the song in my heart this morning . . .

I serve a risen Savior, He's in the world today;

I know that He is living whatever men may say;

I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,

And just the time I need Him, He's always near. 

He lives, He lives,

Christ Jesus lives today!

He walks with me and talks with me

Along life's narrow way.

He lives, He lives,

Salvation to impart!

You ask me how I know He lives?

He lives within my heart.

In all the world around me I see His loving care,

And tho' my heart grows weary I never will despair;

I know that He is leading thro' all the stormy blast,

The day of His appearing will come at last.

Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian, lift up your voice and sing

Eternal hallelujahs to Jesus Christ the King!

The hope of all who seek Him, the help of all who find,

None other is so loving, so good and kind.

--Alfred Ackley

slacker . . .

I've been such a blogging slacker this week!  C'est la vie . . . chances are, if I've been slacking on the blog, life is moving along at a pretty good pace!

My stash hasn't increased or decreased, my design wall hasn't changed, and to be honest, I haven't gotten even fifteen minutes of stitching time in since last Friday! On the other hand, I've spend time with my friends, worshipped and fellowshipped with my Sunday school class peeps, spent time with family and especially grands, and (grocery) shopped and (grocery) shopped and shopped. One of those trips included riding the train with my friend (and pastor's wife) and their son:

Whew, it's all been a whirlwind!  Oh yeah, I also found out . . .

Yup!  It's a girl!!  We'll be having *marvelous* tea parties!!!

Ellie and I made a sweet little Easter craft on Tuesday . . .

He's not here; He is risen!!  She was so sweet, working on the empty tomb.  She also tells me she's ready to be a big sister.

I think she's going be a terrific big sister!

And today is my sweet husband's birthday!  We'll be celebrating with the whole crew, tonight, here at the camp!

♪♫ Happy birthday ♪ to YOU! ♫♪

♫♪ Happy ♪ birthday to YOU! ♪♫

♪♫ Happy birthday dear ♪ Todd !!!! ♫♪

♫♪ Happy ♪ birthday ♪ to ♪ YOU!!! ♪♫

♪♫ And many more . . . I ♥ you!!!!! ♫♪

I do have a new little hexie project for the month.  Actually, I have my choice of three different hexi projects:

These are from the StitchMAP hex labs for the month (along with my Celtic Garden and Australian Wattle projects).  I haven't decided for sure which one I want to do . . . any thoughts?! Regardless of which design I choose, it'll finish up in hexie form.  So I'm linking this on up to HeLP for Hexie-aholics on sarah did it!

Have a happy day!

:)

minutiae . . .

It's been a nice week . . . the weather has been gorgeous!  It's definitely Spring and that means baseball and softball season! Sawyer and I went to his first ever ballgame yesterday afternoon. Our church has adopted the Lady Colts of Central School (it's a K-8 school next door to the church) and yesterday afternoon they had a double-header, so our bunch cooked burgers and dogs for the girls between games.

Sawyer was full of questions and enjoyed cheering and encouraging the girls from both teams on. He's such a sweet fellow! Luckily for the two of us, the Lady Colts went ahead by enough to call the game during the fourth inning. Sawyer felt like that was the perfect amount of time to allot for a ballgame!

I've gotten in some good time to work on my next wool egg . . .

One bunny done and the rest marked and ready to stitch!  Normally I'd have taken stitch work to the ballgame, but with Sawyer there, I felt it was best not to -- in hindsight, I can say it was a smart call!

I've also gotten my strips cut and pressed and ready to attach to assemble the midsection of the pineapple quilt:

I'll probably get all the machine stitching done on it tomorrow morning, and save the hand stitching for Sunday.

Tonight we're off to Joc's house for a little celebration.  She's been playing on pinterest and found the cutest idea . . .

Isn't that fun??!! It's a homemade scratch off ticket. At the appointed time, we'll each be given a card to scratch and the person with three of a kind will be able to announce if the baby is a boy or a girl!! And haven't I been good at keeping that little gem off my blog since January??!!!

That's right -- sometime early in September, Ellie is going to be a big sister! Hurray!!

The whole idea of another human has put Leia on her back ... she isn't quite sure how she feels about it!

TGIFF (Thank Goodness It's Feline Friday)!!!!

:)

design wall tuesday . . .

I had an unexpected change to my week right off the bat . . . Ellie was not feeling well and Joc needed to go into work, so I switched up my Tuesday for Monday, which meant I kick-started my week with a happy Ellie day!

First, we snuggled together to watch Tangled.  Of course, Ellie loves taking pictures when she can see the picture being taken!  And of course we had to have tea, too . . .

Little Miss likes to 'sip' her tea from the spoon.  And not just any spoon (believe me, I know), she needed a "teeny, tiny spoon."  Haha!  Silly girl! She also helped my put my last embroidery stitches in my wool egg:

I heard her mutter, "Sharp!" several times as she was handling the needle, but she didn't back off!

Speaking of the egg, I stitched it together, filled it, and closed it up last night:

It's sweet, but I don't think I'll use the 'invisible thread' to stitch up the next four. It was impossible to work with and doesn't give a nice clean edge to the egg seams. I may go back and do a blanket stitch with some matching floss (I just didn't have any that quite matches the color wool I used).  

I also (finally) finished up putting together the pieces to set the center of the pineapple quilt on point . . .

The back of this quilt will look very striking with it's solid (sorta) purple and blue and black.

I love the hand quilting I did on the pineapple center (I machine quilted the blocks I've yet to attach)-

But it's hilarious (and a little embarrassing) to look at the backside . . .

This UFO was the third quilt I ever started (my second LQS BOM) and it was the reason I *finished* my first quilt (and first BOM).  I did a little wall hanging in between . . . but this is all the subject for another post. My point is, I did the hand quilting in 2007 -- I think it's fair to say I'm come a long way, baby! (At least, I certainly hope it is!)

So, even though I finished up my goals from last week, my design wall for this week looks much the same -- another egg and more work on finishing up the pineapple quilt.  This week I'll work towards connecting the block sides to the center square.  It's more of the same -- making the strips (which I'll make *correctly* this time), attaching them, zig zag stitching the units together, and then hand stitching the other side of the strips down.

Sounds like a fairly productive week, non?!  Linking up (a day late and a dollar short) to Patchwork Times. And right on time to Esther Aliu's WOW = WIPs on Wednesdays.

Tonight, Todd and I are settling in to watch The Desolation of Smaug (part two of The Hobbit series) on DVD -- it's been released today. YAY!  

:)

bits and pieces . . .

Another quickie . . . my 15 Minutes report looks rather repetitive . . .

Getting my stitching in where I can, like in the car on the way to church!  

My stash report is unchanged from last week . . .

Nothing in, nothing out.  Huh.  I'm not getting out enough!  Hahaha!

Still working on the first egg (but the third side) . . .

Considering Easter Sunday is exactly two weeks away and I still have four additional eggs I'd *like* to make, I really should step up my game!  Or perhaps just take it slow and steady and have five gorgeous eggs to display next year? Yeah, probably. This is where you'll find me this afternoon. Well, either working that or reading this . . .

Either way, I'm a happy camper! (Quite literally.)

Linking up today with the Stash Report at Patchwork Times and the Slow Sunday Stitching link-up at Kathy's Quilts.  Have a happy Sunday!

:)

closing thoughts . . .

As we close out the work (and I use that word loosely) week, I thought I'd share a pic of one of the carrot table toppers in its new home . . .

Leia gives it her paw of approval.

Indeed.

I guess she's as happy with that as she is with anything else.  LOL!  Linking her up with the Feline Friday linky party over at sarah did it!

After doing a little research online, I've made a decision to eliminate gluten from my diet and see what happens.  To that end, I picked up a couple of magazines yesterday . . .

Both have a LOT of information and recipes.  But what really amazed me was the advertising for all these gluten-free products.  Wow!

I picked up a loaf of gf bread in the freezer section.  I wasn't sure it would taste like anything but cardboard, but I was wrong.

Of course, the homemade pimento cheese spread didn't hurt.

I'm still plugging away at my handwork this week. I'll slip a few more minutes (and stitches) in tonight, babysitting Sawyer and June (post-bed time, of course). I also sketched out my versions of the sweet little Cheryl Fall Easter egg embroidery patterns available on About.com, onto the wool felt egg pattern outline:

I can't trace ... I've really got to re-draw each design. Whew! I'm really digging these darling little things . . . and having a lot of fun 'reorganizing' the embroidery patterns to make them fit the elongated outline.  Hope they stitch as sweetly as they sketched!

And that's it for me, this rainy Friday afternoon.  TTFN!!

:)

rolling along . . .

All my stitching this week has been hand work . . . minutes grabbed here and there when we're in the car (and Todd's driving) or when Ellie was napping yesterday.

I've made good progress on the strips on the back of the center of the pineapple quilt . . . 

Two sides are completely done and I'm nearly finished a third.  Which leaves me with just one more to go and then I can either start piecing assembling the pieces I've got so far, or work on putting the border together.  

I'll *probably* assemble . . . but we'll see.

I do know one thing . . . when I show Ellie the center, she *gushed* over it.  

Haha -- perhaps it was her glasses, though they're certainly not rose-colored! Needless to say, this quilt will have Ellie's name attached to it . . . for some day down the road!

I've also been working a little on my wool felt Easter egg . . .

Okay, so *very* little. I'm only halfway through the second side. Ha! I found the pattern and tutorial over at Shiny Happy World.  You can 'hop' over there, get an idea of how the finished product will look *and* pick up a copy of the pattern (for free) for yourself.

I got to thinking (rut roh) that I'd like to have a little *variety* in my little stuffed, wool eggs.  So I started looking through embroidery patterns and eggs and stumbled across some little cuties by Cheryl Fall (four freebie patterns, available on About.com).  I printed out the first of the designs and played around with it a little bit . . .

I think I've got a good modification from the egg shape to the elongated shape. And I believe the other three designs will modify nicely, as well. Yay!  I'll have them finished just in time for Easter 2015 -- it's just how I roll!  

So that's where I am this week, in an 'egg'shell.  What do *you* have going on?!

Linking up with Esther Aliu's WOW = WIP's on Wednesdays!

:)

april's bibliophile files . . .

Happy APRIL FOOLS' DAY!! I think the big joke is on those people who still have snow on the first day of April!!  Being that it's the first Tuesday of the month, it's also time for the Bibliophile Files . . .

And that's no joke!!

I finished up all my March books and will be doing several reviews over the next few Saturdays. This month, my books practically chose themselves! My challenge is to read four books from the following categories: books that have been recommended, books I've borrowed from the lending library, books I'm reviewing (blogging for books), and books that are faith/walk strengtheners.  So let's see what I've chosen (or rather, what chose me) . . .

This month's review book will be one of Beverly Lewis's--a favorite author who specializes in Amish fiction. It's book five in the Hickory Hollow series, The Last Bride. I've followed this series from beginning to end, so I'm looking forward to getting started on it! It's a new release, too, as of this morning!

A Rooster Once Crowed by Bryant Cornett is my "recommended book".  I've heard good things about the both the author and the book and decided this month, the month of Easter, was a particularly good time to give it a read.  I have to admit, I've already started turning the Kindle pages on this one -- it's going to be a quick read!  (As of this morning, it was a freebie on Amazon, too!)

One of my favorite movies is Julie & Julia -- the story of a blogger (Julie Powell) who cooks/blogs her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I'm tickled to say that Joc has a copy of MAFC and I will be looking through it today (Ellie Day!  YAY!!) for a recipe for potage parmentier, aka potato and leek soup.  But that's a story for another post, non?!  When I saw my e-library had a digital copy of the book available for check out, I decided to grab it.

And finally, my faith strengthening book for this month will be Francis Chan's Forgotten God.  We just started a new series in Sunday school and this is the book our series is based on.  Our teacher (who is also our pastor) recommended we get and read the book, so I will. (I was always that kind of student!)  I've read several of Francis Chan's other books and so I know this one will be terrific. This is a freebie for Amazon prime users!

So, that's where my nose will be for the next several weeks . . . what about yours??!  Be sure to head over to sarah did it! and see what else is coming off the bookshelves for the month of April!!

:)