Sue

Last stash report of the year!  Used in last three weeks:  4.5 yards.  Bought in last three weeks:  Nada.

2010 will be a different kind of quilting year for me.  I’m not going to take customer quilts any more, and I’m going to focus on finishing my many, many UFOs.  I also want to spend some time sewing quilts from my designs I’ve made using Electric Quilt.  It will be a fun and challenging year for me, and I think I’m ready! 

Design Wall Monday Report:  Quilting is definitely on the back burner this week.  Waaay back burner.  DS#3’s recently purchased duplex is in the midst of renovation, and DH and I are the paint “crew”.  Saturday was spent scraping off wall paper and washing one bedroom; Sunday was spent painting Kilz primer in the same bedroom.  So out of 14 rooms, we have one room half done!!!  Yikes!!!!!!!!!  Things will start to go a little faster, hopefully.  We can only work when the regular subcontractors aren’t there, so that limits our time during the week.  That’s good, because our bodies couldn’t survive doing this  all day, every day! 

This is what happens when small children have access to magic markers (and picture this on most of the walls in one of the units):

Kitchen of one side with new cabinets, new flooring, old icky paint (imagine nice neutral walls, a light neutral countertop, and a real light fixture) — and here is where my old dishwasher came to live:

When I do get back to quilting, I have some projects waiting for me:

• Quilt my 9-patch new antique quilt for DS#3 (Rob) for his new place (amandajean’s design)
• Finish my purple placemats
• Finish my Shine On Bayou Cane UFO (Judy L’s design)
• Finish my Freeze Frame UFO (JudyL’s design)
• And many more projects than I care to think about right now!!!

Christmas was wonderful, although we did miss DS#1 Dave who was home in Virginia.  A picture of DS#3 & DS#2 (Rob & Tony), in their matchy-matchy sweaters from (of course) their matchy-matchy mommy (they are so very tolerant):

And a photo of lovely DIL Lynn with her sampler quilt (ALMOST done — need to finish the binding Wednesday at DayStitchers — you didn’t think I would let painting get in the way of ALL my fun, did you???):

We are taking tonight off from painting so I can rest my sore muscles and so DH can cheer on the Vikings.  This afternoon we are off to do a little shopping and an early dinner out.  Sounds fabulous to me!  Tuesday night through next weekend will be pretty much painting filled, so if my blog is a little sparce in the next few days, you will know why!  Think of me with my bottle of Motrin and BioFreeze for those sore muscles!  It’s really amazing what a person can do when you know it’s short term, and when it’s for one of your offspring!

–Sue

We live in Minnesota, so we shouldn’t need to resort to a virtual snowball fight!  DS#1, Dave, came home for Thanksgiving; he is home in Virginia working Christmas Eve day and Christmas day, and of course we are missing him!  He must have missed us too, because here’s what he sent me today — a virtual snowball fight with our faces “pasted” in.  There were only five faces, so DIL Lynn isn’t represented here.  She must be the one taking the movie — or maybe she’s in the kitchen making hot chocolate for all of us.

Click here to see the fun on JibJab.  (If you have a slower computer or connection, like we do, it will stop once in a while to catch up with itself.  I know, that’s not very good tech talk!  It’s actually only about 20 seconds long.)  You can also make a video using your family/friend photos.

Thanks, Dave!  We miss you too…

–Sue (Mom)

It’s been snowing and blowing for the last day or so.  We have about 8″ or so of new snow on the ground, but it looks like much more than that because of drifting.  Lots of things to do today to get ready for our Christmas celebration, but I was so pleased to get this little lap quilt quilted last night, I wanted to share it today.

This is the BOM our quilt guild did this year.  I changed out the last two blocks, as I found I was procrastinating on finishing this quilt because I really didn’t care for the last two blocks.  (It takes me a long time to figure things out sometimes!)  Such an easy solution:  make two different blocks!  Do you ever do that, get stalled on a quilt and don’t really know why?  Lost interest, disappointed in how it’s coming out, just not enjoying the process?

These are all Asian-inspired fabrics I bought in a FQ sale last New Year’s Day for $1 each.  Then I had no idea what I would do with them!  A lot of the fabrics have shiny gold printed on them, so they aren’t something you could throw into any quilt. 

 Then I found I had nothing in my stash that would work for the sashings.  I found this cinnamon-colored marbled fabric at a LQS on Tuesday, and I think it turned out to be a good choice.  It wasn’t at all what I was envisioning, but luckily I took some blocks with me to “audition”.  My only complaint about this cinnamon color is it’s hard to photograph the quilting!

I quilted it with wonky loose feathers in the sashings and border, and pretty much ditched the blocks.  Time consuming, but I think it was the right choice.  I can sneak in a little handwork time for the binding later on in the day.

Someone asked me about my camera this week (I think it was Luanne, but I could be wrong!).  It’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20.  Mine has the 12x optical zoom and 4x digital, for a possible total of 48x zoom, plus it has Image Stabilization.  If you like taking pictures of birds, look for something with a super zoom on it.  I’ve had mine for about three years, so it’s probably just about obsolete, and there are probably better choices out there now.  This would give you something to compare with, however.  On that note, I feel the need to throw in a bird photo.  In the interest of color coordination, how about a Cinnamon Teal?

Have a fabulously wonderful Christmas Eve!

–Sue

I’m pushing it down to the wire, but I did get Lynn’s top completed last night.  Since she sometimes stops by my blog, I’ll just show a peek at a favorite block:

A Reminder:  With Christmas Eve and Christmas Day practically here, check your cameras for a charged battery, a memory card (sometimes I forget mine in the computer), and it would be good to erase the pictures on your memory card so you don’t run out of room! 

And since it’s Wednesday, we need a puzzle.  We’re going back in time a couple of days to those fun Cedar Waxwings.  

 And if you haven’t done one of these puzzles before, just click on the puzzle to begin.  I just KNOW everybody has lots of extra time today!  Right.  Maybe you need to get someone out of your hair for 15 or 20 minutes — just call them over to the computer right now and challenge them to complete this puzzle! 

–Sue

This is our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, and has been for years.  Eons, even.  This is right out of the Betty Crocker Cookbook (circa 1970).  And a note from me:  I make this in one large casserole dish and bake it just a bit longer.  We pass it family style.  We serve it over rice, with a salad, crusty bread, and glass of vino.  Yes, it’s a lot of butter, but it’s Christmas!  And it’s up to you as to how much chicken broth/butter you want to spoon on your rice.  Make sure your shrimp is already cooked before you start — I buy it frozen, and if it’s nice and pink instead of gray, it’s cooked.  Be sure to thaw the shrimp before beginning the recipe, and pat it dry with paper towels.

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Divide shrimp among 8 ungreased individual casseroles (each about 5 inches in diameter).  Cook and stir garlic in butter until butter browns.  Remove from heat.  Remove garlic pieces; add remaining ingredients except bread crumbs.

Toss 1/4 cup of the garlic butter with bread crumbs.  Pour remaining butter mixture over shrimp in casseroles and top with buttered crumbs.  Bake uncovered 10 minutes.  (Do not overbake shrimp as they tend to become tough.)  Garnish with sprigs of parsley (fresh).

8 Servings

Did I mention lately these are my favorite birds?  Oh?  I said that about pelicans, hummingbirds, night herons, and a multitude of other birds as well?  I guess my real favorite is whatever happens to be out my window, and today it was the hungry Cedar Waxwings.   

  I just love how “punk” these guys looked with their spiky “hair” and wrap-around sunglasses, don’t they look too cool for school?

 They came in a flock of eight or ten and took over the crab apple tree out my kitchen window.  They only ate off our tree, not the neighbor’s tree you can sometimes see in the background.  Go figure. 

Our tree is now picked clean, but I sure enjoyed their visit!

–Sue

Vicki W. suggested in an e-mail that I could maybe blog about how to take better photos of shiny objects.  Never did figure out the shiny objects thing, but one thing seems to lead to another.  That got me started taking some tree photos…and of course, the first picture the flash went off…the second picture I suppressed the flash:

It would have been better with a tripod or if I had steadied the camera on the back of a chair, but I was just playing around.  It also would have been better if I picked up the envelopes lying on tree skirt!

Then I went in for some close-ups of individual ornaments.  Betty, recognize your angel?  She looks a little grainy because of the low light in the room, but I actually really like this picture.

I wish I had been sipping a glass of wine at the time so I could blame this on the alcohol (it must have been the sugar in the cookies I’ve sampled), but I started giving the camera a little twist as I took the picture:

This was fun!  I found the key to keeping your ornament somewhat focused is to keep it in the center, imagine the axis of your twisting movement is going right through the lens, and then give a slight rotation when you’re pressing the shutter.

It’s so much fun because you can see right away what you got…

Have I made you all feel a little dizzy?

This would be an interesting activity for children/grandchildren who are the right age to use a digital camera.  They might even end up taking a picture suitable for next year’s Christmas card!  This would also be fun to try if you’re going to an evening parade, such as the Hollidazzle parade in downtown Minneapolis.

Thanks for the inspiration, Vicki!  I’ll get back to baking and cleaning and laundry now.

–Sue

PS:  Some tips if you decide to try this.  I had no lights on in the room, just ambient light from an adjoining room.  Remember to suppress the flash.  Just a little twist, like from 2:00 to 3:00.  Experiment with more and less of a twist.  You’re not wasting film — you will just delete more pictures (I deleted a lot)!  I took these with my little point-and-shoot camera, no fancy equipment required.