Another traveling holiday

We are back from Seattle and it was a great trip. The weather was interesting, but not scary, the whole time. We made it to Williams about 1 am the first night. Jill and Earl had to work so we got a late start. The Ashland grade...not it's real name, was beautiful.

We got to our fav eating spot, Morninglory, for lunch and got to Portland about 6 to meet up with Roberta at her amazing Broadway Books bookstore, to drop off some paintings for the store.

Got to LE's about 10:30. She had decorated the house so cute and prepared our rooms with water and chocolates.

This is the Acorn room, also known as the guest bath.

Next day LE cooked lots of great food in her beautiful kitchen.

She had made us all stockings with one for "XWP". That is the baby's current name: Xena Warrior Princess.

Jill and I headed off to Kinokuniay Bookstore while LE napped and Earl and Jon played Wii sports all day.
And of course we had to go to Maxine's around the corner!
We watched movies on LE and Jon's new amazing screen, opened gifts and did a little journaling and art projects. Fun fun fun!

OK....you pick a tag line for this one....

Another fun day at the ART CLINIC

Between the chit chat and cookie eating there was a needle felting project going on. Here is the results so far. Alice made a good model for Joel's granddaughter's revamped hat.

Fun at Maren's house

We had a beautiful day at Maren's Wed. We celebrated her, Colleen and Patti's birthdays.

Her house is something out of a magazine. Everywhere you look is something amazing. I love all her unusual succulents.
It was a very festive day that gave me my first holiday cheer feeling. Lots of gift giving and stories to catch up on along with lots of laughter.
Here is Mary in her new hat. I got to wear it for awhile.
Here is Penny in her new glasses and all polk a dot dressed to match.

Getting out the tree ornaments

Sometimes I don't even get into my massive collection of ornaments for Christmas, I just use what is around the house...which is more than I could use on 20 trees....But this year I took down, out of the garage rafters, one box. These are some of the treasures.

This one is new from sweet Teesha.


And this is my new favorite piece of jewelry....I think I'm turning Japanese....I really think so....

Here is another pic of part of my inchies from FiberFest. Marilyn did an amazing job and I love to take various ones out and arrange them from time to time.


This is my latest fun project.
...and this is my latest fabric ATC for a
swap...coming your way Betsey....

This is our latest class at the ART CLINIC...Barbara Carr taught us how to make wool on silk skarves. It was such a great class and we had so much fun.



And last ...here in a winter funny for ya...

Keep on

Want to see Keepon dance? Go here.

so flaky

Want to make your own flake?

I did it....

I finally added a header to my blog!

anyone looking for a little project?

...I know you are thinkin' soooo many people on my holiday list and so little time...here is the perfect project!

Guess what?

It's going to be a granddaughter!

Home again...home again

Not counting hotel time, I figure it is a 17 hour drive to Cortez, CO. We had good traffic both ways.
Earl drove so Jill and I just relaxed...if you know how bad a passeger I am you know that is quite an acomplishment.This was LE's idea. She and Jon flew in to Durango from Seattle. It was good to be there with them. I just did not get a good pic of them. The first morning there we had snow but not enough for a snowman.

It was really good to see Earl's family. Julie, I had not seen in 4 years or met her new, really sweet husband, Bob. All the kids had grown, of course.
The dinner was in the honey house ( where they work on their bee hives etc.) at Earleen and John's. Cherrie had fixed it up so cute with a doily, she had collected, under each glass plate, cute signs, photos, arrangments of all kinds and much much more. It was so fun and cozy.
All the food was perfect. Cherrie is also the family pie maker....are we all lucky! It was so hard to choose. But I have to say that the highlight for our little part of the family was the surprise baby shower for Jill! It was soooo cute the way she planned it. She got all the gifts and had each person present the gift to Jill along with thier suggestion for a girl and boy name. My favorite boy name suggestions were: Optimus Prime, Walker Texas Ranger, Frank the Tank and Winston Samuel...Nobel Prize winner....there were also many names after themselves... My fav girl names were: Princess, JoeJoe, "not this time", Temperence, Pearl, Xena and more names after themselves...We all laughed alot. The thoughtful gifts were so fun too....cute little oneies, soft blanket, lots of things that an experienced mother like Cherrie would know about...like "butt cream" ....who knew?
Then Cherrie had arranged for a photographer to come and get lots of family photos...to top it all off! We were sent on our way with home produced Elk jerky, canned salsa and honey.

Jill went through her basket of baby treasures on the way home, holding small garments up and trying to imagine her baby in them. We all have warm memories that will be with us for awhile.

Isn't this the cutest thing?

LE made it and she made a little bit bigger one for Jill. Jill has designed next year's Halloween outfit around it.

We are anxious to all be together this Thanksgiving. We are meeting in Cortez, CO at Earl's family stomping grounds. LE and Jon are flying from Seattle and we are driving with Jill. Have to have Jill back to work by Mon....so it will be a fast trip.

Hope everyone has a good turkey day!!!

Here are the latest ATCs

We had a great ATC trading section. Some new people came by to see what it is all about. A couple of these are left over from the ATC show we had at Art from Scrap in Santa Barbara.

For anyone following the Jill saga. No baby news. Next apt. the 26th.

I am the luckiest girl in the world.....

Now that I have my camera unloaded I can get photos of my special treasures. Through some hic up in a parallel universe....I was given a birthday gift from Tracie Lynn 4 months early! I LOOOOOVE it!!!! Is it not way cool? And so sweet of her too....

I also wanted to share the fabric I got in Ashland, OR at the Fabric of Vision. This is such a cool shop.....and look at the cool way they folded it!

This is a doll from a street vendor in Oaxaca.


This is a way cool ATC from Tara....I love it! Sorry I did not find it sooner. It was buried in my mail that I am just getting to now...Thank you Tara. It was so good to see you at FiberFest.....!

This is the square that Teesha showed us how to do at ArtFiberFest....

Here are some of my purchases at Queen of Arts...
This is a card pack by Shari....

This is my choice of the dolls Mary made I picked. It is me and my 2 girls.