This is the lye solution ready to go. This is also why I don’t make soap with kids or furry animals around….this stuff can be dangerous if it gets on skin or eyes.

This picture shows the fats and oils ready to mix with the lye.  This has some luscious oils such as cocoa butter in it and it made for wonderful soap.

Because of the cocoa butter I didn’t add any fragrance to this batch of soap. It had plenty on its own, but I did marble the soap by mixing in some cocoa in about 2 cups of the soap, then marbling it like you would when making a cake. It added some wonderful color to the finished bars! Sorry I didn’t show you pictures of any of the process, but I think you need a second person to photograph soap making!

These pictures show some of the marbled bars and some of the next batch I made curing.

I should have left it sit out for about three weeks before using it, makes for harder, more mild bars that last longer, but I just couldn’t wait on these marbled bars.

Doesn’t that bar look luscious?! The Hunter calls them chocolate chip cookie dough soap because they smell like chocolate chip cookies!

Another thing we did before Christmas break was over was to make peach jelly for Mini-me. He LOVES peach jelly and won’t hardly eat any other kind now, so we had to get it done before school started. PBJs are just not the same without jelly!I think they like to play with the canning utensils more than anything. I kept having to search for what I needed!This was just our first batch. I made another a couple of days later.

If you want to find out more you can go to StepOnPins or go to Carla’s blog, Feathered Fibers.

Join me!

The first time we took them was on December 22 and we took them to Schell Osage because they have blinds there and the kids don’t have to be quite so still as they do when you aren’t hunting out of a blind. It was supposed to be a clear day with temperatures in the upper 40′s so would be perfect to get the kids out. We had to get up at 2:30 AM to get up there by the time they had the draw for the hunting spots. There were 26 blinds available and some other wade and shoot areas where you have to stand in the water when hunting, so we really wanted to draw a blind. Mini-me got to draw and drew number 27. Fortunately, when we got to the window to make our pick there was still one blind left. It was something like 17 degrees out that morning, so we drove to Nevada (Missouri, that is!) for breakfast before heading out to hunt. We hoped it would warm up by the time we got out there.

On the drive to the blind after entering the conservation area we saw these huge flocks of snow geese.

The kids were amazed and had so much fun watching them!

We got to the blind and got everything set up. Unfortunately, the wind was out of the northeast and it was much colder than it was supposed to be. Worse yet, the ducks weren’t flying. Everyone but The Hunter took a nap at some point. 

The interior of the blind has a bench so is not too uncomfortable for a nap, especially when you have a soft head rest! 

This is a picture of Munchie looking for incoming ducks. The ducks you see on the water in the background are our decoys. Notice the cover of the blind in this picture? How bare it is with just the grass covering the interior of the blind? Munchie spent quite a bit of time while Mini-me took a long nap and camouflaged the blind for us. She gathered grass from the mound and piled it in the holes on the front. We were really glad she did as the weather got even worse as the day went on. the wind was howling and it even began snowing and sleeting. That extra cover on the blind really helped keep us warm!

Munchie is trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue. You can see how much more cover there is on the top of the blind. She is in the same position she was in the picture above. She worked HARD!

Finally toward the end of the day a few ducks began flying. You can see the snow flying in this photo of The Hunter and one of the two ducks we were able to kill. Overall, it was brutally cold but the kids had fun and stayed warm. They both wanted to go again.

The second day we went was on December 29. We went to Four Rivers this time and the weather actually was beautiful! The sun was shining for most of the day and it was so warm we were hunting without gloves or coats.

We hadn’t much more than set up the decoys, put the boat in a tree row with the kids in it, placed some sticks and brush on the boat to disguise it some, when the ducks started to come in. The Hunter wasted no time getting the first green head!

That was where we started….but with a little shooting and the warm weather we had one problem -

You can see just a little bit of a knot on the right side of the tree down under that leaning branch…there is a honey bee hive inside of that and they didn’t like the shooting and the close proximity! You can see a few of them flying around, but here is a close-up.

Can  you see all those bees? You could hear the buzzing and more of them were swarming around, so before either of the kids got stung we figured we better move down the tree row.

Here is the second place we ended up. Just down the tree row from the others. Here the kids are in the boat playing with a willow branch that hung over the boat. It was pretty well camouflaged, and when ducks were flying they would hunker down and not move. We got to see a lot of ducks, and though they didn’t want to be here as much as they wanted to be in our first spot, we didn’t do too bad. 

These two drakes were killed by the Hunter with one shot! Not too bad!

My man….ain’t he awesome?

You can also see we were in our hunting shirts with no coats or gloves or anything. Perfect weather to get the kids out!

This picture is looking across the marsh at the area we were hunting. All the grasses you see are in water that is about thigh high. Four Rivers had been dry and hadn’t had any water in it at all until the week before this when they area finally got enough rain to put the river out of its banks and flood the fields. There was plenty of food and the ducks were loving it.

Here we are all headed in. We ended up with 5 mallard drakes total…not too bad considering when we take the kids we are happy with anything! The most important thing was that we had a wonderful time and made some incredible memories!

This first one is Bowtie Blues and has been floating around my UFO pile since the early 2000′s. I can’t remember the exact date, but all the blocks were completed but not yet put together when I got married in 2003. This is #2 on my list of “Tops Needing Minimal Work”. The interior of the top without the borders is 81 square. I put the blue borders on earlier this week. I had planned another border but found that if I added any more it wouldn’t fit on the bed I am going to use it on. I still need to piece the back and cut out the binding, but it is all in one place and ready for that. I am also planning on doing a panto on this quilt as it will be a utility quilt.

This quilt was started in a Carol Doak paper piecing class in March 2009 that I posted about here. I started quilting it a couple of years ago, but was not happy with the backing I picked out. It is a loose weave fabric (love the colors though!) and the batting kind of pokes through a bit when it is quilted. I put it aside thinking I would rip it all out and use a new back, but at this point, I just want it done! It is on the machine right now and I am working on finishing up the pink areas. I had already quilted 3/4 of one of the stars and done all the SID in black. This quilt is #4 on my “Finished Tops” list.

A third quilt I am “playing” with is my Lancaster Rose top and is #9 on the “Finished Tops” list. I want to determine the quilting design in the white space and get it marked so that it is ready to quilt.

I have also sorted through a few of my tops that are ready to be quilted. I organized batting, made sure I had backing and binding ready, and they are packaged ready to go when I have time on the longarm. My plan is to have one of my quilts hanging around ready to go if there is even a day or two between customer quilts.

These along with the customer quilts I have to do this month will keep me more than busy!

The doll quilt is made of scraps and selvages from the fabric I used in Lilli’s quilt here.

We had a wonderful Christmas so I will start with that. I think we had a total of four Christmases and one birthday bash between December 17th and December 30th. Way too many, but the kids sure enjoyed it and had fun. The pictures are a mix of all the get togethers and various family members.Click to view slideshow.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

 

Luke 2:8-14

Bonnie Hunter shared this on her blog, Quiltville’s Quips & Snips, and I just have to pass it on…wonderful!

Won’t he be a pretty in a couple of years?

Personal Quilting Goals for the remainder of 2011 and all of 2012

1. Main goal – finish as many UFOs as possible! (I have around 40!)
2. Finish a minimum of 24 UFOs  - average 2 per month
3. Enter some of those UFOs in upcoming quilt shows
4. Start no new quilting projects unless they are immediate gifts or I am already committed to them

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? (Can you hear my hysterical laughter?! How did I ever get to this point?)

I have three quilts I would like to finish up this year – Matt’s dinosaur quilt, Lilli’s doll quilt (this one has to be done by Christmas!), and put the binding on Deb’s Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt. As I said earlier, I had hoped to do more, but at this point I will be happy to get these three done.

Fifteen of my UFOs are “flimsies”, tops that just need quilting and then binding. Those should not be too bad if I will just make time for them on my longarm. One of the big incentives on this is that my local guild show is held every two years and the next is September 2012. I would love to have a bed quilt to hang in the show as well as my usual wall hanging!

Four more quilts don’t have too awful much work on them. If I can get these and the 15 flimsies finished that is already 19 UFOs! If I can get multiple of the easier projects done earlier, that would give me more time for some of the more labor-intensive tops such as the Civil War Tribute (CWT). I don’t think I can get all of them done in one year (see the CWT quilt, what in the world was I thinking?!), but I am going to try to get as close to that number as I can!

My pledge of not starting new projects includes no block of the month programs, First Saturday programs, tempting blog quilt-alongs…..all those fun, exciting projects that just beckon me to start them. 2013 will be a year of new starts…..if the Lord lets me survive until then! The only exception to this is two classes that I have signed up for this coming spring – one is the glorified 9-patch and the other is a Radiant Sunshine and Shadow quilt.

I am posting a whole page with my UFO projects on it – look at the tabs above: “Home”, “Contacts”, “Crossroads Custom Quilts Photos”, and “UFO Challenge”. Click on UFO Challenge and you can see the wide variety of my UFOs. I will update changes to this page as I post them to my main blog and will link the two together.

I will also be doing this in conjunction with Judy Laquidara’s Patchwork Times UFO Challenge, though I am not really sure how I am going to coordinate it. Probably pick one or two of my easier quilts for the month and go with them instead of the random number thing. That will obviously mean the latter months of the year will be much more difficult than the earlier months!

Here is an abbreviated version of my list – for the full list with pictures check out the UFO Challenge page.

2011

1. Mini-me’s dinosaur quilt
2. Lilli’s doll quilt
3. Bind Deb’s grandmother’s flower garden

2012

1. 2008 First Saturday – Mariner’s Compass
2. 2009 First Saturday – Chocolate Swirls
3. 2010 First Saturday – French
4. Spring Stars
5. McTavish wholecloth #1
6. McTavish wholecloth #2 – roses
7. The Mariner’s Coins
8. Pineapple Four Patch
9. Lancaster Rose Applique wall hanging
10. Pink and green ugly
11. Baby girl crib quilt
12. 2012 Longarm Challenge quilt – due in June
13. Ann H’s BOM QOV top
14. JoAnn S’s QOV top
15. Rainbow sampler borders and sashing quilt
16. 2011 First Saturday – Square in a Square
17. Bowtie Blues
18. Four Patch Posey
19. Jelly Roll Strip quilt
20. 2009 Row Quilt
21. Birds in the Air
22. Christmas Tree skirt
23. Inchies for Camp
24. Not So Ugly Monkey quilt
25. Mini 9-patch quilt, green and white
26. Lorraine’s mini sampler quilt from class
27. Carmen Four Patch Posey
28. Jinny Beyer’s Mirage
29. American Dream
30. Elusive
31. Black. red and white hexagon quilt
32. Star and tulip applique
33. Civil War Tribute
34. Tiny Bowties – leftovers from Bowtie Blues
35. Bali Zinger
36. Orca Bay
37. Cows for Deb

Wow, that is quite a list. I think I have them all, but will add more as I find them just so I can keep track. I am also very tempted to re-purpose some of them, such as number 32, the star and tulip applique. I honestly don’t think I am going to have time for any hand applique this year. Others I know I will not get done this year, such as the CWT quilt and American Dream. Those are going to take quite a bit of work. I may set a goal through the year to get 6 blocks from each done this year which would give me a decent start for next year’s UFO challenge.