Power gli....gli....glitch..... Grrrrr.

We lost power on Thursday morning, about 5 minutes after I gave my husband an anniversary card that said "Come rain or come shine, we'll be doing fine...as long as we have each other! (And electricity!!)" Geez! We were laughing ourselves silly until it came back on and we discovered that we had lost a TV, a satellite receiver, a DVD/VCR combo and a clock and a $10 lightbulb, from 3 different rooms. And it's all the same stuff we lost 20 months ago when Ike came whipping through and wreaking havoc. We stopped laughing for a while, it wasn't funny any more. Well, he fixed the DVD/VCR combo. We bought a new clock. (It didn't work, we had to return it, another trip to WalMart, 20+ miles away.) We ran all over trying to find a part for the TV- the capacitor blew out- we had to order one online. The satellite receiver is being replaced no charge. We have had no TV since Wed night. We are missing the last 2 episodes of Survivor, which is just MEAN. A friend is recording it for me, though, thank you LIZ!!!!!

So, since we're leaving on vacation on Wed, we have to get as much of this stuff fixed before then AND clean the house and make sure everything is in order for our housesitter to stay here in comfort while we're gone. Sheesh, nothing is ever easy. The lawnmower broke, the parts place was closed, we're having monsoon rain storms, and the list goes on and on and time is of the essence!

To distract myself a little, I've played this week with the layouts for both sides of my hexagon quilt.

This side is mostly black. I arranged the mixed hexies to be somewhat orderly, by color, either greens or blues or reds, etc. I spent so much time on the floor getting up, squatting, bending, etc that I could barely move without moaning for 2 days afterward, man I'm out of shape!

This side is bright hexagons with mixed blacks and whites interspersed. I arranged this side so the warms are on one side and cools on the other, but not divided straight up and down, a little looser than that. I locked the cats out of the sewing area so I didn't have to worry about them scrambling up my layouts, this took HOURS and hours to perfect, believe it or not. Anyway, they're all stacked, numbered and put up safely until I can sew all 430 triangles together!

And here are 9 mini 3.5" quilt blocks for a swap I'm in. The challenge was black and white and one other color, I picked yellow. So I made wonky liberated stars and I think they look like nice little suns. I'll send 8 of them away and get back 8, each one black and white and one other color. Then we'll all assemble our mini blocks and make mini quilts!

I also made a mini quilt for a new friend in CA, I'll show you that in another entry, it came out pretty cute, I think.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall....

We had to have an old dead oak tree removed from the property last week. It just died, it had a tiny bit of rot inside the base and a fungus was growing on it. Because of its location near to the house, concrete driveway and fenced yard, we decided to hire a tree service to do it, they're insured and had a huge bucket truck which was really helpful as the limbs wanted to pull the tree towards the house. So Mike's Tree Service came out and in about 3 hours, on one of the hottest days of the year, trimmed off most of the branches and dropped the tree into the old garden area.

This is before-

This is during- most of the side branches are off now-

And this is after-

There's a lot of work to be done, the guys cut up the biggest pieces as our chain saw isn't big enough to go halfway through the trunk.

This is just from some of the branches-

Main trunk and where it split into 3 big sections, there's another stack just like this one-
And just for size reference-

The really hard part will be wrestling these 200 pound chunks into the log splitter, poor Jim! Oh, he counted the rings in the base- 123 years old, approximately. Wow. Beeswax used to climb this tree, just to scare me to death, I think. I used to see him up in it but never saw him come down it, I have no idea how he did it.

One funny coincidence- Mike, from the tree service is married to Debbie. She works at our vet's office. I asked him if he had seen the 4 white kittens that the clinic had raised and he said not only had he seen them, he'd helped feed them as they all took turns bringing the litter home at night to care for them. He had fed Nosey Parker! He was so excited to see her again and he was glad that we had her. He kissed her on her head. lol It was so cute.

Confessions of a plate addict... and new fabric, too.

After making the pillowcase for my mother, I was reminded of some Melmac plates we had when I was a kid. They had violets on them and I know she bought them piece by piece, or maybe a place setting at a time, from the grocery store in Mequon, Wisconsin, probably Sentry grocery store. I think it was a deal like if you spend $10, you get a place setting for $2, something like that. Well, we had these pretty plates and ate off of them for years. Little by little I think they yellowed or broke, somehow they all disappeared.

Ebay is a wonderful thing. :) I found a set of the exact same dishes, made by Royalon, Inc up for auction and I was happy to win them. Service for 4. I think I'll split this set with my mom, if she wants some of them, and I think she will. Not microwave safe, but I don't care, these plates bring back such happy memories, like eating birthday cake in May- cake that was decorated with big bunches of lilacs on them, which were always blooming right at my birthday in late May in Wisconsin.

Look at how prettily the seller package it up for me! And the set is in near mint condition! Yay! 40 years old and almost perfect, that's amazing to me. I don't really need more plates, I can't even use all the ones I have now, but I couldn't resist these. I think this will make my 6th or 7th set of dinnerware. But come on, don't you think they're sweet?

I had a great sale on Etsy the other day and took the opportunity (and the money) to buy some more fabric. This is the same fabric I used on the triangular bag I blogged about earlier, along with 2 accompanying pieces. Love this stuff, it's Moda's Swanky by Chez Moi.

And I got some more of Timeless Treasures Gypsy fabric, like my red purse is made out of. I love the bright, bold colors and the graphic.

This is fun, hot fabric! It makes me happy!