Friday, May 31, 2013

Progress!

I have made some progress on the quilting front, but I just haven't shared anything in a while.  Here's my Bento Box top all complete.  I haven't quilted it yet... its in the line of quilts waiting to be quilted.

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Here's a closer picture of one corner.  I like how the stones in the border set off the boxes in the middle.

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Our garden has also been taking off lately.  Here's some of our poppies:

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More poppies and our clematis on the lattice work is really starting to grown and climb.

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These haven't flowered yet, but they're definitely getting bigger.

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I absolutely love this Columbine plant.  The flowers look so delicate!  They're a nice reddish color, too.

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And a view all the way down the sidewalk showing the various different poppies.

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We have a nice pink flower, too.  I love the pinks.  They're a very deep pink when they first bloom.

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I have some more pictures of the garden to show that are a bit newer.  We also had a very heavy storm come through earlier this week that resulted in flash flood warnings and tornado warnings.  We actually had a EF2 tornado on the ground for 17 miles on Tuesday night.  There was some damage, but not as much property damage as one would have expected given that we don't normally get tornadoes in this area.



Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Phew! Busy!

I can't believe its been almost 2 weeks since I last posted.  It seems like life has decided to get in the way of my blogging again.

I have been doing some quilting as well as needlepoint.  Our garden is also starting to flourish.  These pictures are from a little over a week ago, but I wanted to show some of my pretty flowers today. :-)


orange flowers

The pink flower below was towards the end of its blooming cycle.  When it first bloomed, the whole flower was a bright pink (similar to what you see on the edge of the petals).

Pink flower



yellow flower

And the start of my columbine.  It was trying to bloom a while ago, but it just wasn't warm/sunny enough yet.  It is currently blooming and I will show some pictures of it.

purple flower

We had a crazy amount of rain last week.  Between last Tuesday and Saturday, we had 6.25" of rain.  While we needed the rain, we needed it over a larger period of time and not just a few days.  I'm just hoping we don't have a super-dry summer like we did last year.

With the long weekend this past weekend, DH and I decided to do some furniture shopping on Friday afternoon (we both took a half day off from work).  We ended up going to a local store that deals only Amish-made furniture (mostly from the Ohio area) and we're 99% sure we're going to get some furniture through there.  The prices are very reasonable ($240/ dining chair versus $450/chair at a local furniture store) and they will make everything custom for you.  We only wish we started out at this place instead of ending there. :-)

We also took a drive Saturday morning out to Vermont to check out some antique dealers.  Since it was pouring rain all day, it actually wasn't too bad to go out for the drive.  There weren't as many people out due to the rain and cold temperatures (think pouring rain and no warmer than 45F), so it made the drive and window shopping a bit more enjoyable.  We left the house at about 10am and headed to Bennington, VT.  We then made a few other stops on our way up to Manchester, VT and then drove back home.  We were back by about 5pm.  We didn't find anything that said "buy me now", but it was a good way to spend the day and we enjoyed ourselves.

Hopefully I'll get some quilting mojo back soon.  I think I'm in a bit of a rut as I really need to finish quilting my Lone Star quilt and its taking quite a bit of time.  But then again... I'm only getting 30 minutes here and there to make progress on it.


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Hope everyone else enjoyed their Memorial Day and took a few minutes to remember our fallen soldiers who have paid the ultimate price for our freedoms!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Egged!

Only we can live out in the middle of nowhere and get egged!


egging

Sorry about the junk in the corner.  Spiders have taken up residence on the porch and the pollen has gotten trapped in their webs.  The whole area will get cleaned this weekend

So you may be wondering where that egg came from... and that it looks pretty small. 

Here's where it came from:

bird nest

A little sparrow decided that the top of our porch light was a good spot to build her nest.  I had noticed that there was some mud up there at one point and I cleaned it a bit.  DH was convinced the slope was too steep for a nest..... he was wrong. :-)

Our industrious little sparrow planted her nest up there, and its a pretty good nest, too.  After the nest was already built and fully formed, I didn't have the heart to remove it.  So there's a sparrow up there sitting on the rest of her eggs waiting for them to hatch.  I think I may take the ladder out this weekend and take a peek up there.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Friday, May 10, 2013

Garden Update

It's been a week or two since I posted about our gardens, so I thought today would be a good time to post on how things are going.

This planting bed is actually mostly new this year.  We had a lot of trouble getting grass to grow here and we were thinking of changing it to a planting bed anyway.  So we decided to just pull some of the dirt out and layer mulch down so it looks a lot better.  We didn't know what kind of flowers we wanted to plant, so we ended up putting some veggies here.  :-)


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Its a little hard to see in the picture, but the small plants in the front and on the right are broccoli.  The four on the right were a 2nd batch we bought after seeing how big they were compared to the other ones we had purchased.  There are also 3 cherry tomato plants in there.  We'll have easy access to the items and they should be relatively easy to care for since they're right at the house.  Next year we hope to have a bigger garden in the back of the house.

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The plants in the existing planting bed (flowers) are all starting to really take off.  They're getting big and bushy as well as starting to get some buds.

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The one above may actually flower today or tomorrow.  These are beautiful magenta-red flowers that are very pretty.

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The rest of the plants are coming along well.  They have lots of green, but not too many have buds yet.  There's a lot more green around that the last time I posted pictures.

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Our lupine is very happy this year.  The one in front is actually a new plant to replace one that died last year, but the two in the bag are existing plants and they are definitely happy.

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Here's a view down the sidewalk towards the driveway.  My little pig is keeping a careful watch on the clematis and poppies.  :-)

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Speaking of poppies,  here's one that is just about ready to bloom.  Its been like that for 2 days now and I know in the next day or two it will just completely pop open.

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Our clematis are definitely much happier this year, too.  The one in the center is from last year and he's grown more this year than he did all of last summer.  We also planted two new clematis on either side of the first one.  They are all of a variety that you don't have to trim each year.  They bloom/grow on old wood, so we won't have to untangle it every year from the lattice.  We'll just need to trim off any dead bits and that's it.

I'm hoping the clematis will flower soon, too.  It looks like it has some buds that are almost ready to go, but since nothing flowered last year, I'm not sure how long it will take for the buds to mature.  The flowers are supposed to be anywhere from 4-7" wide, so it may take a while for them to mature enough to be a 7" flower.  When it does though... its going to be beautiful.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Whirlwind

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind for me.  I'm not quite sure how it got to be Friday (almost) already.  The past week or so has been primarily taken up by work items.  My work is going through a re-structuring....again.  By the time everything falls out, I will have had 6 managers in 6 years!

Part of this re-structuring is also some "de-layering", which essentially means that anyone above an individual contributor level needs to re-interview for our own jobs.  We have 15 people at the current level that I am at, and only 8 positions open.  In light of this, I decided to post for one of the new, open manager positions.  It took me several days to decide whether I even wanted to post for it.

At this stage, I've had the interviews (today) and I'm absolutely beat.  The interviews weren't especially long or difficult, but the whole stress of the situation seems to have taken its toll on me.  My quilting mojo is completely gone and I have very little desire to even get into the sewing room.  I'm hoping that now that the interviews are done and everything is essentially out of my hands, that I'll get some of that mojo back.  I'll know in about another 1-1.5 weeks whether I am selected over the other 3 candidates.  The other 3 have at least 5 years more experience than I have, so I'm not feeling quite so confident now about my chances.

Anyway, last weekend I did play with some new fabric in my sewing room.  I purchased a scrap bag just before Christmas and I'm going to make some fun and funky place mats with it.  I'm cutting the pieces into 4.5" lengths and varying widths.  Then those will get sewn into 12.5" long, strip pieced sets.  Everything will get sashed and the end place mat will be about 16" x 18".


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Some of these fabrics are really fun, while some others are pretty ugly (see pieces being held up on the right side of the picture below).  I'm going to use Bonnie Hunter's method.... if its ugly, just cut it smaller.  :-)

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I'm also thinking I should have taken a piece of advice from my cat over the weekend.  She had it right.... curling up on a soft blanket on a chair in front of an open window in the sun!

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This weekend we're traveling a bit to visit my parents for Mother's Day.  Each year we visit them and with my siblings, we make a trip to a local garden center and buy my Mom more plants than she knows what to do with. :-)  Its a combination of Mother's Day and birthday for her.  Plus, my younger sister's birthday is also next week, so we'll celebrate that, too.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Stashbusting 2013 - Week 18

Wow!  Two weeks in a row that I'm posting for stashbusting... maybe I can keep it up. ;-)

I used a bit more fabric this week for my Bento Box quilt.  I had to cut some more pieces to make the pieced border, and I cut strips of fabric for 4" borders around the entire quilt.


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The borders are ready to go on, but today will be spent outside again with the garden and taking care of the property (along with laundry and grocery shopping and paying bills).

Yesterday, I planted 24 new perennials to replace ones that died over the winter and also 4 more broccoli plants.  This is the first year that we're trying to grow some veggies, so we're starting with tomatoes and broccoli.  Next year we'll try some beans and possibly corn, too.


Here are my numbers so far this year:
Added This Week:       0.00 yards
Added Year to Date:    5.86 yards
Used This Week:          0.88 yards
Used Year to Date:       4.89 yards
Net Year to Date:         -0.97 yards

I'm just one yard in the hole and I know I'll be able to bust that out soon.  I will have one quilt ready for quilting and the Bento Box quilt will be ready soon, so that will be some good yardage busted once I get those complete.

Go on over to Judy's blog to see how everyone else is doing.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Guess What???


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The text above the chicken says "Chicken Butt".

Yes - that was the lovely card my sister sent me for my birthday.  :-)  We got a good laugh out of it.  I actually had to check the back of the card to see if it was one she had special made or if it was something she found.  Believe it or not... it was a card that she found at a store! 

The "chicken butt" joke is one that has been running around the family for at least 10-15 years now.  I may have to recycle this card and give it to another sibling.

On the quilty front, here's my Bento box quilt with the pieced border sewn onto one side.  Its pinned onto the other long side, but I haven't had a chance to sew it on yet.  Hopefully that will happen tonight.

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I'm slowly making progress on my quilts.  One would think that by sewing with a machine I'd get the tops done faster!  Too bad life tends to get in the way. ;-)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations