Happy Birthday to me and a big THANK YOU to all those in my life that I treasure and who help keep me creating, sane, and happy. It is an honor to have all of you in my life. I talked to my mom last night (herself 74 years young) and she mentioned needing some veggie seeds for her spring garden. She is out west in a much warmer zone and virtually months ahead of me here in MN for growing time. So, I pulled together some of my seed packets to send out to her. SPRING IS COMING! Yeh! Went out to lunch with a dear friend and  I even got a Skype call from Basel, Switzerland where my daughter Jen and her hubby are vacationing and enjoying the Fastnacht festival in Basel. It's like a cross between Mardi Gras and Christmas and Halloween. I was very happy to hear from them and see them on screen. Hubby and I will go out tonight too and celebrate my 53rd year in style. I don't hide my age or color my hair. I am who I am baby! :D I would not trade one minute of my life to be y...

February Projects! I just finished 3 more Works in Progress projects this week. Here are some pics. Don't you just love these 6 inch clam shell style cases? Adorable! These coordinate with the tote bags I have been making lately.  I call this next bag the red tote bag even though there are many more colors to it than that.  Truly beautiful in Moda fabrics called Marmalade. Most of my tote bags measure 12 inches high x 15 wide x 4 deep. I give them as gifts and want my friends to be able to use them for scrapbook papers, albums and project boxes if needed.    Below is my second sunflower tote bag with this combination of fabrics. I have used up this part of my stash now (YEAH!) and will move on to my other lovely stash fabrics. After the photo was taken I added an accent sunflower button yoyo to the center upper green pleat square. This weekend we are having a cyber-sewing-retreat from the Stashbuster quilt group and for it I have been workin...

February's Challenge room is the bedroom. So off I went to purge 1 item in each category where I owned 5 or more of something. Five pairs of sneakers? Get rid of one! Either the master bedroom or kids rooms works for the challenge but I worked mainly in my master bedroom and closet. I read that we really only need to keep about 3 weeks of clothing for any one season (if your climate has true seasons) 21 days. For me in MN that means 21 winter outfits and 21 summer outfits. I am sure I can fudge a few of those into Fall and Spring. Well I am not sure I am down to that yet suggested number, but maybe someday. I did do a big master closet purge though! Go for it and try to purge 1 item for every 5! From my closet: 32 winter blouses and non-sweater tops. I decided to get rid of 6. That took about half an hour. Next I went through my winter cardigans and zipper front sweatshirts and sweaters. I have 26 of these so I got rid of 5. Great progress! Skirts: I had 7 skirts ...

Finishing What I Start.  WHOOHOO! One  of my goals this Fall 2012 was to try to make each gift given in 2012 Holiday season as well as into 2013 all year. Many of my Christmas gifts 2012 were scrapbooks, quilted items, genealogy gifts or food gifts. This worked very well for decreasing my pantry, my Christmas fabrics, and some scrapbook papers as well as digital photo files that needed sharing into digital scrapbooks. I wanted in 2013 to get more of my sewing underway and to finish projects that I either had the supplies specifically for or had bought patterns for. I also wanted.  I decided that after focusing on my scrapbooking for soooo many years it was high time for me to get on to using my lingering quilting stash before it was completely classified as pre-historic! In January 2013 I continued my focus on the sewing stash. Joining a group called Stashbusters (for quilting and sewing) I kept myself motivated. I joined in three specific challenges that I though...