5th Grade Graduation

June 5 was an important day ..... GD#2 graduated from 5th Grade. Next year she'll enter Middle School ....... how time flies.


Gym is ready, balloons are waiting



Here she comes ...............






Our most favorite teacher of always ...... Mary Ann Wilson .... I'll miss you.

Mrs. Applebaum


Mrs. Vincent, Princpal


Mrs. Pollock

Friends

Dad

Mom

Goodbye Classroom


Goodbye Criss School ..... my home for the last 6 years


Lookout Hamilton ....... here I come

More Biggest Loser Meals

I said a couple days ago that the Biggest Loser meals arrive at your home in a BIG box with a frozen pack inside. You then put them into your freezer and they expire date is about 18 months. I guarantee the meals won't stay in your freezer 18 months ..... maybe 18 days but definitely not 18 months.



This is just one of the frozen meals.

Fresh out of the microwave ..... 6 minutes and you're ready to cut the bags open and eat.

AND this is Thai Chicken - (grilled chicken chunks with a thai coconut ginger sauce, served with mixed vegetables and grilled pineapple) 6 points on Weight Watchers flex program.

(chicken breast, flamed roasted pineapple and broccoli florets, sugar snap peas, carrots and yellow carrots).

Everything you see on the plate is part of the meal, I did 'not' add anything. YES it was very good, very good. I can't believe how good these Biggest Loser Meals taste.

calories 285
total fat 5mg
cholesterol 80mg
sodium 720mg
total carbohydrate 31g
dietary fibre 3g
sugar 21g
protein 34g

If you're interested I found this article, Diet Plans in Review in reference to the Biggest Loser meal plan.

Custom Quilt, my first

Goodbye Sharon................

Sharon, a member of our Stitchers Group is moving to Delaware ....... so, of course, we had to make her a quilt. We searched and thought until we found the perfect pattern. Sew Much To Do, by Michele Scott in McCall's Quilting, February 2000. I made the doggie tote for the quilt but now Sharon can use it for grocery shopping and even better visiting quilt shops up North.

All the members of our Wednesday Stitchers Group made a spool block. The featherweight in the middle was perfect .... you see Sharon brings her featherweight to sew on each week.

This was my very first custom quilting job. A few facts:

166 tie offs and burying of threads
21 (yes 21) thread changes ......

20 buttons sewed onto the jar

24-30 hours of quilting (and frogging)

bias binding hand sewing to the back 3 1/2 hours

40 x 40 size

rolled quilt back/forth probably a zillion times

I really didn't know where to start because I'm a pantograph quilter only. I asked my friend Irene, Deb, Marlies, members of APQS chat, MQResource forum and Delphi Quilting Passion friends for help. Man what a great bunch of friends on all the boards ...... Heidi from APQS even sent me a PDF with ideas (thanks Heidi). With all their help I finally got up the nerve to go for it.

First I layed clear vinyl over the quilt, using white board pens I marked the ideas I gathered from everyone. I did this because I've never done custom quilting .... it did help me alot. Once I decided what to do then I went for it.

The quilting took hours. I lost track but I'm guessing somewhere between 24 to 30 hours. One of my problems was I really didn't know where to start. Everyone said to do the SID (stitch in the ditch) first. Unfortunately I had never done SID so I decided to do more like an inside outline. I used my stitch regulator and my Dainty Ditcher ruler.

To make the fabric resemble thread I did lines back/forth. By the way when the spool is laying on it's side the lines must go up/down otherwise you'll be frogging.

The black fabric had gold curlie q's. I found a feather that I traced/cut out of freezer paper, using school chalk I chalked in 2 feathers on the machine. The machine represents a featherweight and Sharon always brings her featherweight machine to sewing group.

The offwhite background fabric (Thimbleberries) was done in a loopy meander. Inside the button jar I did just a meander (my first meander) and lines on the lid. Buttons were sewed on after it was quilted .... yes it was hard as I didn't want the thread to show on the back.

I wanted to use like a heart 'n' hand idea for the outside 4 inch border. I traced my grandson's hand again on freezer paper, chalked the hand randomly then freehanded loops and hearts to connect with the hand.

Our label ...... everyone will sign their name at the bottom.


Well here it is ...... all pieced and quilted. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Sharon and her quilt.

Sharon we will miss you.

Thank you to everyone who helped me with suggestions and especially for the encouragement.

Biggest Loser Meal Plan

It seems like I've been on a diet all my life ...... yep I'm almost as old as dirt. I've tried all kinds of plans, meal plans and more ...... you know how it goes.


Recently I was given some of the Biggest Loser meals. I have to say they are the BEST I've ever eaten in the diet food line of any brand, any meal plan. The meals arrive at your house in a large box with a frozen pack. The lunch portion is large enough for dinner, in my opinion, so you can stretch the meals to last 2 weeks by supplementing your lunch. In 6 minutes you can sit down to a feast.


This is the BBQ chicken, roasted corn/peppers and broccoli ...... (sorry the photo isn't that great but I couldn't wait to eat my dinner). It was delicious, better than I can cook, really. Weight Watcher points would be 6 for this meal.





Calories 340

Total Fat 5g
Cholesterol 80mg
Sodium 910mg
Total Carbohydrate 40g
Dietary fiber 6g
Sugars 21g
Protein 37g


Anyway a few years ago I saw a Christmas photo of my butte. WOW what a shock. I joined Weight Watchers, lost weight, even made goal. Then lots of things in my life happened and I've gained almost all the weight back. BUT I'm back on track with Weight Watchers. I'm planning to order the Biggest Loser meals and continue doing Weight Watchers by counting points (flex plan).


AND I'm a regular on the Weight Watchers message boards ........ I love chatting with others from my own State (Neighbors), also with Ohio people (Neighbors) and a very large Quilt group (50 year olds).

Landscape So Beautiful

Hello ............ this is our home in the spring of 2002.




We moved here in 2002 and for 6 years I've hated the landscape. Since I'm not an outdoors person I just kept saying .... "next year we'll do the landscape work". Then in Dec. 2007 we had a water line break which caused water to leak into our family room. The water line broke out next to the street. There's nothing like not having water over the Christmas holiday ....... yes there's nothing like it.

The broken water line was under our concrete sidewalk ..... So bright and early Dec. 31 (our 41st wedding anniversary) the plumbers were able to fit us into the schedule .... we spent the whole day together. If you're interested the whole story is further down in my blog.

So my saying "we'll do the landscape next year" ....... that year arrived 2008. I wanted to get rid of everything but DH loves those Christmas trees (as I call them) so we kept them. Our SIL, Shaun, did all the work for us .... aren't we lucky. YES.

River rock we love so he brought in 6 ton and covered everything. Did you notice how I changed the layout with that nice curve.

The we shopped for some plants and a huge pot of pre-planted flowers. We spent 3 hours planting day lily, hosta, oriental grass, creeping jenny, portulaca and some nice decorative rocks.

We had tons of Iris in the front too .... so I had Shaun move them to a little corner garden with Mickey & Minnie Mouse in the backyard. I do hope they survive.



We also have a very large fish pond in the backyard .... compliments of the former owners. It was so overgrown you couldn't see the water or fish (koi and gold fish). So DH tore out a lot of the old plantings ... now we have a nice view.


The pond has a beautiful waterfall but unfortunately it's in the shade and difficult to get a photo.



This is a Siberian iris (thanks Vicki). It grows inside the pond and returns bigger every year. I think this year we'll have to separate it after the season is over.




That's all folks .............. have a GREAT summer.