3 Down, 1 To Go

I finally finished Preston's quilt. The lady who has the longarm that I use went to Idaho at the last minute and we had to wait a week to do the quilting so Preston only had a top to open for his birthday. He really did not seem too excited. Hopefully he will like the finished product better. The material was different John Deere prints.

I have all the material to do one for Ashlyn. If I am lucky I will finish by her birthday in April.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

I Caught the Bug

Do I have too much time on my hands or what? Last night we were watching TV kind of late and a paid program came on. Well it was an infomercial for the Cricut. I have looked at this machine for quite some time and was a little interested but I did not really know what all it could do and so I was very hesitant to spend all that money. Well after watching all the wonderful things it can do I was SOLD. I immediately went to EBay and checked things out. I really wanted it but again I was not wanting to spend all the money. So much for hesitation. I got on EBay again this morning and the bug got me!

I have been participating in a card exchange group for about 1 1/2 years and I can hardly wait for our next exchange. I am going to put my Cricut to use. I am also looking forward to doing some vinyl cutting - this is what I had been wondering if the Cricut could do. Through the infomercial I learned that you can cut cardstock, vinyl and even material to do appliques. You can also control the size and so you can do small to very large. Can you tell that I am way excited? :) I am not so sure that Wayne is very excited though.

Mah Jong at the Senior Center

 

Since I quit my job at Friendly Visitor Service two years ago, I have found several new activities to keep me busy. One of them is playing Mah Jong at the Clovis Senior Center. Every Monday afternoon I spend 3 hours playing with a group of women who make me feel like I am a youngster. I am at the entry level age wise to be using the Senior Center while most of the ladies I play with are at the other end. Several are around 80 years of age. We have a really good time playing and I really miss it when I am unable to go.

This other picture was taken when we were on the Yangtze River Cruise. I had looked forward to being able to play Mah Jong in China but I only got to play one time. The charge to rent a game on the cruise was about as much as it cost to buy a game so I was unwillng to do it. I did pay to join in when they taught people how to play the game and then we got to play for the rest of the afternoon. It was enough to tide me over for the rest of the trip.

 

Christmas 2008

Christmas Eve for the Hopkins clan was spent at our house. We crammed 34 adults and children into the house and it wasn't bad at all. Everyone had plenty of food, fun and family.

 Stacy and her trusty assistant Trevor did a great job of distributing the gifts to all the children. Notice the "beautiful" tree in the background. I have been so busy this year that I had not even put out one single decoration until the day of the dinner. Wayne and I went to Lowes on Tuesday to look at their artificial trees. We decided that if we were not going to put the tree up until the 24th that we did not want to pay for a real tree only to turn around and throw it away less than a week later. We found a decent looking tree and only paid $29 after 75% off and a $10 coupon. It already has the lights on the tree and when it is filled with decorations and the lights are on it doesn't look too bad.

 The children all lined up ready to rip into all those packages.







 



Grandpa Al and Grandma Lulu oversee it all!


There was and abundance of packages in all sizes, shapes and colors.

A Quilting We Will Go

I have a lady in Madera that I have gone to when I needed to finish up my quilts. I did Thomas and Lucas's quilts several weeks ago and then I returned with Jeannie when she quilted Anna and Karyn's Christmas presents.

 

This first picture shows how big the Longarm machine is.

 

 

Jeannie did a really good job. She is much more daring than I am and I am jealous of the beautiful results.











These are the quilts I made for my boys. Thomas picked out the material when we visited Amish country in September. The colors in the pictures turned out a bit odd but the actual quilts look pretty good.



Now that Christmas is over and I can breathe a little I will start on Preston and Ashlyn's quilts.

A New Roof

After our trip to China, Wayne started on his first major project after retiring. He hired Jordan Papin to help him rip off our old shake shingles and then during the week of Thanksgiving he and Marco, our nephew, reroofed with new composition shingles.

 

Josh and Wayne working hard

 

 

As you can see there was a slight mishap during the roofing. Wayne put a foot through the bathroom ceiling. We went for several weeks with it just patched up but he finally got it all repaired and it looks as good as new!