Back to Work

Here is a photo of a personalized double flannel receiving blanket I made. I had given one as a gift to my friend's son for their first baby and they loved it. When they were expecting their second, my friend called and wanted one for the new baby. I made a plain one for them to bring the baby home from the hospital and then the personalized one for later. I was pleased that they liked them so much that my friend was willing to buy some. They are not hard to do and by prewashing the fabric they don't shrink up and stay new looking even after lots of use.

Things are starting to get back to normal here after being gone a week. It took me most of last week to catch up with phone calls and paperwork. It didn't help that I had several networking meetings also last week. I was disappointed that I had no students sign up for beginning sewing this week. I don't know if it was the time of summer or just no interest. I will be getting out the fall schedule next week. I look forward to seeing what my students have been doing over the summer. Finished up a couple of other small projects and now onto the faux hobbled Roman shade that will hang in my massage therapist's room. I look forward to my massage tomorrow. It has been three weeks and I need it, usually I go every two weeks. It is one luxury that I feel is more of a necessity with all the exercise I do. Karen Langel is wonderful and I would recommend her to everyone.

My trainer had me do a brick workout for the first time on Sunday. It was a hard 45 min bike ride followed by a 4 mile zone 2 run. With the heat, the run was quite slow to keep it down in zone 2. Drank lots of water with SaltSticks and ShotBlocs to keep the electrolytes in balance. My hubby did it with me as we are looking to do a few duathlons next year.

Right now it is raining buckets again with lots of lightening and thunder. I hope we don't lose power again or get hit by lightening. It seems like every other storm someone's house in our subdivision gets hit. Mostly it has been chimneys getting damaged but there have been some major fires also.

I will end with another picture from our vacation in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Summer Vacation

What a wonderful vacation. We spent a week near Gatlinburg, TN at the Smoky Mountains. We spent the time hiking, biking, white water rafting and also zip-lining. We stayed at the Wyndham Smoky Mountains Resort where we had a one bedroom condo. We grilled out most nights and just enjoyed the laid back pace. We did several of the day hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They were definitely challenging with all the climbing. We also went biking in Townsend, a town along the Little River. We were also able to bike Cade's Cove in the park when they close the road every Wednesday and Saturday morning to car traffic.

We went white water rafting with Smoky Mountain Outdoors and zip-lining with Foxfire Mountain. Both were a lot of fun and I would highly recommend them. We did go out to dinner one night and took in the show, Country Tonite. What a high energy show with lots of singing, dancing and costume changes. The last day there we went to Hillside Winery which was just down the street from our hotel. We came home with a bunch of different wines and cheeses.

Kind of sad to be home but things are getting busy with work. Just met with someone to do seat cushions for her banquette. Looking forward to getting some projects finished.

Summer Continues

WOW! Look at all those pillows. These are the pillows that the three girls finished last week in their Pile of Pillows class. In four days they made all these pillows. One set even had a button back. They learned how to make buttonholes by machine and sew on the buttons with the sewing machine also. Amy, Lauren and Mia all had a great time. Many thanks to Lauren for helping also when I was tied up. My next camp is the last week of July, it is a beginners sewing camp again. Do you know of anyone that wants to learn to sew?

On Friday last week I finished up a couple of small projects so that I could concentrate on some larger projects this week. I am lining a pair of panels someone had bought. I really wish they had just brought me the fabric because I had to take apart the whole panel to add the lining. It would have been easier to start from the beginning.

We haven't had any rain for a while and the grass is really starting to show it. Too much rain in the spring and now none when we need some. Oh how I love living in the Chicago area. Did a 5K race on the Fourth of July. I came in first in my age group, about a half a minute ahead of the second place person. This is a first for me to even place in my age group.

One last photo of the girls and their pillows and off to work for me.