Progress!

My sister's house caught fire 2 weeks ago, while she was home.  The firefighters arrived quickly and had the fire out before much was damaged.  She lost the roof and but nothing inside the house was damaged.  The electrician she hired a year ago did some shoddy work in her attic, he's in trouble now.

The power has been off since the fire, so she's staying in a motel until her house can be repaired.  A friend of hers is taking care of her cat while she's in the hotel. 

I took a break from the scrapbooking to make a table topper as a thank you gift to the friend for helping my sister, and while I was at it I thought I'd make one for my sister as well. 

One can be seen on the far left.  The second one is nearly assembled.  I'll add the borders and get them quilted this weekend.  I need to get them in the mail by Tuesday!

The.... NEEDLE (theme to Jaws playing in the background)

My 10 yo son experienced his first rusty nail yesterday. In the doctor's office he ran circles, paced, jumped up and down, squeezed the goop out of the hand sanitizer, danced, ran the water in the water fountain, flipped the light switches all the while asking "Mom, why does the air in my lungs come out like this".... displays the air coming out of his lungs...."Mom, why do the cords on my neck look like this when I do this".. displays the cords on his neck...you get the picture... for nearly an hour while we waited for.... THE NEEDLE.

And when it went in, he looked at me and said "MOM, THAT DIDN'T EVEN HURT!"

His mother went home and had a very strong Bahama Mama.

Civil War

The kids are in bed, dh is working and the house is quiet.  I love scrapbooking during this time.  A friend and I are visiting a new fabric store in the morning so I should get to bed but it's sooo nice and quiet right now.

I'm honoring my great, great grandfather James Monroe.  James fought in the Civil War from start to finish.  He enlisted on 6 Jul. 1861 in Company D, 4th Iowa Infantry. He fought in the battles of Chickasaw Bayou; Arkansas Post; First and Second battles of Jackson, Mississippi; Champion Hill; Siege of Vicksburg; Brandon, Mississippi; Chattanooga; Mission Ridge; In the Atlanta Campaign and in the battles of Jonesboro & Savannah. He was wounded in the head by a piece of shell at Chickasaw Bayou and was shot through the clothing at Vicksburg. Honorably Discharged at Davenport, Iowa 6 Aug. 1865.

I'm off to bed now... thanks for visiting!

Using fabric in a whole new way

A woman in Oregon makes these using chairs from a garage sale.  They're beautiful!

If I wanted America to fail...

Good ol' NC blizzard

We had ANOTHER tree fall on the house. 6 days before high school graduation too! We had super help to clean it up though and by dusk all that remained was a stump, saw dust and the ever so lovely scent of gas/oil in the air.

Our front yard used to look like this every spring, a good ol' North Carolina blizzard (flowers falling off our flowering pear trees):

Today, our front yard looked like this:

We did it

Liebster Blog Award

Mallorie Anderson over at Everyday Quilter Http://babyfire04.blogspot.com awarded me with the Liebster Blog Award!  It's for bloggers with under 100 followers to help them get some from what I understand.  After you have it given to you, you are supposed to send it to 5 others with the same qualifications.  I'm really excited!  Not only is it cool to get an award, it's neat that there are actually some people that read my blog!

Thank you Mallorie!

Here are a few people I"m sending this award to:
Valorie at Eat Clean  http://eatclean-traindirty.blogspot.com
Sarah at Long Time Coming  http://likealonggoodbye.blogspot.com

Master Gardener

I'm happy to announce I am now a Master Gardner, and in honor of this auspicious occassion....