Prom 2011

Briana and her date, Alex Vaughn.

Briana's dress was so beautiful! The earrings were make by a Portland jeweler. Again, I cannot make this picture go upright. Grrrr!


Silly picture of the two kids!


Briana and good friend Malinda Allie



These three met up with seven other kids at the Rhinelander German Restaurant. After that they went on to the Oregon Zoo (go figure) for an evening of dancing. Afterwards, they all went for ice cream. Briana was home by one a.m. They had a great time! The only downside to this whole evening was that both Briana and Alex had to be at Mass at 8:45 to take pledges for the New Orleans Service Project trip. Oh, well!!

Vintage Store Find of the Season

LOOK what I found at a little shop on the coast for just 3 dollars!

Crafty Spring Projects and Quilts

Here's the little scrappy quilt that I mentioned earlier.



Instead of giving it to Granny, I gave it to Shammy (Shamu). He loves it!!



This next Project is a cute little chair that I found at Good Will. I cleaned it up and painted it white. Briana and Alex painted the circles.


I also made a little companion quilt out of a vintage top I found at a G Sale a few years ago.


I believe, if they come, I will give this to Chloe, Jim and Jessi's daughter at Easter. (That would be Bob's granddaughter)

Briana's 18th Birthday Party

On Briana's birthday, we had a massive Bingo Game. About 25 people came and lottery tickets, candy bars and sombreros were the prizes. It was most obnoxious; just the way we like it!!


Don and Kendall we so silly together!



Cole and Kendall helped Don call the numbers.



Briana blew out so many candles, she needed Granny's nebulizer!!
Fun Day for all!!

New Couch and Love Seat - sorta!

I finally took pictures of our recently recovered couch and love seat. The pillow are made from Pendleton Wool.
They are still the MOST comfortable couches ever, and there is no dog vomit or cat shreds on the arms. The base fabric is a tough micro fiber and the interior wood is solid hickory. I have a feeling the couches will live longer than the rest of us!!

First Official Day of Spring Break

And this is what it looks like!!


All three of us are home for the whole week. It's raining and cold, but there is hope. Briana's 18th birthday party is Sunday. PIZZA and BINGO!! You are all invited!!

I finished a rather over sized baby quilt for my friend Michelle. I know it doesn't look very baby-ish, but I was thinking that a quilt should not only be utilitarian but versatile as well. This picture shows much brighter blues than it really is - a deep cerulean blue border with five inch squares.


I have four more finished quilt tops in the queue and will be posting them as they are completed. Right now I am working on this sweet little scrappy quilt I think Momma would like for Mother's Day. We'll see.

Okay, so I am posting a picture of a deer that lives in our neighborhood. It doesn't look like any of the white tails that we have around here. It is over a year old but is very small, and his head is odd. I call him our donkey deer because he has the coloring and body of a skinny burro. The Adamses up the street say that the other deer chase him away whenever they see him. He's pitiful and an orphan, but I can get within ten feet of him before he cautiously slinks away. Don feeds him - naturally!

What do you think he is?

Well, I'm back to my machine for a little creative quilting!!
Dottie

I'm back!!

Wow!! For some reason I could not log in to Blogger, but I found a back door, so I'm BACK!!!!

Several things
3/15 - Ides of March
DDHS started laying off teachers
I'm in the middle of testing - - High Stakes, that is!!
The fourth reactor went up in smoke.

3/14 - Pi Day
Began testing with my students
Folded 10 loads of laundry
3rd reactor at the Fukushima Nuclear power plant in Japan let off some steam

3/13 - Sunday
Can't wait to be a li'l old church lady
Set my clocks
made a great meat loaf
Nervous about the Nuclear power plant in Japan
Briana got home from Idaho at 2:30 a.m.
Posted 6 weeks grades

3/12 - Saturday
We got our taxes done and we OWE way too much
Very dark and rainy day
Pictures from Japan's Tsunami and earthquake are CRAZY scary

3/11 - teacher work day
Giant earthquake in Japan followed by a tsunami
Michelle's shower at 12
Bagels and coffee for staff
graded like 300 assignments
cheese pizza
Found a tax lady

3/10
Picked up cupcakes - - so cute
taught all day
Finished Michelle's quilt
Watched Bones

3/9 - Ash Wednesday
Unfortunate bystander at a food fight at DDHS - - I had to borrow clothes to get through the rest of the day
Snowflake said her final farewell to us all. She was 19 years old.
Mass at St. Henry's.

CHA CHA CHA - cue the music!

I am happy to announce that at this very moment I have finished entering and posting all of semester one's grades. I am at ZERO status as far as papers to grade!!
In the last three days, I have scored 177 hand written essays. Yup!! I'm that good!!

CHA CHA CHA!!!!

Dot

Poem

My parasitic twin is on the inside.
Her limbs are within mine.
Brain, spleen, heart, lungs,
all inside me.
I'll call her Baby.
Baby feeds on me.
She consumes my oxygen, devours my energy.
When I work she gets so tired I must rest.
When I am sad Baby gets a headache.
She doesn't like it when I am pissed or frustrated,
and she lets me know it.
We don't have the same inclinations as other twins often have.
Baby wants to go to strange places and do and see weird things;
I want to read a book, write, quilt.

Baby is restless.
She wakes me in the night and reminds me of all the bad decisions,
useless fears, stupid embarrassing moments that have happened in my life.
She chides me, throwing in my face all that is imperfect about me.
Baby would have done things differently.
No regrets, oh, no, she would have been proud of that or this.
She'd be somewhere exotic!

Once, I considered having her removed, but the surgery sounded too risky.
One of us might not make it. She didn't care.
Secretly, Baby hoped that I'd be the one to perish.
I fixed her; I opted to keep her
Trapped in me
Forever
Who's in charge now?

Dottie 2011

Okay, so I am not crazy nor am I suffering multiple personalities. I just saw this TLC special about a boy with a parasitic twin. That opened up so many possibilities and weird situations that I couldn't stop thinking about it. This is what came of all that obsessive imagining!!
Enjoy!!

Today is January 6, 2011

2011 is such a big year for so many people. Briana is graduating from high school and going off to college. Don is retiring. Lots of my friends are having babies. BIG STUFF!!

I think this year I'll push myself a little to explore some writing. Mom has inspired me with her sweet, sweet little book.

Thanks, Mom!!
I LOVE your style!!

Dottie

Today is December 26th

CAN I GET A HELL YEA FOR CHRISTMAS HANGOVER!!?

We washed and put away all the dishes, vacuumed and mopped all the floors, only ate fruit and veggies, washed all the linens and watched two movies while eating the popcorn from Sammy and Robin! Everything is almost back to pre- Christmas day cleanliness.
We had so much fun yesterday. Briana fell in love with Carter; Don really liked playing grandpa to Farhan, Ezzat, and Emir, and I, well, I just loved all the love. We are grateful for our family!
Merry Christmas all year long,
Dottie

Two Days to Christmas!!

Today is the 23rd.

On my list

Buy Groceries
Get the last two presents still yet to buy
Bake an Apple Pie

Tomorrow

Clean House
Go to Mass
Make Chicken Noodle Soup

Christmas Day

Enjoy all the family and friends
Love Jesus!

Sounds like a great plan!!
Dottie

Snow Ball Winter Formal 2010

OMG!! Am I ever glad that's over!! Briana is did look amazing! AND she had an actual date!!



Does anyone know how to rotate these? I set this one right before I pulled it from iPhoto, but it still goes sideways. GRRR!!

Three Quilts

I just finished two baby quilts!! Yea! They are already in boxes ready to be given to the mommies-to-be! I used the exact same pattern and two different styles of fabric.

The red and white one is more traditional

and the orange and green and banana quilt is a little more modern. Anywho, my friends don't know what sex the babies are, so I had to go with anything other than pink and blue. What a relief!!

I finally, well, almost finished this spider web quilt. It is 50" X 50" with out the binding. It has over 80 different fabric scraps. I really like this showy piece!




Here's a close up of the web.

QUILT

Okay, so I finally finished this Bargello Queen-sized Quilt. I tell ya, I almost gave up my hobby over this bugger. I used 42 different fabrics which equaled 2012 2" X 2" squares. I started this task in July and just finished last weekend. Grrrr! Every piece with the exception of the border and backing was a scrap in my stash!

The cat likes it!!

Adventures in Meat

Have you ever had a turtle burger? I have!!


Two patties, weenies, bacon = Yum!!

Halloween with the Busics

Every year, Don and I go over to Scott and Vicki's house to pass out candy so they can take their tribe trick-or-treating. This year was, as always, lots of fun. Kendall was Tinkerbell.



Cameron, Connor, and Cole we MegaEvil, the Grim Reeper, and Venom, in that order. Funny how in years past, these guys are usually dressed up in some Star Wars or Power Ranger characters. At a certain point, boys go bad!!




Briana was Pebbles, the teenage years!



Fun for ALL!!

It has been a long time, Friend

Wow! I did not realized how many calendar pages had fallen from the peg. I sit here this morning alone and too early even for the cats. Don is out of town, Briana got home super late from an Ashland Shakespeare Festival, and no one is awake even to call two time zones away. That's okay.
I am working one two quilts that are very involved. One is a Queen Size Bargello style with at least 42 different fabrics in it. With just a little more top stitching and an edging, I should have a finished project. I'll post as soon as it is done!! The other is called a spider web. It is a little larger than a lap quilt, but has just as many different colors. The entire thing is made of scraps. I used paper piecing for the first time with this one. That was a trip. Regular printer paper is pretty thick, so cutting the little bits away took an EON!! I am undecided as to what to do with this quilt. Part of me wants to hang it on the wall; it is that showy. Part of me wants to give it as a Christmas present to my friend Monica, and part of me wants to give it to a friend as a baby quilt. I'm stumped. I know three people who are pregnant right now, well, actually, I know six. Only three or four are going to get baby quilts. I suppose that is my next big push. (no pun intended)
School has started. This year I have 181 students currently enrolled in my 6 classes. I think this is a record for me!! Overall, however, the kiddos have been really good. Actually, I'm having lots of fun!
Don has found another property in Central Oregon for us to look at. This time, it is in the town of Culver which is right above Lake Billy Chinook. Can you guess why he likes it? The property is a little over three and half acres with a weird house and a new four car garage/rv/boat enclosure that looks better than anything we have. Bank owned and foreclosed means it comes as is. If you'd like to look it up RMLS#10048509. It has water, septic, electricity which is more than I can say for the last two vacation properties on our wish list. One place only had an outhouse. Ummm, that would creep Don out. He already has issues about the toilet. Anywho, this one is about 40K less than the place in an earlier post. Of course, that one had 20 more acres and amazing views. We'll see.
Last weekend, Don and I went to the Pendleton Woolen Mills Portland store. That was either a mistake or an amazing find. I LOVE this stuff! We bought several signature pieces. Then we went to the largest fabric store in Oregon which is across the street. There we found some luxurious taupe/mushroom herringbone micro fiber upholstery material that just matched the beautiful wool. In the course of dreaming we met an ace upholsterer who just happened to work there on Saturdays. Can you guess where this is going? I went home and took pictures of the couch and love seat in my living room, sent them off to this guy, and set up an appointment to have these two redone. We are going to use the Pendleton Wool as the pillows. Now I'm thinking about painting the living room and the hall and the entry way. I have already decided to paint the Kitchen and Dining Room this great Lobster red! Just what the Doc ordered!!
It looks like a busy fall ahead!! Yippee!!

Summer Vacation 2010

We just spent 15 days in Louisiana and Texas where the order of the day is to eat, sleep, fish, and eat again!! We stopped at Sam's first to pick up Granny

and had a wonderful breakfast with Sam, Karen, Sarah, and Dennis. In the afternoon we travelled to Boerne to visit J5. They have a fantastic setting in the hill country. We went to the Alamo - -

it was hot! Then it rained, and you know what happens when you mix the two - a hot and humid Texas Day!! Love it!!
The next day we went fishing and hanging out at the lake.

Don and I could live there, like, right now!!

Then we drove to Galveston to visit with Steve and Rosie. There we saw Julie and Karen and Joey and Mark and Leah! Steve has a new boat - - it's AHH-MAZing. So the guys and girls went tubing!! Don was have a fantastic time even though he doesn't look too happy!


Briana and Karen soaked up some sun and some waves!!


Our next big adventure in Galveston was an off shore fishing trip on the Good News!! Steve is modeling a spade fish.


We caught lots of red snapper; unfortunately, they were out of season, so we tossed them back. We did get to keep the Mangrove Snapper!


Don also caught a ling, a king, and a trigger fish!

Alas, our time in Galveston had to come to an end, and we journeyed on to Welsh. There we spent time at Granny's house along with EATING!! On Friday we had a Celebrate Sarah Day!!

And for our Celebrate Sarah Day, we went on a swamp tour at Lake Martin. We saw lots of wildlife like this Great Blue Heron


And the American Alligator!



We visited with lots of family like Claire and Shawn and the kiddos, and Susan and Rick and Abby. For my birthday, Granny took us all to DI's for dinner. I had some most excellent boiled crabs!



The tail end of out trip was a Sammy's house where we were able to visit with Joey and Sam and spend some much needed down time before out flight home and the ever present busy schedule.

All in all, Don, Briana, and I had a wonderful vacation. We'd like to thank all of you who housed us and fed us and let us relax and enjoy being with family!!
We miss you all so much already,
Dottie

QUILT

I found these vintage bowtie squares at the antique show about 8 days ago, so I decided to put them together for a sweet little quilt. Happy Belated Birthday, Mom!!