Welcome to my SNOW GLOBE !

Hi. . . you may think that I took this picture last month, but. . .it, and all the snow is just fresh from a few minutes ago today, the last day of MARCH, 2009. It has been snowing steadily here now for 2 days, and I feel like I am in the middle of a snowglobe. What you can't see in the picture are the big fat snowflakes coming down. However, SPRING is here. . . it really is. . . so God can stop shaking my snow globe anytime now.

Send good thoughts and prayers for all our friends battling the floods all over this state. .. . . now we are starting to sandbag here in town too, and are expecting a couple more weeks of possible flooding. My Mom says " never complain if it gets too wet in North Dakota ". . . . which I am sure she learned from the "dirty 30's" dust bowl years. Well, if you are listening to the news, you can hear that we aren't complaining. We are putting up a good fight though.

St. Patrick's Day Contest !

Happy St. Patrick's Day !

In honor of today, I would like to have a little fun, so I am going to host a " GO GREEN" giveaway. I will send a "GREEN GROCERY BAG KIT" to the winner. The kit makes into a generous size bag, it will be quilted as shown, with lots of vegetables, and stars and will include the lining and the directions for you to sew it all together. Contents are not included as the food will probably be eaten by the time this contest is over ! All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment on this post with a good recycling or "going green" tip. If you mention this giveaway and include a link on your blog and if you comment back here, letting me know you have done this, you will be entered a second time. Contest will end at midnight, March 31, 2009 and the winner will be notified shortly thereafter. If you don't have a blog, be sure and leave me your email address, so I can get in touch with you if you win.

Good Luck, and I'm looking forward to all the GREEN tips !

NQR

NQR

Not Quilt Related. Standard slang on the quilting boards. . . . . . for when you need to talk about some of the other things going on in life. Remember the previous post ? ( which was also NQR ! ) I was telling you how the first weekend in March has usually been a storm and we are usually driving in it ? Well we missed it this year. Had a great time and I hopefully will post about it later, if my buddy took pictures and sends them to me. Anyway, I digress. . . the driving weather and roads were BEAUTIFUL all weekend, we got home Sunday nite, and by Monday morning it started to snow, snow, snow, and blow, blow, blow! Now we had lost about half our winter's snow up until last weekend, but now with the new snow, I think we have more than before. Here is a picture of the snow in my front yard, along with my yardstick I use for quilting ( well, I guess this is now a quilt related post ! ) I think we must have gotten around 10" of new snow, but of course you are seeing it all piled up here. . problem is, that everyone is running out of places to pile the snow. As for me. . . part of me is ready for spring, however the part that doesn't have all my inside winter projects done is still content with winter - and there is only 8 days of winter left !

On the Road AGAIN !

Well I've been busy this week not only with my real world job, but with customer quilts, so I can take off this weekend for our annual WINTER BLUEGRASS weekend in Minnesota ! Time to pack up the ol' instruments and head on over for 3 days of bands, jammin' and sleepless nites ( cause we are up jammin' for most of the nite ! ) We can usually count on a storm, as past history has proven for bad weather and icy roads. . . so we will pack our winter survival gear and take it easy, but we are going ! Here is a picture of a couple of us jammin' away. . . I hope to return with some more pictures from this weekend, and will clean some quilt pictures out of the camera too. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to convince the rest of the gang to stop at any quilt stores along the way. . . and there are some really NICE ones too ! . . so that will probably cause me to go into withdrawals. . . I will have to take some quilt magazines along for the ride I guess ! See ya Monday !

Cowboy Country

Yes, right now we are the land of snow and ice, but it is still cowboy country up here, and when I received this customer quilt I knew just what to quilt on it. . In the middle is a cute over-all design of cowboy boots, hats, horseshoes and such to match the focus fabric, and barbed wire was just the thing for the plaid sashing and the outer border got a line dance of cowboy boots and hats ! This was such a fun quilt to quilt, and it's great when the fabrics really tell me what they want quilted. . . yes, they really do talk ! You just have to listen carefully.

Don't forget, you can

double click for a close-up !

I WAS A WHIRL INTO WINTER WINNER !

Happy 1st day of MARCH ! Can spring be too far behind ? Well, we are still into winter here in North Dakota ( it was 1 degree below zero here this morning which is much warmer than it has been lately ! ), and it is time for me to finish some winter business. Back in January, MANY of us bloggers participated into a WHIRL INTO WINTER giveaway. It was alot of fun ( see post dated 1/1/09) and I sure hope we do it again. Well, after a computer outage here, and a quilt show and a bad bad cold, I am finally back posting and in the picture shows the goodies I won from 2 different blogs in the WHIRL INTO WINTER giveaway. First, from Paula at A Latte Quilts I won a pack of 6 homespun fat quarters ( she must know I really am a primitive quilter at heart ), 2 Dove bars ( and she knows about me and chocolate ) and a yummy hot chocolate mix ( she knows I've been freezin' all winter) and a whole latte' scraps which I just love, and really need for my calendar quilt ! THANK YOU so much Paula !
I was also lucky enough to win 2 cute wildlife panels from Cathy at Cathy~Originals . I just love the colors and the scenes on them and can't wait to find just the right projects to use them in.

Thanks everyone, this has all been a whole latte' fun !