Favorite Things Friday

I can't believe how quickly Friday has rolled around again.  But that means only one thing:  Favorite Things Friday with Mrs. P. at Quilting in My Pyjamas.

My favorite this week is the time I spent with my young cousin.  She is nine.  We both have a penchant for nail polish.  Neither of us are real girlie girls, except about our nails.  This afternoon, she introduced me to Crackle Overcoat.  Hers are the black with white crackle and mine are pink with white crackle.

Rather blurry picture taken with my cell phone.  Apologies.

I'm not sure Crackle itself will ever become a favorite of mine, but it sure was fun to do it with her.  It is always the small moments in life that mean the most.

Favorite Things Friday

Is it politically correct to refer to a person as a "favorite thing"?  Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, but have never been overly concerned about being politically correct anyway.  So yes, this week, my cousin is my featured favorite thing. 

Michelle & Lori

Lori and I were always close as kids.  We thought it was cool that we shared the same birthday (although she is two years younger than me).  Spent a lot of Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays together when we were very young, and time camping together in the summer as teens.

However, as life often does, it took us in separate directions as young adults.  Sometimes we were lucky to converse once a year ~ but it was always as if we'd just talked the day before.  Now in our 40's, we have finally remedied that situation.  We live together.  How cool is that?  We both enjoy crafty things (in fact, I've blogged about Lori's craftiness here and here), have a similar sense of humor, and the same feeling of responsibility toward our family. I could not ask for a better person to have in my life.  I feel very blessed.

Now we are embarking on a move back to Kansas ~ Lori, her family and I.  Crazy, huh?  She and I feel we need to be closer to our family.  Our grandparents, and both of our mothers are there.  They need our attention.  We are already organizing, packing, and planning a garage sale.  We make a good team. 

It's been a long time since I participated in Favorite Things Friday, but it's a real pleasure to read about everybody's favorite things, so I urge you to play too.

Monday Miscellaneous

Slack Before Christmas:

It's been an entire week since I last posted.  I'd love to regale you with stories of pre-Christmas busyness that interfered with my posting, but the fact of the matter is I was just not feeling well.  Picked up some mild bug somewhere.  I'm still shaking off the effects.

Photo by Clara S.

Christmas:

Christmas proved to be a restful day, here at the Prairie Quilter household.  A much needed reprieve from painting and feeling that we simply had to be productive.  So we lounged around, except for making the pancake brunch that the four of us (my grandparents, mother and me) enjoyed.

Also we were preserving our strength.  My cousin, Lori and her family are here, arriving yesterday, the 26th.  While a visit from my cousin is always an enjoyable occasion, the thing that will make this visit special is that we will celebrate our birthday together.  Lori is two years younger than I am to the day, both of us born on December 30th.  This will be the first time we've celebrated together as adults.  In fact, it will probably be the first time either of us has done much celebrating in years.  Having a birthday stuck between Christmas and New Year's is really rather inconvenient.  Most people are just happy to have made it through Christmas and are hoping to regain enough steam to push on to the New Year--myself included.  But with the two of us together the formula this year has changed.

Photo taken and modified by Eric H., Lori's husband

This Year in Review:

I don't tend to be an overly prolific quilter, and this year with all of the turmoil, it was particularly true.  Still, I'm proud of what I did finish this year:

Robynn's Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

The Teddy Bear Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

Matt's Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

Sunshine in Winter

From The Prairie Quilter

I need to work on my quilt-naming skills, don't I?  Sunshine in Winter isn't bad, but the others could have been more poetic.

Food for Thought:
(Snagged from One Piece at a Time)



Blog Schedule:

If you don't hear from me again before next Monday, don't worry.  I'm just out with my cousin having fun.

Is Camouflage A Color?

A month or two back, I made an addition to my Quilting Bucket List: making each of my cousins a quilt. I've taken great pains to try to keep my Bucket List at 12 projects or under. The purpose of the Bucket List is to prioritize the quilts I want to make before I die, so that means I can't put every quilt that catches my eye on it. However, by adding the Cousins Quilts to the list, I've broken my own rule as that puts the Quilting Bucket List at well over 12 projects. Perhaps some of the other quilts on the list will go to some of my cousins....? Who am I kidding? In all honestly that's not likely to happen. So it just means I'd better get my butt in gear.

To that end, I've been quizzing my cousins about their favorite colors. Some have proven to be more forthcoming than others. I'm not sure what's up with that.

My cousin, Aaron, wasn't at all shy when I asked him though. Right off the bat, favorite color: Camouflage. What? (Actually, in my mind it was more like WTF?) Is camouflage even a color? Okay, so I guess it was a one word answer for a list of colors.

I quizzed Aaron about other colors that I thought might go along with the basic camouflage color scheme.  Navy?  I got an unhappy face for an answer.

Then, Aaron, sweetie that he is (but don't tell him I said that) says, "Even if you make me a pink quilt, I'll use it; but just not in front of the guys."  I had to laugh.  I also assured him that I wouldn't make him a pink quilt.

Thinking of combat pants and tents, I started perusing the online shops for camouflage colored quilting fabric.  I didn't have much luck.  Most of the fabric I found was indeed the heavy denim one would use for making pants.  It wasn't until my first trip to our local Wal-mart here in Newton that I found quilting camouflage fabric.  I bought four yards.

Monday Miscellaneous

Out of Sight, Out of Mind No More:

Last winter I began hand-quilting the Scrappy Star, then put away in April or May when it became too hot to hold it on my lap.  When I packed it away for the move, it was still too warm to hold on my lap to quilt.  The unpacking was a different story.  I'm now back at work on it with a handful of blocks left to do, and some work on the borders.  I'm seeing a strong possibility of being able to finish it some time this winter.

Cousin's Visit:

My cousin, Lori and her husband Eric are visiting this week, spending time between her mom's house and ours.  Lori and I haven't seen one another in 10 years, and yet except for catching up on the miscellaneous of our lives, in some ways it seems like we'd just seen each other yesterday.  It's always been like that with us.

We took a photo tour of Newton yesterday.  Eric is a wonderful photographer.  He couples an artist's eye with a bit of whimsy.  I think (I hope) he plan to share some of the pictures with me so I can share with you.


Copying is the Highest Form of Flattery:

Last week, P. from The Way I Sew It shared the commercials she found funny.  It got me to thinking about my favorite commercial.  Here it is:  (I hope you enjoy it too.)