How I Spent Friday and Saturday....

... decorating and then de-decorating for DH's Rotary Dinner. Gotta show off here. Hubris is my middle name.

All most all of the stuff here came from my stash. Hurricane lamps came from another guy; glittery wreaths were from BadAmy's wedding; mirrors, ribbons, chargers, ornaments from the after-holiday sales with coupons (score!); and the candlesticks are mostly from the Goodwill. Trust me, this was cheap. I bought the material with my 50% off one item coupon at JoAnn's so I own that now, too. I told the girls that helped to decorate to just make the stuff cute. They were all different but all the same since we had to use the hurricane lamps. The other thing that worked really, really well was to use double stick tape on top of the candlesticks~~it's just enough hold the votives on top. And only one slipped--I was keeping an eye on them all night.

So here's a sampling, before dinner and in the evening.

Friday Night Sew In Sorta!

Last night was the Friday Night Sew In (FNSI). I had projects lined up. I was restraining from cookies--gotta fit back into that uniform in a few months. Boys were all fine, DH was gone, the stars were aligned.

Then I fell asleep.

Holy cow. Yep, I fell sound asleep on the couch.

The good news is that I was really rested up this morning! I started working on some more Kind Hearted Lady mug rugs. I'm trying to decide how I really like them, so I've been messing with different stuff like how much machine quilting to put on 'em, I accidentally zig zagged thru the batting on some (like the look as it turns out), and blah blah blah. For some reason it took me half as long to sew them today, so I'm trying to figure out what I did better this time. Hmph.

I left my camera at the club where DH's Rotary Club is having the Dinner Dance tonight, so I can't upload pics just yet. Conceited girl that I am, I took pics of all the centerpieces we made with my stash. I'll post those, along with the new stack of mug rugs.

I'd go sew now, too, but I have to do yet more computer work for the Rotarians. I'm thinking I should auction off computer/graphics lessons to some of the old farts.......

Friday Night Sew In!

Somebody out there in the blogosphere, I think its Crafty Vegas Mom, came up with the idea of staying in on some Friday nights and sewing. So later on, I'll fix a cuppa, wish I had some cookies stashed somewhere, and go down to the crafty corner in the basement to sew. I've got a couple of current WIPs to play with, mainly more Kind Hearted Lady kitties, and of course, DD's hobo quilt. That should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Spent today setting up for DH's Rotary Club's Community Dinner Dance and Auction. It looks nice. Between my Goodwill stash and another guy's hurricane lamps, it looks good. And we had just the right number of hands to get the work done without bumping into one another.

Back to Crafty Stuff

Gee, whiz, this is supposed to be the quiet time of the year~~no such thing around our house. (I just wish I could figure a way to get paid for having this much fun. Got it covered 4 months of the year, but that leaves 8 unpaid-yet-working-my-ass-off months. Hmmmmm....)

Yep, let's see, last weekend organized and ran a first-time-for-us Winterfest with Barb. It was a grand success. Did I mention that? Well, it's worth mentioning again. Did I mention the hundreds of people who attended?

This weekend is DH's Rotary Club's annual fund-raiser. I'm in charge of decorations, most of which will come out of my stash. For at least the past 30 years, the Club has done an auction. When DH and I met, they rented a tent and had the auction in the parking lot of our beloved Swanton Super Valu. That's where The Romantic picked up my engagement gift: a chain saw. No diamond for me, looooong story there. Then about 15 years ago, the club moved the auction inside, and it was still fun, but not as wacky as the parking lot ones. But the auction as they were doing it has run its course. This year they are going to try a higher class, $40/head affair. The local country club is donating the room, which is really, really nice of them. There will be grazing stations, silent auction, and afterwards dancing. We'll see how this goes. Swantucky really isn't a $40 a plate kinda town, but apparently ticket sales are going pretty well.

For the decorations, I sprung for some nice ultra-suede type stuff in wonderful, regal purple, which I've cut up into squares to put under centerpieces. If we don't monkey with the fabric a lot, it doesn't fray, so no sewing involved~~yea. I also went out and bought a ton of silver stuff~~several yards of a gauzy silver metallic material, all the after-Christmas silver ribbon I could find, silver beads, stuff like that. I own a ton of pressed glass candlesticks of all shapes and sizes (thank you, Goodwill) that we'll use all over. When BadAmy got married she used silver, crystally twig wreaths for center pieces and we have 8 or 10 of those still. So the plan is to make each center piece different, using all this stuff. And the best part of the deal is that I bartered an afternoon from BadAmy to come help. I helped wind the yarn for the first shipment of her yarn club, and in return she's gunna help decorate. She's awesome like that.

But wait there's more! Took DD to the U-Mich Hospital to discuss the results of his first round of tests. Yep, there's something wrong with him and it's not all in his head. In fact, his brain isn't connected to his butt, just like I've been saying for years. Maybe I'll pour out all the gory details in another post. Yuck. Poor kid. He needs one more test for the final diagnoses, and it involves putting him to sleep to check. Back to U-M.




But wait there's more! I actually squeezed a little sewing time in! I'm experimenting with more Kind Lady mug rugs. . . . . .

and ta-daaa! I got the
hobo sign wall hanging for DD's train club pieced together, have the batting and backing cut, and now just have to figure out how to quilt it. I'm thinkin' stitch-in-the-ditch for this one. And I got my Alpine Wonder quilt out of hock from the long-arm shop. I'm going to try to bind it myself. There's a great way to ruin a perfectly good quilt.

So the good news is (knock on wood) that none of us has any flu or serious cold type stuff. I imagine with the colder weather we'll all get hit soon.