I'M HOME AND LOOK WHAT I'VE DONE ...

In honor of the start of my last (whoohoo) school year I've changed my background for a few days, weeks, or months.

Nashville was fun fun fun. Michael is an A#1 Dad and Avery is a sweet sweet granddaughter. Well, most of the time :) We played at the park, went shopping -- she loves popcorn at Target and so do I cause she sits in the buggy to eat and I can look around -hee hee :) We visited Vail and Katy and watched Fox and Hounds almost everday I was there. I learned all about Tod and Copper. One night Robbie came and ate with us. He is so much fun to visit with. Jen and the girls ate with us that night too. Matty was playing soccer so he missed out. I got home late yesterday (Friday) afternoon and got all my stuff back in the house. I vegged most of the rest of last night.

Today I've been busy -- I went to Kroger and refilled my frig, made a dress (from start to finish thank you very much) and also, one of each of the five different squares I'm making my next quilt out of. I can't wait to finish the quilt top. I love the way the squares look. Supposedly you can make the quilt in five hours. Of course, I had to undo several lines of stitching because I put squares together wrong so that took more time and if the 5 hours includes the quilting also - forget it -- I'm definitely not that fast. Following are pictures to go with all my ramblings.

Uncle Brian helping Avery traverse the whatever that thing is called.
Swinging on our favorite swing

Pretending to be shy about having our picture made

One night we went walking on the Greenway - a walking/biking trail that goes all over Nashvegas. The part we walked on was off of Two Rivers Parkway and in the picture we are going under the interstate and toward the bridge that goes across the Cumberland River. I didn't know the Cumberland River went through Nashville.

Here is a view looking down the river toward the General Jackson - a riverboat you can ride on that leaves from just off of the Opry Mills parking lot

and here we are on the bridge. Poor Avery was really tired. She has pretty much given up her afternoon nap so she's usually getting tired by supper time. She perked up though when we went to the Aquarium to eat supper. If you've never been -- it's great -- a huge aquarium in the middle and the tables all around it. The fish are so much fun to watch and the food is really good too.

Waiting for Aunt Traci to pick up Avery to go pick up her Mom from her trip.

Hanging out with Uncle Brian.

Giving Toby some bye bye love.

One more hug for Grams. Oh yeah :)



One of our shopping treks was to the Dancing Needles shop where they sell some of the prettiest fabric along the Cumberland River and Avery picked out this really cute strawberry print pique so I could make her a "pillowcase" dress. I used some white piping and red ribbon with white stitch lines on it to decorate the hemline. It went together very quickly as it should have since it is the sixth one I've made :) and I think she made a really good choice!

The last two pictures are of the block samples I made for the new quilt top I'm working on (and Toby's toy that he put in the picture). You make 4 each of five different blocks. Then you line them up in rows 1-2-3-4-5. That's what the first picture shows. All the blocks are laid out the same way. Then to make it look more "scrappy" you turn the second block a quarter turn, the third 2 quarter turns and the fourth 3 quarter turns (thats what the second picture shows). Or you can do what ever you want if you have a good eye for design. I'm just going by the directions -- unless I don't like it after I've laid it out. Then, all bets are off. My plan is to finish the other squares tomorrow -- they are all cut out and the different pieces grouped together so it's just a matter of putting them together. I've done all of the first block and one of each of the others so if my math is right, I only have twelve left to put together. It won't take very long. I got enough of the red flowered fabric for the quilt back and then the plain yellow and the stripe will be borders around the blocks. When the top is finished, I'm going to concentrate on the family tree for g'ma. When that top is finished, I have fabric for a blue and yellow quilt and once that top is finished, I'm going to concentrate on sandwiching, quilting and binding the four quilts. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Update: - I can't believe what a dork I am. Several weeks ago, all of a sudden my pictures were showing up as html in the compose window. Tonight as I was working on my blog, all of a sudden, they were no longer html but regular pictures. Then I realized that I had thought I was in the compose window but was actually in the edit html window and had apparently inadvertantly clicked on the compose window so the pictures looked normal. Apparently I did just the opposite a month or more ago and it has taken me this long to figure it out. I called myself looking to be sure I was in the compose window. And they call me a technology wizard at school. Guess it's a good thing nobody there can read my blog :)