Brave

I am not entirely sure why Farrah Fawcett's death has hit me so hard. I was never a huge fan of hers, never went out of my way to see any of her movies and never googled her. With that being said, I am so very proud of her for making her struggle with cancer public because, in reality, the process she went through was just like any other person dealing with the balance between life and death (though perhaps the more regular folks with cancer are not flown to Germany for experimental treatments). Apparently she documented her struggle with video for the last few years of her life and I think that was one of the most wisest actions she could have taken during this process.

The battle begins with awareness.

Her struggle was not ANY different than my grandpa's or my still-living grandmother's, or your sister, friend, mother, cousin, neighbor, coworker or grocery store clerk. There has been cancer in my family, on both sides, and I realize how prevalent the disease is and I am also quite scared that I, too, will probably fight some sort of cancer as I age. Is that morbid of me to say? It just seems to be everywhere. I can just hope that those fortunate enough to affect millions of people like Farrah will continue to reach out and inform and help research grow. I have been part of a local American Cancer Society Relay for Life team for many years now, and it seems more important now than ever before. So let's conquer this devastating and painful disease once and for all. If any of you, my readers, are interested in donating to the American Cancer Society, please Click here to visit my personal page.

Thank you.

Sweetness and Light

Happy day when I get a box in the mail. This arrived:

It is the start of my quilt group's next quilt. I'm thinking log cabins or bento box. What do you think? I told Sara (after a guessing game) that I purchased 15 yards of this line. She thought I was nuts, in a good way. I guess I wanted leftovers!

Also, I failed to mention in my previous post that when I got home from the valley on Sunday, my sweetest guy in the whole wide world left a single red rose by my bed. In unison, now: Awwwww!

Hi, my name is...

..Deirdre, and I'm a fabric addict.

I searched high and low for the Lush line by Erin Michael. I spent more than I probably should have for small pieces of discontinued fabric. But this love feels so good!!
I hope I am done with this particular addiction to this line so I can stop spending so much time searching the internet for it and actually make something with it! I have been completely inspired by this quilt Jacquie, from Tallgrass Prairie Studio made for her son. It is simple, gorgeous, and a lovely design!

What's funny is that since my mom and I got back from a visit with Grandma Pat, I've been having this urge to really declutter my house. I'm not an inherently cluttery person, but I do tend to get lazy about the dishes in the sink, or the pottery dish full of who knows what on my bookcase/coffee table/kitchen counter. So while I continue to receive bundles of fabric in the mail and stash them away in my fabric bins, I simultaneously have been filling the goodwill box. Life is good.

Mom's birthday was friday, and I made her four placemats from the Alexander Henry Granville line. She loved them, but as I suspected, she wants eight! I tried different quilting techniques on each one, and because my feed dogs don't lower on my machine, I can't stipple. The curviest I can manage are slight waves, which I actually really dig how they look. You can't really tell the different techniques in the photo, but I tried waves, square spirals, boxes within boxes, and long curves every which way (still need to come up with a better name). Here are the backs:

And here we all are, enjoying the last of the Lincoln warm air. From left to right: Me, Mom, Aunt Laurel and her man Mike, Uncle Randy, Grandma Pat, Bon Bon (the cutest little munchkin doggie you will ever meet) and Grandma's honey Morris. Happy birthday Mom!!

And that concludes this segment of June 2009 birthdays.

"Quilty Group" Quilt No. 3

As you know, I'm in a quilting bee with some good friends locally. We're coming up with a name finally and I think we've got it. We all met yesterday to reveal the blocks for the third quilt - the Heather Ross Mendocino couch quilt for Ms. Sara. Everyone is always so creative and I just really enjoy that we can all get together and be crafty. Here are my four squares.

June Birthdays: 2 of 3!

Happy Birthday Tiffany!! I made her four quilted place mats and coordinating napkins out of a charm pack of the Wonderland line. I heart these place mats and it was tough to give them up. They were made with all kinds of love.

The backs are very simple.Here's Tif, happily seeing how the mats display on her dining room table. She loves them, by the way :)I also tried out a new vanilla cupcake recipe with chocolate frosting. They were so rich and yummy!
We also made some homemade super delicious rum mojitos! Needless to say I got up way later than expected this morning. Good times were had by all. Happy birthday, friend!

Rest in Peace Betta Fishy

My 2+ year old Betta died a couple days ago. What makes me the saddest is Mo really misses him! They used to hang out together, and I honestly believe that Mo didn't want to eat him..
They hung out for hours - Mo on the warm dryer and Betta Fishy in his tasteful little home. We'll miss you little Betta Fishy.

A very happy birthday

Numerous pictures in this blog, beware!

This weekend has been action packed full of Mike's birthday fun. Yesterday I spent the entire afternoon and evening in the kitchen making a german chocolate cake from scratch (Mike's favorite) then homemade lasagna for the birthday boy's dinner. For some reason the coconut pecan frosting didn't make it to the outside of the cake, but that is ok, because Mike enjoys the cake part of the cake better anyways. It looks pretty funny, sorta lopsided and bare, but it sure was tasty! And as always, he hammed it up for the camera big time any chance he got.

I also have spent the last few weekends thinking up a pattern for pillows for Mike's bed. I just love Alexander Henry's fabric collections, and made a couple pillows out of naked camo girls and some cutie patootie spotted owls. My mom says the owl pillow looks like it's for a kid.. Of course Mo had to get in on the action. A blog post is never complete without a shot of the crazy catface.

We rounded out the evening with the brand new Guitar Hero for Wii at John and Melina's. We lost ALL track of time, and noticed that it was almost 1 am and decided to call it quits. I can't get Eye of the Tiger out of my head (and I don't want to!)
Today is Mike's actual birthday, and we're celebrating with dinner and a movie with his folks. Fun fun! Happy birthday sweetie!!

I hope I win! And more.

Tonight is when winners of all of the what seemed like hundreds of materials/handmade gifts giveaways I entered will be announced! I do hope I win something! I still need to conquer the last of the handmade list...

On another note, I am just so INTO the gift I finished last night for my dear friend's birthday in two weeks. I can't say anything more and it's killing me! Today I'll take a ton of pictures in anticipation of that future blog I'll be writing.

Last night I used the recipe found on Posie Gets Cozy bloggy for Baked Rigatoni with Eggplant and Sausage. My eggplant sure didn't end up looking like Alicia's, and honestly that was my first and last time cooking eggplant. I really don't like it! I think if I had fried it a little more (but I fried it for way longer than the recipe called for, and they still turned up squishy and weird) then maybe they would have been good. Or maybe if eggplant had a better taste, the texture wouldn't bother me so much. Anyways, this isn't a rag on eggplant; I'm sure it has a place but not in this dish next time I make it. And I will make it again as it was super delish. Mike agreed that perhaps artichoke hearts or zucchini would be a better fit. Of course we enjoyed this dish with the last drops of Fieldbrook Winery's barbera, and opened (and tried not to finish) the lovely 2003 Turnbull syrah. Yummms. Sausage was cooking when I took this picture. I used whisky fennel chicken sausage for a healthier version rather than the traditioal pork sausage. Eggplant is so pretty - I do wish I liked it better.

It smelled amazing, with the freshly grated parmgiano reggiano on top and the fresh basil leaves (from my garden!) mixed in with the tomato sauce.

Just delicious! And now I have my meal for the rest of the week until payday. I will try and not pick out the eggplant. Maybe a re-heat of leftovers in the oven will make them tastier?

Old Tapes

I was just watching a movie with Mike tonight and an ad came on for that Notorious movie about Biggie Smalls aka Big Poppa the fat rapper guy that was shot dead and it inspired me to pull out my old cassette tapes. Mike was astound that a) I've kept and moved with my hella old tapes for a over a decade and b) the sheer number of them fill two old boxes full. I found a couple of recorded and re-recorded tapes from back in the day. You know, when you buy a cassette, say Boyz II Men's Cooleyhighharmony, and record over that (after you put scotch tape over the two little anti-record holes on the top) with some awesome Power 96.3 Jodeci song or in later years song after song from KXGO - primarily he Rolling Stones then re-record over that with your own personal musings, but leave a few spaces between re-recordings so you can still dig on the Stones.

Sophomore year my best friend Shaunna and I went to a yard sale and bought a small (for the time) tape recorder with built-in microphone. The following month (May 1997 to be exact) was audibly covered - from my weekend stays at their house in Eureka to our evenings out with the friends and instruments and cigarettes and music and pot and the occasional six pack of beer shared amongst at least 10 friends. The recorder wasn't allowed at school, and honestly it probably wouldn't have fit in Shaunna's backpack. We talked about teen angst, taking huge trucker shits that clog up the toilet, endless strings of quotes from Beavis and Butthead to Forrest Gump to Dirty Dancing and the fact that one of the boys didn't like us recording because "what if the cops found this, man?!?" Not like we were doing anything remotely bad or illegal, except for that random sixer, the toke everyone had in their pockets and the walks around the neighborhood late at night past curfew. I wonder if other people did this - before ipods, cell phones, even daily use of the internet. How cumbersome it all seems now compared to the current days of fast fast fast information, yet so much more innocent. I'm nostalgic now after hearing those tapes of the end of that sophomore year, before Shaunna moved to Arizona, and before we all grew up. I don't want to go back, that's for sure, but I do enjoy listening down memory lane. I wish I had a picture scanned in from those days that I could post here now, but I don't because I'm still not that techie. Perhaps I'm trying to preserve a teeny bit of that sophomore innocence by not adapting completely. Like my dad, who refuses to own a cell phone and who still doesn't log into the home computer. Ever. Will I be one of those old ladies who doesn't understand a thing 'young kids do these days?'

Packing and Hacking

Well not so much hacking as packing, but my throat has been sore since yesterday. Tomorrow before the sun rises I'm driving down to the Bay Area with Melissa as my date. First pit stop: outlet mall in Petaluma. Second stop, Market Street in San Francisco for some serious H&M etc shopping. Then meeting up with Geraldine for dinner and staying there for the night. Uncle Gerry is turing 65 (!!) and we are celebrating Saturday night on a dance party boat in Sausalito! I am just so freaking excited for his adventure. I wish I wasn't getting sick. Mel also has some headache sore throat thing going on too. We'll be quite the pair. Shopping til we drop, missing our honeys, but having a blast dancing til the sun comes up (well not really) on the bay. How more romantic is that? Too bad Mike is in the desert on his bike right now hehe.

Ick a spider was just crawling on my arm when I as writing on my wall calendar!! Now I feel creepy crawlies all over me ewwww.

Ok, gotta complete the packing, go to sleep and get to the City tomorrow.