My Almost Ticket

Earlier last week I had a hair appointment. The salon I go to is in the ‘big city’ and there is no parking lot. I have to park on the street. Which is no biggy with Giselle, the only car that I’ve ever been semi-decent at parallel parking.  So I normally end up parking a block or two away. Well this there was an open spot right in front of the building. OMG Score!! This never happens to me, my lucky day!

I’m sitting in the chair, it’s been about a half hour by now. We’ve discussed the plan for the color and she’s applied the dye to my roots. Now I had worn pin curls to bed the night before, so my hair had some body to it. Well she had to brush it out to apply the dye. And you know what happens when you brush culries – bring on the frizz.

So I’m sitting in the chair with the dye in, just on my  roots so my frizzy hair sticks out like an afro. I have the black cap around my shoulders that they put on you to keep any dye and hair off of your clothes. I’m skimming through my people magazine catching up an all the celebrity gossip listening to the beauty parlor chat. The one stylist goes oh look someone's getting a ticket.

The gentleman next to me asks if it's the BMW. No not that one. Then I ask is it the MINI. Looks like it. It's parked in the handicap stall. OH CRAP. I run out, mind you I still have the cape on and my hair is frizzy craziness, to plead with the parking attendant. I didn't see the sign I tell him, I was just so excited about the great parking spot. I didn't see the sign hiding behind the tree. I say I'm so sorry; I'll move it right away.  

He tells me go ahead and move it. So I run back inside and grab my keys. The nearest spot I can find is two blocks way. I have to do the walk of shame back to the salon with crazy- dye-in hair. I get issued a warning.

Orange and Blue Churn Dash

 

I’ve wanted to make a quilt using the traditional churn-dash block for a while now. When I found out my cousin was expecting a baby boy I knew that it was the perfect excuse to do it. I just love the combination of blue and orange for little boys; especially with the bright white for a background.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process of making this quilt from fabric selection, the repetitiveness of piecing the block (cut sew press trim repeat), and the quilting. Ok not the whole process I’m not a fan of basting never will be. If anyone out there likes crawling around on the floor putting in handfuls of safety pins let me know – I got a job for you!

Once again I used the Juki to straight line quilt in a grid pattern using the seams as my guide. This has become my go-to quilting method lately. I haven’t given up hand quilting completely – I have one in the works right now. Maybe I’ll show you some teaser pictures of that tomorrow. But for now enjoy the simplicity of the churn dash quilt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They're Here!!

So much for the New Year’s Resolution, you know posting twice a week. It’s been three weeks since I wrote anything new. YIKES! And it’s not like there hasn’t been things going on. Oh my goodness there has been house projects, gardening, crafties, egg incubating, just to name a few.  That’s just it I get so caught up in crossing things off my to do list, I don’t have the energy to stop and share them with you. Just want to sit on the couch and veg out. Season three of Game of Thrones is out on DVD, need I say more.

Last time we talked I was telling you about the bestest mother’s day present to date: the incubator and eggs. I’m sure you can guess form the title of this post that they hatched. Saturday morning we woke up to three little peep-peeps fresh out of their eggs. The other seven followed by the afternoon. The days leading up were rather intense, I was so impatient to meet them and hold the little fuzzies. First we could see the eggs wobble and we could hear them peeping. Then they started to crack. We could see their little beaks trying to push out of the shell.

I am amazed that all ten hatched. I mean this is our first time incubating and I wasn’t sure we transported them right and there were so many things that could have gone wrong. 100% hatch rate on our first try, impressive. I was hoping for  5 to make it. Mr. B was a great ‘duck daddy’ (his words not mine) monitoring the incubator and rotating the eggs.

The past few days I’ve been enjoying the babies. Right now they are still staying in the house with a heat lamp. It gets too cold at night form them to be out by themselves. The other fur babies seem to be adjusting well to the fuzzies. Gus is in love with them, but jealous if I seem to give them more attention them him. Erwin has been banished from the mudroom. I’m afraid we would want to play with them, with his claws out.

Monday night Mr. B and I brought them outside so they could help me in the gardens. Somehow I managed to be the one to turn the soil and do all the planting, while Gus and Mr. B laid in the grass and played with these cuties.

 

 

 

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably have seen the super adorable video of them in the tub. OMG I almost died from the cuteness.

Eggs in the 'Bator

I have the most wonderful, exciting news! We have baby birds!! Ok well not yet, they are still growing but in about 20ish days we will. Yup you heard me right still growing; they have yet to hatch. Mr. B got word of a soon to be abandoned nest, mama built it in the middle of a landscaping project.  Well he knew how sad I was over the fact that there would be no goslings this spring. (and he’s a softie he didn’t want to see them abandoned either)  He told the guy that we would come and pick them up.

So Sunday afternoon, Mother’s day how fitting, we drove to the farm supply store to pick up an incubator and then on to rescue some babies. All ten of them are tucked away in the ‘bator at a nice 99.5 degrees with 55% humidity and are being rotated twice daily. We candled when we brought them home and we will look again in a few days to check for growth. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

On the crafty front I managed to finish this pillow the other day from the leftover triangles from piecing the Starry Splendor quilt.

Frosting for Dinner

I made cupcakes last night! Guess what that means?

Yup frosting for dinner.

I promise it's not the only thing I had. We made chicken salad sandwiches. I heart chicken salad sandwiches don't you? We eat ALOT of sandwiches at our house. Cold cuts, grilled chicken, chicken salad, BLTs, veggie delites, pulled pork, burgers - turkey, cow, and bean. (burgers are technically a sandwich they are on bread). Toasted sandwiches, open faced sandwiches, paninis. On wheat, on rye, on pumpernickel, on sourdough, and my new favorite pretzel buns. Seriously if you haven't tried a pretzel bun go get some today, make yourself a sandwich, and nom-nom that thang. Or you could  make brats, I saw some pretzel hot dog buns at the store this weekend - i can just imagine how amazing a good brat with some grainy mustard would taste on the goodness of a pretzel bun. 

All this talk of the amazing-ness of the pretzel bun is making me sad. I packed the rest of the chicken salad and buns for Mr. B's lunch and all I have is a lettuce salad and no carbs.

Let's end with another picture of cake-cakes to take our mind off that tragedy.

Derby de Mayo with a Special Pinata

This past Satruday the Familia had our anual Cinco de Mayo celebration. Which morphed into Derby de Mayo seeing as the race was that day. It was a day of tacos, carnitas, salsas, mojitos and betting on the horses.

Of course there was a pinata, what feista is complete with out one? This year my little sista had the honor of brining it. She made it extra special, the contents of the pinata would tell us if her little bun was a boy or a girl; gender reveal pinata!  

I love these pictures of my parents' reaction.

Nana's face is priceless - you can really sense her excitement.

We are all looking forward to meeting the little man in a few months!

Eggs

How was your weekend? Did you get a lot accomplished?

We did manage to get a few things done. Along with getting in a fight with a garden rake and giving myself a black eye and Erwin knocking over my Easter egg tree and smashing the vase to smithereens at 3am Sunday morning - great timing!

Mr B and I put up a new fence around our patio with a gate this time, not one but two gates! More details and pictures to come later this week - when it stops raining.

We also candled all of the geese eggs, simple description and instructions found here. We managed to shoo the ladies off there nests and checked every egg to see if it was fertile. Out of 37 eggs - yes just over three dozen NONE were. (sad face). We then sexed the one goose that wasn't nesting, to the best of my knowledge she is a female. I think it is safe to say we have all geese and no ganders. I was rather disappointed. Oh how I wanted to have fuzzy wuzzy baby geese running around the acres this spring. Maybe I'll get the girls a beau for next season...

Sunday afternoon we had dinner at Mr B's parents. They have a robins nest just outside their window. At least they will get to watch some baby birds this spring.