Can you say HOT!!

A couple of weekends ago my sisters and I, plus Karissa a niece went to sunny and a very hot St. George. Take a look at the tempature on the thermometer. Yup, that's how hot it really was while we were there. You can call us crazy but we didn't let a little heat stop us from having fun. This is the thermometer on the back patio of the house. I couldn't resist the photo, it says it's almost 110 outside and this is in the shade! I started the weekend off by giving my sisters a fun gift for their belated and early birthday gifts. Tamara and Jan's birthdays are in April and Collette's is in August. I had been anxiously awaiting this day to give them their presents.

These are the necklace's I had made for them. Aren't they sweet. On one side they have their initial backed with scrapbooking paper that looks like cross stitching, something my mother used to love to do. And on the other side is a picture of my mom and dad when they were dating. The year I believe is 1947. Notice how cute the picture is, my dad was always a little silly!

The beaded dangle hanging from the bottom loop is made from a necklace my mom had that broke several years ago. I have had it for quite sometime just waiting for the right thing to have made from it. This was the perfect thing, all of us could have something to remember her by. I still have beads leftover to make earrings for all of us too.

It's really hard to see it, but Mom is wearing this necklace in this family photo taken in 1963. The beads have been stored away in this little clutch purse for a long, long time. Needless to say, my sisters loved the gift, we were off to a great weekend of fun and laughter. Mom loved to laugh with us.

We went to Iggy's for dinner and right off the get go we started laughing. Jan's sandwich came and it had this much dressing on the bun. Not really, all the dressing was on the underneath, how strange is that?

Then off to the grocery store for a few items for breakfast. Well we didn't make it out of the store without buying snack food too. Jan's ice cream was melting so fast she couldn't even wait to get home to eat it. I'm just glad it didn't get on Collette's beautiful new car! We watched movies and munched the rest of the evening.

While we were there we went to see Footloose at the Tuachan. We knew it was going to be really hot so we sent Tamara and Collette out shopping for mister fans. They found some at Bed Bath and Beyond that would do the trick. Here they are getting them ready for the show. We renamed them the "Sister Misters"!

The royal treatment, our backstage tour of the theater.

Me and Karissa being silly. We always say Karissa is going to be taking care of her silly aunts when they get old and feeble. She is so fun to have around. What would we do without her, she keeps us laughing all the time.

The pretty red rock scenery of the Tuachan theater. The show was terriffic, and the cast did such a great job. I've been here many times and I think Footloose has been my favorite so far. I highly recommend it if you can stand a little heat.

Getting ready to say our goodbyes, nobody wants this weekend to end. So off to the Dollar Store and In and Out while the towels are drying. This is Jan, Tamara, Collette and Myself.

Where's my food??

We have a first timer here. So what did you think of it Jan? Are you ready to go back? I am but not until it gets a little cooler ok!

My brother Lane and his wife Annette were going to be using the house following us so we thought it would be fun to do some sprucing up around the place!! (This is where the Dollar Store comes in)

Lane will be so proud of me, I finally did some yard work around the house with all sorts of plastic flowers!! I'm sure he loved them, not!

We even put new bathroom accessories in the master bathroom. I bet they just loved having Barbie around!

New stuffed animals on the bed. Lane is a big time golfer, so that is in honor of him!

And finally a new welcome sign on the back door. It's the first thing you see when you pull in the garage. I hope they liked everything we did to the place. I hope he realizes it was just a joke. I'm sure he thinks we are pretty dumb for wasting money on this kind of stuff, but oh well we sure had some fun laughs in the Dollar Store!

Thanks to my sisters for a wonderful weekend. Let's not wait so long to do it again. It's always fun when were all together. I love you all so very much.

Quilts, Quilts, Quilts!

The Fiesta Days Quilt show keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. There was a big variety of quilts this year. Angie and myself went down on the 24th to view them all. Congratulations to one of my friends Lisa Dunn for winning one of this years Viewer's Choice Awards. I wished I had gotten a picture of her quilt called Grandma's Aprons. Here are pictures of the quilts I took to display for this year. Taffy Pull, and Mystery Pinwheel. Both patterns are from Pie Plate Patterns.

Memories of Dad

Floating Square, Pie Plate Patterns.

Button Up Butter Cup. This is the quilt I have made for my sewing room. It's made out of 40's and 50's retro fabrics.

Vintage Baby Quilt by Yo Yo Mama Designs.

Let's celebrate!

Another 24th of July has come and gone. We spent the weekend at the parade, 3 nights of rodeo, plus the Santaquin City Buckaroo rodeo where Hatch was participating in the Mutton Bustin event. The quilt show and the fireworks display rounded up the weekends events for us. It was fun visiting with friends and family over the Fiesta Days celebration here in good old Spanish Fork. We had Angie here for the weekend as well, it's always fun to have her staying with us. I hope she enjoyed the events.Bonnie and Doc our good friends enjoying the first night of the rodeo with us.

Some of the rodeo highlights. These Brahma bulls were awesome!

Parade time. Cousin Lana tellin stories to Angie and Stuart. She always has a story to tell.

Richard and Karissa in the parade. Richard is one of the town's councilmen. He did a great job on the parade line up, over 90 entries this year. Way to go Rich!

Thayne just chillin' at the parade.

The gangs all here. Karas, Kira, Hatch, Me and Thayne, Angie, John and Lana in front of the Oil Spout. This is where we have been watching the parade for several years.

Kira, John and the kids at the rodeo. Our kids have grown up sitting in these seats. We have sponsored these box seats for over 20 years. Now it's fun watching the grandkids do the same. We are really close to the rodeo action, sometimes you may even get a little dirt in your drink!

Jacob and Angie

Kody and Rachelle (Sturat's neice) joined in on the fun the last two nights. It was alot of fun having them join us. They can't wait for next year.

We enjoyed the fireworks display outside the rodeo grounds on the 24th.

Stuart and Tina, a family friend we haven't seen in quite sometime. It was fun to run into her and her family.

John, Kira and Hatch watching the fireworks. Thayne was in his stroller enjoying them. But where's Karas?

Here she is! Isn't this the cutest picture ever. She had found this sign laying on the ground and she could of cared less about the fireworks. She just wanted to play and dance on the sign so I let her of course. When I looked over she was laying down on it. What a perfect picture opportunity. After all the sign does say "Free Public Parking"!

Saturday morning we headed for Santaquin to watch Hatch in the little buckaroo rodeo that they put on. What a busy day this little guy would have. He would also be doing it at the Fiesta Days rodeo that night. What a cowboy won't do to make the circuit!

The 8 second ride and holding on for dear life!

Here's Hatch and one of the Bullfighters at the rodeo Saturday night.

And here he is getting ready for his second muttin bustin ride of the day. He did a great job on this ride too. Let's do it all over again in a year!

And here she is . . .

Our Whitehouse celebrity. For those of you that missed Kira on Good Things Utah yesterday here is the video clip of her cooking in the kitchen with Regan. The recipe she made is on the bottom of the screen or you can download it at ABC 4.com, it's called Easy Apple Dumplings.
You will probably hear a phone ringing in the background, it was mine, I wasn't going to stop recording to answer it. Duh!

I'm hooked!

I've got something new to brag about and yes it has to do with chocolate! I ran onto these yummy little treats at the Dollar Store one afternoon. Can I just say, " I'm hooked"! They are limited edition coconut M&M's. I haven't come across them any place else but there. So if your out and about and you spot a big bag of these babies, think of me!

Whitehouse Celebrity!

Hey were going to have a celebrity in the fam. Watch for Kira on Good Things Utah tomorrow, July 23rd at 10:00 am on Channel 4. She will be plugging Santaquin Orchard Days. She's making a yummy apple dessert in their fancy kitchen. Check out her cute aprons. She's been doing a little sewing lately. I guess I will have to be just a little late for work, I don't want to miss my daughters television debut. Good luck Kira, we will be cheering for ya!

Another Girl's Camp Over!

Well we survived another year of hosting our stake's girl's camp. We spent the 5th through the 12th at Camp KoHoLoWo. The girl's and their leaders didn't arrive until Wednesday morning so Stuart and I had a couple of days to ourselves before all the fun began. We had almost 240 girl's and leader's there the rest of the week. Here are some of the highlights of our week.(I'm warning you in advance of the picture overload ahead. There are so many I want to share, even the bear skat. Yup, we had a friendly little visitor one night.) This is Stuart and I in front of the lodge. We all gather here for flag and chapel, meals, programs, etc.

The meadow hadn't been mowed in a very long time. Stuart was lucky enough to be the first one to do it. He was on the tractor until after dark on Monday evening. He so could of been a farmer! He loved every minute of this job.

Doesn't it look so beautiful and green. He really did do a great job on it.

It was my job during camp to make sure the toilet paper and paper towel dispensers were full. Wow, I didn't realize just how much tp those girl's go through. One word, alot!!

Stuart did a little painting on the benches outside the lodge. They needed a fresh coat of paint, they haven't had one for sometime.

We had a little grafitti during the week, so we had to patch that up after the girl's had gone on Saturday.

And a couple of loose screws on beds to be tightened. The girl's are lucky enough to have these bunk beds to sleep on. These beds are so old, I slept on them when I was going to girl's camp!

We baked cookies for the girl's as a little gift as they left on Saturday. Then we packaged them in baggies and put a label on each one. You can read the little poem below:

We even had some visitors during the week. Kaitlyn and McKinley drove up from Levan. They spent a couple of hours with us. McKinley was showing off her new trick. Hum, should we call that walking! What a little smartie pants, she's only 9 months old.

Grandpa, Grandma and McKinley outside our home away from home.

During the week we participated in several activities with the girls. They had some really fun things going the whole time.

The beauty of the outdoors was all around us, the wildflowers were so pretty. We enjoyed some wildlife as well. We did see a few deer out in the meadow playing tag.

Surprise! A bear was in camp one night. He left his mark on the lawn in front of the lodge. With all that was going on I still found time to sew. I made a few fun things while I was away.

All set up and ready to sew! Just the perfect work space.

This is the Black Forest Bag from Melly and Me. I am going to be teaching this class at a Quilt Retreat in a couple of weeks so I wanted to make one that I could give away as one of the door prizes. I love how it turned out. The name and color of the bag are just fitting for the back drop of the picture. The forest, get it? The inside of the bag.

And this is a quilt I started for one of Jacob's co-workers in Idaho. I need to finish it up and then I'll tell you the story behind it.

I made this cute little purse pin cushion. I found the tutorial here if you are interested. The pouches were really fun and easy to make. The pattern is from Lazy Girl Designs, the zippers were so easy to put in. They have a fast zippy way of doing it. Way cute don't you think? These could be used for just about anything.

This is a mystery quilt I made at a quilt retreat last year. I finally got it quilted so I took it with me to finish binding. Look for it at the Fiesta Days Quilt show going on this weekend. If it's one of your favorite's please vote for it, ok.

And the last couple of things I got done were these cute tote bags. The pattern is from Whistlepig Creek. Each one is made from charm packs and a little extra yardage.

This bag I'm keeping for myself, it's made from Soriee from Moda.

And this one is on display at the Corn Wagon. It's made from Moda's Flag Day Farm.

So as you can see we had one busy week, but one filled with fun and laughter and memories that will last a lifetime. We look forward to doing this again. It was so quiet after all the girl's left on Saturday we just sat and enjoyed each other's company.