RSC 2014 November

I am amazingly close to being caught up with all the colors for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It is truly shiny.

I do not do Block of the Month (BOM) quilts or Quilt Alongs (QAL). I am so limited in the time I have to quilt, that 1. I need anytime I can eek out for quilting on my own projects and 2. I can never keep up the pace.

The exception has been the RSC. I was delighted to find a QAL I could do! I chose a simple block: Snowball. 

I’ve been keeping up…until school started and I had to go back and work. August is surely the bane of my existence! (You can find woesome posts singing the dirges of August here: 2014, 2013) When August rolls around, about three months of my own life disappear under stacks of paperwork, meetings, trainings, assessments, and inservicing teachers. Believe it or not, I’m a teacher. Sometimes it takes me two hours to answer my email for a day. I have an inordinate amount of paperwork. I would love to just teach, it is a joy, my passion. I think I spend almost as much time doing non-teaching tasks as teaching.

But I digress. As for the RSC, August was light green and September was orange. I was able to pick out my light green and orange scraps. 

For October, the color was light blue. I've patted myself on the back and have done a little dancing because I got it done. I just didn't get it posted. And now, here they are:

This month is browns/greys maybe blacks. And I made those also! As for August and September and the fabrics I picked out...there a tragedy unfolds as I can’t find my orange or light green fabric!

I’m a great believer that if you search for something and just can’t seem to find it, then stop. It will show up sometime soon. For me, it translates into months or years before things show up.

Now that your hanky is perfectly soggy, here are my November blocks! I now see that I have a plethora of stripes. Oh well, I liked all the fabrics when I chose them and so they remain!

I'm hooking up at RSC 2014, you can mosey over there by using the button on the left sidebar. It's a great deal of uniquenesses to see what blocks everyone has been making!

Here are the fabrics that I have in each color: At least one novelty, a plaid and a vintage fabric

A Thoughtful and Thankful Day

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

This year has brought bounteous blessings in my life. If I took a pen and paper, the list would take 20 pages or more. And those would just be those I remember.

One of the most miraculous (and I don’t use this word lightly) is about my oldest daughter, Noel Heart.

One year ago, she was in a serious car accident. Her car was a compact one that Chief’s grandma had given them for Noel to drive to and from work. When she was driving back from dropping Firstest off at school, she came to a construction zone. As she drove through, her car tire went into a little gully. This flipped the car and it rolled over five times.

During the roll, her driver window was broken and her arm went out of the gaping hole. She shattered her upper arm and broke a finger. Her head was bounced against the ceiling several times.

She lived.

Those are the most precious words. With a small car, the cabin should have been crushed. She should have been killed.

She lived.

Heavenly Father was watching over her, as he does each of us every day. It was not time for her to leave earth.

She lived.

Noel Heart and Chief had been married just over a year. Half a year after the accident, Noel Heart became pregnant with their first child.

Because of this accident, she and I became close again. We have shared laughter and tears this past year. This Thanksgiving my most extraordinary blessing is:

She lived.

Noel Heart, Chief and Baby
Taken yesterday at Apple Hill

I hope that part of your Thanksgiving is to deeply reflect on all the blessings in your life. The big and the small. And like the name of the holiday reminds us, give thanks. Say a prayer and fervently thank Heavenly Father for all the blessings he sends your way.




You might also enjoy an earlier post I wrote which expresses gratitude for friends. You will find it here.

Be sure to enter my giveaway celebrating my 4th blogiversary.

An Anniversary and a Give-Away

HAPPY 4TH ANNIVERSARY 

QUILTING NONNIE BLOG!

Four years ago, I started this blog! I had no idea what I was doing. I just started writing, and my four family members plus a couple of friends read it.
It’s a long road since then…and I have loved, enjoyed, savored every piece of blogging.

Things I Would Do Differently:
1. Have a different blog name
2. Change the layout and style of blog

Things I Would Keep the Same:
1. My “special” features, like Mish-Mosh Monday.
2. A little more eclectic blog than all 100% quilting
3. My style of writing
4. I love all the pictures I put in the blog. It takes a load of time, but the result is worth the effort.

I overdid it when I put this picture in a post about the Log Cabin I was making for my DS & DDIL. I had posted about this quilt so many times, that I decided to be a little artistic in this point. In the nine months since I posted it, that picture has grabbed the attention of 2067 people! I know it’s because of the picture! Just to prove it, my next highest viewed post has 592 people.

I have been wanting to do a giveaway for a long time. I was waiting until I had a certain number of viewers, but since I’ve been absent from blogging for six months, I don’t know where I was then. Having a fourth anniversary of blogging is a BIG event, so I'm happy to announce!

MY FIRST GIVEAWAY's EXCITING DETAILS:

There are two splendid prizes:

For the first place winner:
Flowering Favorites, a book by those spectacular Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins of Piece O’ Cake.

For the second place winner:
10 at least “fat” quarters in your favorite color. The quarters can be skinny or fat. But it will be at least a quarter of a yard. In the picture of the book above, you can see a sample of blues I have.

To enter, write a comment telling me what your favorite color is and what is your favorite type of quilting.

Just for your random facts file, my favorite color is turquoise and I love to quilt traditional, scrap and string quilts.

Good luck to all! I am so excited to offer my FIRST giveaway.

Winners will be announced on the first day of December!

Winners will be chosen by Random.org.

The Evil School Monster Has Captured Me!

An Illustrated Story....

There I was, sleeping blissfully. The alarm clock rang. What’s this? An alarm? What is this all about? A prank?




I turned back over to go back to sleep, when oozing out from under my bed came a sludgie, gelatinous monster. Ooh, ick, he was slimy. It made me shiver and shudder; a gasp may have escaped my lips.

I pulled the blankets down from my head and opened my eyes. Oops, I didn’t tell you I dove under the covers. Uh, well, you know…minor detail.

I stuck out my chest, stiffened my upper lip and took a hard stare at this putrid mass of scummy crud. Somewhere in all the rotten slop dripping from his body, I saw a… oh no! Please, no! It was…it was…a textbook! 



And all of a sudden it hit me. It was August 10th, 6:00 a.m. and horror of horrors! My first day back at school.

Yes, that horrendous monster grabbed me before I could chain myself to summer, and drug me behind him. He gave low, growly chuckles as he jerked me along.

He reached my school office, swung the front door open with a screeching, jarring scrape. He picked me up, and as slime ran all over me, he chucked me through the door. Satisfied, the monster hurled the door closed with a satisfied grunt.

Dear readers, I have been locked in the school dungeon ever since. I’ve barely seen the light of day. But someone, I think a student of mine that I had once and liked me, let me come home for Thanksgiving.


Thankful, indeed! I get to see family, eat real food that has no mold on it and actually, amazingly get to quilt!


I have done so little quilting in the dungeon. There was no material, but sometimes the bread was hard enough that I could cut it in squares. I hoarded those until I had enough to sew together with loose threads from my clothing.


But here I am! I’m not going back. Uhh, okay I go back in 6 days. But it seems like forever!


Kind readers, beloved family, and devoted friends, fear not! I have seen the emptiness of the dark pit where I do not blog. It has haunted me as I have gone on a long quest to find a way to blog during the months of August to May. All I have come up with is that I must to blog.

My conclusion is that there will be the school year edition of the blog and the summer and school break edition of the blog. School year will be leaner, but it will be there as often as it can.

Maybe by doing this, I can stop looking at things and thinking “I’m going to write that in my blog.” Or doing something quilty and wanting to share it with my blogland friends.

I will tame the nefarious school monster and live happily in both realms of my life: school and not-school.

See you all soon!