Tiny Scraps

These are my tiny scraps - the littliest ittiest bittiest pieces of fabric that I save. Aren't they darlings? You can see the curved edges from cutting out my Dresden Plate blades on some of these - after ironing those edges are trimmed straight with the rotary cutter. I am thinking that I will cut each square 4", but maybe 4.5" or even as large as 5". I am a bit undecided about that!

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My intent is to make a nice little table runner for the top of my dresser. I am using all "fall" colors with a touch of brighter yellows, blue and purple for a bit of "pop". A "controlled" scrap quilt, with tiny pieces - my favorite kind of quilt - or table runner in this case. These little blocks are super fun to make. I have lots more done too - just outside of the edge of the photo.

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I am thinking an outside "border" of these blocks with an inside cream border embroidered with leaves and then 2 rows of blocks as the center. I just don't have any embroidery pattern, but I am sure that there has to be a free site somewhere on the internet - if you know of one, please let me know! If I can't find what I am looking for maybe I could even draw my own leaf pattern.

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My quilt group meets up again next Thursday and I hope to have a neat, tidy stack of blocks all done to show them - they who probably thought maybe I was just a slight bit crazy to keep all those tiny trimmings from my Dresden Plate blades, but were to polite to say so! LOL.

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I have a little tote of "bright" colored tiny scraps too... once this one is done I just might have to make a "summer" one with embroidered flowers, or an all blue one with embroidered snowmen, or an all red one with embroidered hearts, or, or, or!!!! Oh yes, I do love my scraps!

Dinner for Two

This is the dinner DH and I fixed... just for the 2 of us for New Year's Eve! Little Boy had his own menu as he seems to be going through another picky eating stage, sigh. But he was very impressed that we were having such a special dinner with THREE candles on the table! Traditionally for New Year's we do a meat fondu with lots of salads. Our salads included: a cubed potatoe salad with mayo and vegetables, pasta salad, bean salad, cucumber salad, tuna salad PLUS store bought bruschetta, spinache dip, goat cheese and a pate. And we had garlic bread. (Had we been in Europe DH's sister would have fixed a multitude of different fish salads as well). Did I mention that all this food was just for the 2 of us? Goodness! But a special occassion calls for a special dinner and we both really enjoyed it. Besides - it kept us nicely in left overs for a few days. Oh - and dessert - yum, yum, yum... we had chocolate fondu with strawberries, banana and rum pound cake. Mmmm. Just before 7 pm we tuned in to an Austrian radio station, did the count down and then they played the traditional waltze and we were in bed well before midnight our time!

On New Year's Eve we also exchange little good luck charms. This year we had marzipan charms and little glass ones. Little Boy also got a stuffed pig. They might be hard to see but there is a horseshoe, pig, chimney sweep, lady bug, mushroom and 2 more pigs - these are all traditional good luck charms.

P.S. Excuse the bare sheetrock - we are, as usual, in some sort of state of construction.

Looking to 2008

Goodbye 2007! Hello 2008! Usually I like to post a photo of some special moment during the past year (ok, usually being for the previous 2 years because before that I didn't even know what a blog was!). This year I looked and looked through my photos and was at a loss... I've already shared lots of great photos this past year on my blog but there are so many more...


Finally I settled on these - me at work and 2 of my son playing at the beach (I love to see him have fun! Doesn't that make the "work" part worth it?).

I don't know what 2008 will hold for me, but I will:

*Appreciate every day that I am feeling well and my family is healthy. I was pretty sick for about 6 months this year - but am better now and am slowly getting my energy back. Plus, I had that big scare when Little Boy had that awful allergic reaction. Good health is definately something to be thankful for! Being together is an additional plus - we were apart from DH for about 6 months this year - entirely too much time apart so hopefully that will change this coming year.

*I will continue to make PLAY time a priority. Having F-U-N is so important.

*I have been fiddling around with printing favorite recipes out to share - I cook alot and amazingly enough - most of my favorite recipes are scribbled on the back of scraps of paper of some sort - I know - sad for someone in the food business! So far in 2008 I've typed in 4 recipes - it is a start! I look forward to the day when I have all my favorite recipes organized in a photo album. I feel strongly about this because I realize that so many special memories center around different foods. An album of favorite family recipes can be a real treasure!

*And, I really need to back up all my digital photos (I even have the external hard drive - I just have to figure it out), plus order prints of favorites for a good old-fashioned photo album that you can hold in your hands and pass around. Other photos need to be scanned!

*The paperwork still needs to be organized! Doesn't it always?

I am sure there are more things too, but that is enough for me to concentrate on for now!

I didn't list sewing at all - one of my sisters once said that me and my sewing machine is like a smoker and their cigerette - not long apart from each other! Obviously I will sew!

So, here's to 2008. Health, Love, Happiness, Peace.