An update on Family and Life... NQR

I've been busy preparing for my son's graduation... yes, finally! The trials and tribulations of grades and GPA's, missed credits from almost forgetten classes, FCAT testing replaced by ACT testing (don't even ask my opinion of the FCAT), along with all the "etc" (my nice word for bs) are all done. My son has graduated. It was an amazing, happy, sad, tearful, and joyful event. He kept telling me, "it's no big deal Mom", I begged to argue with him... as I sat watching him during the ceremony I knew he finally realized, yes, IT IS A BIG DEAL! I am more than proud of him, and love him more than any words can say...

My son thinks I'm amazing...

really, those were his exact words -- "Mom, you are amazing!" No, not because of my awesome parenting skills, not because I handed him money or car keys, but because he finally watched me quilt. No, he didn't stand next to me while at the Gammill, he sat at the computer and watched me quilt on my newly uploaded video. I thought it was grainy so I asked him to watch -- he told me I was amazing and he could not believe how accurate and precise I was. The entire time I'm laughing because he is in the house alot when I'm quilting, he has stood at the end of the machine and watched from afar. It wasn't until he saw the birds-eye-view that he realized I'm a really good machine quilter. Just had to share this!

Anyway, here is the video, it is on my YouTube channel KarMarchetti

Ketchup -- oh I mean catch up...

LOL... really because if not I'd be crying! I just spent an hour remembering everything I forgot to tell you all, typing it up, inserting pictures, tweeking, perking and gosh-darn-it... laptop freezes up -- again! That's okay right, autosave will save me... I finally get the laptop back up and running, pull up my drafts and no, nothing, no even a first sentence! Ahhhhh... it should really be LOLWCMEO... laughing out loud while crying my eyes out! So anyway, here we go again, and no, it will not be as good as the first one, it never is!

I'll start way back at the end of January with Ruth's beautiful dresden plate. This quilt was just screaming spring and I wanted it to scream WOW beautiful spring when I was done. I'm seriously hoping I accomplished that - I think so (oh and Ruth really like it so that's all that matters)!

Onward to FUN (not that quilting isn't) - the family spent an evening at the Palm Beach Int'l Raceway for Nitro Jam! We had a blast even though it was super chilly out and we spent the next two days coughing up jet fuel, it was still up there with major fun! Here are just a couple of pictures of monster truck versus jet truck (way cool):

Most people left before this... the jet truck had a fuel leak earlier (could you imagine with all those flames) in the evening and they weren't sure it would be able to run. They held a few other races and after almost an hour delay "Shockwave" was awesome! Thank goodness for earplugs!

So, after all this I decided I needed some true "domestic" time. A few weeks earlier my husband and I were watching Food Network. The Barefoot Contessa was whipping up this amazing looking coconut cake and we thought, wow that really looks good. Well, I rounded up all the ingredients and went to town. Six hours later... yes, it took all freakin' day -- this is what we ended up with. Yes, it was a beautiful cake. The raw batter was delicious (I know, I know, so bad), the icing was to die for, but as my darling husband cut into this beautiful masterpiece I thought he was going to need the sawzall! It turned out to be a heavy (OMG) cake. Indeed, it tasted very good, but it was a thick, heavy cake. In no way was it up there with light and fluffy. Perhaps I goofed, it is possible, especially with my ADD, but I don't think so, I checked off each step as I went so as to prevent any goofs. Anyway, we tried it and sorry to say it is not going in the favorites book. :(


I'll have a few more beautiful quilts coming up soon. I don't want to overwhelm and put everything in this post.

A NEW YEAR!!!

A New Year… wow, I’m not sure I was finished with the last one!

I hope you all had wonderful holiday seasons, I must admit, mine turned out to be fabulous! I was able to spend two weeks work-free with my family and friends up north. What did I get for Christmas you ask? A blizzard, of course! I wanted it to snow so badly, mostly because my son hasn’t seen snow in almost ten years. Boy did we get snow… about 15 inches in our area. WHAT FUN! We went sledding, sliding, and wipe-outing (ha-ha). We did manage to squeeze in a visit to the ice rink, and yes, I did skate, but only for a few minutes… the fear of last year’s fall got the best of me and I decided four months of recuperation from broken ribs just wasn’t worth it again. I opted for some quality best friend time along with super hot, hot chocolate while the kids skated. The entire vacation truly was wonderful. I spent some much needed time with my family and also hours and hours of catch-up time with many of my much-missed friends.

Here are some pictures to delight and possibly amuse you…

Zentangle… Obsession or Addiction

What is Zentangle? Squidoo states “In a word, a doodle. A structured, contained doodle.”

I have always doodled. There is always paper, notebooks, sketch pads, you name it, they are all over my house, everywhere -- there are even a few Magna-Doodles if you look hard enough. If you open any of them you will find a myriad of doodles, drawings, quilting ideas, new motifs, background fills, etc.

About a year ago I stumbled upon Zentangle’s blog – I would read the posts, doodle and enjoy. After following the blog and doodling my own tangles I noticed there was an awesome connection between Zentangles and machine quilting. I noticed that I was actually drawing little background fills. Now I realize that not all of these are “quilt-able”, but tangling puts your mind in such a creative zone it is almost scary. Be warned, doodling a tangle can take a few minutes, or few hours, depending on the size and fills.

Here is a picture of my latest tangles...

Drawing, doodling, sketching, tangling, whatever name you choose to call it, it is fun, relaxing, and almost meditative. Try it!

The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Way TOO Fast Weekend...

Wow, the weekend went by way too fast! I hope that you all had a wonderful day/weekend with your "Father's" -- the important men in your lives. Sunday we enjoyed a calm, non-eventful, stress-free day. We celebrated Father's Day with an awesome venison dinner with fresh stick break... ummm (bread is such a no-no on my diet, but it was Father's Day and it was delicious!) Then we took a drive to the island for a nice walk on the beach. Bathtub Reef had just reopened on Memorial Day after a multiple-year closing due to the damage is sustained in the hurricanes back in 2004, so that was our choice for a fantastic family walk. Here are just few pictures of our adventure -- we truly missed this beach while it was closed and are super happy it has reopened!

Wow, it has been a busy past three days... The PSL Crazy Quilters Show has wrapped up and today is a calm day of relaxing... hah... work on the website slide show of all the quilts, realize I'm missing some... call the other photo buds I know... then a quick trip to the airport to return Mom & Sis to the stormy-snowy north... then another quick trip to drive my son to his friends super bowl party... then another quick trip home so hubby could fit in some fishing before the super bowl! So when exactly is the relaxation going to happen? Apparently it is now, during my blog posting... LOL cause if not I'd be crying!

Anyway, I must send a shout out to my friend Natalie who took Best of Show at the show... woohoo (hopefully she's not tired of hearing that)... double woohoo!!! Okay, I walked away with eight ribbons myself -- not so bad if I say so myself!

I also won First Place for the Member Challenge with this -- "Beauty of the Sea" -- my own design utilizing a bunch of stuff I learned during the week long Sharon Schamber Design and Construction retreat that I attended back in September.

She is absolutely amazing and I had so much fun making her. The finished piece is only 20" square. I am planning to make a larger piece exactly the same, well close, nothing is ever exactly the same!

Back to the PSL Crazy Quilters Show... for a list of winners click here, the slideshow is still "in progess" so once it is posted to their site I'll let everyone know! This way you can see ALL the beautiful quilts.

Okay people... thanks for following and I truly need at least an hour of peace and quiet before the super bowl starts!!! Have fun, enjoy, stay safe and sane!!!

One busy week... and a Christmas too!

I can't believe it has been a full week since my last post. Shame, shame on me! Anyway, I hope all of you had wonderful holidays! But, wow, it has been so busy here. Yes, busy cleaning... you might not know this about me... I am messy, messy in the stuff all-over-cluttery way. I had to "find" our dining room table in order to have Christmas dinner. Our dining room table is the "catch-all" for any and everything that enters this house -- any item entering the house must reside there for at least 24 hours. So before we could sit at the "company's coming" table I had to find it which caused some "busy". Then of course, at least one full day of baking cookies. We kept it quite mild this year with only sugar and chocolate chip... less cookies, less calories! Yeah right - doesn't work that way! Anyway Christmas morning was wonderful -- only two electronic dilemmas, both of which resolved themselves quickly and easily. Dinner was here... my darling MIL made lasagna and brought it over, while my darling hubby smoked a ham. If you have never smelled a smoking ham, it is an amazing aroma... don't you wish we had smell-o-blog? LOL! Needless to say, it was delicious and there's still some lasagna leftovers!

But, all of yesterday and all of today was "ribbons". Me, my MIL, and even Joe spent several hours in ribbon production for the PSL Crazy Quilters show... here was a picture from early this morning... we got quite a bit more accomplished during today. They are actually starting to resemble award ribbons now! Will post more pics later.

After Thanksgiving fun sale...

Today was a fantastically great day... no sales, just pure fun! Two adults, three almost adults, and one child on ice skates... awesome fun!

And then, behind the parking lot... the ice scrapings pile from the Zamboni -- this may seem like nothing to all of you; but let me tell you, this is the closest thing to snow that my son has seen in almost 8 years!!! We have a wonderful mod-snowball fight -- too cool for words -- I managed to grab two quick pictures before being sucked into the snowball fighting vortex!