Christmas Break

The kids are on Christmas break and we've had a busy week. We spent part of last week at my brother's house, then back to home, then to our house in Reeds Spring for the weekend, then back home for Christmas. Now we're back at my brother's house for New Years and to do some work on my mother's apartment.

I am replacing her kitchen floor, installing wood trim and painting doors. Along with that, I'll be installing a new kitchen cabinet so she'll have more storage room. It's time consuming but satisfying work. Mom needs her apartment arranged better since she isn't as mobile as she once once. I'll be working on that, too. Luckily I have several days left to complete everything.

Waiting for Snow

The weather reports for our area are predicting up to 8 inches of snow. The girls are looking forward to getting out and playing in it. The trees still have a lot of ice on them around here, so we may get some more damage. The tree trimmmers are working hard to clean up the broken branches, but they have a lot of work ahead of them.

I just finished up 5 quilts of Lorraine's. She has 5 Christmas wallhangings that I shipped back to her today. Three of them are the same center panel with different borders on them. I worked around the electrical outages but was able to get them done as scheduled! I forgot to take photos of the last one I quilted. It had 2 snow people on it and was soooo cute! I could kick myself for forgetting to take pictures of it.

Here Comes the Sun!

Well, at least we're getting a glimpse of it now and then. The ice is just now starting to melt and the temperatures are up to 35* Whoopee!

I drove to the fabric store yesterday which was the first time I've been out of the house since Saturday. I didn't realize how much damage the ice storm had done to the town. Trees are down all along the street we live on. Branches are piled up in peoples yards. Ameren UE has sent a trailer and parked it in the mall parking lot. All the repair trucks go there to load up on equipment and supplies. There must have been 40 repair trucks in the parking lot yesterday afternoon.

Today, I'm hearing chainsaws so I'm guessing trees are getting trimmed and broken branches are getting cut up to get ready to be put into the dump. There is still a lot of ice on our trees right now, but I'm anxious for it to melt completely so I can see how much damage has been done. Our pine tree is bent over pretty badly right now, but it doesn't look like any branches have been broken. We'll know more once the ice melts. Two of our trees have the tops broken out of them and they'll probably have to be taken down, but they are in line with where we want to extend our fence, so they would have had to be taken down eventually anyway.

Electricity hasn't been very reliable this week, but it hasn't been off for more than half an hour at a time since Sunday. It flickers off and on a lot - a couple of times an hour. It is making it hard to get as much quilting done as I want to do. I did finish 2 wall-hangings this week and am working on a 3rd. I hope to have it done tomorrow morning. I guess that's not too bad.

Ice Storm!

We just made it through an ice storm this weekend with more coming today and tomorrow. I snapped a few photos of the ice during the storm yesterday.

We were without power for over 8 hours. Luckily we still had water and we have a gas-burning fireplace so we were able to keep warm. School is out for today so the girls are happy to have electricity again! So is mom!! I don't have to work as hard to keep them entertained :D

I'm working today to get caught up with laundry and to get some quilting done so as not to fall very far behind. If we get as much ice today as we did yesterday, we'll probably be without electricity for quite a while again.

Here is a close-up view of a pinetree branch off our back deck. You may be able to get the idea of how much ice we got. I think we got about 3/4 of an inch.

It's Finished!

Here is a photo of the quilt Hannah made for her friend. It's all quilted and bound now and waiting to be wrapped for Christmas. I'm so proud of Hannah for making this quilt.

The weather has slowed me down on getting Christmas shopping done. We had snow, sleet and rain today. It hasn't accumulated much, but the roads are slick from the freezing temperatures.

I'm busy working on customer quilts, hoping to get them done in the next week or 2. A few of them are due before Christmas so I'm working on them first. 2 down, 3 more to go!

Paul finished adding more lighting to the basement so I have lots of light to quilt by now. It's much more pleasant to quilt in a well-lit room. Now to get the drywall up, the walls painted and a TV and DVD player hooked up :D

I'm working on making a list of websites that carry mystery quilt instructions and another that has free quilt blocks. I'm also working on getting self-educated on quilt care and restoration. I've know the basics of quilt care and storage for ages now, but my skills in restoration needed updating. I found a quilt restorer who has a couple of DVD's from her restoration workshops and I'm saving up to purchase them. I'm also working towards education on quilt appraisals. Once I have the skills needed for that, I'll work towards earning a certification from the American Quilter's Society as a quilt appraiser. I'm finding all this new information very fascinating. Being an appraiser covers knowledge of the thousands of quilt block patterns in the world as well as fiber identification, fabric dating and pattern dating, as well as knowledge of the different regional styles of quilting within the USA. Fun stuff!