Stacked Squares Quilt

This was Sophia's Christmas present, given to her less than a month after Christmas! I actually thought I would have it done before Christmas but I misjudged the amount of backing fabric I needed and when I went back to Walmart to get more/another piece, there were NO bolts of logical fabric with at least the six yards I needed. That's one of the disadvantages of living in a small town--limited ability to get specialty items.

I waited until I took ds to the airport in Albuquerque after Christmas and went to Hancock Fabrics. Wow. I don't know how people who have access to that kind of store all the time contain themselves. Maybe it's because they do have access and know they can return any time. Anyway, I got the fabric I needed and it was nicer than what I could get at Walmart at only a little more per yard. I was very pleased.

It took me awhile to do the machine quilting. I don't even want to think how long hand quilting takes. I sewed the binding on by machine on the front, then by hand on the back. That took several days, but I'm glad I did it by hand and not by machine.

I call it a Stacked Squares quilt because the tri-color squares are not pieced. The biggest piece is put down, then the medium and small squares are simply stacked on top and sewn down. Here is a tutorial that gives a better description than I have here. After each square is made, then it's sewn together and the rest is the same as any other kind of quilt.

It looks really nice on dd's bed. Very shabby chic and I love it.

Something I never thought I'd like

I like getting up early. I get up five days a week at about 4:30 am. I was always a bed slug, loving to luxuriate in bed until at least 7:30 if I could get away with it, but NO MORE!! I think it's because my house is really noisy. We have a lot of hard floors and my three little girls are very loud. They are always talking, laughing, shouting, and singing. It's just a noisy place to live. So the 4:30 to 6:30 hour is . . . quiet. So very quiet that I don't know why all mothers don't get up like this.

Of course the down side is I have to go to bed surprisingly early. If I want my eight hours of sleep I have to be snoozing by 8:30 pm. That doesn't usually happen, but it does more often than you'd imagine. When the girls go to bed, so do I. I read or watch TV, then go to sleep. Honestly, 4:30 isn't early if I go to bed on time.

So here I am with my cup of Twinings lemon herbal tea, chatting away with my unseen friends.

I have to wait a little longer

I went over to the hospital today to take Holly's camera and freshly washed clothes back to her. I hoped I might get a little time to hold Baby Zach, but it wasn't to be. When I got there around 8:45 am she and the baby were sound asleep in a darkend room. I tiptoed in and left the package with the things in it, admired the baby in the dark, then pulled the door shut behind me. I left her a note telling her I'd stay out of sight while her father and step-mother are visiting the rest of the week and will see her after they leave this weekend.

I'm positively itching to hold that baby on my lap with his head down by my knees and his feet on my stomach and look him over and tell him a few things. I'll wait though.

Dh is fielding calls from headhunters left and right. It's strange but nice. I wonder where we'll end up?

Just call me Grandma Kate!

My grandson was born today to my daughter Holly. His name is Zachariah and he is about the cutest thing I've ever seen. I might be biased though. Here he is less than half an hour old. He is a such a pretty baby with beautiful skin and a little bit of light brown hair. The hospital didn't weigh him in the birthing room and I had to leave to get my girls from the sitter so I'm not sure yet of his weight or length. The doctor thought he looked to be in the 6-7 pound range and I agree.

Hehehe, I didn't mean to post the picture of him with his loving Grandma first, but I don't know how to rearrange the pictures. But know that the most important people on this page are Holly and Baby Zach.

I wish for you, Baby Zach, all the love and sweetness life has to offer you. I hope you will have a wonderful life with your family.

Reconnected with a friend

I've been missing my friend since last summer. We used to talk regularly on the phone but life got weird for me and (just found out) almost as weird for her and we didn't talk again until today. It was good to hear everything she had been doing and going through and it was nice to tell her my little bits and pieces as well. I've known her for more than 30 years so there aren't a whole bunch of secrets there. I am vowing that we will never again go half a year without a long heart-to-heart talk.

New Sunday

I'm still getting accustomed to our new ward. When they made two wards out of three, our ward was the one that got split. We kept the name, and thus our callings, but everything else is still really strange to me. Instead of families scattered throughout the chapel, we have one to two families on almost every row. I know that is normal in other wards, but we had an average Sacrament Meeting attendance of less than 100 for a long time and I kind of got used to it. The good part is there are plenty of people for all the callings that an average ward has. Before the reorganization it was kind of like those little carnival puzzles I used to get when I was a child. You know the ones with 16 spaces and 15 numbered tiles and you had to move them around to put them in numerical order? That's how it was with callings before the change.

Happily, I hear there will be two new teachers in Relief Society. I'm the education counselor, so that's important to me! One will replace a departed teacher and one will replace a teacher who has also had a stake calling forever. Next Sunday is my turn to teach the Fast Sunday lesson. Since those come from the current month's Ensign I can never prepare too far ahead, but that's okay because they are usually pretty easy. I thought that part of the calling was going to be my downfall, but it's been all right.

Sacrament Meeting is going to be a challenge with the girls and no dh there. ~sigh~

Losing weight

I finally got sick of how I look and decided to get serious about losing weight. Again, ho hum. I decided to do it the Alli way and it seems to be working all right. I take one pill with each meal and something in it interferes with an enzyme or something that helps the body break down fat and use it. Thus, about 25% of the fat you eat passes through your body undigested. That's one part of how it works. The other part is that if you eat more than about 15 grams of fat per meal, it, um, passes through you rather unpleasantly. So knowing you're going to pay if you eat too much causes better food choices which also help with weight loss. I bought enough for two months and probably won't buy more, but I'm hoping by then I'll have gotten some new eating habits and will continue losing. Or maybe I'll keep buying it. It would be cheaper to just eat better, but it is a lot less expensive than Nutrisystem or especially Jenny Craig would be. I'd love to do one of those, but they're just more money than I want or can afford to spend right now. I've lost six pounds since I started just before the new year. Not a lot, but better than doing nothing, right?

I should have called this . . .

. . . my Enchanted Silver Gem Golden Beehive blog because I've lived in New Mexico, Nevada, Idaho, California, and Utah in recent years. Well, not California, but since I lived there the first seventeen years of my life, I always give it a nod. That's too much moving around, if you ask me, and we are on the move again. I know I'll like wherever we land because I always do. Right now the following places are under consideration:

northern California
southern New Mexico

but really, any place in the West is a possibility. Or Florida. Just kidding. My brother would probably like to have some family around him in Florida, but we are western kind of people and I doubt we'd ever make a permanent move to the East or South, which excludes Florida nicely.

More news on a move soon, I hope. The kids and I will be here in town at least until school gets out. If you remember Carson City 2004 and Albuquerque 2007 you know why.