MY FIRST Blanket QUILT

Here is the fabric that I bought last September when I was in Los Angeles. I have been wanting to make a lightweight quilt for some time now. I decided to start small with a two yard limit, and and nice cotton fabric. After a couple of hours of cutting out the fabric, matching up the sides, and sewing the three layers together, I was down to putting on the satin blanket binding. This is the stuff that everybody loves to feel on a nice blanket. I choose the color white because I thought it would look the best with the small two inch blue square side of the blanket.

This is my new little Singer sewing machine that I bought back in May at Sears in Santa Monica. It is a great little machine. Threading and filling up the bobbin are not that hard to do on this model. Don't you just love the fact that Singer went back and curved up the body of this machine in an homage to the Singer machines of yesteryear.. Did you notice the little white cup next to my sewing machine.. That is to catch the pins that I pulled out of the quilt as I was sewing.

I started the process of assembling this quilt many times, but last night I was feeling the need to be creative and pull this quilt together. I started working on it around 7:00 PM and was done by 11:00 PM. I did make a small mistake on one of the bindings at the very end of the project. The last thing that needs to be done on this quilt is placing a few yarn ties throughout the body of the blanket to hold the materials together especially after washing.

Scroll down for the final picture!

Sur La Table ~ Crazy Large Cupcake Cake

I went to LA to see my sister, Isabelle, and she took me to this great store that sells kitchen goods. I was fixated on this unbelieveably cool cupcake cake mold for making personal large cupcake cakes. I bought the pan and proceeded to make myself a sample personal cupcake cake.

I was wondering if one cake mix would be enough because the pan is rather deep. But as soon as I started to pour in the cake mix I learned that one is enough. I used PAM spray, and then put the cupcake cake in the oven. Now I did encounter a problem with the cooking, the small shallow side which is the top was seemingly done before the body section. I left it in the oven while continuing to cook the rest of the cake. It took about an hour to bake clean on the toothpick. I pulled it out and let it cool. I had a hard time cutting off the top of the bottom side therefore the cupcake is shorter than it should be, but overall it turned out terrific. I put little green sprinkles on it and called it done. Yes, It was yummy!

Trish tells me that I should have put a cupcake wrapper around the sides of it, but heck, how would I do that?? any Ideas????

FOLSOM LAKE

Where has all the water gone, at lake Folsom???

Where has all the water gone, it is not there anymore... Somebody needs to start conserving water pretty soon!

Granite Bay beach area, where the water is no where to be found...

Here is Donna working away!

I like to call this today's treasures! $1.59 cash value!

My shot of myself, my tradition!

So, Metal Detecting was the order of the day for this fine new year's day activity!

It was more fun than I expected.. Finding the six quarters was very fun!

Same shot as below except I zoomed in on the Dam.

This Picture was taken at Beals Point looking towards the Dam. But you cant really see any water... Very overcast day!

Well Folsom Lake is not the Folsom Lake you all remember. That darn lake is about dried up--just look at the photos...

Christmas Santa Bag

I had this great idea to create a Santa gift bag out of red canvas material that I got from Joanns fabric store. I didn't want to buy a plastic bag to take gifts over to my brother's house. I purchased two yards of red canvas fabric with my 50% off coupon, for a grand total of $4.00. I thought about how I wanted to sew it on my new sewing machine that I bought way back in May. I already had put in the red thread, now I just needed to change the needle. I pinned the fabric and started sewing away. Within 30 minutes I had a bag done, except for the rope that I needed to purchase at the hardware store. I bought 8 feet of 1/2 inch rope of white nylon rope, took it home and threaded it threw my bag. The rope only cost me about $2.50 so my bag was made for $6.50, not too bad if you ask me.

Fresh and Sweet WALNUTS!!!!

Every Autumn for that last two decades I have spent my weekends gatherning many of these delightful little nuts. People just love walnuts, and puchase these nuts without hesitation. The nuts are organic, holistic, fresh, & hand picked and process from hull to half. Here is a picture of the nuts laying about awaiting my arrival to pick, clean, dry, shell. Already have about 38 lbs worth of nuts to shell and sell. This year there was a late frost that really impacted the crop. I would say we are running on 1/3 of the usual amount we would process in any given season. These are English walnuts, and yes we have some black walnut trees but too hard to process. The squirrels have been a huge problem because they steal and eat the nuts all day every day while I only can get up there on the weekends. As for cracking and shelling the nuts, my sister Isabelle got me this great device that helps me crack away with out too much hassle.

School Jog-A-Thon

Today was the school jog-a-thon and here is my class just before the official jogging at the starting line. My class brought in $328.80. We had a fun time and the majority of my students made it around the track six times.

Here is our pre-jog group photo...

My Bulletin Boards

Hello Presidential Race! Here is my board to decribe the race without showing any favor to either side. I especially like the middle posters that describe the process.

This is three different art projects, first the pumpkins sitting on the fence, then the scarecrows and lastly the trees turning color and losing their leaves. My friend and fellow teacher, Daphne, helped me put these up in this particular way. I think it looks great although if I had to do it differently I wouldn't have an orange back ground color. I had a hard time figuring out a title for this board, so I went all minimalistic.. If you have any suggestions let me know, plus Thanksgiving is coming!