Quilt Retreat in the Rocky Mountains

 The picture above shows my sewing area in the retreat work-room. My sewing machine is the one in front of the door. I had my back to the windows but it was nice to have the light behind me while sewing. This is the 3rd retreat I have been on since moving here. They are SO much fun!!

 Here is the other side of the work-room. (Notice the snack table in the middle.) There were 32 of us that attended but we had plenty or room and beautiful views.

 It snowed most of the day on Saturday. This was the view out the window behind my work area.

 Looking the other direction.

I ventured out for a walk when it stopped snowing and this is some of the scenery. Beautiful!!

Road to California

 We had a wonderful trip to California in January. The only bummer was that it rained the first couple of days...just when we thought we were going to get some nice weather. My favorite thing was attending the Road to California Quilt Show. The picture above is me with my friend Debbie Warner, sister-in-law Karen Dunivent and my mom with the quilts we started at a class we took together. It was SO much fun being together and sharing our love of quilting!

 My other favorite thing was being in San Diego for a Thompson family get-together. It was wonderful being in Colleen and Skips home again with 6 of the Thompson siblings.

 Here I am enjoying the sunshine at my brother-in-law's John's house where we spent 2 nights. Other highlights of the trip were getting to see our friends Donna and Ed's new beach house and spending a night with them. We had dinner with friends Shawn and Jane at their new home in Cota de Casa--what a great place! We had breakfast with our old neighbors Stan, Margaret and Miriam Marlow. It was strange seeing our old house where we lived for 30 years. It made us miss our neighbors but not our house. We also got to spend a night with Debbie and Gary Warner and Debbie and I even did some sewing together. Thank you to everyone who shared their homes and hospitality and even took time off work to spend time with us.

Even though we had such a great time, heading back to Colorado felt right. The drive back was beautiful and it was fun seeing the ski resorts in full operation and the parking lots packed. Below is the alcohol loot we came home with thanks to stops at Costco, gifts from the Warner's and a 2-buck Chuck that mom left behind and we ended up with.

Snow Day/Sew Day

 We woke up to snow this morning and it snowed all day long. Just a week ago today it was 50 degrees and we went mountain biking...what a change.

 Here is the view from our back yard looking down the street. Later in the day everyone started coming out to shovel driveways.

 We shoved our driveway twice. Here I am helping with the first go-around. It was coming down hard at this point.

 What a great excuse to stay inside and do some sewing! Nathan the boys came over for breakfast and then the boys got cozy in grandpa's chair to watch a Bat Man movie.

Road Shots

 We had a great trip to California and the drive was beautiful. Here are a few photos taken from the road.

 The snow on the red rocks was so pretty!

 We stopped at several "view points" on the way back and this was one of them.

Here is Dennis taking a break at a rest stop in Colorado.

Quilts, Quilts, Quilts

 My "Crumb" quilt won second place for viewers choice in the "small traditional" category at the Longmont Quilt show. I made the quilt out of small paper-pieced blocks made by myself, my mom and my sister-in-law. Mom came up with this idea and the 3 of us made blocks for one year and then exchanged them the next year. We each designed our own quilt and this is what I came up with.

 The blocks were made out of "crumb" (meaning small) scraps from previous projects.

 This quilt is called "In My Garden" and I started it 2 years ago and just finished it after Christmas. It was started at a class my mom taught in Riverside CA. Everyone in the class brought 6" squares and 10 "x 2.5" strips to share. We brought fabrics that were things you would find in a garden like flowers, leaves, vegetables, fruit, bugs, birds etc. We exchanged squares with each other and then started sewing---so much fun and I love how it turned out!

All in a Day's Work

 I have been thinking about making curtains for some of our windows and decided to start in the master bathroom. We have a window over the tub that has gets glaring sunlight, hence the ugly pull-down shade.

I searched my stash of fabric and found this lovely old-fashioned toile fabric. Here are the curtains I made. I love them!! What a huge difference and only a couple of hours of work.

Happy New Year

You can tell we are really getting old when we go out to eat at 5pm on New Year's Eve! We had a fun meal at Texas Roadhouse and then came home and watched "The Electric Horseman", which was free from On Demand. (Can we say "old" again--watching old movies on TV but they have to be FREE?) Later on we had popcorn and actually stayed up until past 11pm---WOW!