Love for Sale--$5.35

I had a nice, relaxing weekend "off" and feel refreshed and ready to start "chatting" again. No, I didn't make 15 quilts over the weekend; in fact, I only spent a few hours quilting. I read--I finished reading a suspenseful mystery called Birdman by Mo Hayder and started and finished The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller. If you haven't read her Sharon McCone series and you enjoy books like the Sue Grafton (A is for Alibi, etc.) series that feature female detectives/private investigators, I bet you'll enjoy Marcia Muller's books. Edwin of the Iron Shoes was the first in the series. If you're interested, click HERE for a list of the series in order. Then I started another book called Dead Past by Beverly Connor.

What else did I do? I packed away all the Easter and some of the spring decorations and got out my summer things. I'll probably show you a few pictures in the next week or so. I cleaned house--that's a given when rearranging and changing things around for the season. My husband and I went out to a late lunch on Sunday with his parents and had a lovely time. (I had some really good crab cakes--YUM!)

When we started getting hungry again around 8 p.m., I threw together a late night snack of pizza--easy to do with Trader Joe's pizza dough, some leftover alfredo sauce, and a little sliced tomato and basil, and a sprinkle of cheese.

I worked on the patriotic quilt a bit, but I don't have anything to show you yet. By the way, if you don't much like mitering corners, raise your hand. Okay, I think I'm not alone then. I've added one inner border with mitered corners and I have another one to do next. It's not that I don't understand the concept but where the corners meet the side seams--I almost always have a hard time making it look just right. So maybe I'll go back to it tonight, but I'm not making any promises.

I had a wonderful lunch hour today! I didn't have any hand work with me, so I thought I'd leave the office and go on an excursion. A thrift store sounded like a good way to spend the lunch hour, although I have to tell you--I very rarely find any of the great buys that other people seem to find. Still, it was a lunch hour with nothing else going on, so I headed down to a Goodwill store I hadn't been in before. What I had in mind was looking for a "vintage" apron--I had put up this "thing" on the wall that says "Fresh" and has four pegs--wouldn't an apron look good hanging where the towel is?

No, I didn't find an apron, but what a gold mine! I ended up with some stuff I'm really pretty excited about and I spent less than $30. I'll probably show you some of my "treasures" over the next few days as I clean and polish them up and put them to use. First, though, take a look at this:

It's not very old--I recognize the fabrics from when I started quilting about nine years ago. It's not very elaborate, nor is it very big, but in my son's former room, I have a nautical theme going on, and I just put a red, white, and blue quilt on the bed, so this cute sailboat throw looks great! But it IS hand quilted, and see?

It's stitched with love by Grandma Connie! All that love for only $5.35! This is the first time I've ever bought a quilt made by someone else, other than the inexpensive ones you can get at Target for $40, and that was only when I first started quilting and wanted something quick for the beds while I made quilted accessories and eventually worked my way up to covering the beds with my own handiwork. So I'm pretty excited about this. Grandma Connie embroidered the name "Tate" on the boat. Would you leave that as is or would you pick out the name? I'm of two minds over this, so I'd like a little input. Of course I'll leave the label on the back.

And, by the way, Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Look at what I picked up at Trader Joe's the other day--

Yes, this is the lazy gal's guacamole kit. Now if you're a purist like Vallen who actually learned to make guacamole in the land where it originated, you'd probably be pretty unimpressed--check out her recipe if you want to make the REAL good stuff. (She's not the Queen for nothin'!) But, hey, this kit from Trader Joe's is just fine for THIS lazy peasant gal!

And you know what? It tastes even better than it looks! (More thrift store buys, by the way--that little glass pot was 49 cents and the crock was $1.99. Can I get an OLE?!) Thanks for stopping in to see if I've come back from my little blogging vacation!