A fun book

It seems with all the adventures in remodeling, I am using any extra time to destress and read!  This is a fun, frivolous book I picked up at the library.

The plot is light, highly improbable and a little risque.  It's about two very wealthy friends in their early forties that have a significant reversal in fortunes.  The news anchor is fired and the other's husband loses his multi million a year job.  They happenstance into an opportunity to start a high end call girl business in their luxurious high rise NYC apartment building.  One is the mother of two teenage girls.  It's funny and an easy read. 

February Craft Night

I posted awhile ago about the vintage card baskets I adore.  My mom did a Google search, found the directions and patterns and we made our own at our last craft night.  None of us can crochet, so we used the blanket stitch to put the baskets together.  We saved our Christmas cards (which seemed to dwindle in number this year) to make Christmas baskets.  You could use any kind of cards for any holiday or birthdays.  Here are our creations.

And here is a close up of each one:

This was mine.

My sister's.

My mom's.

It took us awhile to get the hang of it and at one point we almost abandoned the project and went out for the evening.  I will make some more now.  She found the pattern and instructions at allfreecrafts.com.  Check it out!

It seems I've forgotten about the blog the past month.  We've been busy installing new floors in our bedroom and living room/dining room, painting, selecting furniture, fabrics, etc.  The house is getting a whole new look.  I have stuff everywhere -- the china hutch is emptied as well as the hope chest, closet, assorted cupboards.  I have a couch in the middle of my kitchen, hutch drawers on the family room floor, boxes in the hall, garage, etc.  It took awhile to find the camera and then some batteries! 

February Book Club -- New Book Format

We were all too busy after the holidays to make it to our January Book Club meeting -- that happens every so often.  So our February date will be for our January book selection -- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It's our classic novel selection for this six month period.  I just love F. Scott Fitzgerald.  In fact, The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books ever.  I have a new toy for reading books -- the Ipad!  It was a wonderful Christmas gift. 

I really love the Apple jacket for it.  I feel like it's protected.  Here is the book:

My page is bookmarked.

I am very new to this world of reading.  I've bought some books at Amazon, IGoogle books and figured out how to get on the waiting list for ebooks at our local library and downloaded that software.  I still love the feel of a book in my hand but this option if for portability.

January Craft Night

Our January craft night was at my house and it was my project.  I found this darling Valentine project in my Simply Handmade magazine.  There were some trials and tribulations associated with the project.  I went to Joann's to buy the frames and other materials.  You needed a frame, mat, crackle paint medium, white paint, scrapbook papers, glue (Tacky Glue is my favorite), scalloped scissors (we could find every other style so adapted) and some embellishments.  First problem was that all the frames were on sale except the frames I picked!  Then they ended up with a different finish on the wood and the paint wouldn't stick.  So we were off to Target to buy new frames that worked out fine (and were less expensive).  Our next challenge was rolling all these strips of paper and making them uniform sizes.  We did our best.  These are our finished projects.

This was my mom's and we think it looks the best.  The frame is 8 X 10" with a 5 X 7" mat opening.

This is mine, not sure it looks like a heart.  I think I could remove a couple of spirals to clean it up.

The last one is my sister's.  It sure looks pretty.  These were harder and trickier than we thought they would be.  My mom called the next day and said hers looked better the day after!

Amazing Pastel on Paper

This was a very special Christmas gift.  My daughter's high school friend is an artist and started a small business using her amazing talents.  My daughter took her a photograph and a pastel portrait was made from it.  The picture is from when our daughters were about two and three.  They were playing dress up with my nightgowns. 

I just love it!  You can see the tops of our nativity scene on the bottom.  We are redecorating our living room and this will be hung in a very special place.  It was the best gift ever!

This is a quilt I made during our now annual Lake Tahoe retreat.  It's called Stepping Stones and was a quick and easy pattern.  It's been in my stash since early 2009, looking for a good home.  Well, it found one.  One of our retreat group's daughters will run a children's summer camp in Uganda this June or July.  She is a senior in college and this is a graduation project.  She has to do all the fundraising for the camp costs.  So I sent her this quilt to use as a raffle item.  I am so impressed with her efforts and she is a remarkable young woman.  I think this beautiful quilt found the perfect purpose.  I wish her the best of luck!  We also made her another quilt at December's retreat and it's at the longarm quilter right now.

Beautiful Ballerinas

This was finished just in time to be wrapped for Christmas.  It was started in 2004 when my daughter was still in ballet 15-20 hours a week.  She was a beautiful dancer but high school became more demanding and she had to give up ballet.  This is a small wall hanging, paper pieced, and a much bigger project than anticipated.

Here are some close ups of the dancers.

This ballerina was missing a finger when I finished her so she had to have some repair work done.  Some of these pieces were TINY!

The ribbons on the costume waistbands was saved from the ribbons (hundreds of them I'm sure) I sewed on her pointe shoes.  I think the piece is darling and making it brought back many fabulous memories.