Catching Up Again! Surprise On Ringo Lake is a Flimsy!

Hannah and I at our first wine tasting of many!

This past July I flew to Wisconsin for 15 days!  I was able to be at my best friend's son's wedding, see Hannah and her boyfriend Jeremy and Mac (we call him Jay now) and his fiancé Liz and hang with my extended family too.  Hannah and I took our third annual Mother Daughter Trip to Door County so we could combine the trips this year (with me teaching I can no longer go in May and so it had to be postponed and this made the most sense..we may do something close to Wisconsin every three years or so so I can combine the trips and see everyone there too!). We also had Mac/Jay and Liz come up for a day and spend it with us.  That was super fun too!  

We went to this cool beach and hiked through the woods and until we found all these stacked up rocks.  So much fun setting the camera and trying to get just the right picture!

Hannah and I have a blast doing anything including trying on a ton of hats!

With Jay and Liz we took a ferry out to Washington Island and saw the Stave Church, two lavender farms, climbed a ton of stairs to the highest point on the island and had pizza (twice--don't ask!)

 This is my best friend Monica and I at Kyle and Anna's wedding.  They had it in this beautiful barn (built for weddings) and it was perfect!
I have not been feeling well at all for a long time and was finally diagnosed with a B12 deficiency.  For some reason I still am super tired after ten weeks of shots...I had a cold and then my BP was high...anyways it has been a rough few months.  Between trying to make it through my work week and the start of one of my moonlighting jobs (seven credits at community college in addition to full time teaching high school) I have been neglecting my sewing.  Finally put it some time before school started and a few hours each weekend to get this On Ringo Lake (On Green Bay) Quiltville Mystery Quilt into a flimsy!

I got the backing and binding made and it is packed up for Ros!

 Kathy has a few steps left to go so since this is my brother's wedding quilt (wedding postponed a year as his fiancé is pregnant...so time to get on the baby quilt!) I have been helping with it.  I am sewing the geese together at this point and made the backing and binding tonight.  Kathy just finished the three piece triangle part and will now start joining that to the larger triangle.  We really want to get it done for pictures at our next Mystery Kickoff Party in November!

I miss blogging and reading my blogs, but I just never seem to have time for anything but work and exercise and sleep.  Thanks for stopping by!

Antics at My End

I am now doing the blog and calendar for my quilt guild Nimble Thimbles.  Today I wrote a post that some of you might be interested in--organization for quilters.  I have mentioned these pages here before but thought I would share again.  Also, if you are local or visiting, feel free to join in on one of our Tuesday night meetings.  We would love to have you!

 Here is our sweet Rosie plopped down before I could even grab my camera.  Rosie is heading over the Rainbow Bridge in less than a week...we are really going to miss her but it is time.

 Stash Kitty also never misses a change to plop down on a quilt before I can grab the camera!

 I am sending a suitcase full of quilts (and a few other gifts) to Wisconsin with my siblings going for a wedding.  I did not go as I was scheduled to teach but the class fell through..too expensive to get tickets at this point.  Anyways, I posted about the quilts I was sending back (wedding quilt for Luke and Ashley and Linc and Christin, baby quilts for Luke and Ashley's soon to be born son, my other cousin Ashley's just born son Knoxton, and my cousin Crystal's already born daughter London) and my other aunt popped in to the conversation to complain her daughters and grandson did not have a quilt.  Her daughters are not yet married (and they will get one when they get married) and I swear I sent one to her grandson...in any event I finished up this Packer quilt (blocks were gifted to me but I sadly cannot recall who gave them to me-if you read my blog remind me!) and so Brayden will be getting it.

 I did some Skype cutting with Barb on Sunday.  I got the next Pat Sloan Children's Library block cut and laid out.  I also cut Straits of Mackinac blocks in yellow and in light purple (to make up for the rainbow month I skipped for the RSC.  I will be sewing these later today at Barb's before our guild meeting tonight.

 I had to share these fun pictures from the Denver Art Museum.  Hannah and I ran across these statues and immediately wanted the other to take a picture.  We had different ideas, but sort of the same.  We are definitely related!

Gotta love art that speaks to us!

Second Annual Mama Daughter Trip: Denver 2017!

Hannah and I met in Denver for our second annual mama daughter city trip last Wednesday!  We covered a lot of ground (over 20,000 steps one day) and saw so much of Denver.  I even tried to talk Hannah into all of us moving there in a year or two.  We are tentatively planning to move back to Wisconsin when Hannah starts having babies but Colorado is warmer!
Our first stop after the hotel was Starbucks, I found another mug to add to my collection.

We walked around and found the blue bear at the convention center.  On our last day we ran back there to each buy a little blue bear for this year's ornament.

We started at the aquarium and then we went for ice cream to Little Man Ice Cream.  It was a walk uphill to get there and there was quite a line!  It was delicious though.

After that we went to Union Station and Lodo to explore and found The Tattered Cover bookstore.

 It just so happened there was a panel and we stayed for that and got autographed books"Anatomy of Innocence Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted" edited by Laura Caldwell and Leslie S. Klinger.  Since we stayed for that we had to change our dinner plans.

We went to Adrift, a tiki hut place and shared some Hawaiian food and each had a fun drink.

Thursday we went to the Denver Zoo and saw lots of animal babies.  It is really a nice zoo and the tiger exhibit was just updated.  The tigers can walk over the people and they had paper towels all over their homes for that days enrichment.  They had a fabulous seal show too!  One of our favorite things was the lorakeets. They were not hungry while we were there so I like the ones here at the Ostrich Ranch better but these were just as pretty.

We stopped for lunch at Jelly.  I had a salad...and a donut hole since that is their specialty.  We went past this place again on Saturday and the line was out the door.  We got super lucky since we went in late for lunch.

We went to the Molly Brown Historic Home Museum but did not have time for the tour since we had tickets to the US Treasury at 3:30.  After that disappointment, we went to the Brown Hotel and looked around.  It was a stunning building, in fact we decided Denver really had a lot of nice old buildings.  We then dashed back to the hotel to drop off our purses before hitting the treasury.  After that back to the hotel to change and walk to the p!at!  We saw The Secret Garden, the musical.  We found a great Indian place for dinner, then walked back to the hotel...see how we got record breaking steps?Friday we hiked Red Rocks and saw the amphitheater.  It is breathtaking out there.

I had to buy this cool rock!

Hannah surprised me by telling me we could check out the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum so we did that next.  Just in time as there was a downpour while we were.  I bought a few fun things for quilty gifts and about two yards of fabric, neutrals and a cheddar!  The show was about the Wild West.  This was one of our favorites though.  This butterfly looked like it would fly right off the quilt!  I had to really resist just touching the gorgeous threads.  People have such amazing talent!

We went to Casa Bonita for lunch since we ran out of time our first night.  It was an experience like no other restaurant! They have a huge waterfall in the restaurant and people, divers, lo! dive into it.  They also have gunfights and gorillas and lots of crazy entertainment.  Apparently the show is featured on South Park.

Next up was the fast version of the Denver Art Museum.  We took so e fun pictures, made and mailed some postcards and checked out the gift shops.  We wanted the little blue bears, but they were out...so we returned to the hotel and put our feet up for a few
On Friday night we went to the botanical gardens with Hannah's newly approved car2go.   We decided they were the best ones we had ever seen.  Water, waterfalls, flowers, rabbits, greenery. Bonus was at sunset on Friday night few people were there too!

We then decided to skip dinner and go have a flight of ice cream at High Point Creamery.  I had basil blueberry and earl grey I've cream.  Super fun!  

Saturday morning we had planned to do the Amazing Race type adventure but we were exhausted and worried we would not have enough time.  We decided for future cities we would do that first thing!  So instead we got coffee and returned to the Molly Brown House Museum!  

This time we toured the inside.  Really learned a lot of history and now I want to find a biography of Molly Brown.  We stopped in at a Fire Museum and bought Kathy a patch since she collects them, did some quick shopping on 16th, ate lunch at Mad Greens then got our luggage to go.  Uber had issues...or our drivers did which put us a bit behind schedule.  We had to catch the train to the airport and Hannah missed her flight.  I was at my gate. Before she even got up to the luggage counter.  Luckily they rebooked her to Chicago and all was well.  We are super excited for next year already!