My Yellow Farmhouse

OH NO IT DIDN'T AND OH YES I DID

TAP TAP TAP - anyone out there.  I know it's been awhile since I've posted and read any blogs.  I hope you haven't forgotten about me :).   I know I have lots to catch up on in all of your neck of the woods.  My computer service while I was away was pretty scarce so that's why only 1 post happened while I was in Houston.  Market was lots of fun and lots of work.  With only 2 of us in Kari's booth

 - even shopping was limited.  Heck we were lucky to get away to have a tinkle break, so shopping didn't happen until very late Monday afternoon before the close of the actual market.  We had hoped to have time to walk the show each morning before it opened to see what was new and there just was never enough time.  I did manage to find a few new things for the website tho with the little shopping time I did have and will get them posted when Kari gets back.  I didn't have room in my suitcase to bring them home on the plane so she is bringing them home after Festival which she is staying and vending at.  I was going to stay with her and help but I just can't afford to be gone for 2 weeks with the house building going on and decisions that need to be made in person not over the phone.  I will say that  I sure was glad to get home last night and sleep in my own bed and have my coffee in my happy cup this morning.

So while I was gone Mr. Farmhouse called on Sunday morning to tell me that there was a blizzard happening in farmhouse country.  So to channel Sharon - OH NO IT DIDN'T" and yes it did.  Only a few inches came down, but strong winds made driving not so good.  It's to dang early for that kind of weather.  So since the temps aren't to high it was still sticking around when I got home so I could see it and share it with you


I am one of those weird people who enjoy the snow and winter.  I actually love the 4 seasons and the changes that each of them bring.  BUT this snow is to early even for me.

Soooo let's channel Ms Sharon again and say I actually met her - "OH YES I DID", lol.  I first saw her and NancyNoBlog on Friday while they were heading to schoolhouse to do some learnin (that's not a typo folks, just my version of humor).  We chatted awhile and then they came to one of Kari's lectures.  They stopped by the booth on Saturday and we made plans to meet for dinner that night with Anne.

We had so much fun and lots and lots of laughs.  I only wish that we had more time for visiting, shoot I just wish they all lived close by - these ladies know how to have a good time.  Thanks bloggy peeps for a very fun evening, it was such a treat to meet :).

I'm almost ashamed to say this, but little silver hardly ventured out of the bottom of my purse.  I certainly have no pictures from the actual market with the exception of Kari's booth at the top of the post.  I seriously meant to take a few pictures around me - there was a Japanese booth right behind us with adorable things.  I mean how convenient would that be for a picture - never happened.   I'm sure tho that others will have pictures on their blogs to share of market.  Met some wonderful quilt shop owners from all over the world and so much fun to learn about their neck of the woods.  We had 15 minutes on Monday afternoon after the close of market to quickly tour the quilt exhibit before that closed so I did get a few pictures of some of my favorites that I was allowed to photograph. 

So now I have a nice quiet schedule for several months to get caught up on things and get started on others.  I feel like I've been behind for sometime and am looking forward to getting back into my old routine and getting back to doing things I haven't taken the time for.   I'm planning on having lots to share with you in the coming weeks of projects and some baking goodies.  Time to start the nesting of the farmhouse for winter. 

So thanks for stopping by the farmhouse if your still with me, LOL.  I will sign off with some of the quilts from the exhibit at market.  Hope you enjoy them

Until Next Time

One of my favorites

This one was made of flannels

A wonderful wool quilt - very sweet

love this one - simple but stunning

this one was made up of lots of hexagon type pieces

Hello From Dallas

Yup the road trip to Houston has began and we are almost there, tonight we are staying in Dallas and this is what we saw driving in


It was a cement spaghetti junction I tell ya.  I drove through it last year and Kari had the privilege of driving through it this year.  This time we had her trusty GPS system nicknamed Rhonda for the song "help me Rhonda".  She has really earned her keep through this trip.
 Tomorrow if you were looking you'd find me smack dab in the middle of the convention center starting the process of setting up.  I hope to blog about market as we go along, but it will depend on internet service at the hotel we are staying at.  I'm pretty sure that dinner with Kari, Sharon, Nancy No Blog, Anne and Anne will be happening on Saturday night.  Looking sooooo forward to meeting up with all of them.  Hope to get lots of pictures to share.

This past weekend was a quilt retreat with the peeps.  We had a lot of fun and lots of laughs.  I finished up lots of little projects and started a couple of new ones for the website.

This retreat center is part of a big resort hotel with a wonderful golf course and water park.  This was our view during lunch on Friday

I can't share any pictures of my projects because it's all in the sewing cave where I dumped it when I got home on Sunday.  Monday was busy busy busy getting ready to leave Tuesday morning for Houston.  So I will share with you  when I get home along with a couple of things I bought - shhhhh don't tell anyone.  I did get a few pictures of some fun things that others showed at the retreat.  These were some the quilts that the vendor had hanging around the retreat center

I bought the kit for this quilt called Grandma's Button Box

on this quilt the witches legs were stuffed and hanging loose

one of the peeps did a pattern of Kari's called Starry Path

This quilt was adorable and I should have gotten a picture of it all sewn together because she finished it during the weekend.  It's a Buggy Barn quilt but I'm not sure of the name

I loved this quilt for the applique center

 and this one had sweet applique flowers in each block

I tried to get a few pictures at show and tell Saturday night, but the lighting wasn't good for little silver and the pictures turned out rather dark.

The framing of the house is really moving along
 
and the lake is very quiet up and down the beach with docks and boat lifts out of the water until next spring

So I'm signing off for now and hope to be back posting again sometime during this trip.

Until Next Time

Happy Tuesday

Did everyone have a good weekend?  Ours was busy and a good one.  The weather turned out to be exactly what they said it would be - cold, windy and very very rainy.  Keep good thoughts going towards sunny and windy days for our area so the fields can dry out and the machines can get in there and do the harvesting.  One of the woolies said they had 4 or 4 1/2" of rain - that's a lot of rain.

A couple of weeks ago I threw my name into the ring to win a pattern over at Renee's site for her darling dress pattern.  YAHOO I won and got it in the mail the other day.  Not a great picture but I liked how she had the cute little tag on it and wanted that in the pic - so pardon the shine from the flash.  Renee is such a sweetie and I look forward to seeing her at market in Houston in a little over a week.  Her booth is always so adorable.

I also got another sweet little package in the mail from Wendy - "just because" is what she said.  I've seen these darling little totes around blogland and love them.  She had tucked inside 2 charm packs of some yummy moda fabric from The Collection for a Cause line - beautiful beautiful fabric.  I LOVE chocolate and caramel  (together is a little bite of heaven) and she sent along some darling little eyeball peepers called Creepy Peepers -  they are chocolates with caramel inside.  They will be heading to a quilting retreat this weekend that I'm going to with the peeps - peepers for the peeps, LOL.  Sorry about that - thank you sweet Wendy - your the best and we will all sing thanks to you this weekend while we enjoy these little treats which will be tucked inside the darling little tote

Last night we had our monthly quilting bee at one of the peeps house.  Not sure what the heck I was thinking - or not thinking I guess I forgot to get a couple of pics of what some of them were working on.  One was even beading a wedding veil.  Anything goes at our get togethers.  I took a few pics tho to share with ya - here's a few snippets of her autumn decorating

love this scarecrow picture

cute quilt on her table

a cute little pair of socks for her grandson

A Little Jo Club quilt

love the colors on this quilt

I'm heading to a quilt retreat this weekend with the peeps.  We have always gone during the winter in either January or February.  The retreat we've been attending the last couple of years also offers one during the month of October.  So we decided to try a fall retreat once and see what we think about that.  I haven't even begun to get ready for it yet.  But it will all come together before Friday morning when I head out.

I promised autumn decorating pics and decided it would be easier to load them onto my webshots page rather than on the blog.  So if your interested click on this link and hop on over and take a peek.  Do you know I've been working on this post since early afternoon and it's now almost 9:30 at night.  Lots of distractions today, LOL.

Until Next Time

BTW - I found out through Anne that my comment on her blog wasn't showing up as me and so all the commenting I've been doing the last couple of weeks probably isn't showing up as me on the blogs I've been visiting.  I figured out what I was doing wrong.  So hopefully now it's fixed.  Thanks Anne otherwise who knows how long it would have gone on.

Almost Caught Up

Yup I've got one more cool place to show ya and then I'm officially caught up with the fun places I've been.  Remember the Dr. Seus Book "Oh The Places You'll Go".  Seems like I've been on the go to some fun places the last few weeks.  My last one to share with you is a wonderful place called the Crooked Willow in Alexandria MN.  This is an amazing gift shop experience and worth the trip just to see what they've accomplished starting with an old farmhouse, remodeling that and adding other fun buildings.  If you click on the highlight there you will see the picture of the farmhouse before the remodel.  This is what you see when you pull into the parking lot - these are the offices and they are new buildings



beautiful gardens and more outside


they have the coolest iron fence with brick posts that lines the front of the property and you can see it a little bit straight ahead of this walking path.
 
another cool little building full of antiques and fun new stuff

not sure I was supposed to take pictures inside but I got a few on the 2nd floor of the main shop


we loved this window treatment

and we loved this bathroom and the wood on the walls


It was a fun place to visit and I even came home without buying anything - yes insert shocked face here, LOL.  Before we made it to this great shop we had our last Little Jo's Club meeting and this was the project for our final get together

cute project.  While at the club meeting I did pick up this new book

Lots of cute projects in there in the French General style - like this
one

and this one would be a great hostess gift - flax seed or cherry stones are sewn  into the bottom part of this bag to help keep  bread warm when you microwave the bag before putting the bread in

This is just a sweet book with lots of projects for the home and really just a visual treat to look at and read.

We lived in our house for 8 years and for half of that time there's been talk of getting a new bridge that you have to cross to get back into our development.  Well it's finally happening.  The old bridge has been demolished and they've given us this temporary one to drive over one car at a time

while they work on this

At the new house the flooring went on yesterday for the second floor and we were able to walk upstairs and get the view from up there
 

Mr. Farmhouse is standing in part of my sewing room - which will be full of bright wonderful light for these old eyes, LOL and looking out onto the lake - makes me smile to think about it.

there's my storm shelter

this is looking into the family room all the way into our bedroom and up the stairs

our porch

They had hoped to start putting the walls up on the 2nd floor but we are having some very hard rains today.  This is not the time of year that rain is welcomed.  Several of the woolies are farm families that grow sugar beets, beans and more.  This time of year is always a race to get the crops in before the freeze happens and their crops are gone.  This rain is not welcomed by them at all.  With cooler days and nights soil doesn't dry out very well and that makes it difficult if not impossible to get their machines into the fields to harvest their crops when it rains.  Once harvest starts they run their operations 24 hours a day to get it all in before it's to late.  So woolies I will keep you all in my thoughts over the next couple of weeks.  In fact a woolie meeting isn't even scheduled for October because weather and harvesting makes for a tense month for all of them.    So let's hope that the rain the weather man predicated for the next 3 days doesn't happen. 

Soooo now that catches me up to today - YAHOO.  Lots of new things have arrived this week for the website including this wonderful yuumy site
 
and my box of Need'l Love Wool just arrived while I was typing this - YAHOO - it's more yummy stuff. 

So I will be back on Monday with pictures of the fall decorating.  Hope you have a great weekend and better weather than is in our neck of the woods.

Until next time

Where The Heck Does Time Go

I think that's the million dollar question.  I had such good intentions of posting over the last few days - and you got nuttin honey, LOL.  I had to look back and see when was the last post and I was really surprised that it had been a week.  I'm really going to try and be better about it (I know you've heard that one before).  I wanted to share with you my view from outside my back porch - I LOVE IT

I have several shipments coming in the next week or so for the website and that will be fun when it arrives.  I leave for Houston in 2 weeks to help my friend Kari at quilt market.  I will be squeezing in a bit of shopping for the website as well and will have some new and fun things to offer you. I will also be meeting up with my friend Anne and hopefully squeezing in a dinner with Anne, Sharon and Nancy No Blog as well - keep your fingers crossed - I'm anxious to meet those 2.  Last week Kari dropped of one of her new projects for me to stitch the binding on - it's darling and made out of some fun fabrics.  She's also starting to blog so stop by and say hi when you get a chance :)

I wanted to share with you a couple of pictures from a a great wool shop I went to a few weeks ago along with a fun quilt shop we stopped at on our way home.  First stop is LJ Fibers in Minneapolis.  She spent several hours with us picking out wool for the block of the month I'm offering on the website.  She also did some custom dying for me as well.  What I realized is that I didn't take any pictures of the whole wall of dyed wool that was in her shop - you know that slap your forehead kind of moment - like what was I thinking, LOL.  Anyway here's a few pics from the other sides of the store.  The 3 of us where drooling before we were even in the door.  I had to keep telling myself to breath - breath - it was pure wool heaven :)

On the way home from LJ Fibers we stopped at Common Threads to see their new location - well they've been there a year but it was my first time in their new store - lots of fun samples and a great open and bright space

Of course I came home with a few pieces of fabric - I am a weak girl, LOL.

This past weekend my sweet friend Lois's daughter was married and the day was an absolutely perfect autumn day.  The colors around here are beautiful - not at peak yet but getting close - the weather was perfect - sunny with just a touch of coolness.  The group had a great time at the wedding reception.  Sunday morning I flew out of bed in a flash when I was hit by a big old charlie horse - I guess dancing the night away in high heels is hard on this old girl.  One of the cool things the DJ did was give just about everyone there a band that lit up that we wore around our wrists,  it was so cool to look around the room and see these neon splashes of color everywhere, between the candles on the table, the little twinkle lights and the bracelets - it's was a bit magical.  The picture doesn't show them lit up because of the flash, but one of the gals wore hers in her hair

So as an inside joke  from the wedding - "B" this ones for you :)


 I've got a couple more fun places to show you - and pictures of fall decorating this weekend and that's a promise - sooooo I will be back tomorrow - I promise - I really do :)

Until Next Time

Back Again

A few weeks back we had our monthly peep get together.  She has beautiful gardens outside so we took a quick little stroll through them before we headed inside to start sewing.

Early in the summer season we had a really bad storm go through.  She was hit by it and lost lots of big trees in her yard, damage to surrounding buildings on her farm as well as damage to these

They say it was straight line winds - others say tornado.  This is why we are building a storm shelter inside the new garage - YIKES

She was decorated for fall





One of the peeps was working on a very small sock

another one has been working on this applique project for a bit

earlier in the day I stopped by my favorite machine quilter (hi PM)

who was gracious enough to do some quick stitching on a project I wanted to get the binding on and sew down that night at the peeps.  It was a quilt I did for an order and wanted to drop off to them the following day

On my way home from PM's house I swung by one of the peeps to drop off something.  I posted pictures of her house back in August and was asked in emails for pics of more of the room rather than snippets of fall - so here goes

love this idea



This is her darling summer kitchen all decked out for fall.

So that gets us caught up a little bit.  Tomorrow I will take you along to a great wool shop and a quilt shop.  Typepad is being weird for some reason today so I'm signing off.

Until Next Time