Lady Bug teapot

I volunteer at the Downtown Senior Center in Wichita and sometimes I get to take part in something really special. Last week we had a Tea Party for Mothers. What fun!

As part of the event, I had the chance to share with them a large number of teapots from my collection. That was extra fun for me. What good is a collection of something if for the most part you are the only one who ever sees it? So I cleaned them up and toted some of my favorites for the afternoon party. The photo above highlights my newest one, a Lady Bug (her antennae wiggle too). Isn’t she darling?

The tea party attendees got the chance to try different kinds of hot teas from a local shop, The Spice Merchant. And there were blueberry scones, Scottish shortcake cookies, and lots of other goodies to go along with the tea.

Added to the eating and drinking, most of the ladies shared memories of their mothers. And we learned about each other as well. To end the event, a local retired pastor played several favorite hymns on the accordion. I hadn’t really been up close to an accordion before so it was interesting to see how it works as he played it.

Little girls have tea parties…but it was very special to be part of one for adults. The only thing that could have made it better was to have shared the time with my own mother. But she was there in my heart and my memories.

Interesting Links:

Spoonful St. Patrick’s Day: Crafts projects, treats, games, and more

St. Patrick’s Day Fun Facts: Such as the actual color of St. Patrick is blue and much more.

St. Patrick’s Day Recipes: Such as Squash and Sausage Shepherd’s Pie

St. Patrick’s Day Traditions: Wear green to avoid a pinch on St. Patrick’s Day

6 Fun St. Patrick’s Day Desserts: Irish Flag Cookies, Irish Potato Candy and more

The idea for it came from a small 2-dimensional picture my sister had. I most enjoy doing quilt projects of places I’ve been to or that mean something to me personally. I’ve been to villages similar to this one when my daughter and I visited the UK a few years back. So I had to try to figure out how to turn it into an art quilt.

The first step was to take a picture of it and then blow it up and print it as a 4-sheet poster. Then I traced the basic shapes, decided on what fabrics to use, and cut my fabric pieces from those.

Then I made a basic quilt background with several shades of off-white to build up my picture from there. Next I placed the basic pieces and machine sewed them on. Because I wanted to make certain elements stick out as multidimensional, I didn’t sew down the roofs of the two houses. I carefully put stuffing into those areas of the houses, and then finished sewing the roofs in place.

After adding a lot of details with decorative stitches, I thought I was about finished with the project. And then my brother-in-law suggested adding a dragon. Of course he was teasing. But I thought that would give an extra element of fun. Plus my sister thought I needed a swan in the river, which I also added.

This is my finished project. Everyone who has seen it thinks it is great fun.

I was doing a little research on this special day and ran across some interesting links to share:

Valentine’s Day Fun Facts

10 Weird Valentine’s Day Facts

The 10 Best Love Movies – such as The Notebook and Casablanca

Top 10 Proposal Lines – such as “I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”

Top Ten Love Rituals that Work – such as adding a pinch of ginger to your romantic meals

Valentines Day Statistics – such as 196 million roses are produced for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day facts, superstitions – such as in Medieval times, girls consumed unusual foods on Valentine’s Day in the belief it would make them dream of their future husbands

This year I am using a “buddy” system, sort of, to overcome that “evil” thought about exercise.

My sister and I signed up for a Zumba Gold class at a park recreation center. This class makes exercise more fun by combining it with Latin dance movements. We actually went to the first class yesterday…and survived. (Yeah us!) Normally Zumba classes are killers, super active. We knew this wouldn’t work for us.

This class really could be called Zumba Old, since it is specifically for people age 55+ or with special needs. We decided we fit both qualifications, because we aren’t exactly physically fit. But we enjoyed the class and will actually continue with it. So I’m meeting that first New Year’s resolution…and I’m working on the other one.

The picture here is of my mother (years ago) jumping on a mini-trampoline we had. I used to have one of my own and thought it was great fun to jump on it, considering it exercise. I’ve always enjoyed this photo. Fortunately I don’t have any photos of me exercising.

Photographs once happily taken on those special days get packed away. They age and almost deteriorate away forever. So very sad. I have many like this, which is why I spent hours scanning them into my computer. And I will spend many more hours lovingly trying to adjust them, fix them, make them maybe better than they ever were.

Some of my favorite Christmas photos were taken around trees so painstakingly decorated and admired. One photo from my youth reminded me of Charlie Brown’s tree. If I remember right, we had quite a few trees like it. We didn’t have a lot of money for trees, but even more my mother had a soft spot in her heart for the trees that were often overlooked at tree lots.

Other favorite tree photos included my daughter and husband.

My sister’s kids are much younger than the other nieces in my family. Our parents have been gone a long time and Tami wanted to start some traditions for her kids to remember.
One of them is that we get together on the day after Thanksgiving and create gingerbread house “masterpieces.”

In the early years, we actually rolled out the dough, cut the pieces, and baked them. And then decorated them. You can imagine the massive mess we made. Thank goodness we have always done this project at Tami’s house!

By 2007 we switched to making our houses from pre-cut gingerbread house kits. It did cut down on some of the mess we made, but not much. We always seem to have frosting from one end of the table to the other, besides all over ourselves. Of course part of the construction process involves attempts by each of us to claim the best candy pieces to use for decoration. There can be any number of good-humored “negotiations” going on.

Also there are always some construction problems: walls that want to lean, roofs that cave in, decorations that refuse to stay in place. Frustrations abound! A couple of years ago I had some major construction issues (all of the above problems). My brother-in-law, an engineer, stepped in to fix my problems. He used a teeny-tiny drill on my walls and inserted toothpicks to hold them in place. He was absolutely thrilled to do this!!! Now he wants to use his “skills” all the time.

Last year we went to much smaller kits that are mini gingerbread towns. Most of us still have construction challenges, mainly me. This is not a talent I’m gifted at. But I don’t care in the least. I just love getting to make a mess at my sister’s house.

My daughter, Angela, is the most talented gingerbread house maker. (Her gingerbread village is the first photo.) Then my niece, my younger brother, and my sister and I battle for worst place. The point is that we all have fun together.

I’m making (hoping to make) a number of Christmas themed quilt art projects in the next month or so. I’ve finished one and almost another one. Go me!

This Gingerbread themed quilt piece was created based on a pattern shared in a quilt group my sister and I belong to. And it gave me a chance to use some of the stock-piled holiday fabrics we’ve collected. I enjoyed doing this one because it is like working on a puzzle. Does this piece fit here? Would it work better over here?

Happy quilting, all you quilters out there!

The photo above is from one of the many tree-lined roads where we mainly stayed in the southern part of France. To me, this is one of my typical pictures taken while driving. The kind you take (as a passenger) when you don’t want to ask the driver to stop but you want a picture anyway. So you end up with a blurry photo, or a picture of a tree or pole instead of the beautiful scenery you thought you were focused on. Anybody else ever get that kind of picture?

Usually I delete such photos, but I kind of liked this one. Something about it just seems interesting.

I’ve always loved taking pictures, especially when I travel. And I really enjoy these days of digital cameras. I can take hundreds of pictures, which makes my daughter laugh. Do I care? No. The way I see it is that maybe out of all those attempts I will end up with at least some decent pictures.

I have to admit that I get my “skills” with taking pictures while traveling from my mother. Okay, I’m a lot better than she was, but she tried. Like me, she wasn’t patient about waiting for the car to stop to take the perfect photo. I remember many pictures Mom took with something clearly that must have been important in a scenery photo missing. She was also fairly expert at cutting off parts of people in family photos: heads, arms, feet, etc. I rarely try taking pictures of people because I’ve inherited that “skill” as well.

We took a class at one of the local fabric shops here to make a twin-sized quilt top. Our first real quilting experience. Good and bad. I hadn’t really “made friends” with my sewing machine at the time, so there were a lot of “not good” moments. I’ve since bought a real quilting machine and this one seems to understand me. We’ve never actually finished those quilt projects. Too big for us.

We aren’t like the extremely talented women who can create those massive, beautiful quilts over a year or more’s time. Okay, we’re more interested in smaller projects, arty ones. And we are happiest when working on something we’ve designed ourselves, rather than something from a kit. I’m not saying there aren’t some wonderful kits; just that we like to draw on our own imaginations and make something that means a lot to us.

The quilt pictured above is one I designed and made based on a really cute little English-style restaurant in Carmel, California. The Tuck Box reminds me of Hansel and Gretel’s cottage, mainly because of the odd little door and… Well, it just does. This is one of the favorite places my daughter, Angie (oh, excuse me, she is “Angela” now that she’s grown up, according to her), and I go when I visit her in California.

Anyway, I took several photos of the place and then designed my quilted version of it.

I have also made several other small quilt projects that mean a lot to me. I made one from a photo of Angie and me visiting the Blarney Castle in Ireland. This was my first project and let me tell you I learned a lot. A lot of “don’t ever do it this way again” stuff. Doesn’t matter at all, I still love looking at that quilt and remembering our trip.

And recently I made a small quilt that exemplifies the short stories I write occasionally about Blossom the cow. The people who have read and heard her stories enjoyed seeing the quilt. … Memories. I’m all about them.