Tornado Damage 2011

We had a tornado hit our area last Tuesday (June 21st), but thankfully there were no personal injuries reported, and not many houses were damaged. Most of the damage was to mature trees. The most damage to our house was inside - our dogs like to play UNDER our bed, and somehow they ripped my bedskirt!

Does Dora look guilty?

My poor bedskirt! I have since repaired it - not the type of sewing that I like to spend my time on!

This poor house had not one, not two, but three trees uprooted! They said one of the ways they knew it was a tornado, was by studying the direction the trees were twisted out of the ground and tossed.

I wonder how badly this person's truck was damaged!

This was a huge tree, split in half (nice pic of Hannah in the mirror!).

Typical tornado damage - tops of trees just snapped off, and set down on the ground. I saw several really tall pine trees damaged in this manner.

This house had damage on the edge of its roof, caused by a falling tree. All in all, our area was extremely lucky. The tornado was in our area for exactly two minutes, did all this damage, yet no houses were damaged (except by falling trees), and no lives were lost. Very lucky indeed.

Emily's Father's Day Dinner

Here is my daughter, Emily, cooking up a storm this past Sunday for Father's Day dinner!


She was ably assisted by my other daughter, Hannah. Check out Hannah's newly-blonde look! She had to opt for either all blonde or all brown, for her role as Sandy in "Grease" - I think the blonde works for her!

Of course, Scott got into the act, too!
First, he was tasting the guacamole...then he was mixing the all-important mojitos!

My main job was keeping up with the used dishes! I think Emily used most of my pots and pans (just kidding Emily), but it was worth it!

This is the fantastic Mojito Chicken - by Guy Fieri on the Food Network - which we all agreed was the best chicken dish ever! First a dry rub marinade, then browning in a skillet, then oven baking in broth, and finally oven glazing. Scrumptious!

This is Emily's warm corn and tomato salad - she also made stuffed peppers, which you can see below -

...but the best part? Spending all day together with the family! Happy Father's Day, Scott! We love you!

Father's Day Breakfast

Father's Day 2011 was a food extravaganza! Starting the day was my very modest breakfast for two. The main event was Bacon and Tomato Cups from Melody's fabulous blog fibermania (which now has a sub-blog called fabu food!). Anyway, my cups had neither bacon nor tomatoes! I substituted canadian bacon for the bacon (6 slices, chopped), a few chopped red and yellow pepper slices for the tomatoes, and shredded jack-cheddar-mozzarella cheese for the Swiss. Get the picture? You can put whatever you like in these easy little bites!

By the way - for those you scoff at the idea of using mayo in these breakfast treats - instead of eggs - let me remind you: mayonaisse is made of ....oil and eggs. So there you go. Step one is above - chopping the canadian bacon (like my retro kitchen? complete with the slide-away cutting board).

These frozen chopped onions are a MUST HAVE in my freezer. Why cry over chopping onions, when someone else can do it for you???? By the way, this little corner of countertop? It's just about my only usable counterspace in my entire kitchen. To the left of the sink is my dish drainer, and...oh yeah, that's it. No more counterspace! Did I tell you, I have a retro kitchen? It's tiny, but I have cooked for as many as 40 for dinner.

Here are my able assistants, Dora (7 months) and Cohen (3 years). Once I started chopping canadian bacon, they were VERY close by! Cute, aren't they?

Also on the menu - Tuscan cantaloupe from Trader Joe's. It looked like a regular supermarket cantaloupe, but with deeper, darker green ridges in the rind, ... but the inside was the best part! Super juicy, fragrant, and deeply flavorful - yum! One of my favorite foods in the world!

Makes quite a nice breakfast, doncha think? Happy Father's Day!

AAQI Quilt Finished!

The mini quilt below (8.5" x 11.5") is entitled "Sunrise", and made for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. This is an online quilt auction, which raises money for Alzheimer's Research. Victoria, over at 15 Minutes Play, encouraged us all to make one to donate, and I was happy to participate.

This shows my husband, Scott, and his mom, Maurine. Although she has Alzheimer's, we are grateful that she still can visit with us, and seems to know us, especially Scott, even though her memory is pretty much gone. She is lucky to be in such a nice care center, where they take such good care of her. The day we dropped by, they had just fixed her hair, and she was dressed so nicely for the day.

The morning sky background is curve-pieced, and the sun (which was in my leftover box) was machine appliqued.

"Sunrise" is dedicated to the staff of Morningside Heights Care Center, in Marshall, Minnesota. They treat all of the residents with round-the-clock love and respect. We are so grateful.

My quilt is not on the website yet, but will be added in the next month or two. If you would like to view the quilts currently on their website, or to learn more about the initiative, go to alzquilts.org. Thank you!

12 x 12 Swap Finished!

I never used to save scraps. I DID, however, save smallish pieces, and fold them neatly and stack on my shelf - pieces smaller than a fat quarter, I would nicely fold and put away. But extra strips or scraps from a project? I would stash them in a bag under my sewing table, and give to a friend when the bag got full. No more! Blogging has changed this! I am a regular follower of "15 Minutes Play", a very fun (and addictive) blog which encourages creativity and play, using SCRAPS! and I am hooked!!!

Recently, Victoria (the blog's writer) offered a 12" square mini quilt swap, "something from nothing" - using only scraps. I signed up instantly! She paired me with another quilter, who will receive my quilt. Another quilter will make a mini for me! We may post our progress, but we are not to divulge the recepient until that lucky person opens her mail and finds her quilt gift. The names were given out on April 8th, and the quilts are to be mailed by May 16th. I just finished my quilt recently.

I started with my MANY bins and baskets of scraps, and a design idea for my quilt. One of the main focuses of the 15 minute blog, and something I wanted to include in my quilt, is to "make fabric". We use our scraps, piecing them together any which way, until a usable size is achieved. Victoria actually has an excellent tutorial on the website.

I wanted to make flying geese, so I started by making fabric for the geese. My background was to be made of lime green fabrics (my favorite color). I made the geese of red, purple, and orange scraps. Some of these fabrics are old!

This shows my progress in piecing my flying geese. I drew the curved shape on phone book paper with a sharpie, which shows through to the back side - an essential element of paper piecing. Starting at the bottom/wide end, I placed fabric for a goose, then some gold "sky", first on one side. Stitch from the back side, so you can see the line, flip, and press. Then add the other sky piece and repeat. You're on your way! The gold batik is leftover from Christmas projects! (see previous posts about Emily's tree skirt and stocking) I'm sure this is old fabric, too! The red print is a very old Alexander Henry that still looks smashing!

After piecing the curved geese, I pieced the large lime background sections, adding a few errant geese - you know those you see, trying to catch up with the others! Then came the challenging but not-really-that-hard part of fitting the geese to the background. I traced the curve onto the green section, cut, added matching hash marks, and then pinned like crazy. It was sort of like setting in a sleeve. I used to sew all of my own clothes - in another life - but I'm good at it! :)

Finished quilt top, ta da!

Then I layered with wool batt (yummy, creates lovely dimension, and nice drape), quilted it, added an orange flap edge insert, and bound with the red print. After sewing a label on the back, it's ready to "fly" to its new home! Fun project!

Scrap Challenge - Finish!

You might recognize this picture - this is the same bin of scraps used for my Challenge Block in a previous post. Why? Well, the table runner was made FIRST, then the Challenge Block, but I couldn't post about the runner until today...because I finally gave the gift (the runner) to my friend on Saturday. Actually, this runner, and the Challenge Block, are the 2nd and 3rd projects made with this same set of lime green scraps!

This runner was inspired by a Scrap Challenge on a friend's blog (Basket full of Scraps, by my friend Sujata). This was to be done in February, the theme was Love, and we were to use only scraps. I decided to try Sujata's string piecing pattern, using my scraps, and make a table runner for my friend, Sue. The love theme was perfect for Sue, because she is a very special friend, she shares her love with those around her, and this gift is also dedicated to her son, who passed away.
I started with my favorite lime green scraps, although I tried to lean toward the sage greens, as that more suits Sue's decor. I also threw in some red scraps, as Sue love's red! The gold and purple jumped into the pool because of the colors in that red print fabric.

Then I string-pieced blocks (around 11" square I think), using strips of various widths. The blocks were cut diagonally in half, some one way, and some the other way, to yield a nice groups of triagles. I arranged them until I was happy with the result.

I backed and bound it in the sage green dotty print, after quilting it. I combined some straight-line quilting (with the walking foot) and some free-motion shell design quilting, my new favorite for filling in a space.

Close up view, including my great grandma's pretty vase. Project completed!

Minnesota Love

I LOVE Minnesota! But I'm sure there are those of you who wonder WHY ON EARTH anyone would want to live "up north", where it gets cold and snows a lot? and the winters are long? and the lakes actually freeze over and people drive their cars on them??? Well, I'll tell you - it's because Minnesota is beautiful, and Minnesotans are even more beautiful. There is a saying "Minnesota nice", describing the folks up there, and it's true!

I found this shot online, but I do remember deep snowdrifts this deep! I've got a picture somewhere of my grandma shoveling snow that she had to toss over her head! And we've also got a picture of Maggie as a puppy - around 1997 - standing on top of a snow pile that's at least 6 feet tall. Feeling the love yet?

How about now? This lovely picture is of Lake of the Isles, one of the dozen or so lakes that are located within the city limits of Minneapolis. Yes, this is IN the city. I shared a house on Lake of the Isles with 3 girlfriends one summer during my college years, and this was pretty much the view from our front door. You could just walk across the street and get on a nice walking path, and walk all the way around the lake. So relaxing on a hot summer day! (yes, it gets hot up there!) We even had an awesome porch swing on the front porch, how Norman Rockwell is that?

Love it now?

How about this gorgeous shot? This shows the stunning fall color around Lake Minnetonka, a huge network of lakes that is between Minneapolis and my home town of Delano. Doesn't this just take your breath away? My mom and dad used to love to take a drive to "look at the fall color", and they didn't have to go far to see beautiful scenery.

Here's something else to love about Minnesota - the good old U of M! The University of Minnesota, my alma mater, is located right in Minneapolis, just across the Mississippi River from downtown. College kids sprawled across the grass was a common sight in the spring and fall - same as most campuses!

I can't believe I found this picture! This is the house where I grew up, shown in a listing from when it was sold just a few years ago. Lots of good memories there! And look in the background, you can see the school I attended, kindergarten through 6th grade. Looks like a happy house, doesn't it?

Minnesota, Hail to Thee!