Fun For Friday - Candy Land

Happy Friday Again!  My Lollipop Garden Quilt header is perfect for today's theme.

Last Friday I was busy making a cake for my son's Birthday.  I was able to take a photo just in the nick of time before it gone!

FYI - I use home made butter cream frosting and added the zest, instead of the tub of frosting and cool whip.

 

Here is what I made with all the candy that laying around the kitchen last week.

It is a Candy Bouquet!  Here are the steps to making one.

Find a large vase and fill with with some candy.  I used Hershey's kisses.
Cut a swimming noodle to fit in the neck of the vase.

Using a couple squares of tissue paper wrap the noodle and insert into the neck of the vase.

Using Bamboo sticks (I bought them at the grocery store near the grilling supplies). Hot glue the candy to the sticks.  I also included a gift card.  I think photos or a CD would be fun too.  I used varying lengths of sticks but just snapping off a piece from the top.

 Then you insert the candy sticks into the swimming noodle arranging as you would flowers.

 

After all the candy is in place, I tucked pinched squares of tulle to fill in the gaps.  You can also use colored tissue paper.  I used a pre-made bow to decorate the vase.

And there you have it!  Who wouldn't love one of these?  Andrew sure did!

Yay!  I finished my flying geese quilt top.  My goal is to get it basted today.

 

Warm weather has finally reached us in NJ!  I was able to enjoy my favorite quilting location. 

And of course coco is loving the yard time with me!

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Fun For Friday - Food Fun!!

Hooray!  Today I'm making a total mess of the kitchen and is it fun!

Our house went on the market on Tuesday and we've been super blessed to have received 3 offers in the first 2/3 days.  We accepted one and the family is thrilled to buy our home - whew!

So after keeping the kitchen clean, clean, clean I'm having a great time messing it up.


My son ordered "Bubble Room Orange Crunch Cake" for his Birthday celebration this weekend - great choice, I love it!

Here is the Bubble Room restaurant in Captiva, FL that invented this fabulous cake.

And here is their Orange Crunch cake -

Click HERE for the recipe.   I'll photograph my finished cake this weekend.

The secret to this cake is a layer of walnuts, brown sugar, butter and graham cracker crumbs.   No, I'm not gorging on candy, lol, it is for another project.

 

The cake batter has 1/2 cup orange juice and 2 TBs of orange zest.  It's fragrant and delicious.

 

I got a really fun and funny give away prize in the mail.  I won the Downton Abbey T-shirt from my blog buddy and recent AQS Lancaster Winner, Teresa of Fabric Therapy .

Check out this address - what a hoot she is!  Thanks Teresa!

Thank you to all who have asked about our moving process.   We are house hunting this weekend and hopeful to move in early June.   Now that the house is sold, maybe I'll get a little sewing done.

Have a fun weekend!

 

Wassup?

Popping in to report on the little bit if quilting I've done lately.

Hand quilting update on the Jubilee quilt.

Here is the back view.  You can really see how the wool has great loft and body.  I'm loving it.  Surprisingly, I'm using a size 9 between.  It has great strength and I'm able to achieve small stitches (small enough for me anyway).

If you are wondering if those circles are a pain to quilt, YES they are.  But I like the look with the stuffed berries.

Here is an update on the projects I took to the retreat, which was fabulous!

I got all the blocks pieced on this.  I have to get it on the wall and play with it.

Here are my blocks for my eventual king sized bed quilt.  I'm loving it so far.

and Hooray!  I purchased one of Lori's quilts from AAQI.  I've been wanting to and when I saw this one it really spoke to me.  Lori has done an amazing job toward achieving her goal of $1000. for this worthy organization.

 
That's a wrap for me.  Have a somber and joyful Easter week if you celebrate, and if you don't Happy Spring!

Fun For Friday - I'm LEAVING!!

Just for the weekend.....
This weekend is our annual Shawnee Retreat!  Hooray!! I'm Saved!

But first a little Frida love.  I bought 3 yards of this fabulous fabric at the Lancaster Quilt Show.  Won't this make a wonderful backing?

This is my favorite art book of her work.  She was a talented and fascinating woman.

Little Day of the Dead figures of Frida and Diego keep company with my thread.

Today I'm also sharing a fun note and photos I received from Gwen Marston (my mentor, idol and friend.)  It was such a fun surprise for me.

Here is a photo from 1995, my first Beaver Island  retreat with my dear friend, Mary B.  The theme was log cabin quilts and  I made 1 small quilt a day.

Gwen in on the far left, I don't know who is in the brown pants, then me looking totally dorky in a denim dress and sweatshirt (nice hair, lol) and my Mary.

Here is the log cabin quilt that Mary made.  I loved it then; I love it now.

Here is what I'll be working on at the Retreat:

The Flying Geese project:

And my king sized bed nine-patch quilt (not worked on since the retreat 2 years ago - ooops.)  I even added some more of those chinzy looking brown florals.  Oh yea, I have a backing already.  Now I just need to SEW!

I hope you are doing something really fun this Weekend and Happy Spring!

Ramblings

Happy Tuesday!

Here is another "quilt from the attic" that I made for my son, Andrew, in 2000.  We had 2 cats and a chocolate lab then, but all different from the ones we have now.



The acorns and oak leave pattern was inspired by the bedroom set that he has, which was my Grandparents and looks like this:

It is literally falling apart as you can see here:

Without properly securing the quilt all the diagonal quilting stretched and broke :(

 What's this? by gum it's GUM! (can you name that movie?)

 Of course coco, who spends a lot of time on Andrews bed doesn't see any problems.  I'm not sure it will ever get repaired, but I'm glad Andrew loved and used it so long.

Now here is some real quilt guilt!  (see original quilt post here)  Every night coco goes to bed in her crate with a cookie.  Apparently one night she got a little "confused" and ended up chewing a large portion of binding.  Stinker!!  Well, I just told her, "you did it, you live with it".....

I got a really nice surprise at the AQS Show in Lancaster last Friday.  They included a photo of my Mother's Garden Quilt from 2012 in the program.

My class with Sharon Schamber was not what I expected, but I sure learned a lot!!
here is my top take away from the class.  By the way I never even sewed!

1.   Everything should be constructed for the quilting process.

2.  Use Schmetz embroidery needles in the machine, they are heat tempered and won't bend.

3.  Always wash your backing fabric; but never dry it in the dryer.  Sharon says the act of tumbling it and turning it add twist into the fibers.  She said just snap it straight and hang it over  banister, or shower rod.  She also said it "cooks" it and reminded us that cotton is a vegetable.

4.  Always, I repeat, always cut your borders, strips and lattice on the length of  fabric!!  Did I mention always?  Your strips will have less of chance to skew or ripple.

With all that is going on here, I'm finding it hard to stay caught up on the computer. For the time being instead of emailing everyone a thank you for commenting, I'd rather take the time to visit your blog.  If you have a question I'm more than happy to answer it.  I love getting questions.

I really enjoy reading comments and I never take them for granted.  They are what makes blogging worthwhile for me.

I'll be sneaking back on Friday for a little fun.