Winter Wonderland quilt in Quilting Gallery Embroidery/Stitchery contest

Hi blogging friends,

I have entered my Winter Wonderland embroidered/pieced quilt in the Quilting Gallery's Embroidery/Stitchery contest. The winner wins a nice basket of sewing goodies. So that's a long way of saying please have a look at the entries, and if you are so inclined, I would appreciate your votes. My entry is the last one. There are quite a few lovely quilts. The following is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/24y9r87

Quick escape to Long Beach, WA

We made a spontaneous quick overnight trip to Long Beach, WA on Sunday. It's probably 2-1/2 hours from home, and we hadn't been there for a long time. Other ocean beaches are closer, so we had stayed south of the border. We had such a nice time. We were disappointed when we went through Astoria though, that our favorite little fresh tuna fish and chips shop was closed. 

The first picture is taken when we were walking along the beach, and the second is from the balcony of our room.  The day was just beautiful!

We took a drive and saw this inlet with the tide out and a gaggle of geese working on getting their dinner.

We loved this picture taken along the Bear River.  We wondered what those pilings had supported in days past.

This bridge crosses the very, very wide Columbia River from Astoria, Oregon to Washington.  It is a pretty spectacular bridge.  Toward the Oregon side, the bridge rises high above the water so that ships can go under, and then drops down again.  At this particular point, I think the river is approximately 3 miles wide.  It is a very treacherous area for ship navigation, and tugboats are hired to guide ships through what they call the Columbia Bar.  There are many large sandbars, and they have to really know the deep channels of the river to keep from going aground on the sandbars.  The tug operators are experts on the river navigation.  The Columbia rolls on out a ways from Astoria to meet the Pacific Ocean.

Project Linus completion

 Anyone who has looked at my blog knows that I love to do quilts for Project Linus, and though it's been a while, here is another one.  This quilt actually is a mystery quilt pattern that some in my quilt guild did.  As you can readily see, it is an extremely easy pattern, but I am real pleased with the way it turned out.  I had intended it from the start to go to Project Linus, so chose fabrics that I thought would work for that purpose.  We have been told that PL is most in need of quilts big enough for older children, and especially boys, since they get more for girls, and I think this quilt will fill that bill, as do most of mine.

 On one of the blogs I was perusing the other day, I saw a block similar to this and decided that looked like fun, so out came just a small portion of my scraps, and I started in.  It was fun, and I now have 11 more similar blocks to go with it.  Now I need to sash them and put them all together and there will be another Project Linus quilt top.

Three of our DGC are coming over today, so I think maybe we will ride bikes and have a picnic.  The summer is going much too quickly to suit me!

Last night we went to a youth football fundraiser at a restaurant here in town and saw so many people we know.  Our fireman son was one of the servers.  They had police and firefighters helping with serving, and the tips that they got, as well as 20% of the restaurant proceeds, went to the youth football program.  Our grandson plays football, so of course we wanted to participate.  It was fun to see so many we knew there.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  I think ours will be quiet and that sounds great to me.

Birthday and quilt gift

A while back I mentioned that I had a quilt that I would show after it had been gifted. Well, now it has been given to DGD who turned 9. She seems pretty pleased, judging from her expression in the first picture. Her bedroom is done in red, black and white, so I knew I wanted to use those colors, and I didn't want to do anything real traditional. I thought circles would be perfect, and I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

The blocks with the random circles I designed myself, but the other blocks were from a pattern from the June issue of American Patchwork & Quilting.

Unfortunately, before the following picture no one told me I was having a very bad hair day.

I machine quilted the quilt with what I call scrolls.  It seems to have become quite a favorite way of mine to do the machine quilting.

Home after Disneyland

We've been home a week today, and it was so good to get home again. July was a very busy, but enjoyable month.

We had such a nice time at Disneyland/California Adventure with our kids and grandkids. It is such fun to go with family and enjoy with them the things that they enjoy so much. We also spent one day at Knott's Berry Farm with our older son and his family. That was great fun also. There were several roller coasters there, and I went on one, but was not too crazy about it. At California Adventure though, they had a big roller coaster that we all went on twice (yes, twice), and it was awesome! I surprised myself, believe me!

The first pic is of our 4 DGC.

This is a picture of our older son and his family.

And this would be our younger son and his family.

And here we are with our two sons. I guess I don't need to say that we're very proud of both of them and their families.