Wacky Weekend

Saturday was the regional Odyssey of the Mind Competition.  This was our third year having a team.  Our problem was to build a Rube Goldberg Machine.  Check out this link if you don't know what a Rube Goldberg Machine is. 

The machine worked great, but we lost a lot of points on style and didn't do very well in the spontaneous problem.  With a 4th place finish, it will be our first time ever not to make it to state.  I shouldn't admit that I am relieved to be done.  We are constantly way overbooked these days that it is nice to see the end of an activity.  There were two other teams from our school though who did a fabulous job and both of them finished first in their categories and qualified for state! One team had a boy from our Lego team and the other was most of our Girl Scout Troop.  We got to watch their performance and it was fabulous.  Ryan's flag football team was also there and ended up making it to the next round, so there were celebrations all around. 
It was also the day of Girl Scout Camporee.  We were going to try to make it for at least part of the day between the competition and the awards ceremony.  I was pretty wiped out though, and the kids seemed to be about the same.  We all took a little bit of a power nap before heading back down again for evening festivities. 

Today I started making some pink ribbon blocks for Mom's Chemo Quilt.  I found a pattern here, and modified it so that it used slightly large pieces.  The directions called for a lot of squares and half square triangles sewn together and it seemed like too many seams to think about.  I've got 7 ribbon blocks done and have most of the chain blocks in progress.  I'll need to put it away soon though so I can get some work done for school tomorrow.  It has been nice to spend some time on other things this weekend, but I will be paying the price all week trying to keep up with lesson plans and grading. 
Speaking of keeping up with things.  I want to apologize to anyone who has commented recently and not gotten a response back quite yet.  It has been an adjustment to keep up with the new schedule and I'm not quite into a routine yet.  I'm slowly working my way backwards to try to catch up again.  So for anyone who has recently asked to join the Rainbow Scrap Challenge -- please consider yourself joined.  I'll get your name added to the list "officially" as soon as I can find a chance.  

Going to State

This was our primary team at OM last weekend. The little guys don't get judged and everyone gets a ribbon for participating.
The big guys got second place which is well enough to qualify for the state competition.
It has been busy for the last few weeks and with another round of OM coming up, it doesn't look like that is ready to change anytime soon.

Frugality or Futility?

Sometimes I wonder if being frugal is truly worth it. OK, if I were really struggling to stretch the budget and couldn't afford to go out and get new batting, I could see the utility in piecing together all of the odd scraps to make a new quilt bat. However, I stocked up on batting when it was on sale after Christmas, and still have 3 bags stashed in the laundry room. Why do I torture myself by insisting on using every last scrap? Something in me just abhors waste. I spent all afternoon puzzling together a batting and a backing. I truly don't mind the time. If I wanted a hobby where I could accomplish things quickly and efficiently, I probably would not have chosen quilting. If I had been happy with the way it all went together, it wouldn't have been an issue. As it was, the batting ended up a little lumpy and wonky. I got it all laid out and ended up muttering under my breath when I realized the batting had a swerve to it, leaving one corner completely unstuffed. More muttering followed as I whacked off the protruding section and handsewed it behind the offending corner.

So that took most of the afternoon. Alternated with loads of laundry and the usual weekend stuff, I got my quilt layered and pin basted. Kurt voted for read quilting thread, assuming I have some of that, I'll get a start on that as soon as the kids are in bed. Today was the last OM practice before the big state competition next weekend. Ryan is going to be a newscaster and announce what is happening from this TV he made out of cardboard boxes. The boys are going to be dinosaurs destroying a cardboard city while the girls drop weights on the structure. I think everyone is ready for it to be over. We'll have a final dress rehearsal on Thursday and then it's off to Orlando on Saturday.

Quilt Show

I was surprised when my mother-in-law wanted to go to a quilt show together, but I was happy to oblige! had so much fun looking at all of the beautiful patterns, colors and techniques. "Mom" seemed to be having a good time too, and asked questions about the different methods we were seeing. Before long she was able to tell the difference between the hand and machine quilted tops and separate the pieced blocks from the applique. She seemed drawn to the earth tones and didn't care for the "art" quilts at all, preferring the more traditional blocks. I found myself drawn to quilts with careful value placement that gave shaded effects. I liked the way the different yellows and golds made this quilt seem to glow. I think the green contrast adds nice movement and the reversal of the color placement in the sashing strips is a nice touch. It was quilted with lots of straight lines following the diagonal.

This one had fabulous quilting in each of the stripes and gave a cool woven effect. I keep thinking I'll try a bright and black quilt sometime, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Ryan was anxious to have an OM practice today to begin preparing for the state competition, he even volunteered to make the snack and worked diligently on blueberry muffins for everyone. They got a little carried away with the spray paint today, but started working on a box city for their dinosaurs to demolish.

Last night I got busy organizing and putting away all of the scrap squares I've been producing lately. I've used lots of two inch squares, but I still seem to have more to spare. I went ahead and sorted everything into colors because I've got a leader ender thing going that's called crayon box. It's a 16 patch with a solid ring around a white center. I am thinking about alternating it with a yellow and green square of some sort to suggest a crayola carton. I made good progress on the Scrappy Irish Chain, but in the wee hours of the morning realized that I might have made a small math error causing me to make twice as many blocks as I need. I looked up the size of a standard twin quilt, and compared that to the finished block size to determine the number of columns and row. However, I think I forgot about the fact that their are two types of blocks, thus requiring only half as many of each. I think the mistake is still recoverable, as I only got about half done with the blocks. I can put the two halves back together and end up with about the right number.

Anna and Sydney both came to cookie booths with me this morning and then wanted a picnic for lunch. I'm not sure how they managed to eat their lunch on the swing set, but they were having fun and playing well together, so I can't complain.
I was planning to stay up tonight and watch the academy awards while cutting some more scraps, but I 'm tuckered out from my late night. I think I'll curl up in bed and watch the arrivals until I fall asleep.

Weekend Full of Fun

This was one of those weekends that had to be carefully choreographed to make sure that everything happened with the right people at the right times. Friday evening Kurt took the girls to a father daughter dance at school and Ryan and I had cookie duty. We went to pick up our first re-order and then got ice cream on the way home. The girls all danced their hearts out and were all very excited to wear pretty dresses and real flower corsages!

This is Sydney with some of her class mates. Kurt thought it was too funny that their were 5 girls at the dance all wearing the same dress. (I wonder if they all got theirs off the clearance rack at Kohl's?)

Saturday morning was supposed to be the beginning of cookie booths,but my girls all seemed to have other plans. I ended up cancelling it, because everyone else seemed to be fully booked as well. Most of our day was devoted to the Odyssey of the Mind competition.

This is our team. Their task was to build a balsa wood structure to hold as much weight as possible. Then the team created "shockwaves" by pulling spacers out so the weights slammed down on the structure. While this was going on, they were performing a skit that was supposed to tie into what was happening with the structure.

.The kids chose a dinosaur theme and made their own costumes out of green clothes, cardboard, spray paint, and lots of bungee chords. The boys danced around being dinosaurs and going extinct while the girls handled the weights and spacers. Then the judges quizzed them and talked to them about the structure and the skit. They are all very into making sure the kids did all their own work and ask lots of process questions to make sure the kids know what is going on.

They performed in the morning and then returned in the afternoon for a spontaneous problem, where they had to turn one of the team members into a monster using common household items. We were lucky enough that the venue was just a few miles from home, so we came back and rested between events.

The evening brought the awards ceremony. Most of the team made it back, but Anna decided to skip the awards to go to a sleepover birthday party.

I think Kurt was very hopeful that the team would score well enough to feel good about what they did, but not well enough to go onto the next level. We were all surprised (pleased?) that the team took second place in their division and qualified for the state competition!! The kids are all pretty excited to have a chance to add to their skit and build an even stronger structure to hold lots more weight. Ryan is cooking up some scheme about making a city out of empty Girl Scout Cookie boxes.

Sunday brought Girl Scout Cookie Booths! We signed up to stand outside a local 7-11 and try to hawk cookies for two hours. Things went fairly smoothly for that, although the business seems to be slower than in years past. The weather was lovely, not too hot or too cold. I was especially happy about our timing when the rain hit just as we arrived home after our shift.

Then this afternoon, Kurt went to pick his mom up from the airport so that we can leave tomorrow for our cruise! We're leaving the computer here, so I'll be completely cut off for the next few days. I hope everyone out there is healthy and safe, I'll check back in a the end of the week.