100 post giveaway and Quilt retreat!

My bags are packed! I'm so excited....I'm going away for a week long quilt retreat with 7 of my friends. We are heading north to Idaho and the Teton Mountain range.
We all went last year and had such a blast, we booked for this year before we even left last years retreat!
It's called the Teton Patchworks. I recommend it highly...check it out here.
Do you remember the blocks that I showed you a long time ago? (top photo) I'm hoping to have time there to work on this quilt............

.... and this quilt that I have been working on for a while every time that I get a few spare minutes at my machine.....a snowball quilt made with 30's charm squares that I have swapped over the past 3 years with my Clothesline Club members & Yo Yo Mama's.

I have several hundred charm squares so I think I'm safe to assume that I'll have enough!

I have a quilt cut ready to piece for my family room....8"- 60 degree triangles...I'm just putting them together with an ecclectic mix of fabric from my stash.

I've also cut for a fall quilt using a layer cake and 3 yards brown polka dot for a background....

All my projects are in thier containers & ready to go...my goal is to have them out of the containers and made into quilt tops by the time I get home!

Of course I will show them to you when I get back....but in the meantime, It's time to celebrate my 100 post with a pattern giveaway....

There will be 3 winners and I will be sending each winner a copy of my "Thanksgiving Dinner" and my "Scarecrow" pattern....just in time for some Fall stitchin!

Here is how you enter....show me some bloggy love by becoming one of my Followers! Just add my blog to your reader and then leave a comment on this post telling me that you are now a follower....for those of you who already are on my followers list and would still like to enter, all you need to do is leave a comment.

Easy - peasy.....when I get back I'll draw 3 names from my followers list and send off the patterns with a few fun suprises included. The winners will be announced on Sunday October 4th. Good luck ya'll!!!!

Now I'm off to do some marathon sewing!

Fall Garden

This describes what my garden looks like right now....
a tumble of flowers no longer in nice little mounds but overgrown and full.....
Vegetable vines climbing one into the other refusing to stay within the boundaries of the raised beds that I planted them in....
Herbs aplenty and full apple and pear trees.....
Smiling sunflowers and happy mums......
The lovely scent of roses fill the crisp evening air.....
White blossoms glow under the full harvest moon.....
Tomatoes still ripening on the vine.....

I love my garden in the fall......I don't worry too much about the upkeep at this point, I just enjoy the bountiful harvest of Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers.

This is also the time that I harvest seeds for next spring.....even though I am enjoying this time in the garden when it's almost time for it to go to sleep for the long winter.

When spring comes I will want to be prepared for the awakening with a wide variety of saved seeds for more abundance next fall....

and the wonderful circle of planting & harvesting continues.

To Everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven......

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which has been planted.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

More Family Reunion...

Here are the new blocks that I've added to my "Family Reunion" quilt for this month's class. I pieced a few blocks to go in the quilt because.....well.....what's a family reunion without grandma's quilts?
I pieced the blocks below hoping they would look like a scrap quilt that a grandma would have made.....and to compliment the poem beside it.

My "embroidery stunt double" Kassidy stitched these two blocks for me while I appliqued. I'm so glad to have her help....teaching her to applique is in the very near future!

Below are the family sir & maiden names on both mine and Mr. Honey's side back about 3 generations....our childrens ancestors. Of course everyone doing the quilt will stitch thier own family names.

I wanted this block to look like an old quilt that had been pieced out of leftover clothing.....maybe from Aunt Hazel's red dress and Uncle Earl's graysuit.....

Or some yellow gingham leftover from a "chicken-scratch" apron.....

Here's a new shot of the quilt so far.....we will complete it in February and then the pattern will also be available for anyone who did not join the club.

I like the way it's turning out onto fabric looking just like it did in my head!

For some reason, I failed to get a close up of the "Come give us a Hug & Kiss" block on the top photo......my brothers & sisters and I would always get "the speech" on the way to the reunion about being polite and letting our great aunts & uncles which we maybe hadn't seen for a while give us a hug & kiss.

This was especially hard for my little brothers who walked around with thier hands covering thier cheeks for the first little while of every reunion! (that's why we got he speech)

More on this quilt next month.....

New Project for the Yo-Yo Mama's!

Last week I met all of the YO-YO Mama's for our club meeting at Material Girls. We are a 1930's club hosted by Nadine once a month.
We call ourselves yo-yo mamas because all of last year we did a yo-yo exchange at every meeting....now it's time for a new project.
We are doing a 1930's sampler quilt called "Egg Money Quilts" by Eleanor Burns. Here are a few of the blocks.

We also had a few quilts brought for show and tell.

Shanna made this quilt a long time ago...I think it's called Grandma's Dishes. I just love it....it's perfectly scrappy.
Below is Debbie's show and tell....I dont know what the quilt is but of course the fabric is Mary Englebriet.

Debbie is still working on this one, she will be adding more squares for the border. I especially like the two colored stars.

We also have another swap going on with 2 1/2" squares.....at the end of the year we will get together and we will each make them into a quilt called the "Brown bag 9 patch".....as usual me and my quilty friends had a great time.

I love going to Nadine's...I'm always inspired by her & the wonderful women in our club.

Look what I found!

I know today is Vintage Monday but I am showing you something else that's sort of old...8 years anyway. Last week I found an old roll of film that had never been developed. Yay!!!! a found treasure! I ran it over to Walgreens to see what was on it and these are the pictures.

Here is Sterling at 4 and Kassidy at 2. It's October 2001 at Gardner Village in West Jordan.

Every year we always make sure that we go to Gardner Village and take thier pictures with the witches. This is probably the first year we took them. I highly recommend visiting the village if you are ever in this area. Click on the link & go check it out.

Can you see Sterling on the porch trying to see what the front of the witch looks like?

Kassidy isn't far behind. By the way...can you see why Mr. Honey calls her Curly-Girly? Those curls are all natural and she gets them from him.

Gardner Village always decorates for the season....in October it's witches and they always put on quite a display.

The witch on the bicycle over the pond (in the top photo) is motorized so that she is pedaling the bike.

You can't really tell from the picture but she is high over the water and looks like she is riding in the air...kind of like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz during the twister scene.

A witches garden.....

They always have this HUGE witch that has flown right into the silo of the original flour mill building which is now a big FUN shopping area and restaraunt called Archibalds.

More pictures on the lost roll.

It's in October so I'm sure we were on a camping & deer hunting trip.

We usually make that one a Holt trip with Mr.Honey's parents and his brothers along with thier families. We always have a great time....as you know I love to go out in my trailer especially during the hunting season, the mountains in the fall are absolutely breathtaking.

This is Sterling & Kass with thier Grandma & Grandpa Holt.

Still camping......

Sterling in our backyard with our 15 lb cat Oliver.....yes, I said 15 pounds. We rescued him from a shelter when he was a year old........Oliver is now 16 years old. We really should have named him Garfield because that's exactly who he acts and looks like.....but it really doesn't matter, we just call him kitty anyway except for Mr. Honey who calls him "Meatball".... Mr. Honey has a nickname for everyone. He rarely calls me Lori. To him, my name is Wifey.

Ben is "Bud or Buddy", Sterling is "The Ster-man" and he always calls Sophie "cutes".

More of Kassidy & Sterling in front of the arbor and gate that leads to the vegetable & herb garden in our backyard. I don't know why Kassidy isn't very happy here, a good guess would be Sterling had been teasing her as usual ....some things never change! LOL....

I'm so glad I found this old roll of film. Now that we've gone digital, hopefully no more pictures will be lost! I'm very carefull to back them up onto a hard copy.....I would hate to lose anymore precious memories!