Survivor Finale

Wow, I never would have guessed it. Danni won it all. You know we love survivor and have survivor Thursdays every week. Well tonight being the finale we had a big dinner celebration before we settled in to watch the 2 hour show. Once the merge happened in the show we started to vote each week on who we thought would make it to the final two. Each week we wrote down our votes and put them in the Survivor gourd until tonight. Tonight we tallied the votes and waited to see who had won. In our group we had 80$ in the pot and Randy and Jennifer ended up splitting it. Wow what fun, we are already talking about next time and what we are going to do to sweeten the pot, how we are going to vote and what we are going to serve that final night for dinner.

I have been working hard on my newest quilt and have reached an impass. I think for me, the hardest part is the backgrounds on these quilts. Its all about the value and I want it to be perfect. I would love to hear from my fellow artist about how you go about selecting your background fabric and if you have the same problem. I find that it is also the thing I struggle with the most in my paintings. I bought the most beautiful piece of fabric for it and so far I am going to use it but.... I still wonder would something else be better. Should I go light and let the subject be darker or should I use deep, dark colors for the background and let the subject be light and pop off of it. OHHHH decisions, decisions. Tomorrow is another day and I will look at it again in the morning with fresh eyes . I would love to read about what you go through and your thoughts when you are selecting and deciding on backgrounds.

Back to work

Today I started to work on my newest quilt again. It has been so long since I have had a chance to even step foot into my studio. It really felt so good, yesterday I worked on some fabric postcards for our swap but today I concentrated on trying to get further on the quilt. I need to paint somemore fabric to finish the leaves, but the weather needs to cooporate with me.

Tomorrow I am taking Jennifer to see Narnia, we are really looking forward to this movie. I will let everyone know how it is. The computer generation in the movie is supposed to be unpresidented and they said that they worked on it for 2 years before they even started the filming part. I hope it lives up to all the hupla. There is usually not many movies worth seeing these days but suddenly I have a bunch I want to see, Geisha, Narnia, Pride and prejudice, cinderella man. I know that one is old but they rereleased it and I wanted to go and see it. I am planning on working on the quilt up until movie time.

Kylie(my granddaughter) and Christina with their houses all done 

Penny's family  

Jennifer and Kim at work together on their house. 

Some of the people working away 

Some of the Candy 

The Gingerbread Party 

Holiday Parties

This post was started Saturday night...Well, tomorrow is the big day, the annual Gingerbread House Party. I started having these when our youngest was in junior high school, that first party was a disaster. I had invited about 15 girls and spent days making the walls to the gingerbread houses. The day of the party the idea was that the girls would assemble their house and then decorate it. I don't know what I was thinking because the royal frosting, which is the glue, needed to have time to set up. The houses sagged and swayed, to and fro, from the weight of the candy. We ended up using real glue, toothpicks, pins, whatever worked to hold the creation together. Needless to say, the houses were inedible. So I learned to either make them earlier, nah, or get a local bakery to do them for me. That is what I did and now I call the order in and pick up perfect little fresh gingerbread houses to decorate. They each get their own box and cardboard base too! The cost is well worth the time and energy that can now be diverted to decorating! As I sit typing this entry into my blog the house is full of the aroma of gingerbread.
STOP
Well I had to stop there and finish up for the party and we were expected at my brothers for dinner. I had to quickly clean up and leave, when we got back home I opened the front door and was overwhelmed by a horrible odor! My daughter had left the dog locked in her bathroom and the dog was sick and practically covered the floor with doggy diarrhea!!! AHHHHH, the wonderful smell of gingerbread GONE, and for the next 45 minutes I cleaned and cleaned and opened up the house even with the temperature at a chilly 30 degrees. We finished about 1:00 am and closed everything back up and tried to get warm. Some days I hate that little dog, this must be what causes the Bah, Humbugs! But the next day everything was back to smelling Christmasy and the party was a wonderful success. We had about 36 kids and adults here all crammed into my livingroom, laughing and decorating their beautiful houses. Its so much fun to see the kids faces when they see all the candy. It was a lot of work but so much fun, its really feels like Christmas with the house full of friends and family having fun together. Enjoy the pictures.

Road to California

I just received notification that "Midnight Moves" was excepted into the Road to California Quilt show. I am thrilled and so excited to be a part of the whole show this year. It was also excepted into PIQS but didn't do anything. In this picture (which I hate) the blue ribbon was the award from my quilt guild for the most original design. I think its very hard for a black and white quilt to compete against color. My girlfriends spiral lone star quilt was also excepted. We are never in the same catagory when we submit quilts for shows. I am hoping to complete my newest quilt to submit to Paduca by Jan. but that is going to be really tight. The holiday's have a way of sidetracking my production. I need to paint some more fabric for the darks in the quilt. I can't seem to get it dark enough, by the time it dries it has lightened up to much. Today it is supposed to rain so I will wait for a warmer day to start painting. Sunday I have a big Christmas party for a bunch of friends and so I will be tied up until next week now for sure. I love having family down for the holidays and I really love having my mom, but I feel so guilty trying to sew with her here, so I usually don't. I think next week I will have to just get in there and start to sew regardless.