Block of the Month with Nellie

It is a snowy day here in Littleton, Colorado. It is so pretty!

Well, I have four blocks nearly completed- just one is in need of the binding sewn in the back. I have chosen to do a series of wall hangings rather than a quilt for a couple of reasons. One, I need to work on my machine quilting and the small blocks allow me a lot more freedom and ease in that, and two, I have SO MANY free walls to fill around our new home!

The first two are done in my favourite Kansas Trouble-type colours. For the next two, I went outside of my usual, as you can see. I also tried to experiment with the quilting more, trying different things that I have seen Nellie do, and using some of Christine's ideas from her class (that she generously posted on her blog.)

You can click on any of these photos to see it larger- the quilting and embellishments show up better!

I miss being able to do this with the class, but I loved the photos from last month and am having fun participating from here.

Have a great day everyone- I miss you!

The other video!

Playing a song called "America" which we Canadians could recognize as "God Save the Queen". I looked it up and the British used this as their national anthem long before the Americans put the words to their version. So there. lol

Video?

trying to get this video to work on here!

Success!!!

Chloe is second from the left in blonde pigtails- the music stand is so tall, it pretty nearly covers all of her! lol

Thriller!

Last weekend, Heidi went to UNC with a bunch of her bandmates to participate in their attempt to make the Guinness Book of World records for the most people doing the Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance at one time.

Heidi said they had an awesome time, and just this morning, Rich sent me a photo of it that he and Heidi found online- so I wanted to post it here!

There is a group shot, a smaller group shot where you can see Heidi on the far left side, just up from the bottom a bit- there are two guys in marching band uniforms right in the corner, then go up a bit- Heidi is the first full person you see on the left, with dark pants, and a closer up shot of Heidi.

There were more than 600 high school students and the performance needs to be judged to see if they pass or not...

Let it Snow- for real!

We woke up this morning to a gentle snowfall; there was just barely enough snow to see between the blades of grass. Our first snow!

It is now a couple of hours later and the snowflakes are a little bigger and there is definitely enough to cover things now! It won't last though, they are calling for much warmer days next week. But it is pretty while it lasts.

And is it a coincidence that the day after I hang up my "Let it Snow" wall hanging- it does???? I think not.

Let it Snow!

I finally finished that wall hanging that I took the class for a couple of weeks ago. Not that I don't have scads of other unfinished projects... but I wanted to hang this over the fireplace.

I used wool and this heavy thread called Renaissance for the applique. I embellished the middle section with white jewels in lieu of snowflake buttons which I just couldn't find anywhere. 

I took some tips from Christine Baker- she has kindly put her machine quilting tips on her blog- and tried to be a bit creative when quilting this. I tried to make the middle section look like blowing snow, on the corners I "wrote" other things we can do when it snows (besides building a snowman like the fabric border says!lol), and on the borders, I outlined the snowbanks and did stars and loops above the snowmen. I still have a long way to go before I am a good machine quilter, but I am having so much fun getting there!

I have really started to get things on the wall this week and I love the way it looks. Empty walls mean echoes. Full walls means it is ours, it means we are staying, it means HOME.

Handbells!

We went to Chloe's Handbell Choir performance at the elementary school last night and we were SO impressed! They sound so pretty and considering the bells are new- so NO ONE has played them before- the fact that they played actual songs was amazing. I don't have a video camera, but my new camera does allow me to do video for short clips and so I "filmed" two of the songs.

One sounds like "God Save the Queen" though it is called "America". The other song was The Great Gate of Kiev. I haven't added video clips on here before, but I am going to try.*

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos. Chloe is on the far left in the closeup photo, and second from the left in the group photo. I didn't have my big lens- the gym is pretty small (especially considering there are more than 750 kids at the school!), so I thought the small lens would be good enough. It wasn't. We had to sit at the back and I really wasn't able to get a good photo of Chloe. Thank goodness for photo-editing software!

*after waiting more than an hour, I have decided NOT to keep waiting for this video to upload. I have both songs uploaded already onto my facebook, if you would like to hear.

Weekend in Grand Junction

We just spent the weekend with Becca in Grand Junction and it was great. Becca showed us around her campus and around town, as well as giving us a cool tour of the Colorado National Monument just outside of town. Her campus is small but pretty and seems very welcoming. We had a nice dinner out together and breakfast too, before we headed back home.

It is a four hour drive from here, but what a drive! I will be putting a huge photo album up on Webshots today if you would like to see it- the terrain changes so much, it is incredible.

As you can see in my title photo at the top of this page, the west coast of Colorado has mesas, not mountains.  A mesa is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are steep cliffs. They are really amazing.

The photos you see here show the Monument- that little rock right in the middle of the first photo is the same one that Rich is perched on in the second photo!!! AAAAHHHH!!!! My heart was in my throat the whole time as Rich and Becca climbed around on those rocks as nimbly as mountain goats!