adios march.

a few highlights from March-some I've already blogged about:  Alton Brown live at the Fox

A rare photo opportunity with Andrew-there's always something good cookin' when he's home.

Trunk Show at Cast on Cottage featuring Claudia of Claudia Hand Painted Yarns.

A new coat of paint in the dining room-very happy with the results, Andrew was a huge help with this project.  I've already decided on a window treatment and chair covers, just need to find the fabric that is in my head!  Aside from that I still need to put the artwork back on the walls, but I want to move things around so it might be this summer before the room is totally complete.

A few days off from work to do some sewing-enjoyed 2 sessions at Cottontail Quilts and I hosted Quilt Club this month-ALWAYS a good time, and I need to capture THAT in a photo.

There were some truly glorious days, and I tried to take advantage of them when I could.

Sophie did too!

Dinner out with these girls-friends from my KSU days.

Plans for April include finishing up the last of my cold weather knitting, finish 8 blocks for the Needle and Gun Quilt Club annual block exchange, tidy up closets.  Plan spring/summer knitting and enjoy the warm weather.

friday flashback.

it's been a busy last few days, lots of good stuff- friday night quilt club at kathy's good food and company (always)

i finished the gnarled oak cardigan between frames at bowling-i LOVE the pattern and the yarn. now to hunt for buttons. i've cast on the deep water cardigan, made some progress on my cedar leaf shawlette, and the wispy cardigan. am hoping to have these 3 completed before the end of september-we'll see my bosses are traveling next week- wink wink

pj called on thursday to let us know he'd be home for a visit this weekend, unexpected and delightful. i took this opportunity to take a photo of all my kids :-)

in honor of having pj home i stopped by douceur de france macaroons-they were delish!

friday before work i also had to get an estimate on fixing the mirror and damage to my car and return/order andrew's senior portraits.  saturday, sunday and wednesday i got to ride 20+ miles on the silver comet trail which was great. the extra 23 miles made up for not riding on monday (rain) and thursday (lazy).  i really wish i had a helmet cam because the trees on the trail are starting to change, and it's just lovely.
monday was the falcons game-what a win, in fact i got very little knitting done at this game cause i didn't want to miss a thing-plus i had to rip out what i'd worked on in maryland.  it's a little too early in the season to get overly excited about how well they'll do-so many seasons that have ended in disappointment. am looking forward to the next home game on the 30th.

this weekend i'm looking forward to:
completing a couple sewing projects
blocking 5 FOs!
gumbo for saturday
spaghetti with andrew's (divine) marinara on sunday
maybe apple pie?!-certainly feels like apple pie weather
margaritas and pizza tonight
harvest the last of the basil for pesto-maybe

doing other odds and ends around the house-i keep thinking thanksgiving and christmas are going to sneak up on me. i want to get somethings "in order" before they do!

fabric, firearms, flambee and cake

The Dixie stars crossed 3 states to visit maryjo’s in Gastonia nc, this place is massive, but we used a divide and conquer approach with great success. No photos on the quilting front or at lunch, but we had a great time. Kathy has this really cool app on her phone that uses a gps to give you a list of quilt shops in the area. We went to the quilted thimble cottage which is a lovely place that until recently had only provided quilting service, but has begun to carry fabrics. The people there were super nice, so if you are in Belmont, NC, look them up. Here’s what I got at maryjo’s and the quilt shop-I have plans for project bags for a lot of what I got, and was thrilled to get a piece of backing for a queen size quilt top I made, and I won’t have to piece it together (yea!).

The quilt shop in Belmont was located on a 2nd floor of an old building in the downtown area, and this sign was posted on the door next to the entrance. totally random i know, but I couldn’t resist, and since we had no idea what this “place”

The awesome thing about having someone else who likes to cook in the house is that Andrew had dinner well in hand and I didn’t have to do anything but sit down and eat when we got back at 6:45 pm (we departed Acworth at 6 am!) he did a great job grilling chicken-AND since I like to get a jump on Sunday lunch, we seared pork loin chops and decided to throw in some fresh peaches and garlic-Andrew has this “thing” with fire and he wanted to flambee the dish, so we added bourbon and fire-I should have captured the photo earlier cause it burned a little longer than I thought. The chops were very good BTW.

Since we had some raspberries that needed to be used, I had Andrew make a cake from the recent bon appétit blackberry buttermilk cake-very tasty-and I’d say a pretty good Saturday-how was yours?

some assembling required.

seems like there is a lot of that going on, enjoyed quilt club last night, we were productive and enjoyed some good eats, and finalized plans for hilton head. (l-r brenda, joyce, me and kathy)
millefiori is blocked and ready for finishing and the button bands, hope to have this finished today, love love the color, and look forward to getting buttons in nyc in november.
basement update, a couple other photos are on flickr. here's where the new plumbing meets with the old, lots of pipes and assembling with this home improvement project! most of the sheetrock is in, and the ceiling and doors will be next.
steve works on the pocket door for the bathroom.
finally, not to leave andrew out- he's "assembling" pasta salad for the church picnic tomorrow. he's making his favorite-suddenly salad- bacon ranch.
it's a wet and soggy saturday, think i'll go get started assembling my cardigan!

2009 Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop

actually started the "hop" on thursday when brenda picked me up from work and we headed to newnan-great store there AND they told us about a new yarn shop that was opening on the 28th, so when we were done we headed over there and even though they weren't officially opened they let us browse around and see what they had already begun to put on the shelves- great place. we want to go back to the quilt store, the yarn store, and the antique stores, so plans are made to have a saturday excursion to newnan maybe in june.

we had an absolute blast yesterday despite the rain, headed out at 8 am to pick up kathy, joyce then brenda. took us a while to get to jonesboro, and quilts and fixins was our first stop-here i met my saturday morning cartoon favorite scooby doo. we were really feeling the excitement by the time we left our second stop (photo below is from a scarlett thread) in mcdonough.
never managed to get a shot of all of us together, but we had a lot of laughs, went to shops none of us had ever been to, and made promises to return. each shop had something that we liked, and there wasn't one that we totally preferred over another. it helped that many of them had fabrics that the others didn't. despite a misunderstanding on the hov lane, we were able to get brenda back on time, so by 4:45 we were back at her house, and then did a reverse drop off before i headed back to my house to top the pizzas for dinner before kathy came back to get me so we could do the shops in marietta! yes, we headed back out again, and managed to get to tiny stitches our last stop at 6:50, lingered here a bit longer since we were inside before closing time. made it back home by 8, am glad i had partially done the pizzas on thursday as it made dinner much easier. now i just need to take photos of my latest purchases-am real excited about my finds, and we got lots of coupons, fabric squares, patterns, etc in our goodie bags, now if only i'd win that new machine, or the basket of fat quarters, or the $900 shopping spree, or a door price (there were some good ones!) we'll see. am pretty sure we'll be doing this again next year.