Sewing weekend with my sister!!

We've had this weekend planned for 2 months - it  was finally here! How fast time flies!! She got here Thursday morning, it's already Sunday and I just dropped her off at the airport! But we had a great time. Did a little shopping (wink, wink) on Thursday and a little more on Friday. (wink again). Got down to business in the sewing room Friday after shopping, then out to dinner. Back to the sewing room. Visited my daughter and grandkids for a little bit on Saturday.  Back to the sewing room. We did eat now and then. And over our morning coffee , we looked at magazines, new patterns and other stuff we bought (during that little bit of shopping we did :).

Denise's sewing machine didn't fly well, even as a carry-on and she had trouble with it the entire time.  For awhile on Friday night, both our machines were not working right!!  It was like Candid Camera - hers had a problem,  mine worked. Then hers worked, and  mine didn't.  At 10:30, both appeared to be working so we called it a night. That was exhausting trying to figure out what was wrong with 2 machines that had been working perfectly. Saturday morning, we really knuckled down and got to it. But her machine gave her so many probems, it was difficult for her to like her project, given that the machine stitching was not up to par. Mine was working as it should,  so I was able to work on mine.  But in the end, we had a lot of laughs, lots of M&M's, and lots of talking!! 

                                                                  Denise hard at designing

                                                                   Denise ironing

                                                          Here she is - hard at work !

                                                                  the important stuff

                                                                Denise rippin' it out

                                                           Denise's project (unfinished)

                                                         Someone wants some attention

                                                                 Work in progress

The staredown

                                                                     Jeannie hard at it

                                                           Jeannie's turn to rip it out !

                                                             Jeannie's project (unfinished)

Tubing at the lake

Well, we decided to take the boat out yesterday. Took the grandkids Belle and Ian, and stepdaughter Mikayla. This was Ian's second time tubing - his first was when he was about 6 and he got  booted off and we really had to whoop it up about how much air he got and how cool it was so he wouldn't be afraid.

                                                          Belle, Ian and Mikayla

This summer, he knows how to swim and he actually WANTED us to try and knock him off.  Rick never intentionally gives them a really rough ride, but he made some really good waves for them. Both Ian and Mikalya got some air between them and the tube! But Ian did get knocked  off once, and rolled on the top of the water like a rock skipping across it! He thought it was great.
                                                               
                                                               Belle and Grandpa

Since Belle is such a girly girl, I never dreamed she would even want to get in the lake. She said this was her first boat ride too. The tube wasn't in the water 10 minutes, and she said she wanted to swim. Not get on the tube, but she wanted to get in the lake.  When we stopped for lunch, I put her over the side  and Rick got in too. She had a blast. She did get on the tube to sit, and wanted us to let it drift a little farther from the boat, but she didn't want to tube.

                                    Ian on boat, Mikayla and Belle on tube, getting ready to float

All said and done, it was a great day. Temp was about 85, we took lunch with us and ate on the lake. The kids literally ate their sandwiches IN the water !!  No whining, or arguing....yes, it was a good day.

A Day at the County Fair

So I know it's been awhile since I posted - been kinda busy with stuff.  We went to the Dakota County fair last weekend because my stepduaghter was in the Demolition Derby. While we don't whole-heartedly support this activity, we don't have much say in it, so we unwillingly  "support" it . This was her fourth derby and second one this season (she did 2 last year).  She won this one -$500 -  Good for you Ali!!  and she earned this win - got in a lot of good hits, didn't use the "avoidance" method to stay in until the end and even kept her car running and moving while it was overheating and had a rear tire hanging on an angle.

                                         Ali (winner) and Rick (Dad)  with what's left of the car

If you've never been to a Demo Derby, I have only one thing to say: TAKE EARPLUGS. It can be a lot of fun to watch (especially if your kid isn't in one of the cars).  The pickup truck class is the most fun, because the trucks are louder, get up more speed and have way better hits! The trucks are also the loudest and smelliest - lots of smoke, sometimes there's fires, and a whole lot of mud flying around.

                                         Our car is the dark one in front of the towtruck
                                          (yes, the cars get towed or forklifted off at the end)

I took my grandson and his friend and after the derby, they hit the rides. Buying a wristband for unlimited rides was the best thing I did that day !!  Fair food isn't cheap either. Among other things, Hubby had cheese curds (yuck), the boys had cotton candy, smoothies , drinks etc etc. But the BEST thing I had was a Spaghetti Sundae !!  I'll get a picture up in a bit. They literally put stuff thru a pasta roller to make it look like spaghetti. The "meatballs" were chocolate covered cherries. It was FABULOUS! Somehow it didn't taste like "just" ice cream, although it was.

                                          Ian is to the right, blue shirt in orange bumper car

The boys wanted to go to the derby pit and see the car (what's left of it) so I wandered over to the Exhibition
Hall to look at at the quilts. What a disappointment. Not sure how these fairs are judged, but about 85% of the quilts had ribbons. First premium, second premium, third, fourth fifth premium, Judge's Choice, People's Choice etc...there must have been 30 categories. And for the most part, there weren't that many  quilts there, and even less that looked  that great. This is a pretty big Fair too. I think I'm going to see about entering something in that Fair next year. Maybe I can get Best in Show!!1 hahahahaha

Recipe of the Month on today!!

I have been gently reminded by several people that I have not gotten the recipe page  up and running yet. Can't say that anymore !! I posted my first recipe - the Best Banana Bread Ever!!

Be sure to try it - you will not be disappointed. This bread (or muffins, or mini loaves) never last more than a day in my house. It's good by itself or with butter. It freezes well too.

Check it out!

Check out my newest WIP !!

Finally got around to taking photos of my newest project. I think I'll actually keep this one !!  Take at look at my WIP page and see what you think.

My sister reminded me I haven't posted my recipe of the month yet......yea yea yea...I'm working on it.

A Post-It note life

Sometimes I look around and wonder how people ever got thru the day without Post-It notes. No, really, at any given time, I can look around me and see them ....they're everywhere. Sticking out of books and magazines, on the garage service door, the fridge, you name it. These little marvels should be one of the Seven Wonders....no kidding. Not only are there Post-It notes in various sizes, there are Post-it flags and Post-It arrows. And the colors available......right now, in my possession, I have bright blue, orange, canary yellow (the original color), purple and white. I have flags in blue, red, green and yellow, plus arrows that are odd shades of pink, green, blue and orange..... amazing. And I personally have 7 different sizes of these fabulous little stickies.

I stick one on the garage door to remind hubby it's trash day, or trash and recycling day.  They work great for little love notes in his lunchbox. (yea I know, we're kind of mushy still).  I 'll  write something on one at work and stick it in my purse so I'll see it when I get home. There's dozens of files on my desk at work with them on the front and flags sticking off papers in the file. They make great bookmarks, and the arrows are perfect little pointers. I use them in my sewing room, in cookbooks and on calendars. My husband even has one covering the  "brights on" icon (for the headlights) on the dashboard, because it's too bright for him in the dark (crybaby).

I can't remember a time without these litltle marvels. Yet,when I Googled it, I was amazed to see that Post-It notes were only developed in 1974 and not sold in stores until April 6, 1980!!  Who invented these wonderful things? A guy at 3M in Cythiana KY named Art Fry (no really, that's his name, Google says so but even I think it  sound made-up). And even though the patent expired in 1990, allowing other companies to make a similar product, the majority of of the world's Post-It notes are still made in Cynthiana, Kentucky. Amazing. Kind of wish I'd bought stock in it.

Look for Recipe of the Month coming later this week !!

EQ6 = New design = frustration !

I have been wanting a particular thing to hang above my kitchen window. I have a very specifc idea what I want - a sign/wallhanging of some sort with roosters, Rise & Shine, that kind of thing. I have looked everywhere and can't find anything even remotely close to what I want. So, finally I decided I'd just make it. I can do that, for heaven's sake, I can sew !

So I thought I'd use my Electric Quilt 6 design software (yes, the one that was pretty spendy and has been used so little that I have to re-read the manual every time),  Got myself comfy at the computer with all these ideas in my head and started "designing".  Project name: Rooster wallhanging for kitchen.

Must have spent a good 3 hours that night designing it. Then, a couple hours another night revising, coloring blocks, rearranging etc etc. The third night of my design saga suddenly found me deciding I wanted to make a quilt to hang in the space above the stairs as you come down from the 2nd floor to the first. You know, that tall unused space that no one likes to paint.  Husband even agreed a quilt would look great there. In so many words, he said "Go for it honey, that would look great there".   Hmmm.....I guess he isn't thinking about how HE is going to have to hang it.

So, off to EQ6 I go!!  Brought up my kitchen design and started revising. I can revise it since there weren't any roosters on it yet anyway.   3 hours later, for the most part, I have my design.   Went to eat some dinner, something quick (actually a bowl of cereal).....yes, I could eat cereal pretty much anytime.  So I'm standing there eating cereal looking at that space above the stairs. (yes, I was walking around while eating).  Thoughts now racing thru my head as I stare at that space......run to kitchen, put cereal down, grab tape measure form drawer, run to stairs. Measure width. OH NO. Stairs width is 39".   grrrrrrrrr....

My design measures 54" x54". Too big. Back to EQ6. Another couple hours later, I have got it done (the design).  Looked in manual to see how to re-name the project. Then the dog comes in and needs to go out and then a few more distractions and finally, I go back to my computer.

Now I don't like it. Grrrrrrr......I have most likely spent close to 12 hours  working on a design that in a blink of an eye, I decided I'm not going to use. Plus I basically designed over my rooster project.....So, back to square one on both.   Grrrrrrr...................I think I'll go do some laundry........

Thou Shalt Not Covet....... really?

I was raised Catholic, so I know all about the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not covet is #10. The definition of covet is: to desire (what belongs to another). Well, the part "what belongs to another" is what gets me off the hook !!
For instance, I covet a longarm quilting machine. I don't want yours, or my neighbor's . I don't want to take stuff away from someone else - I just want one to call  my very own. So even though I am coveting what you might have, I don't want to take yours!! So it's not the same, right?

We all covet stuff - we just don't call it "coveting". How did they ever come up with the word "covet" anyway? No one says " I sure do covet new wood floors in my kitchen". No, we say something more on the lines of  "I want new wood floors" or "I wish I could afford new wood floors". It all means the same thing - you want something you can't have. Like I can't have a longarm quilting machine because that hefty price tag doesn't fit anywhere in my present (or future) budget. Unless I inherit a small fortune (not likely), win the lottery (even less likely) or one falls from the sky into my sewing room !!  But if that happens, then I'll have to covet a larger sewing room (also not likely).

So go ahead and covet stuff ...or wish upon a star, it's pretty much all the same. Just don't take someone else's !! 

Promoting my Etsy shop JTsAppliques today!

I do a lot of appliques in my pieces, and therefore always have a lot of scraps leftover. I just can't bring myself to throw out scraps! That's how this second shop came to be. Even the smallest scrap can be made into an applique. So I opened JTsAppliques in July 2010 and it took off !!  I was so busy making Halloween and Christmas appliques I could hardly get in any regular sewing.

Check out this shop at http://www.jtsappliques.etsy.com/.   I can make practically anything into an applique for you. Or pick from my selections and customize your colors. I'll be getting my Halloween listings up soon. That always starts my busy season. People seem to love bats, Trick or Trick, pumpkins etc, before moving right into the Christmas choices.  I get lots of orders for names for Christmas stockings and have  lots of fonts to choose from. If you want something I don't show, just let me know. I'll find it for you !!

Appliques are available on No-Sew backing (iron-on only) or on lightweight sewable backing (iron-on and sew edges).  My lightweight backing can be sewn or quilted thru.  Hurry up - GO LOOK !!

It is SO hot here....

I have lived in Minnesota since December 1985 and I can't recall a summer that has been as hot for as long as this one.  The humidity is so bad the windows on the outside of the house are sweating in the morning. The temp today got to 97, but felt like 105 and the dewpoint yesterday broke records here. Dewpoints in the 70's are considered tropical - we were in the low 80's !!  Just step outside and it's instant sweat ! UGH... Our weather guy tonight had  a huge ice sculpture in the "Backyard" and he expected by the 10 o'clock news that it would be completely melted away.

The heat even shattered a window in our pickup truck - the back slider window of the cab. I felt for that poor guy that had to come out and replace it in this heat - he was probably was sweating buckets !

It's even too hot to get in our pool. I'd had to make an effort to take the pool cover off to get in. That's just too much work in this heat....... Of course, the corn in the field behind us loves this weather. Heat, rain, heat, rain, repeat. It's grown about 3 feet in the last 10 days.

Tomorrow is supposed to be much better, both for heat and humidity. But not before we get ugly storms tonight.....I'm just praying the power doesn't go off.

Geez, I'm sweating just writing about how hot it is.......I'm gonna go stand in front of the freezer door.

How I came to be a quilter.....

I found an awesome website thru the Etsy forums - http://www.quiltingboard.com/  and today someone started a topic about how you started quilting.  I go back to about 1989, when I hand cut  and hand sewed over 4,000 little hexagons to make a Grandma's Flower Garden quilt. I don't even remember what made me want to do this and I had zero quilting experience. I spent months putting this king-sized top together, then put it in a closet for awhile. Finally, my (former) Mother-in-law quilted it for me. She also hand quilted every bit of it, finishing it in 1991. It is pictured below (but on a queen size bed). I use it every night, it washes great and none of the stitching is coming out.

Never did another thing quilty, until around 2002, when my sister (from St Louis) and I decided to start getting together for a long weekend at least once a year and do a "project". One of these "projects" was to make a memory quilt. Needless to say, we did it, including pictures and quilted them. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, even though the "quilting" is all In The Ditch. What mattered most to me is that I did it all and I finished it. Pictured below too.

When I was a kid, I learned how to knit (don't remember how now). As a young woman I learned to  crochet , sewed my daughter cute little dresses with matching bottoms until she told me, at age 3 or so, that I could stop because she wasn't going to wear them anymore because they had "baby" pants. End of clothes sewing. I made a few basic curtains, valances etc. Then I got hooked on cross stitch, which I loved and did until my eyes couldn't take it anymore. That's pretty much when I started sewing again  and before I knew it,  I had the quilting bug.

Now my stash rivals a quilt shop's stock, and I can't spend enough time in my sewing room. I discovered Etsy as a venue for selling and now have 2 shops. (see links above). The second came about because I can't throw even the smallest scrap of fabric away, and now I also  sell iron-on appliques.

At least my sewing keeps my hand and mind busy. And that's especially important for these long Minnesota winters. That's my story of how I came to be a quilter.
                                         Flower Garden quiltmade 1989-1991

                                                    memory quilt, est. 2002

Are you a gardening wanna-be ?

 So we never had a big garden until we moved to this house. Now we have this huge garden and we have had corn, carrots, peas, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green peppers, strawberries, rasberries, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and I'm sure I'm forgetting something...

Lessons we have learned - today we learned our lettuce doesn't like 97 degree temps. We have learned the birds really like strawberries and rasberries. We learned we better pick cherry tomatoes before Belle comes over or no one gets any. We learned we aren't going to grow peas, green beans, corn, broccoli or cauliflower again. We learned what Creeping Charlie is.

We also learned a good tiller is well worth the money it cost. That whole day it took to put the chicken wire 12" underground was SO worth it. (no bunnies in our garden!)  And that the birds don't like deer netting. And fresh zucchini makes the best zucchini bread. We learned we should plant more carrots because they were spectacular and everyone fought over them at dinner. Best of all, we learned there's nothing like homegrown veggies! 

So next year, plan a garden. Start your plants under grow lights in March. Re-pot as needed as they grow. The stronger the plants are, the better off they will be in climates like Minnesota. 

Gotta go water the garden !!

Promoting my first Etsy shop BellianStudio

The name of this shop came to be from my 2 grandkids, Belle and Ian.  On this shop, I have quilted pet placemats, quilt blocks, tops for you to finish, Christmas stockings, etc. Anything can be personalized to fit your needs.

Because I also have a full-time day job, I don't get to sew nearly as much as I would like. I have lots of works in progress, and Christmas in July is going on now too. Get 15% off any item in my shop thru July !!!

Custom orders are always welcome. I love applique and most of my items have it on them.
Check out this shop at http://www.bellianstudio.etsy.com/

Here are a few of my currently listed items.

                                          I Chew Stuff pet placemat (featured in Etsy Treasury TODAY!!)

                                                NEW ITEM: set of 5 reindeer blocks (only one shown here)

                                                   Carousel zoo blocks - see the entire set on Etsy

                                                  Fall table runner - TOP ONLY, you finish

 Thanks for looking!

It's all about him ....so says the resident Boxer

So, here he is....one big 72 lb wiggly muscle.  His birthday is August 1, and he's getting to be an old man at 7.  His name is Papi, but he also goes by (and answers to) Knucklehead and Doofus.  He is a rescue dog,  gotten from the MN Boxer Rescue when he was 1 1/2 yrs old.

 Here he is....

 He's kind of a bed hog!!

 He was so excited about going to St Louis for Thanksgiving 2010, he sent my sister this picture.

 No, really, his bed IS big enough for him......

Tennis ball, anyone?

As you can see from the pics, he is a character. Boxers have tons of personality, they fart a lot , LOVE kids, can be very silly and learn quick. Papi is a real smartypants. His new favorite toy is the frisbee and I have been scouring garage sales for them - they don't really fly very well when there's big teeth marks in them.  He only gets to sleep in bed with Mikayla - she's his favorite kid.  And while he does love people food, he doesn't get much of it (except pizza crust, which he loves the best).  So usually, he'll sit in front of the pantry door, willing his treats to come out of it !!  Everybody be sure to wish Papi a Happy Birthday on August 1 !!

OOPs typo in my About Me section

well, even though I proof-read my About Me section, I didn't catch the typo and neither did my sister even though she read it three times after I pointed out there was a typo.... I have 3 stepkids, not 2...ooops.

My sewing studio

view from the door

believe it or not, it's 11 am but looks like nighttime due to storms

My $100 cabinets I scored on Craigslist !!

5' island cutting table and pegboard ruler rack

For some reason, I felt this urge to start a blog......for the life of me, I don't know why. I am no one special, just an ordinary person. An ordinary Joe, except my name is Jeannie. There - that's how I came up with my blog name.

I'm just looking out the window of my sewing studio - it's pouring down rain.  Good thing I love being in my studio. I think that's what I'll talk about today - my sewing studio.

My hubby built this room for me in our new house. Finished it first before anything else - he is such a keeper!

here's what he did: a 10' counter for my 2 machines, with cutouts for the cords to drop thru
A built-in wall cabinet for my embroidery machine thread
a 5' island style cutting table with tons of storage and pegboard on the back for all my rulers,
11' of solid oak cabinetry - top and bottom - we scored these on Craiglsist for just $100. He had to remove them (they were built-ins) but  did we ever get a deal!! I almost peed in my pants when I saw them !!   :)
Put my computer in for me, including a printer
Ran lines for a TV, installed a CD/radio player, hung up a large bulletin board
Hung a wall mounted thread rack that holds 120 spools
Made and hung up a Design wall
I also scored the antique Singer machine (on the top of the cabinet) on Craigslist for FREE - hubby cleaned it up. It was built in 1926 and is a Model 66.
Hope you enjoy the pics