Shhhhhh....I have a secret..

Actually, I have two secrets.  The first one may or may not surprise you, quilting is not my passion.  Now don't get me wrong I love quilting and all things quilting related, but I really, really love to cook.  I think I'm pretty good at it, well at least my family thinks so.  THAT is what leads me to the second secret.  Take a look at this....

It's blueberry bread pudding!  Boy-o-boy is it ever good!!  This is what my breakfast was just before I sat down to write this post.....go ahead, click on it,  you know you want a closer look.....

It's also this that leads me to the other secret, are you ready for this?  Almond extract, yep, that's right, almond extract.  If you don't have those nut allergies to deal with substitute almond extract in all of those blueberry recipes.  Muffins, bread pudding and PANCAKES!!!!  Putting that almond extract in your pancake batter in place of the vanilla will make you a hero, trust me on this one!  Just do it, and let me know how famous you become to the family.

On to other things.  No quilt pictures yet, I've got a monster living in my computer, it's called "picture file".  Dragging my feet on dealing with it.  I've done a pretty good job keeping things in order since we've been in New Hampshire but now I've got to get them off of the passport and onto the hard drive of the new computer.  And I've probably got, wait let me check..............................(your waiting)........

7 new files that I have to go through and sort and name.  I've been busy, really, really, busy.  If you follow Terry she just posted 3 that I just sent back to her.  I've probably got somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ quilts to post pictures of that I have done this month.  AND that doesn't take into consideration the ones that I've had done and not posted, probably another 10 or so!  Hey, I quilted a quilt for a famous blogger, really, Kelly over at I Have A Notion.  Hop on over, she's just made the cutest new bag, one of the Lazy Girl designs.

Remember that cute little Hummingbird?  Well, he's not so cute after all.  He's a huge, super huge little booger!!  He sits on top of the hook and won't let the other birds drink from the feeder.  He dive bombs and flutters and swaks and throws all kinds of fits until they go away.  He's not a very nice little hummingbird. The first picture is a close up and the second if you look on the top of the hook you can see him, again...

I had two feeders out there and he wouldn't let any other little bird near either one of them so I moved one!  How not funny is that?!?!!?!

Went with the hubs on a road trip Sunday over to New York.  Got a few shots of things in Vermont thought I'd share them with you.  If you've never been to Vermont or plan on going to Vermont here's a few pictures of what Vermont looks like. 

Vermont has tons and tons of mountains that look like giant green gum drops to me....

Just about every little town has a general store of some sort....

Lots of very, very cool old houses....

And farms....tons and tons of them.....

Vermont also has an incredible number of covered bridges.  Here's a shot of one that was damaged by Irene.  The bridge was used up until the storm damage.

Next two pictures were taken as we were driving and if you click on them you can see the damage left behind by the storm.  In many, many place we could see where the road had been replaced since it had been washed away by the flood waters. 

Well I think that's it for today.  I need to get myself up from the chair and get upstairs to the machine.  I've got plenty to do and more on the way. 

thanks for checking on me,

have a super wonderful week,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say.....................

Computers, quilts and blueberries!

I was going to insert some cute little clip art showing a sick and old computer but decided just to show you what ours actually looked like.  Here it is during the process of repair, yep, he does computer work too.

So here it lays with all of it's innards hangin' out on it's last leg. We finally get up and running and I, in all of my smartness decided that I needed the kids laptop to have an updated Windows, so insert the disk I do.  NOT SMART, yep, wiped it clean and the version I installed was so old it created major problems and it needed about 2 hours of attention to recover.  oops....good thing he loves me.  Well, the internet is still running like maple sap on a cold day so after a few clicks here and there we've (I get to say "we" because I sat beside him the entire time with everlasting words of encouragement, I couldn't do much else.) discovered that our modem is only running at 30%  and that means slow internet.  Still working on that.  Anyway, long story short - major computer problems.

Happy note, here's a shot of a cute little guy that stopped outside of my window.  Love seeing these little guys zipping about.

How about a few quilt pictures??  Over the weekend I took some time out to drive over to Newport and see the quilts at the South Congregational Church for their blueberry festival and quilt show.  Took a few pics so here they are..

Isn't this just what you think of when you think of a New England old church?

Here's the beautiful quilts that were out for show.

Here's a few pictures which also shows the beautiful interior architecture of the building.

While at the church I ran into Karen (in NH, you've seen a few of her quilts) and I had the opportunity to meet her friend who made this beautiful wall hanging.

And remember I said blueberries???

AND.....the bake sale!!!  THE BEST Blueberry cobbler you have ever eaten!!  I think I ate the entire pan all by myself! Good think I now have the recipe! 

I've been as busy as ever with the machine as soon as I get all of the pictures in order I'll be posting a few.  I was smart enough to save them in a few places just in case. That's it for today!

Have a wonderful week!

thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say..................

Boxes-Why they are important

Unfortunately I am now charging for boxes.  I hope the following post will

help explain why.

This is a box received from a quilter, no kidding!! 

My first picture is of a box that I received containing two quilts.  See how the box is completely ripped open and you can see the bags the quilts were in?  The box is actually upside down.  The lighter color tape is the top of the box and the reinforced tape (that is ripped and just hanging on by a thread) is the bottom of the box. Can you say "not good?".

When I lift the edge you can see how the tape is just barely holding the box together.  If this box had broken the two strings the quilts would have been laying out somewhere between here and Timbuktu.

When I applied pressure to this edge of the box you can see the blue handles from the plastic bag, again, NOT GOOD!! These packages are put through the wringer and you need to make sure your boxes are going to withstand the torture they endure to their destination.

Here's another view.  You can just imagine this poor little box being on the bottom of 15 other boxes and the quilts inside are now exposed to the elements and unknown antics of the journey. 

If you send me your top(s) and do not ship them in a sturdy box, I will return them to you in a new box.  After all of the money and time that goes into these wonderful works of love, they need all of the protection they can get.

That's it for today.

Thanks for checking on me,

Have a wonderful day!

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say.............................