The holiday’s put me in a melancholy mood.  When I was young Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday.  Our family would travel to my dad’s cousin’s home.  They lived about 45 minutes away from us in the country.  Back in those day’s everything closed for the day.  You would be lucky to even find a gas station open.  I can remember sitting in the backseat driving to Joy and Charlie’s house and just gazing out the window at the quiet.  The trees had all dropped their leaves by this time and even though the land was barren looking with the crops harvested and a wide window to all with the leaves off the trees, there was a magic to it all. 

Family members from all over the country would arrive to spend the day together.  As kids we would spend hours outdoors playing football, sliding down the hill on the leaves, having fun.  The home had two kitchens, one upstairs and one down so there was much activity with the meal being prepared.  After dinner if you walked into the large living room there would be men in every seat half asleep with the football game on.  I was drawn to this sense of togetherness.

It is now almost 50 years later, my grandparents are long gone, my parents have passed and I still can’t drive down the road during the holiday’s without looking out the window and thinking about each home and wondering how they are spending their day.  Are they planning on family coming for the day, are they decorating, or do they not even celebrate?  I feel that sense of quiet again.  A feeling that all is right, that the love of family can overcome all.   

It is a scary time for all.  The world has changed so much in those 50 years.  I fear for my grandbabies and the world they will live in.  I wish it could all be so simple again.  I wish we could all feel that sense of quiet - all is good, all is safe. 

Yesterday in church we sang O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.  The last verse touched me so.  I looked it up and it was written in 1861.  Could it be that the fears have always been here, the desire for so much more has always been here, that the quiet has always been here.  We just need to find it within ourselves.

[Verse 7]
O come, desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease
And be Thyself our King of peace

[Refrain]
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

Merry Christmas to all.

Wow this Summer just flew by.  I think it was my busiest one yet.  We had four weddings this Summer. That means 4 weekends away to celebrate love.  They were all so much fun and how wonderful it is to spend time with friends and family. 

We spent some great days on the lake.  We are fortunate to have some lake property just 30 minutes away.  That makes it oh so easy to grab the grand kids and hit the water.  We are going to head that direction this weekend as we need to get things put away and boat cover on as we have already had a couple of nights with freezing temperatures here in the Midwest.

Baby Van arrived in July and he is now almost 3 months old and the sweetest baby!!  My heart melts when I am with him.

One of my BIG loves is music.  I have been a music junkie my whole life.  As this was the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, we declared this to be the summer of music.  We went to over 20 concerts and we also went to two music festivals.  I was able to cross a lot of peeps off my bucket list.  I think my favorite show this Summer was Judah and the Lion.  They put on such a high energy show and the crowd was a part of it from start to end.  I went to two concerts in Vegas one being Def Leppard and it was amazing!!  My biggest surprises for the summer were The Dead and Company and John Fogerty.  They were both great shows.  Number one off my bucket list was Guns N Roses, they were as awesome as I thought they would be.  My biggest disappointments were The Who and Hall and Oates.  Daltry and Hall’s voices were not what they used to be.  To top the Summer off our friend actually attended Woodstock in ’69 so we had a party to honor him. We all dressed in 60’s attire, played the Woodstock list from Spotify in the background and had cocktails made from the Peace Vodka we had purchased at Bethel Woods last year.  We served Guns N Rosa and Stone Temple Pinot wine.  All in all it was a great summer of music!!

I hope to get back to some sewing this fall. I have been working on hand applique projects during my lunch hours at work.  Hallmark Christmas movies start in 10 days so I will have a lot of recliner time in my future.  What better time to get back to all my unfinished projects. 

So much good has happened this summer.  My heart is full!!  My oldest son was married in June in the Teton Mountain range area.  It was such a beautiful wedding with an awesome couple.  We were able to spend almost 2 weeks out west and it was fabulous.  I had all my children and grandchildren with me and I couldn’t ask for a better couple of weeks. 

I also had the Teton Summer Wedding quilt finished in time to gift.  My friend Viki quilted the quilt and she did amazing work.  The fish became fish with scales and the trees became trees.  Viki made it come to life for sure.  I couldn’t have been happier with the final result. 

Last week I became Grandma for the third time and Van Anthony is a gorgeous little bundle of sweetness.  He is so cute and such a sweetheart.  I love having a baby in the family again.  I am sure his older sister and brother will be good helpers for mom and dad. 

Next up is another family wedding this weekend.  My sister’s oldest son is getting married in Indianapolis so we will head that direction.  I love being with family!!

I can’t believe it is June already.  We did not have a very nice spring and so far it is just been wet and rainy.  I spent many years working in agriculture.  I feel so sorry for the farmers that have not been able to get their crops in the field due to all the rain.  We have a lake place and so far we have spent very little time as the weekends have not been very nice or warm.

I have been able to do one of my favorite things quite a few times already this year.  I am a concert junkie.  I have gone to 100’s of concerts in my lifetime.  I just love music.  In May I was able to see The Who for the first time.  What fun!!  I also went to see Kool and The Gang as they opened for Foreigner.  Foreigner is one of my favorites as every song they sing was a hit.  Next up was The Zak Brown Band followed by Jon Pardi and Dierks Bentley.  All in all a good line up so far.  Next week I am going to see Dead and Company. 

I have not accomplished much in the sewing room due to having company for a week and taking a small vacation before that.  I have worked on small hand projects as I am trying to follow along with a group I am in on facebook and complete Cheri Saffiote Payne’s Sweet Land of Liberty. 

I am still finding family.  After my half-sister in Pennsylvania found me last year I received another message in December from a gal in Kentucky.  She is two years younger than me and was given up for adoption also.  We found that we share a large amount of DNA, enough so that we are half-sisters also.  We share the same father as my first sister and I share.  So with little to no work from me I have now found I have two half-sisters.  I have two sisters from my adoptive parents where I was the middle sister and once again I am the middle sister to my blood sisters.  It is all very exciting and fun as we all seem to be alike in many ways. 

 

 We loaded up the RV and headed north last weekend.  We traveled to Holland, MI to the Tulip Festival.  Tulips are my favorite flower.  Every year for my early May birthday my honey sends me tulips.  This year he said he was just going to take me to them.  They were beautiful.  A sea of tulips everywhere.  The weather was absolutely beautiful, we picked a good weekend to go.  I have always been a fan of the antique tulip applique quilts.  Someday I am going to create one.  I know I have a tulip quilt in me.  One of the fun finds of the weekend was that the local quilt show was going on.  It was fairly small but they had some lovely quilts and quilts in a wide range of techniques.  I liked that there were all kinds of quilts.  It was fun also that they allowed pictures.  I have added a few here that were my favorites.  The applique basket quilt was done by hand and just amazing.  On the way home Sunday we stopped at a couple of wineries and did the tastings.  We made it home in time on Sunday to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with friends.  It was a really nice weekend.

I started my DNA story last time.  I will follow up a bit with it.  The first contact I had was from a gal in Pennsylvania.  She claimed that we were 1st cousins or closer per the Ancestry DNA site.  After some sleuthing through our dna matches we determined that we had to be from my birth father's side of the family.  We emailed back and forth and eventually after quite a few months the amount of dna we share determined that we are 1/2 sisters.  She was not given up for adoption.  Our father left her mother when she was two.  So, she had information and pictures of my father.  My middle son is the spitting image of my dad.  We always wondered where he got his height from and it was all my dad.  I found that my dad had passed in 2012 and had not led the most perfect of life's.  My 1/2 sister is a little over 2 years older than me and after he left she did not have much contact with him.  She was not aware of any siblings.  She is a real sweetheart and I can't wait to meet her in person.   We hope to get together this summer.  Oh, so much more to come concerning my finding family story.

I was able to complete the Teton Summer Wedding quilt top.  It is now with my friend to quilt.  I am excited for her to make it come alive. 

I have had so much going on in my life since last summer.  I was adopted at birth.  I have never known anything about my birth family and really I have never had any inclination to find out.  Well, this all changed last summer.  My kids thought it would be interesting to find my ethnic background out.  So, I spit in the tube and sent my DNA off to ancestry to find out where my long lost family might have originated from.  I found out so much more.  I love my adopted family and really didn't need any of my biological family in my life but it has really been crazy all that I have found out.  It is so much I will tell it a bit at a time.  The first thing I found out is that I am not very interesting.  I am about 85% Western European.  The second thing I found out is that my story is nothing that I thought it was.  As a young teen I imagined that my parents were the homecoming queen and the football star, they had me, were forced to give me up and always regretted it and wondered where I was.  Yes, only in the movies.  This was not my case at all.  I have found my parents.  I was the product of a one night stand, from a truck driver and a married mother of two.  Nothing glamorous.  But, they did right by me and gave me a wonderful home.  It is all a bit overwhelming but I don't regret finding out.  I will post a bit each time about my journey as it has been oh so amazing.  You all have a good week! 

The trees and fish of the Jackson Hole area are completed.  My son is an excellent fly fisherman so I had to include the fish that got away.   In the making of this quilt I challenged myself to use only fabric on hand.  Well, I found out I certainly have a bunch of fabric.  I love working in the primitive style so it is absolutely crazy that so far I have only had to purchase the blue for the water.   The remaining fabrics have all came from my stash.  How I ended up with so many bright, clear colored fabrics I will never know.  It truly is an addiction, beautiful fabric! 

Tonight we are entertaining for the Final Four games.  My Bobby loves what I like to call bad sports.  He will watch everything.  I love the Cubs and the Pacers but he is willing to watch two teams play and we don't even follow them.  My sister and her honey and my cousin and her husband wanted to go out tonight.  I knew Bobby wouldn't give up watching these games, so they are coming to us.  Us gals will open a few bottles of wine and sit in the kitchen/dining room and visit.  Isn't it strange that with friends and family you never run out of things to talk about.  When my parents passed a couple of years ago I brought home my mother's old record albums.  We found a really old one that was a family member that traveled as a singer with Big bands.  We are going to put that on the turntable tonight and enjoy. 

I have been working away on the Teton's summer wedding quilt.  The mountains are done.  I have pictures of my son climbing the Teton mountains.  You start with shorts on and finish with winter snow wear on.  I love the thought that the lower areas of the mountains are covered with ponds and wildflowers.  It is definitely not what you think of when you think about mountain climbing.

This paper piecing is new to me and I have not enjoyed it all that much.  I was ready to be finished with the New York beauty blocks and move on to the mountains which looked so much easier for me.  Well, that definitely wasn't the case.   The sky fabric drove me batty for a bit.  I could not get it to go in the correct direction.  In the end I had to make templates from the pattern and sew the mountains from templates.  I am ready to move onto the trees.


It is spring break week here.  I am missing the years traveling with my kiddoes to Florida,  My grandbabes are getting old enough that I might have to start that tradition up again.

  I found out recently that I am going to be a Grandma again.  I am super excited.  My two grandchildren Ian and Kallie are from my youngest child my daughter and they are 5 and 6 years old. were not even sure that they were going to find out what they were having but the new rage of gender reveal parties pulled them in.  Today they had a little party that was so much fun with a Southwest theme, excellent Mexican food and a piñata for the kids to hit.  When they piñata finally burst, blue wrapped candy went everywhere.   It's a boy.  I can't wait for July to come!!

In the meantime I have been sewing again and working on a wedding quilt for my oldest son.  He is getting married this summer in the Tetons as he has lived there for over 10 years.  I found a Jean and Valori Wells quilt pattern from 2006 entitled Sister Scape.  I think it will make the perfect wedding quilt for Jess and Kelly.  They are getting married in June and the Spring wildflowers are going to be the color for their outside wedding.  The Teton mountains will be the backdrop.  The center of the quilt is all New York Beauty blocks made to look like wildflowers. 

 It has mountains across the top and trees on each side.  The bottom of the quilt is a river.  My son has worked as a guide on the snake river for many years.  The majority of the quilt is paper pieced.  I have really had to step out of my comfort zone as paper piecing is not my forte.  I am excited that it is coming along.  I have the center completed and I am now working on the mountains.  I am really having to push myself along on this quilt.  My friend has promised to quilt it so I need to keep moving to give her plenty of time to do her thing.  It does feel good to be sewing again.  Babies and weddings, that is what I have been up to!

     It has definitely been awhile since I have posted anything.  My life has changed as much as this world we live in has changed in these past few years.  When I started this blog I was married, raising my family, living in the country and making quilts.  Fast forward a few years and I was un-expectantly divorced, single mother, living in a small town.  I was working my tail off to support myself and creating very little.  I am now happily in love again, living in the downtown of a mid size Midwest city and creating again.  My home has went from a large farmhouse to a downtown brownstone and I am loving it.  The change of scenery has been good for my creative spirit.  I have pulled fabrics out and started stitching again.  It feels good to be happy.....