4 girls...4 quilts

Great Aunt Karen has done it!

Four quilts were made for 4 little girls. This is the last one. I love this scrappy trip around the world It is just one of the gazillions of patterns you can find from Bonnie K. Hunter right HERE

Makes me want to get out my 2 1/2 strips that I have been stashing away, but then I remember all my other started projects and decide to wait....

Karen has a scrappy bowtie quilt started, but it is looking so baby-girlish, that she may just go with what is done so far and make it a baby quilt instead of bedsize. Then we will both have baby girl quilts for no one in particular.

I was worried that I jinxed a whole generation of babies by having a girl quilt ready,

I hope Karen's doesn't do the same thing.

The words for "you are my sunshine" are stamped around the border with paint. I washed it once and the words are still there.

homecoming 2009

The preschoolers made tiger masks for the pep rally and parade

The touchdown cannon.... At the first game this year we thought it would be neat if Mr. Welder brought one of his homemade cannons to the games and fired it when a touchdown was made!

(we were creamed at that game and it was debated that a better name for it would be

"first down cannon"...

since there wasn't much touchdowning going on....at least for our side.)

Mr. Welder went and got approval from the school and city....no cannonballs are fired, but there is a good...strong...loud..... BANG!

It didn't aways fire...bummer....and all it did was go tinck......but when it did....

It was great!

(if the other team scored, Mr Welder popped a balloon for them)

The final score was 42 to 8.....we won!

(it has been years since we won a homecoming football game)

the bug assignment...

Tomorrow is the big day.....

the 10th grader's bug projects are due.

For weeks we have been out periodically collecting bugs.

10 different bugs to be exact.

Tonight.....
All over our school district, encyclopedias are being opened to insects looking up the orders and where the bugs fit...
google is being overloaded with insect searches.




They need to find.....
the bug order....
the family name....and

the scientific name.

That is harder and takes way longer than anyone anticipated....

Words like Dialictus zephrum

and Lepidoptera....

are being copied and pasted into their work.

I am thankful to say that Crispy's is done now! There isn't extra credit for the umbrellas, but they have been laying on the kitchen table for weeks and Crispy thought they gave the display a little style.

I did sew 2 blocks for a quilt today. Not much progress there.

you don't see that everyday

If you enter the Minneapolis Metrodome through gate G or H...
you will see this picture....it's crazy, just crazy.....

They have tractor joe and my bro-in-law, mr. schmanderson plastered on the wall.
A cousin of ours spotted it this summer while at a Twins game,
he thought OMG, I know these people!
The Schmandersons have season tickets to the Vikings.... tractor joe and the big guy went with them to a game. The big guy is cut off, only his plum colored t-shirt is showing. Mrs. Schmanderson is completly cut out. But she really was there! It is part of a picture that has Adrian Peterson jumping into the end zone after scoring.
Crazy!

geocaching 101

What is geocaching?? I have been asked about this and since

I LOVE geocaching.....I thought I would write a little bit about it.



2 things you must have: a computer hooked up to the Internet, a GPS ^ ^ ^ pictured above and if you live in the middle of no-where like I do....a vehicle to get you within walking distance to the cache coordinates.



There are nearly 900,000 caches hid world wide......

they can be in a park or on a busy city street corner....

they can be as big as garbage can (rare) or as small as the tip of your finger (blinkies, nanos)...

most are pill bottle to shoebox size.



Geocachers run the full range of people...young, old, families, single, male, female.....

tractor joe says they are all geeky, nerds with obsessive compulsive disorders...

I think he's talking about me, so we'll ignore him.




So....you go to geocaching.com (link at bottom) .......get your coords for where you are going ...put them in the GPS and head out for adventure. (search by postal codes, cities, states or countries)

When you find the cache, it always has a log book to sign....I always put the date, "joe tulips", and sometimes what the weather is or misadventures we had finding it. With little ones all that is required is initials.

Regular sized caches have trinkets in them that you can trade.... if you remembered to bring you bag of swag.(trinkets you bring to trade) Kids love that part.



Then you go home...and back to geocaching.com to log all your finds or DNF's (did not find) Sometimes they have been muggled (stolen by a person who doesn't cache) or you just didn't look hard enough and it really is there.




You get a smiley by your name and log online if you found it!!!!! and exercise walking!





Geocachers use multi-million dollar satellites.....




to find Tupperware in the woods.

Here is what I have found so far.......

Name *Count

Traditional Caches * 506
Multi-caches * 20
Virtual Caches * 9
Letterbox Hybrids * 1
Event Caches * 8
Unknown (Mystery) Caches * 36
Webcam Caches * 2
Earthcaches * 1

*Total Caches Found 583



More info can be found at the following websites.....



http://www.geocaching.com/

http://geocacher-u.com/

Noah's Ark BOM

A long time ago, less than 2 years I think.....
I was in blogland going from this blog to that blog
to see what I might see....

I saw these bunnies all over. Wondered what they were
about, but didn't pursue it.

A few months later I found where they were coming from.
It was here

I was only a few months behind and thought it was too cute to pass up.

I changed the way it was put together a little bit.
I used 1/2 inch finished squares instead of a solid frame around them.
I love my Noah's Ark BOM. It normally hangs in the bathroom, not on a tree.

ahh yes, another niece quilt...

Why is bogger underlining everything???

sigh....it just quit....

hmmm...what is the deal.

Anyway....Karen put the binding on the "green quilt", so she has another one to add to the FINISHED pile!!!

(i was going to call it DONE pile, but it sounded to much like "dung" pile)

It is from Fons and Porter's summer issue of Quick and Easy Quilts.

It is so old fashioned looking. I love that about it. Karen is so good at getting that look.

The football game last night....we lost.....56-8....thought I would mention that in case anyone was wondering.

a multi-cache in Blue Earth...

This one was my favorite...
It was at the county fairgrounds.
Stage one was a little tricky....I was looking for a small container with the coords to the final stage. Couldn't find anything....looked some more.....
Ground zero appeared to be right at the corner of this concession stand eating area.

Then I spied the metal band attached to the pole. They had stamped the new coordinates on it....and placed it there upside down.

That was sneaky. But good!!! .....it will be hard for this one to go missing.

Then it was just a couple hundred feet to find the cache!!

We found 5 out of 5 that afternoon.

One was at least a mile of walking total....at least it was on a paved path....

one was hard to find because I had the wrong coords in the GPS!!

It was on the other side of the park,

dang it, I hate when that happens....

and we saw signs of fall along the way.

It was a good afternoon!

cachin' in Blue Earth Minnesota...

Our first cache to do was this one. It is called "are you up for it?" It was just me and Crispy for the afternoon. We needed to find the cache that was hid on top.


There are two of these structures, one on each side of the river. Crispy wasn't sure he would be able to get down once he went up.


We stood there and stared towards the top for awhile....


There are trees growing right next to it and...


Crispy decided he would use them for going up and down.





I am so glad because I knew I wasn't up for it....

"I can't find it."

"What do you mean you can't find it? Stop taking pictures and look some more!"

I continued to look around the bottom, just in case it was all a scam on where it really was hidden. Crispy finally did find it and tossed it down to me for signing the log book.

Yippy, we got it.....this was Crispy's favorite cache that day....

so pleased with myself, until....

Everything went together quickly.
I was pressing the blocks and found this........>>>>

Well the golds are almost done, except for this block.
It needs a little work.


The greens were set aside...I want more greens that aren't to dark or to light or too blueish. (is that a word?)


I laid out what I had to get this picture...........

It is weird because of all the bright sunlight pouring in the window. But the colors are truest in this shot and I just wanted an idea of how it was shaping up.

I am done sewing for the day.........big plans to go geocaching this afternoon!!!!

tourist too

This should have been with the other picture....but I ended up really messing up and deleting things I didn't mean to....and redoing posts.....anyway, here is the crazy bird lady.
I feel that if I do quick short posts....publish right away....blogger won't be able to reject me.

I tried to do this on Thursday......

This my second attempt at posting these pictures.

For whatever reason blogger rejected me over and over.



Karen stopped on her way home from work.

She had two more quilts! The quilter did them in record time.

We laid them out on the livingroom floor and I took a couple of quick pictures.

We'll do formal introductions of them when the binding is on and they are ready for their official pictures.

These quilts will be going to Wyoming. Karen is as paranoid about putting them in the mail as I am.

She'll wait until she sees her sister and nieces before giving them their quilts.

I did a teensy weensy bit of sewing. There are red, purple, green and gold blocks in this quilt.

All the red and purple ones are done....I think I will concentrate on this quilt. It is from American Patchwork and Quilting....from a few months ago....

I started then set it aside....greens may go under the knife this morning.

football

Another Friday night football game.

Watching the other team show us why they are state champs.

Getting confused with which team was who.

I kept looking at the dark jerseys thinking that was us. NO no no.....we are the white team for an away game.

Final score was something like 58-0.

tourists