What I've Been Doing All Summer

OK- so if you've visited my blog lately, you've seen that I haven't posted in a veeerrrryyy looonngg time!! LOL I'm such a bad blogger!! I guess you could say I've kind of been busy. So, here, in a very brief nutshell, I will catch you up with what I've been doing.

First off, in June our mare FINALLY had her foal - the cutest little filly you ever did see. Of course, we had been watching her and watching her. I would even walk down to the barn in the middle of the night and check on her. NOTHING!! I was getting ready to take the two older kidlets to a cattle show in Iowa, so hubs decided that she should go out to pasture since we'd be gone. Well, guess what, the morning we woke up to leave, hubs looks out the window and yells "There's a baby out there!!". That big stinker had her baby out in the pasture. I think she was just waiting until she could go outside and have it - anyhow, every thing was fine and Chloe is now a new member of the herd (which numbers 7 now - but we won't talk about that LOL!!)

So after all that excitement, I took the two older kidlets to Iowa for the North Central Regional Simmental Show. Fun was had by all and the oldest kidlet actually placed sixth in the jr (under 15 yo) public speaking contest - cool!! Then middle kidlet and I booked home for the wedding of two dear friends. So glad to see them finally tie the knot!

A couple weeks later we headed up north for the summer show for the state Charolais association (do you see a theme here?? cattle show after cattle show - no wonder the summer streaked by!!) As always, a really great time catching up with old friends and meeting new ones - here are some pics of the day:

This is middle kidlet showing her heifer, Tasha. She's come a long way in her showing skills just this summer and is really starting to have fun.

Here's hubs and oldest kidlet mugging for the photographer!!

Here's youngest kidlet showing for one of his first times. He was so thrilled to finally be out there and he even won his very own show stick!! He's so proud of it!

This is Murph. As you can see, I think we tired him out LOL!! Poor calf was just wiped out by the end of the day, kind of like the kidlets!!

And our great white chariot!! You can see some of the cattle in the background - thanks goodness it was a nice day since we were all outside.

Shortly after our fun weekend, it was time for county fair and then time for state fair. I'll share more pics of those fun (but exhausting weeks) shortly - then it will be on to our regulary scheduled program of quilting, decorating (for fall!!) and with farm life and cattle peppered in. Thanks for visiting!

Quilt Give-Away

Hi All!
Go check out Old Red Barn Co - she's giving away a fantastic quilt. Sign up and say I referred you - she will give out extra entries for me (and add her info to your blog - then you get extra entries too!!)

Have a great day!
Amy

TA DA!!

Bet you've all been wondering what I've been working on - then again, maybe you haven't - but I've been busy sewing up a storm. Back in early February I swapped out a ton of nine patch blocks from a swap on the Jo Morton list. I was trying to figure out what I would do with my blocks. I counted them - there were 75 3" finished nine patches. What to do? Then one evening I was browsing through one of Kim Diehl's books, Simple Traditions. (I love Kim's books - check them out if you've never seen them!!) Her Garden Patch pattern caught my eye - it uses nine patches, and I thought it would be easy enough to alter the pattern to use my size of nine patches. Well, serendipity, it uses 3" finished nine patches. Yahoo!! So I started counting how many I would need. Serendipity again - it uses exactly 75 nine patches, which was how many I had (Of course, I have since learned that I can't count and have 77 nine patches, but I will use the two extras on the label on the back.) So here's a couple pictures of the completed center of the quilt - now I need to add the inner border, and then start on the applique border. I'm just so happy with how this quilt is turning out - and I'm using all Jo Morton's fabrics, so they just all blend so wonderfully!!
Well, I need to go - hope you enjoy seeing what I've been up to!
Cheers!

Hello from the great white north

Hi! I decided to give this blogging thing a whirl - now I just have to figure it out, so bear with me. Right now I'm going to go sew some more and as soon as my more technologically savvy kids get home, I'll post some pics of what I'm working on right now.