2 Hour Table Runner Finish, a New Iron & a Cutting Mat Bath!

I have gotten way behind in my bindings as I've gotten absorbed in my Perkiomen Daydreams blocks and now I have a huge backlog of quilts needing binding. So, to remedy that situation I have decided to go back to only doing hand work while listening to Daily Audio Bible. I have mostly followed that plan and finally finished sewing down the binding on this two hour table runner last week that has been quilted and half sewn down for months.

This version of the runner is sold out in the shop, but we still have black and red versions, blue and tan and a bright reindeer version available.  You can find them all HERE.

I also made progress on the next binding in the queue and should get this little quilt finished this week.

My cutting mats finally got a bath this past week as well!  It was long overdue.  Too long as it turned out as some of the deepest cuts were just too far gone to heal.  Both of the mats that I washed were 10-15 years old and it was becoming very difficult to cut on them and my rotary blades were becoming dull very quickly.  While the worst parts of both mats didn't really get better, both are reversible and the other sides are in excellent shape, as are the outer parts of the bad sides, so they are still usable.  I will be starting this maintenance on my newer mats now to hopefully keep them in great shape for longer.  There are directions all over the Internet and how and why to do this, but these are the instructions I used today:  http://sew-fantastic.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-self-healing-mat-last-much.html

Out of the bath and drying:

Finally, it was an exciting week last week in that I got a new iron after at least 10 years of using the old one.  I would have been very happy to continue using the old one as I loved that iron, but it had started to randomly spew rusty water out.  Not good when you are pressing very light fabrics.  And my new ironing board cover has stains now as well :-(.  I am very careful to empty the water after each use and to only use distilled or purified water, but alas, after that much use, this was bound to happen eventually. I paid just over $20 for the iron brand new so I most definitely got my money's worth. And yes, it ...was made in China. Just like the replacement model I purchased. The new iron was still only $28 from Amazon with free shipping so if it lasts half as long as the previous version I will be thrilled, but I am hoping it lasts much longer. I love these Panasonic irons and I really love the retractable cord! They also get nice and hot and they heat up quickly. And they are fairly lightweight which is important to me.

And that sums up all of the exciting events in MY life last week :-).  Oh, and we also found a great like-new sectional for our formal living room, so that was fun too :-).  And of course the remodel work on the rest of the house continues to move along.  Last week involved finishing the painting in the living room.  This week it is back to baseboard cleaning and staining.

Bloglovin - Claiming my Blog

As I'm sure you know by now, Google Reader is going away on July 1.  Many people, including myself, have switched to Bloglovin for reading our favorite blogs.  Apparently you have to "claim" your blog if you want to put a button on your blog for people to easily add your blog to their bloglovin reader.  So that is what this post is for.  You can click on the link below to add my blog or on the button on the sidebar.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Soaking Up The Sun!

We have been in Phoenix for almost a week now and are soaking up as much sun as we can while we are here since it was still cold when we left ND last Sunday.  It was finally warmer there yesterday but it's supposed to cool back down again and until the warmer temps stick for a week, I'm not counting on them staying around.

Besides enjoying the warmer weather here in Phoenix, we have been selling all of the remaining furniture in my house down here, which was most of what I had as we moved very little.  We have renters lined up for at least a year, possibly two, so figured we'd just clean everything out and start fresh if we are ever in a position to spend more time down here, which we aren't right now or for the foreseeable future.

We have also been enjoying our backyard wildlife.  We had cameras up here to monitor the house so DH put one out by the quail block in the yard and now we have a live quail cam going lol.  Here is a still pic he took:

What I've Done This Past Week

Scott and I flew back from ND on the 30th.  Since then, I've bought this to accommodate my new expanding family:



I've sold this:

I drove to Tucson to select and buy this:



And we spent a day in Sedona meeting with the minister and selecting this area for our wedding site.  We will get married in June on this little beach right along Oak Creek.



Further up the creek and closer to Cathedral Rock:

And then I took a nap all day yesterday.  Not really, but I wish I had because I'm exhausted!  I certainly haven't been quilting, but I did wash all the new fabric I had acquired over the last month or so and did manage to get unpacked from the trip by the time I had been home for 4 days.

Look Ma, No Fingers!

Ok, that's probably not a very good title for a post, but I bet it got your attention, didn't it lol?  I find that many times in the winter time, my hands are cold but the rest of me is fine.  I've always thought I should get some fingerless gloves, but never got around to actually doing it.  When I was in Hobby Lobby a month or so ago, I found a free pattern for some really cute crocheted fingerless gloves.  Score!  I've seen patterns before, but they were always knitting patterns.  Since I don't know how to knit, this posed a problem.

I pulled out the pattern last week along with some cool twisted yarn that I had found at the Humane Society thrift store many moons ago.  It looked like it would work perfectly and I was right.  After a test run and making some modifications to the pattern to accommodate the yarn weight, I was on my way and had the first glove done pretty quickly.  The second went even faster since I wasn't trying to modify and adjust as I went along like I was with the first one.  The pattern called for cuffs, but I left those off because I liked them just the way they were without the cuffs.

So here are my new fingerless gloves, which I am actually wearing as I type this.  I have two more colors of the twisted yarn left, so I think I'm going to make a couple more pairs.  As a side note, I found it very difficult to try and take a picture of my hand while holding the camera with the other hand!

And of course the felines are still around and keeping me entertained.  I got a couple of pictures this past week.  After two years of watching the other two go up on the plant shelves, Echo finally figured it out a month or so ago and now it is favorite past time.  So here are the boys up on a perch overseeing us girls down below.  I have vaulted ceilings, so they are about 8 or 9 feet up.



And Sassy looked so cute sleeping on the bed yesterday that I had to take a picture.  The first picture is the first picture I took and the second is after she covered her eyes and begged me to stop taking her picture cause she needed her beauty sleep lol.

Hope everyone is keeping their stress to a minimum as they get ready for Christmas.  I am flying north on Sunday for about ten days.  I am all packed except for toiletries so way ahead of schedule.  Half the stuff packed is either Christmas gifts or extra towels I'm transporting since we are hosting Christmas and are a bit short in that department.  I had a set of brand new ones down here, so it seemed silly to buy more up there if I could just bring these.  Thanks to space saver bags, I was able to fit them in.  I put Scott's quilt in one of the bags too, so that is also in my suitcase, along with my hand mixer, some food items I am taking, a pinking shears, and some large pocket knives that Scott bought at Cabala's while he was here for Thanksgiving.  I would love to see what TSA does with all of that!  I hope they don't mess up my stuff too much.  It is perfectly packed right now so everything fits.

As I was previewing this post, I heard the birds scatter outside and looked out to see this guy on the wall.  Guess he wanted breakfast too.











Thanksgiving Engagement!

Yes, it's true.  Scott (previously known as "S" lol) came down to spend Thanksgiving with me and he proposed on Thanksgiving Day.  It was perfect and of course I said yes.  I spent enough years in a wrong relationship to know when I am in the right one.  He was here through Monday and it was just the greatest Thanksgiving weekend I've ever had.  We had to tell the kids over the phone and they are thrilled, as are our families who thought we should have never broken up in the first place lol. 

We are planning a June 2012 wedding in Sedona when he and the kids come down to help me move back to ND.  It sounds like all of our immediate family will also be coming down to attend, so that will be nice.  Small and intimate is what we are going for.

Here is a picture of us at Zoolights at the Phoenix Zoo on Thanksgiving night.





Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving!  S flew in on Tuesday and we are enjoying what will likely be my last warm Thanksgiving.  For awhile at least.  I am keeping my Phoenix house so it would be a possibility to come down, but I can't imagine that I would skip Thanksgiving with family just to be in warmer climate.



Hot Off The Sewing Machine!

Lest you think I have been sitting around eating bon bons since my last post on, ahem, August 19th, I assure you that is not the case.  I have actually been sewing!  Yes, it's true lol.  And I took lots of pictures during the process that I intended to post, but obviously that didn't happen.  But I am posting the finished quilt top, so surely that should count for something. 

This quilt is S's Christmas present, and he knows about it, so no worries about spoiling the surprise.  In fact, I was furiously sewing blocks into rows and then rows together when he was here last weekend.  Last night I attached the borders and here is the finished top, which apparently meets Sassy's approval lol.

The pattern is Radio Flyer by Carrie Nelson and the fabrics are a mix of the Moda Java and Bistro lines by Deb Strain combined with creams and tans from my stash.  More backing fabric is on the way, after I realized I didn't have enough, so next up is piecing the backing when that gets here so I can get the quilt to my longarm quilter by October 6th and the bound and finished by Christmas!

In addition to working on this quilt and preparing tax returns for the tax deadline that was yesterday, did I mention that S and I bought a house while I was in ND in July and that it closed escrow on the 8th of this month?  No kidding.  So we've had a bit going on with that and now that he has taken possession this week, next up are flooring changes and painting.  Lots and lots of painting.  I will be heading up there to help in the near future and on my to do's for today is a trip to Lumber Liquidators to look at the laminate in person that we picked out together online last night.  If it's a go, then he will get it ordered so it is ready for us to install during my October trip. 

This weekend is the big move for him so he can get his house on the market ASAP.  My big move will come early next summer.  Since our real estate market is so poor down here, we figure the best move is to rent my house for now.  Anyone looking to rent in Phoenix starting next summer?

So that is what has been going on in my neck of the woods.  Oh, and killing scorpions.  I'm getting kind of sick of that, but hopefully scorpion season will be over soon.  I will spare you the pictures of those.  Suffice it to say that in the last week I have not only seen the smallest scorpion I have ever seen in my house, but also the largest.  Yuck.  And I have a new pet.  Stuart.  As in Stuart Little.  Yes, it is a mouse.  He lives in my garage and I did buy a trap with which to humanely kill and dispose of him, but then I read online that mice eat scorpions.  He seems to be a bachelor mouse, so as long as that is the case, he gets to stay, provided he eats the scorpions, which I think he does since the dead ones I leave in the garage seem to disappear by morning.  That seems like a win/win to me.

Still Here...

This summer has just flown by!  I have so many things I planned to blog about but got so busy doing them that I didn't get time to write about them. 

I was back in North Dakota for two weeks in July and had a great time with S and his kids.  We got to take a little vacation to dig for fossils in Montana and I also got to see my dad, my sister, his parents and one sister, as well as an old friend while I was up there.  All in all it was a great trip.  There was one big unplanned thing that happened towards the end of the trip, but I will save that story for another post as I'm short on time right now.  Surprise, surprise lol.

After I got back and got caught up a bit with the house stuff, I started working on S's quilt that I am making him for Christmas.  I'm using Carrie Nelson's Radio Flyer pattern.  Lots and lots of cutting and piecing, but I'm having a blast with it and it is going fast.  I have been putting in a lot of sewing time and have a lot to show for it, but again, pictures and details will have to wait for another post.

Oh, and I sold the Texas ranch property and that sale closed this week.  I will miss it, but it is time to move on.  And further north as S's sister said lol.

Until next time, keep on quilting!

In Limbo

For the past couple of months I have felt like I have been living a double life.  I have made two separate ten day trips to North Dakota in the past 60 days and am going to be making another two week trip this month.  That is more traveling than I normally do in a year and it's not done yet.  I have another trip in September and yet another in October.  While I'm there I try to keep up with work via remote access, but stuff related to the house has to wait and I usually come home to nice surprises, like crunchy brown grass because the pet sitter didn't happen to notice that it was changing from green to brown because the irrigation system died while I was gone.

You are probably wondering why I am doing so much traveling right now, other than the fact that it gets me out of the searing Arizona heat, which is great.  Anyway, the answer is that I have become involved with someone that lives in North Dakota, so we are currently enjoying a very long distance relationship.  Your next question is probably how I managed to get involved with someone so far away.  It's actually quite an interesting story, which I am happy to tell if you've got a few spare minutes.  Or twenty lol.

Way back in 1984, at the young age of 15, I met this great guy whom I will refer to as "S".  Mainly because his first name starts with S lol.  We started dating, long distance even then I might add, because he was away at college while I was still in high school.  My parents must have really liked him to allow me to date someone that much older than me.  We dated pretty seriously for over two years until I ended it during my senior year of high school.  It was an amicable split so we stayed friends and kept in touch.  We even kept in touch after I moved to AZ.  That is until he got married and his new wife made him cut off all contact with me.  That was in 1994. 

Fast forward to 2009 when I joined Facebook.  He was on there too so I sent him a friend request.  He accepted and we renewed our friendship and emailed from time to time.  He was divorced by then, but in a relationship.  By the time my divorce was final, the relationship that S had been in had also ended so we were both single for the first time in almost 20 years.  Long story short, we started having actual conversations via internet chat or the phone and realized that it felt like it had been a day since we'd last really talked instead of almost twenty years.  At that point we thought it would be worth it to see each other in person and see how it went.  So S flew down a few months ago and we basically just picked up where we had left off. 

It is nice to be in a real relationship for the first time in many years, but I have to say, it has really cut into my quilting time!  I had boatloads of time to quilt when I was married to someone who didn't want to spend any time with me.  So I'm not sure when I will be able to get back to quilting like I was, between being gone a lot and also looking at the likely prospect of a cross country move some time in the next twelve months.  Oh, and S has three great sons who I have been having a blast getting to know, both in person and chatting via Skype.  Definitely time well spent getting to know them.

So that's where I'm at right now.  Between the relationship, work, and keeping up the house and yard, I don't have time to even think about quilting, let alone do it.  After this next trip I am home for a couple of months and S will be coming my direction instead, so I'm hoping that means a bit more quilting time.  We'll see I guess lol.

Help for Joplin

Judy at Patchwork Times has come up with a wonderful idea for helping the residents of Joplin.  See this post on her blog if you are interested.

Where to Begin?

It has been so long since I last posted that I don't even know where to begin.  The good news is that I survived tax season and immediately reopened the quilt studio and have been quite productive!  I had planned to do many posts over the past couple of weeks with progress reports of what I have been working on, but somehow I never got around to actually writing the posts *sigh*.  I did, however, get around to taking pictures of the quilts projects as I worked on them.  That's progress from my last post!

As soon as the tax deadline was over I started my own personal quilting retreat and did basically nothing but quilt for about 5 days.  Oh, and take care of Maya since she decided to blow out her good knee on April 13th.  More about that in a bit.  First I want to talk about the quilting I have been doing.  Echo found the pile of quilts on my sewing table today and decided they were there for him to lay on.  What is it about cats and quilts???

So anyway, as soon as the tax deadline was over, I got busy in my sewing room.  Oh, and I washed the mountain of fabric that I had purchased during the past few months.  But I digress.  The first order of business after April 18th was to get Chocolate Covered Cherries basted and ready for quilting.  I have all of the ditch quilting done and have started the quilting of the blocks. 

Next I basted Fruit Cocktail.  Twice.  I forgot that the backing was just the right size and left the usual margin on the one side only to discover a drastic shortage on the other side when I went to baste that part.  So I undid all of the basting and redid it with the backing properly centered.  This quilt was made during my beginning quilting class in, ahem, 2001.  Yes, it has been sitting here unquilted for nearly 10 years.  But now it is not only basted and quilted, but I have the binding half sewn down.   Speaking of the binding, I have had that made and stored with the quilt for literally years.  As I'm sewing it on by machine, I realize that it is about half as long as it needs to be.  I think I had another quilt with the same binding and probably switched them.  As luck would have it, I found another binding the same width in my drawer of leftover bindings that matched well and was just the length I needed so I added it to the other one and finished up the machine sewing.  For the quilting, I did straight line quilting in the blocks and my wavy line quilting in the border.

The quilted top:

A closeup of the block quilting:


And the back.  It's kind of hard to see the quilting on the back since the fabric is so busy.

Then I quilted this little orphan bargello block.  It had been basted since last fall.  Took all of 15 minutes to quilt so I don't know why I let it sit so long *sigh*.

And finally, I quilted this little Friendship Star quilt.  It is also from my beginning quilting class which hopefully explains some of the whacked off points on the stars.  Thankfully my piecing has improved!  The binding is attached and ready for the hand sewing, which I'm hoping to work on tomorrow at Dawn's.  I ran out of the top thread with about 4 inches left to go on the quilting.  I found a similar purple thread in my stash and finished it with that.  Done is better than perfect!

And the back:

Amidst all of the quilting I also got bit HARD by the needlepoint bug.  I have had some charts forever, as well as threads, but just never got around to trying canvas work.  That has all changed.  I went to a local shop a few days after tax season ended and came home with the canvas and chart for a new project.  I already had the threads in my cross stitching stash.  Shocking I know lol.  For about two days, the quilting sat untouched as I stitched away on my new project.  I have made quite a bit of progress and plan to work on it more tomorrow, so I will save the pictures, etc. for a separate post.

And then there is the real life stuff that has been going on.  As I mentioned above, Miss Maya decided to tear her ACL (her knee) on April 13th.  She had surgery on her other knee in August 2007 when she tore that ACL, but the surgery was hard on her and at her current age, surgery is not an option.  There was quite a bit of drama for a few days as the ex and I came to terms with her situation.  We thought we were going to have to put her down since surgery wasn't an option.  Thankfully the vet said she could heal on her own.  Funny how everyone said differently when she tore out the first knee.  At that time we were told that her knee could only heal with surgery costing in excess of $2000.  So of course we did the surgery.  That was pretty annoying to find out that we wouldn't have had to put her through that, or spend all that money, but at least we didn't have to put her down. 

The other complicating factor was that my ex had arranged for a pet transport service to pick up Maya, Koda and Sammy the cat on April 30th to take them from Phoenix to his new place in Ohio.  He thought for sure that they wouldn't take Maya while her leg was healing, but he was wrong, thankfully, and they all were picked up on the 30th and arrived in Ohio this past Wednesday safe and sound.  So in the last week I have reduced my pet population by half, which has taken a huge load off.  No more barking dogs day and night and no more getting up 50 times a day to let someone out or bring someone in.  Could be why my blood pressure was down to 102/76 at my physical on Wednesday!

So that is what has been happening in my corner of the world for the last month or so!



So to recap...

This is what I have been doing since I last posted:

Working.

Working some more.

Doing a little more work.

Letting the dogs in and out 60 times a day.

Working.

More working.

Spending an evening at Urgent Care to get super duty drugs for the sinus infection that came raging back.

Working some more.

And then more as I started feeling better again.

Hmmm, what else?  Oh yeah, eating and sleeping, although the sleep has been hard to come by at times.  And I've scooped litter boxes multiple times a day.  And dog poop on the weekend.


What I haven't been doing:

Sewing.  Not one stitch. 

I did take yesterday off for a quilting day at Dawn's, but did I quilt?  No I did not.  I was too mentally brain dead to even attempt it.  Even the simplest quilting task seemed too difficult.  So we went to the quilt store instead.  I found a few fabric bargains, a great pattern and we both got a new marking tool for quilting using our 40% off coupons.

Did I take pictures of any of the stuff I bought?  No I did not.  Because that would involve more effort than I've got energy for right now.  Just know that the fabrics are brights, some with dots, and they are right up my alley lol.

Oh, I did do a bit of mindless crocheting on a cat mat for the shelter while at Dawn's yesterday and after I got home, using some yarn I recycled from a thrift store afghan.  Do I have a picture of my progress so far?  Again, no.  But I'll tell that so far I've used bright purple yarn, yellow yarn, and green yarn.  It's very colorful.

So that's what I've been doing.  And now my 15 minute break from work is over, so have to get back to it.  We are in the final push to April 15th and I am counting the days!!

A Good Week in the Sewing Room and Look What Arrived!

I had a very productive week in the sewing room, but don't have anything really exciting to show for it.  I got the backing made for Chocolate Covered Cherries and also got the batting cut so that quilt is now ready for basting.  The rest of the time I spent pressing my new dot fabrics that I purchased back in November and cutting a strip from each for my dot quilt.  I am now ready to start sewing on the dot quilt, so I should have some actual progress pics to show soon.  During the pressing process, I also finally admitted that my iron is indeed going, so I ordered another one off Amazon that will hopefully arrive soon.

Speaking of Amazon, this arrived this week:

Woo hoo!  I tried so hard to win a copy during the blog tour, but alas, I didn't win.  This new book by Kim is everything that everyone has said about it and more.  Awesome, awesome quilts in this book!  I had thought I knew which one I was going to make first, but when the book actually arrived, I changed my mind and I think I am going to make the cover quilt, Picnic, using the Kaffe Fasset fabrics that I started collecting last summer.  So add that to the "must do soon" list, along with the zillion other projects that are already on that list lol.

I needed a bit more in my order to qualify for free shipping, and forgetting all about the power cord I need for my new postage scale, I ordered this:

I truly loved the music that was popular when I was in high school, so as they come out with CDs of some of this older music, I have been picking them up when I need something extra on Amazon to get free shipping.  I have been listening to this CD since it arrived and it is great!  As a side note, I forgot about the power cord AGAIN when I ordered the iron and ordered a book to get free shipping.  For the exact same price as the power cord I might add LOL.

Burgundy Buttons also got the Max & Whiskers yardage in, so I ordered the background piece that I needed for my applique project as well as a few extra cuts of the bone prints that will work with some of the other pet fabrics I've collected for a different pet quilt.

This weekend will be filled with lots of tax work as well as some yard work, but I'm hoping I can squeeze in some time to start sewing on the dot quilt.

Much to Say and No Time to Say It!

It has been a zoo around here!  The divorce was final on January 3rd and the hearing went off without a hitch.  And then the flurry of paperwork began to make changes to accounts, beneficiaries, etc.  The Texas house closed escrow this past week, which involved a trip to the bank to get documents notarized and then a trip to Fed Ex to send the documents back. 

Tax season officially began on January 5th when the tax returns started rolling in so work has been super busy too.

The animals are all still living with me and they have been a bit stressed with all of the changes and have not been on their best behavior, which is an understatement in some cases.  Now that the Texas house has closed escrow, once T has the funds from the closing, he can start house shopping in Ohio and hopefully be back to get the dogs and his cat by the end of tax season.  Hopefully I can make it until then!  They are keeping me hopping and driving me a bit batty as well lol.

I also got my bedroom/quilting studio furnished.  The bed and tables are exactly what I wanted and match better than I could have ever hoped.  Dawn's daughter had a table virtually identical to my sewing table that left with T and she also had a bookcase that fit perfectly with the rest of the room.  That left the lamps.  Oh, the lamps.  The process of finding and actually purchasing the lamps ended up becoming such a comedy of errors that I had almost given up when things finally fell into place.  I did take pictures today of the furnished room, but don't have time to load them all right now.  I will hopefully have time to do that this week and will tell you the story of the lamps at the same time.

I would like to say that there has been some quilting going on around here, but that is not the case.  Nada, zip, nothing.  Not one stitch or cut or anything remotely resembling quilting, other than putting quilts on the new tables and bed in the bedroom.  I have been so busy that I haven't even had time to think about quilting let alone actually do it.

So that's what has been happening around here for the past two weeks.  In a nutshell, it has been organized chaos lol.

2011 Goals

Happy New Year!

As each year comes to a close, I start to think of my goals for the coming year.  Mostly I put together needlework goals, but usually come up with some financial and household goals as well.  So for the past couple of days I've been trying to think of my goals for the coming year and I keep coming back to the same conclusion.  And that conclusion is that I really only have one goal for 2011...to enjoy and make the most of each day. 

I am starting the year happier than I have been for many years and truly excited about what the future holds.  To that end, I want to be open to anything that comes my way.  I am a Type A Planner by nature, so just going with the flow and seeing what happens is way outside the norm for me.  But oddly enough, it feels totally comfortable and like the right thing to do right now.  So that's what I'm going to do.

On a quilty note, I want to continue to make progress on my UFO list, so to that end, yesterday I pulled out all of the quilt tops awaiting quilting and cut and washed batting for all of them.  Some still need the batting to be pieced, but at least they are all one step closer to becoming finished quilts.

And of course I had help during this process.  Well, I'm not sure how helpful they were, but you had to know that Sassy and Echo were right there with me while I was trying to get things done.

Yesterday morning we had this backyard visitor:



And this morning, we had this one:





Merry Christmas from Our House to Yours

Merry Christmas everyone from myself and all of the furry members of the household.  Tyrone got in the spirit of Christmas this year by putting a little spot of glitter on his nose.  Can you see it?  Look closely and you will lol.

Echo decided to see if he could squeeze into this basket, which he obviously did:

And Sassy was once again very helpful with the laundry this week:

This morning we, well me anyway, will be enjoying the Christmas morning tradition of cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  They are in the oven as I type this.  It's supposed to be a gorgeous day here...probably about 70, so I will be enjoying the weather for sure and will see what else the day brings.  I'm sure it will be another great one.  They have all been great lately :-).





Getting with the Times...Finally!

Up until this week, I have resisted not only getting a smart phone, or anything resembling a smart phone, but also didn't even have a texting plan for my phone.  I used it for making and receiving phone calls.  That's it.

I suddenly decided on Tuesday that I would like to try texting.  I've had a couple of friends telling me that if I tried it, I wouldn't know how I lived without it.  I was sure that wouldn't be the case, but I figured for $5 more a month, it would be worth a try.  So I added texting to my plan.

The first thing I learned was that texting on a regular phone is not only highly inefficient, but also quite troublesome when you have no punctuation available, nor can you capitalize anything other than the very first letter of the text.  But I muddled through anyway. 

Then, as luck would have it, yesterday morning I received an email from Best Buy that included a "Hot Deal" on smart phones.  No kidding.  They were free.  As in no cost to me.  All I had to do was extend my contract for two years.  No problem as I've had my carrier for 10 years, am extremely happy with them, and have no intention of changing.

So I placed my order, requested store pickup, and by mid afternoon, I had this baby in my hot little hands.  It's an HTC Droid Incredible.  I have a friend that has a Droid also, so he helped me with some set up things last night, but for the most part I found it quite easy and intuitive.

And yes, for those of you that were wondering, I can't imagine how I ever lived without texting LOL.  I suspect I'm going to have to up my texting plan or I will be going over my limit which will cost me big bucks.  Actually, for only $5 more per month I can get unlimited texting to anyone in network, which just happens to include everyone that I've currently been texting, so that seems like a worthwhile cost.

I was also able to order the same phone for free for the soon-to-be ex, who also finally got with the times and added texting to his phone too.  He was more adamant than I was about having just a basic phone, but once he realized he could check email and surf the net on this phone, he was all in.  Go figure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in blogland!  I have many things to be thankful for this year, and the friends I've made since I started my blog last December are near the top of the list.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

No Quilting Going on Around Here

Since my marathon quilting session the weekend before last, I've done nothing on the quilting front, nada.  Work has been busy, which is unusual for this time of year, and of course there's the divorce and move stuff for T going on.  I got the divorce decree all prepared this past weekend, so it's ready to file the first couple of days of January.  T's move day is now just 4 weeks away.  We are making good progress with the to do list and should be ready once it's time to actually pack up the truck.

I did spend time picking out paint colors for the rooms I'm going to paint and I went and got paint samples from Lowe's.  This coming weekend we are getting rid of most of the master bedroom furniture as it's old and neither of us wants it, so once that room is fairly empty I'll test out the colors I picked.  If they look ok, then that room will be the first one I paint.  Also this coming weekend, I have a quilting day at Dawn's, so I should actually have some quilty related stuff to post about soon!

Oh, on the pet front, Sassy and Echo both went for exams and their three year booster shots this week.  Both did great and were in excellent health.  I also discovered that Sassy can actually meow when she wants, and quite strongly I might add LOL.  She normally just trills and squeaks, but on the ride to the vet in her carrier, she made it quite clear that she was not happy to be confined!

For those looking for a feline fix, here is a picture of the boys sleeping on my bed this week and also a picture of Sassy where she isn't supposed to be...on top of the armoire in my room *sigh*.