Joy!!!!!!!!!!

There's lots of joy in our little home on our red dirt road.  Maybe these pictures of my latest purchases and projects will give you a hint :) 

Our baby is expecting a baby!  Our younger daughter, Maggie, and her husband are expecting their first baby in early February.  And this will be our first grandbaby!  Many of you will understand the joy we are feeling.  I dearly wanted our two babies and delighted in them.  I've been told that the joy of a grandbaby is that delight multiplied many times over and I can't wait for that experience.  

So other projects will have to wait while I indulge in knitting and crocheting tiny sweaters and hats, sewing bibs and burp cloths, making diaper covers and baby quilts and helping my sweetheart refinish saved baby furniture including Maggie's own bassinet and the bedding I made for her. 

We won't know the baby's gender until fall so, for now, I'm using mainly yellow and green as I did for my own girls (back in the days when you didn't know gender until the baby arrived!) but I'm going to do a bit of  pink and blue just because.

Thank you for understanding while I do my happy dance and, from time to time, share my "grandmother passion!"

My choice in Christian music is gospel and my favorite Southern gospel group is the Southern Prophets out of Patrick Springs and Stuart, Virginia.  You can hear a sample of their music here and see them here and here.  One of their songs I love is "Drinking From My Saucer."   This is the chorus:

"And I thank God for all His blessings on me

And the mercy He's bestowed.

I'll keep drinking from my saucer, Lord,

Cause my cup has overflowed."

Thank you, Lord, for your blessings on our family. 

Praying that your blessings will abound and that you will be drinking from your saucer as you keep stitching.

Karen

Shop Hop

Last weekend was the annual Road to Oklahoma Quilt Shop Hop and Maggie and I had a great time visiting nine quilt shops! We started in Norman and the Oklahoma City metro area and went all the way to Waynoka and Alva. We logged over 700 miles and enjoyed the scenery and the shops. We also stopped at Eischen's in Okarche and had some of the best fried chicken in the world!!

Here is this year's quilt shown at Completely Quilted in Ponca City. We bought a block kit at each shop and the finishing kit at Completely Quilted since we loved the appliqued butterflies, flowers and trees. I think Maggie and I are going to have our own quilt-a-thon and our quilts made quickly because we both love the blocks and the pattern. Can you see the little cow peeking out the barn doors?

The ladies at Completely Quilted took our picture. This was our last shop to visit and we were totally exhausted! Looking at fabric and spending money is a big job!!!!

We did find some wonderful goodies at the various shops. I love 30's reproductions and old-fashioned scrap quilts so these had to come home with me.

And I was very taken with these charm packs, fabrics and patterns. I had been looking for one of the Dresden Plate templates featured on several blogs and found one of those as well.

The interesting fabric with the black background will appeal to a special person who will giggle when she sees this.

Now with all these new goodies, I need to get busy. I'm almost finished cutting ALL my scraps into squares for nine-patches, strings for spider webs and other shapes for future projects. It's so nice to get that huge tub of scrambled scraps into some organization. My reward for all that cutting will be to do some fun sewing.

Hope everyone is well and happily stitching away!!!

Mellow Days

It's 70 degrees and the sun is shining. It's been several years since we've had such a beautiful fall in Oklahoma.

Last Friday, my daughter, Maggie, treated me to a visit to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art to see this exhibit.


It was amazing and we spent several hours looking, reading exhibit captions and admiring these beautiful works of art. We had lunch at the museum cafe and it was a wonderful day!!!

My sweetheart spent the weekend doing yard work and finished with washing the windows. Now I can see the sunshine and the trees through sparkling clean glass.
It's so nice to get everything done up just right!!

I finished one project and decided this morning to make one of the fabric baskets I'd been admiring on several blogs. Pink Penguin has a wonderful tutorial here. It is so easy to make with her excellent instructions. I will definitely make more.


I think this will be really cute to hold candy or other goodies.

I'm off to fix vegetable soup for supper. Hope your days are filled with sunshine and stitching.