Cheers!

On Sunday night, the local weather forecaster told us there was a chance of showers on Monday, but that any precipitation would likely remain to the north of us. Good news for me and my friend Lisa, since we had a road trip planned for the day. As usual, though, whenever a person has plans, the weather forecaster seems to get the weather wrong. Monday morning, I woke to a light drizzle that increased to showers, and the showers lasted much of the day.

Luckily for Lisa and me, our planned road trip took us south and out of the rain, although cloudy skies followed us all the way to Modesto. Our destination? Vintage Gardens where we planned to meet friends for lunch.

That's Vintage Gardens. That's where we DIDN'T have lunch after all. Why? Because the restaurant decided to close today to take care of some repairs, believing that a Monday would be a slow day. While we were waiting in the parking lot for all of our friends to gather, we saw the restaurant turn away at least 10 to 15 customers--and that was just in the space of about 20 minutes!

Before long, we settled on another restaurant, Appetez.

It was a really fun gathering. All together, there were five of us; originally we met through our husbands who had been close friends since their teens, if not before. Oh, the stories we've heard of their exploits! Given all the crazy stunts those "boys" got up to, it's a wonder they lived to turn 30! At some point, though, they met and married us. As we settled down to raising our families, we all moved away from San Jose. Lisa and her husband and Hubby and I moved to Sacramento and the other three couples moved to Modesto, an hour and a half south of us. Over the years, I ran into two of the Modesto gals a couple times in passing but we lost touch as we all had kids and families that took priority in our lives. Now that we're older and our kids are grown, we all have a little more time and expendable income. We hope, now, to meet for lunch every few months and plan get togethers with our spouses too--after all, it was our husbands who brought us all together to begin with.

After a long lunch filled with talk about the past and the paths our lives had taken as well as plans for the future, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. Returning to Sacramento meant returning to rainy skies and traffic accidents--everywhere, it seemed! At one point, about 20 minutes outside the city, traffic on the freeway was completely stopped. And you know when you see truckers get out of their rigs to chat with one another that no one's going anywhere soon. As it turned out, though, Lisa and I ended up stopped just before a freeway exit, and we were able to detour off and wind our way through farming country; eventually we made it home, safe, sound, and relatively dry.

Being able to spend time with old friends is a gift, isn't it? Cheers!

A Haunting Day

I hope you didn't miss me too much this morning. Our Haunted House Party on Saturday was so much fun that by the time the festivities were over, I was just waaaaay too pooped to write a blog post. I'll tell you a little bit about it though.

I should start the story by telling you that the Drooling Dog's sleepover was spectacularly unsuccessful, so the Wild Child brought him home on Saturday morning, accompanied by his date. Yes, apparently the Wild Child saw nothing to be concerned about in trying to mate two dogs while also entertaining guests of the human variety. Oh, well, what can a mom do? I simply banished the Drooling Dog and his girlfriend to the garage for the duration of the Haunted House decorating portion of the afternoon with Hubby to oversee and monitor any progress and offer encouragement.

Remember the Halloween mini quilts I made? Well, now I can tell you I was making them for the Ghoulish Gals attending Saturday's festivities. And I can show you a photo of three of the finished tabletoppers.

My guests for the house decorating were the Wild Child, Soccer Son's Lovely Wife to Be Someday, and the Mother of the Bride--truly a mother/daughter day for our two families. I set up the table outside, as the weather was perfect.

The Wild Child had to leave for work in the late afternoon, so her house was a bit minimalist but still a fine creation. She hasn't quite decided whether she will add more to it later or leave it "as is"--either way, I'm sure it will be terrific!

Here are photos of the other three houses--which are quite done, and possibly even overdone!

But really, is there ever such a thing as too much candy?

Later in the day, when the houses were loaded with candy to capacity, the men joined us for a food fest. Seriously, there was probably enough food to feed twice as many guests and still send everyone home with leftovers. We started, while waiting for Soccer Son to arrive (he had a late soccer game to coach) with beer battered onion rings and stuffed mushrooms. And that was AFTER most of us had been snacking on chips, salsa, guacamole, bean/corn dip, and perhaps even a margarita or two for most of the afternoon.

By the time we were ready for the "real" dinner, no one was very hungry, but we still managed to choke down some fully-loaded burgers and a couple side dish salads. Sadly, though, the dessert Hubby picked up, a tiramisu, was as ignored as the Drooling Dog's girlfriend. Doesn't it look yummy though?

I have since learned that the tiramisu is just as yummy as it looks. Now that I think about it, maybe I wasn't just tired last night after the party; maybe I was suffering from a serious food stupor. That kind of seems appropriate though--I think I was probably just helping our Canadian friends celebrate their Thanksgiving. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

Doggie Viagra?

Remember the Drooling Dog? The Wild Child's "baby"?

Well, the Wild Child has been wanting to breed him for awhile now because many people--including Soccer Son--have expressed an interest in having one of his pups. A couple weeks ago, Hubby, the Wild Child, and the Drooling Dog attended a Boxer show and found the DD a girlfriend.

The Wild Child got the call this week that the DD's girlfriend was coming into season, so a "date" was arranged for today. It seems, however, that perhaps the DD needs a little Viagra or something because he just didn't seem to know what to do.

Really? A DOG? Didn't know what to do?! I don't know; maybe he's just too much of a gentleman. At least our legs are safe around him--so far. He's having a sleepover tonight, though, so maybe he'll figure it out. Maybe he just didn't like being watched. Sheesh!

In the meantime, I've spent part of the day preparing for the Great Halloween House Decorating Party. As you can see, the "ingredients" are gathered.

In the morning, I'll need to do a little food prep for the girly gathering and the dinner later with our guys. Soccer Son's been doing some yard work for us, and he'll be here in the morning too, finishing up. It should be a fun day. I'll try to get a few photos to share, but if I don't post tomorrow night, it's just because I'm either still having fun, I've had too many margaritas and can't type straight, or I've fallen asleep. One way or another, though, I'll be back to tell you about it in a day or two. "See" you later!

Lady of Leisure?

Not exactly! I would have thought that being off work, recuperating from surgery, would have given me plenty of time to sit around and contemplate my navel, but it doesn't really seem to be working out that way--at least not this week.

On Wednesday, I had a housecleaning service come. I've never had anyone else clean my house before; have you? It was an interesting experience.

I had purchased a half-priced cleaning package from Living Social but then I found they were booked up through the next couple months, so I ended up paying full price for Wednesday's house cleaning. The reason behind hiring a cleaning service was because I thought it was best I not use my hand too much for another couple weeks. All in all, they did a pretty good job, but I found they didn't clean a couple things I would have expected and DID clean a couple things I myself clean only when I'm doing more major cleaning. I actually felt kind of sorry for them: I have a lot of "stuff" (a more polite term than the word that came to mind), including my seasonal decorations, craft and sewing supplies, etc., that they had to clean around. I have reason to know that's not the easiest job!

While the service cleaned my house, Hubby hung out in his garage workshop and I ran some errands I'd been putting off. By the time I got home in the afternoon, most of the day was gone. Oh, you know what one of the biggest benefits of the house cleaning was? It motivated me to finally, FINALLY clean out that purse that I had sitting on the floor in the corner of my bedroom so it wasn't just one more thing they had to clean around.

On Thursday, I drove into my office for the firm's annual flu shot clinic, followed by a visit to the physical therapist, the quilt shop, and Trader Joe's. We're having a bit of a gathering at our house on Saturday, and there's a lot to do to get ready for that. Remember the Halloween gingerbread house I showed you awhile back?

Well, I've rounded up a few more houses and invited Soccer Son's Lovely Wife to Be Someday and her mom over on Saturday afternoon to decorate houses with me and the Wild Child. The "boys" will come over later for dinner. I think we'll have a great time!

Although the week has been a busy one, it really hasn't been too bad. At least I'm not bored to death with nothing to do! Not that THAT's really likely to ever happen anyway--not as long as my brain's active and I'm dreaming up new projects to work on and plans to carry out.

What do you have planned for the weekend?

Fun With the Carpenter's Wheel Quilt Pattern

Some years ago, my online quilt group did a mystery quilt, and it turned out to be the carpenter's wheel quilt pattern. I loved it--and that's really saying something, because I don't really like mystery quilts much. With mystery quilts, I never seem to get the fabrics right, but with this pattern, all you need are three fabrics that look well together but have a high contrast--pretty simple, really.

The other day, I decided I wanted to make some quick Halloween mini quilts. When I thought about the colors I wanted--orange, black, and white--and the need for a quick pattern, the carpenter's wheel came to mind. Here's what I came up with:

These are four small quilt tops that measure 24" square. But wouldn't they also be stunning sewn together into one lap sized quilt? It's tempting!

Tomorrow I'll get busy quilting these--I'm going to keep the quilting pretty simple since they're small, so they should be finished fairly quickly, I think.

These aren't the only Halloween carpenter's wheel quilts I've made. I actually have a larger one that I made using my Fireworks! pattern (originally designed as a Fourth of July quilt pattern). Right now, it resides on the sofa and is excellent for keeping away the fall chill.

There's not as much contrast and more "print" in the fabrics I used in the larger quilt, but the minis I'm making look very dimensional, don't they? I find it fascinating to see and compare the results when using different fabrics, prints, and color placement--you can see those differences between the larger quilt and the minis and then between each of the minis themselves where the color placement varies.

By the way, there are no Y-seams--there are 16 half square triangles of each color combination (i.e., orange/black, orange/white, and black/white) and 16 plain squares of whatever the background color will be. Easy-peasy, yes?!

I'll show these again once I get the quilting and binding done. I don't think I'm going to add borders; picking binding fabrics should be interesting! What do you think about a black and orange stripe on the bias?

And Another of the Eleven Completed!

Here's one of those recent projects I mentioned yesterday--my eighth completed quilt of the eleven quilt goal for 2011:

It's a pretty boring photo, but once I finished it, it went up on the wall in the Wild Child's room, and there's not a lot that can be done with photos of quilts on walls--especially if the rest of the room isn't spiffed up a bit first. (The Wild Child is currently working on spiffing--she just hadn't done it yesterday when I hung and photographed the quilt.)

This is a quilt I designed a couple years ago as a charm pattern for a class I was teaching, and I named the pattern Eye of the Beast--it reminded me of the yarn and stick God's Eyes we used to make at summer camp when we were kids, but the Halloween fabric seemed more beastly; hence, the name.

As usual, I overestimated how much I could get done in the amount of time I had available, and I never found time to quilt the top before the class, so it went into the "to be quilted" basket until now. It sure feels good to get some of these old projects finished!

The next quilt of the eleven for this year is--I think--an appliqued child's quilt. I've been working on it off and on for several years, so I think it's time to get it finished, don't you?!

So Besides That . . .

what have I been doing lately? Well, since the surgery, I haven't been working, so I have more time to "play," although if I do too much, my hand gets achy. I think, though, that much of what I do is good for it and will help me regain strength and flexibility. So I just try to be careful not to do anything for too long, and if my hand gets achy, I stop and do something else. I've also been spending at least some of my days reading. And napping. I'm such a night owl that I find my favorite schedule is to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, go to bed and sleep for about six hours, and then take an afternoon nap for about an hour. Yep, I could get used to this!

On Sunday, I added a border to the Halloween embroidery, quilted the piece, and added the binding.

I always have a hard time trying to decide how to quilt an embroidered piece, because I don't want the quilting to detract from the embroidery. With this one, I quilted a simple 1-1/2" criss-cross grid using the same colored thread as the background fabric.

Soccer Son came over the other day and arranged the skeletons for me--he's so clever!

And over the past couple of days, I worked on hanging a few light strings and arranging a couple of small displays.

While we don't really have the chilly autumn weather yet, the temperatures are dropping a bit and we will likely get a bit of rain this week, so it's starting to feel a little more like Fall.

I've been working on a couple more Halloween/Fall projects, but this post is long enough, so I'll have to show them to you later. See you then!

The Event--2011

Each year my firm hosts a mystery event. Some years, the event is designed as a family gathering, and some years, it's adults only; this year's festivities were definitely adults only.

The events always take place on a Saturday and we're given shirts with clues in the designs on the Friday afternoon before the event. Here's this year's T-shirt logo:

So what did we do on Saturday?

We gathered at the office mid-morning for a continental breakfast and a little work on a fashion makeover for our tees. The daughter of one of our secretaries is a whiz at slicing and dicing T-shirts and altering them into something a bit more feminine. Personally, I absolutely hate the rounded neck tees; I was pretty happy to just cut mine into a V-neck. Some of us, though, got very creative with slashed sleeves and tied sides. Cute stuff!

Soon we loaded onto a bus and drove to a restaurant in Old Sacramento. During Prohibition, there was a speakeasy on the property, and the restaurant/bar has maintained the look and feel of that era. Most of the activity on Saturday took place on the restaurant's patio, where we divided into four groups for a beer making challenge. Here you can see the brew master, Robert, and his staff, waiting to begin our training session. (Robert is the dark haired guy in the middle with one foot forward.)

There were points awarded to the groups for different things, and in the end, there was a quiz. Two of the four teams tied, and Hubby was on one of the winning teams although my group wasn't in the running. I should mention that some of us were probably distracted a bit during the brewing/teaching process by the food and beer pairings Robert arranged for us to taste as well as the full bar and, as a result, maybe didn't learn as much as we should have. I might have been one of those people.

As the afternoon drew late, we were ushered back onto the bus for a drive to our next location, a local clubhouse, where we were served a traditional German dinner. This man serenaded us with polka music while we dined, and another gentleman taught us all how to dance.

Later, a DJ took over and rock and roll prevailed. Another fun and successful firm event!

Oh, and one more cool thing: Eight names were drawn to meet with Brewmaster Robert in a few weeks to bottle the beer we made and taste more cheese and beer, and guess what? Yep, my name was one of those drawn. The adventure continues . . . .

Maxine

Today (Saturday, October 1st) is my firm's annual mystery event, so instead of blogging tonight, I'm off having fun. After all, we can't argue with the wisdom of Maxine!

I'll be back tomorrow night to tell you what we did this year. I hope you're "getting a life" this weekend too!

Movie Review

The Wild Child and I had a mother/daughter outing today: We went to see The Help followed by a late lunch at In and Out Burger. Excellent!

I read the book, The Help, some time ago and loved it; I loved the movie just as much, and I thought they did a great job getting all the most important parts of the book into the film. The only down side? I should have brought more tissues with me as the few I had were a soggy mess by the end of the film. When we were having lunch, the Wild Child mentioned she wished she knew what happened to all the characters after the story ended. I think that's a pretty good recommendation for any book or movie, don't you?

Hubby and I went to see the Helen Mirren film, The Debt, a couple weeks ago. I guess I was expecting more action but it was more about the characters, their relationships, and the psychology of the situation they were involved in. It wasn't bad--just not what I expected. And I left the film thinking it was one of those movies that would linger in my mind to be pondered later, but that's not what happened. I just pretty much forgot about it.

I think Hubby and I may need to see Money Ball next. How about you? Have you seen any good movies lately?