Friday Funday

 I am in Virginia for the weekend with my good friend Linda and it is. As the airplane landed, I could see beautiful crystalline snowflakes sticking to the windows. It is sunny and 42 right now, but it is supposed to get quite cold right before the inauguration. I will be back home safely before then, so no need to worry about freezing my toes off. It is so nice to have a nice relaxing weekend in the snow. Being cold all winter would be an entirely different story!

Thursday - Spicy

 

The adventures in organization continue! I threw a bunch of cake decorating tips into the dishwasher yesterday. Anna was really into cake decorating for a while. I was thinking that I might just take the tips to her in Virginia because I was never much of a cake decorator. At one point I bought a clever little frosting tip storage box to keep them all organized. I thought it might be in a corner lazy Susan cabinet where we put mixing and baking things. So I started to dig through that and found the hand mixer. It has been missing for years! Unfortunately, I threw out the beaters yesterday when I was clearing out the bottom drawer. Kurt offered to dig through the trash to find them, but is it really worth digging through the trash to find something that hasn't been used in years? I decided that it was not. 

So while I was digging around for the cake tip box, I pulled out a little tin thinking that would work for storing the tips. Imagine how surprised I was to find it full of Christmas cookies. It wouldn't be quite as surprising if we had baked any cookies this year. Those were the cookies we baked last year. Kurt said they tasted fine and offered to take care of them for me. 

Happy Thursday. It has been a long week, but next week will be a short one, so it all works out in the end. 

Wednesday - A Quickie

 The spice drawer was the perfect choice for a busy weekday. I didn't even get a before photo. Just filled up any empty jars from the overstocks behind and sorted the extra bits into a few jars on the side. There are some empty jars in the dishwasher, but so they will come back soon enough. Having all my spices in matching jars brings me joy. My kids would say it is my OCD shining through, but everything is just so much easier to find when it is uniform and alphabetical. How many times have I bought mustard powder because I thought we were out when it was really just hiding? Nobody needs that much mustard powder! I even added some of the homegrown spices that I grew this summer. I love using sage that came from my own plants. 

I hope that you are having a happy hump day. 

Tuesday - One Day at a Time

  

Being at work again every day is hard! I could really do this if work weeks were 4 days. 5 in a row is just so much! Trying hard to work ahead on grad school so that I can take the weekend off. Wish me luck! This is the bottom drawer in our kitchen. It is supposed to hold baking supplies. It usually holds anything that doesn't have another home. First an empty, clean and then a sort. 

Like things are together now, and a bunch of scary things went into the trash. I ordered a couple of clear bins to keep things sorted. That was a quick one. The spice drawer is on the agenda for tomorrow. Nothing is more fun than alphabetizing the spices!

Monday - Here we go again

The upstairs bathroom was next on the list. I am using a random number generator to choose projects, so it is just luck of the draw that I have already done thee bathrooms. 

We had this one redone just after the pandemic and I love the views. Right now the beach includes backhoes and dump trucks, but it is still nice to look out at the ocean. We had the contractor basically make to entire room waterproof and then put up a barrier free two sided glass shower. The goal was to make it as open as possible. The glass tends to collect hard water spots, and I go in every couple of weeks and give it a good scrub while I am in the shower. The philodendron is getting a little out of control. Maybe I can put a stake in it to get it to grow up a bit more than out? 

There is always the random stuff that collects over time to be put away and then an extra deep clean is in order. It shouldn't take too long to cross this one off the list. 

It is cleaner now, and the counters are clear for the moment. I out a little bin under the sink with the things that get used every day. 

Kurt grabbed a lattice for me at Lowe's this morning and I tried to get the plant to go up a bit. I think I was semi successful. He has asked for a palm tree instead, but those are harder keep alive, so I will stick with this one for now. It is conveniently close to the tub with a spray head that makes watering easy. All the plants that I used to keep in the front steps died terrible thirsty deaths. 

I will cross that job off the list and move on to what is next. This will be a long week at school but then next week is only 4 days for MLK. For weekend I will head to Virginia for a few days, so that will be a bit nice change of pace. I am not sure how long I can keep up with the daily to do lists jobs. I might have to change to weekends only when things get busy again. Right now I need to finish a 3-5 page paper about teacher perceptions of Common Core Standards

Sunday for the Slowdown

It was a long week back at school. It is cold which is unusual for here. Getting back into the flow of things again will take a bit longer I think. I am thankful to have a weekend, even a cold and rainy one. My slow stitching time today will be devoted to hand stitching the binding on my first ever quilt. If I get energetic, I might even try a bit more hand quilting. Hand quilting is not easy through high loft polyester batting, but we live and learn as we evolve in our quilting. I am enjoying the idea of turning my first attempt at quilting into a finished project. It only took a bit more than 25 years. 

If you have more than one RSC25 project in the works, or have a few ongoing projects from years past, these tracking sheets are a great way to keep track. Stephanie makes them for us each year and there are several formats available depending on whether you want to use them electronically or print them and go analog. 

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tracking Sheet in word

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tracking Sheet in PDF

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tracking Sheet in pages

I randomly drew the powder room as the next project on the "To Do" list. Honestly I thought it was in pretty good shape. It is just a half bath on the main floor that doesn't get used much. I keep some extra guest towels on the back of the potty. 

Then there is a little corner shelf for sunglasses, sunscreen and TP. Kurt has decided to turn old TP rolls into fire starters and so I will donate these to his new craft project. 

It was quick work to sort through the sunglasses and sunscreen. I am not sure who thought that bug spray, aloe and lotion should all start living in there, but they got moved out. There were some sad and broken sunglasses that have gone away. I really need a few matching containers that are slightly larger to hold those, so I will keep my eyes open. I am not much of a shopper, but maybe something will turn up. 

Then it was just a quick scrub, wipe down and polish to make everything all shiny. It was a quick one today, which is good because my first assignment for statistics is an essay that needs a bit more work. There is a group chat for the class and the professor seems to be fairly strict in her grading. Honestly, I thought I would be doing some math, but so far it is not that at all. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Pink is a Promise

 

I woke up bright and early this morning to put the binding on this quilt. It is the first that I ever started and it is a bit embarrassing to admit that it is still unfinished after more than 25 years. There was a lot that I didn't know back then and the blocks are poorly constructed by hand because I didn't have a sewing machine. I used puffy high loft polyester binding because I thought that quilts were supposed to be fluffy. That made hand quilting really difficult and binding was incomprehensible to be at that point in time. So in it went to a bag to be carted around from our first condo in Chicago through two Florida houses and finally to our beach condo here. I used walking foot straight line quilting in the muslin sashing and border areas to try to smush everything a bit flatter. The quilt blocks will still need some hand quilting, but I can do that during cold winter nights at the cabin in Virginia. For now I will sew the binding to the back tomorrow during slow stitching Sunday and it will be finished enough to use. Do you still have the first quilt that you ever started? It is fun to look back and appreciate how much more I know now than I did back then.

I think that I added a few more blocks to the pink cross and dots leaders and enders project for this year and I've got a few hexies along to the top of the diamond hexie quilt to straighten out the tip. I think it just needs some half hexies all along the outside to be done. What pink scraps have come out to play in your sewing room? Misterlinky is below. Please share

Friday - for the Finish

 I am fairly amazed that I made it through the first full week of back to school while still managing to cross more organizations tasks off of the list. 

This tiny bookshelf used to live in my sewing room and somehow through the years it ended up in Ryan's closet. I would like to take it to the cabin to keep a stack of games and puzzles. Most of what is there is honestly trash. 

I sorted through and picked out office supplies that should live at school, saving out a few books and magazines along with phone books and my quilting notebooks. Those will all move into the sewing room and the bookshelf will be free to move to the cabin. 

We had an evening event at school last night and I am dragging this morning. Thankfully the weekend is in sight! I didn't manage to do much that was quilting related other than distributing my donated fabric scraps into the appropriate colored bins. I hope you are finding time to fondle some fabric today as well, it is good for the soul!

Thursday - Sorting Out

 

I got the nicest text from my next door neighbor yesterday reminding me that she was bringing me some fabric scraps to play with. It looked like a pile of random until I sorted it by color. Now I can see lots of fun possibilities to add to my collection. I will start with pink of course. The beauty of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is that I know each color will get its turn and I don't have to do all of this right now. 

I used a random number generator to choose closet drawer 1 from the 2025 To Do List as my tiny organization project for today. I need a tiny project right now as I adjust to being back at school again. I seem to be hungry and cold all the time! Too much snuggling up under a cozy blanket with tea during the break I suppose. 

When I opened this drawer I had trouble figuring out what was supposed to live there. We got new bedroom furniture not too long ago and went from two dressers to one. That is when we put a couple of extra drawers into the closet. I guess that I never made a decision about what would go where. How else could I end up with a drawer of unmatched socks, slips, swimsuits and bras?  

I robbed some drawer dividers that don't work all that well in the new dresser and decided that this space would be for bras, nighties and silky things. Everything else went somewhere else to be a later problem. Tada. 10 minutes and a nice tidy space to enjoy. My two graduate classes for the new term have started and I have some reading to do for statistics along with a paper to right for standards based instruction. I think I will just enjoy my break for a few more minutes first. I pared down shoes while i was in there, but I think that now I need to add purses to the list. Those are also a mess.  

Wednesday - My First Quilt is a UFO

With the cleaning and organizing that comes with a new year, I unearthed my very first quilt. I started it before we moved to Florida which was in 1998.  I did not have a sewing machine or a rotary cutter at that time. I had a pattern book from the library book sale that had sampler blocks labelled with 1 through 3 thimbles to represent difficulty level. As I look back at how I started, I am pretty proud of how far I have come. The seams are not straight and do not lie flat.  They are loose and show on the front in some places. I chose puffy polyester batting that made quilting difficult which is how it ended up as a UFO. I did some straight link walking foot quilting in the borders and sashing to help everything stay together and now I will throw on some binding so that I can take it to the cabin and add some hand quilting to the blocks. 

Today I chose the laundry room to organize. It has become a dumping ground for everything that is homeless. A lot of it just needed to go away, but there is a stack for the cabin and several things that are back where they belong. 

It is certainly more functional now. Hopefully it will stay clear for at least a little while. I will add some cabinet organization to THE LIST which has now gone digital after my little bucket of paper slips fell onto the floor while I was quilting my UFO. The list keeps getting longer as each project reveals a deeper layer of chaos.