Decorations Installment #6

First a Mom update for those interested. Mom had her surgery, but what was suppose to be out patient surgery turned into a two days hospital stay. There were a few complications that caused the sidetrack, but we're back home now in time for Christmas festivities. Lesson learned: avoid elective surgery during Christmas holidays because services are slower and be very assertive in managing your own health care while in a hospital.

So here is another Tree Decoration installment. Thank you to all of those interested in my decorations documentation and apologies for not getting more up there in a more regular fashion!

This decorations is a sewing machine with trinkets related to sewing hanging off it. I got that in Germany a couple of years ago and it's for my own hobby of sewing and quilting.



I wanted to include more than just this one ornament, but the rest of my pictures are very blurry. I hope I get a new camera tomorrow for Christmas and if I do, than I'll take more pictures and try to get many more ornaments up before the new year.

I'm sure I'll be too busy for blogging tomorrow what with cooking, family, etc.... so Here's wishing everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Decorations Installment #5

Mom is here at my house for the Christmas holiday and to recuperate from back surgery that will happen tomorrow (12/22/06). My dye studio/laundry room has been transformed into a guest room/recovery room. It's a bit strange, but Mom says it's better than climbing my stairs to get to the second floor.

So while Mom is here she gently chastised me about the lack of decorations posted on this blog. Well that's what happens when one becomes a new grandmother and tries to get ready for Christmas and changes her dye studio into a guest room. Too much to do and not enough hours on my clock!

So here is another installment. Perhaps the plan of getting all the ornaments posted before Christmas was a bit too ambitious, but we'll get some more up and then perhaps finish with more next year??? Hows that for a cliff hanger to finish the season, almost as bad as television!

Ok, so here are more decorations in no particular order.

This first one is for the year I got Holly, my Springer Spaniel. She was actually born in December 2000 and thus her name, Holly for the Christmas season. We didn't actually bring her home until February of 2001 and in the ornament she's one year old. This year she turned 6. I was always told that she'd calm down after she was about 4 years old, but she's still a very rambunctious puppy. Always ready to play and she should wear a sign that says "Will work for Tennis Balls" - thrown tennis balls that is. She's actually not too particular about what item is thrown for her to retrieve!

(Sorry about the glare on these ornaments, most were very shiny, and probably should have been photographed without the automatic flash.) I'm learning.

Next is an ornament that my brother and his family gave us. (I'm sure Renee actually did the shopping, - thank goodness for female in-laws!) Back in 1998, we had only four in our family. This year we're up to 7 !

The final ornament in this installment is a small cable car from San Francisco. It's for the year or more that Don had to travel to San Francisco every week for work. That was rough being in separate time zones and still raising teenagers. I can't remember the exact year. Also the year Jason got married we took a trip to California. Several years ago I started collecting ornaments that would remind me of our travels. This ornament actually came long before the trip. Maybe that's an idea. I could start collecting ornaments for places that I'd like to go to sometime. Does anyone have an ornament for Alaska? Also the Grand Canyon.... Um... where else do I want to go??? Oh yes, Norway, Denmark, Finland.....

So I'll try to find some time to take better pictures of the ornaments without the glares and get more posted as soon as possible.

Any good Grandma has plenty of baby pictures!

Faith just keeps getting cuter and cuter! Here she is in her matching outfit! The clothes match the blanket and there are even matching socks!





Here we are and Faith's only about 22 hours old at this point. Oh the joys of being a grandmother! After I finish with posting on this blog I'm going to work on her little baby quilt for a while then go to bed and basically sleep through the night. Her parents on the other hand.....


Faith definitely looks very much like her mother, Rachel, so far!

She even had the exact hair color, auburn with a touch of red. We're still waiting to see about the eye color.

I'm a grandma!

Today at 5:49pm I became a grandma for the first time! Jason and Rachel's daughter, Faith Elizabeth Harwell was born. She weighs 8lbs 2oz and is 20 inches long.
Here are a few pictures and if you have my personal email address and would like an invitation to view my personal online album send me a request.

She's so cute! She looks like she has blue eyes and dark hair at this time.



I'm thrilled to be a grandma! Now the real spoiling can begin!
Jason is doing a great job holding her. He looks like an expert.


I think she was sizing her daddy up and deciding it was going to be easy wrapping him around her finger!


Elise is an official aunt and couldn't wait to get her hands on her!



If you want more pictures go to www.mombrinton.com
And keep watching I'm sure there will be many more pictures to come!

Decorations Installment #4

If I'm going to get most of the decorations posted by Christmas, I'm going to have to pick up the pace. So this post has two decorations and it's very difficult to know which one to post put first.

These two decorations were bought when my children were very young. E - elephant for Elise and J - jet for Jason. I would like to find more similar ones for the coming grandchildren, but I've never seen these since. Oh well, I'll have to find something else special for the grandchildren.

Each year as we all decorated the tree the kids each tried to get their letter the highest or in the most prominent place on the tree. I sort of forgot that until Elise was over and had to change where we had placed her E so that it was in a better spot than her brother. My goodness does the sibling rivilry ever end?




My little kids are all grown now, but my mind still holds the picture of them climbing on chairs to get their ornaments up as high as they can on the tree.

NOTE:
The pictures can't be posted side by side, so for the record in case either of my children is reading, I decided to post these alphabetically.

My Baby Still Needs Me!

I woke up Friday with not too much on my schedule, so it seemed as if I was going to have a relaxing day until I get the call. My daughter, a kindergarten teacher at a nearby school, calls with panic in her voice. She starts out with, "Mom what are you doing today?" My answer of "not too much" brought relief to her voice and then the details. The school system had a wonderful science kit that was being passed around from school to school. She already had a unit on fish which included small 1/2 gallong plastic boxes that served as aquariums. That wasn't too bad, she'd grown up with us having a huge 55 gallon aquarium so that was ok, she was fine. But now the next unit had arrived. It was BUGS and WORMS and SNAILS! My response of "Oh My" followed by giggles and then outright laughing was not funny to her. She saw no humor in it at all. I just could see her opening the box and seeing those bugs. Now to fully understand the situation, you have to understand. Elise, my daughter is a phenomenal teacher and especially in kindergarten. She was created to teach and connect with young children. She makes them each feel special and infuses them with a love for learning. She loves those children and loves teaching. If she had to pay to do the job I think she'd do it. But there's one thing she doesn't do and that's bugs, and worms and snails. She's terrified of them.So she called her Mom to the rescue. (Her husband was busy working and couldn't be bothered at the time and her dad was out of town.)

So of course I have to go - She needs me!

Here I am preparing the more permanent aquarium for the surviving fish from the science observations.



Here are the two goldfish in their new homes along with some small guppies that can't be seen.



The white things at the bottom of the aquarium are sticky notes with the names of the fish, there until they receive proper labels like everything else in the classroom has.

Life in Kindergarten

Everyone needs to visit a kindergarten classroom at least once a year. It brings you back to the basics of life and what's really important. So while I was there helping my daughter I had to snap a few extra pictures.

Here's a display on the wall that caught my eye. We should all be proud of our accomplishments!


This wall has the names of the students who can do various task such as "open their milk", "know their addresses", "know their birthdays", "can count to 100".
We should all be proud of what we can do! Delight in the simple things and most of all hope that you can still do all of that when you're 90 years old. They should have a wall like that at the senior citizen center. Maybe we'd try harder to keep going!

And here is Elise going over important things with her class who listens indently to the instructions. It was Friday so the staff wore jeans that day. The students all think the tree is very fancy and very expensive. Oh to have the eyes of a child! (The tree was free from her in-laws.)



Now I just had to snap a picture of this. It was on a very high shelf out of the reach of any child, but I couldn't help but wonder what in the world it is used for.

I'm not sure what kind of leaks they might have in a kindergarten class, and I've never stayed long enough to witness any leaks. Maybe it's good that I haven't! So maybe my daughter can post a comment to explain what this is for.

Decorations Installment #3

Things are changing, never staying exactly the same. Keep reading for more.


There are six of these white ceramic doves on our tree. I took my daughter and her best friend, Stacy to a local ceramic place to do arts and crafts. They chose these ceramic doves to paint with a shimmery white paint, and then the eyes and beaks. I think they had to be fired in the oven again and then I think a final coat of glaze was applied. It took us several trips to the ceramics place to do these and the girls, around 10 years old or so seemed to have had fun. Stacy's family also has an identical set of doves on their tree.
Now for the changes. I read in our local paper that the city recreation department, who ran the ceramics house, has decided to close down the ceramics place. And this year both my daughter, Elise (6/24/06) got married and now Stacy, this week-end will be married (12/02/06).
So this year, these ornaments became much more valuable. From what I know they are irreplaceable. There is no ceramice house to go to and I doubt I could get these two very busy young ladies to make anymore. Lets just hope they don't get broken!

Decorations Installment #2

Some of the oldest decorations on the tree are the ones that I made myself. When Don and I first got married we had the plain glass balls and tinsel type garland, but after a few years I made this set of decorations.

These are only three out of the total set. Each one is for a name or adjective for Jesus. There are actually many more names, but I think I only made twelve. They are counted cross stitch and then inserted into very cheap plastic frames. Each one is only about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. I love using them because it reminds us what the Christmas season is all about.

Post Thanksgiving Festivities

The Thanksgiving holiday continues on with my brother Jonathan and his wife Beth stopping by to visit on Saturday. This was a very special treat because for several years they have been living in various areas of the country as travel nurses and it was always just too far to come home for the holidays. But this year they are only about 3 1/2 hours away so they were able to make it over!

Jonathan brought a quilt that he had been working on. It's actually an old comforter that belonged to his wife that was being given a second life as a quilt. It was suppose to be for their two cats to sleep on, but I think it's too nice for that. Jonathan wanted advice on the border and after I showed him the ins and outs of the use of my "old" sewing machine he had the quilt complete by the end of the night.

The Cat Quilt is almost King Size with extra thick batting.
I told Jonathan to smile like a man who had just finished making a quilt. He should be very proud.

Oh and we have to note that Beth Brinton, his wife contributed about 3% in the making of the appliques so this was a team effort.

Most of the appliques were either ready made patterns or from coloring books. (You'd think they'd been quilting for a long time to know to use the coloring books!)
But this close up of one of the cats was actually designed and an original of Jonathan's.

It's hard to believe that this was Jonathan's first quilt. I think he may be hooked and after I showed him my hand dyed fabric he's promised to come play with me some day soon with that as well. After that who knows where this quilting will all lead to!

While Jonathan worked on his quilt, Beth and I used the computer and picture editing software to work on gifts for her sister. Not wanting to be the one to spoil that surprise I won't reveal what the gift is and I forgot to take a picture. I can say that it involved extensive picture editing to get things just right and Beth was awed by what can be done with manipulating photos these days.

So this brings our Thanksgiving holiday officially to an end. Food and Family that's what we had and it was all great! We just hope that next year will be just as great!

Decorations Installment #1

This is the first installment of the Christmas Tree Decoration Explanations.

The Red Rope Garland -purchased at a local Fabric Store

The first decorations to go on our tree are the lights and the red rope garland. The lights really don’t have a specific story. The garland was added a couple of years ago just after I did a Bible study on the book of Ruth. The Bible study is from Precept Ministries and it’s a great 4 week study about how God provided a “kinsman redeemer” for Ruth and she was then included in the lineage of Jesus who is our “kinsman redeemer.” The red rope represents the blood lineage of Jesus who came to redeem us to His and now Our Father. It also represents the blood of Jesus that was shed for the atonement of our sins to redeem us from sins. Jesus is my Redeemer and My Redeemer Lives!

Christmas Tree Shopping Trip

Each year for the last 2 years and this year as well we have all gone up to the mountains to get our Christmas trees. We go to a Christmas Tree farm since North Carolina is one of the leading producers of Christmas trees. The northwestern corner of our state has hills covered with Christmas trees and plenty of choose and cut farms. We've made it a tradition now in it's 4th year to drive up there which is about an hour drive to pick out our fresh trees. It began with the first year when Elise, Don and Debby went up to get a tree. We can't remember where that tree farm was exactly, but it was a bare bones outfit (meaning no extras.) The following year, which was Jason and Rachel's first Christmas as one, we went up and found a very nice place which we've been going to ever since. That year Jason and Rachel picked out the nicest tree that turned out to be way too big for their little house. The next year they measured, but again the tree needed to be cut off a bit to make it fit. They thought for sure the tree would fit fine this year, but it still needed a little cut off the bottom. They almost got it right. Next year they will be in their new house for Christmas and size won't be so much of an effort.

Here is Jason and Rachel with baby Faith's first Christmas Tree. (Rachel has about 2 weeks left to go, but you can barely tell in this picture that she's pregnant at all.)

This is Elise and Josh's first Christmas together and they live in a tiny little place behind Elise's uncle's house. Their tree needed to be small, and they were very excited about picking out just the right one.

Christmas Tree Shopping Part 2

So both kids had their trees, but Don and I still hadn't found what we wanted. We like to get tall skinny trees. Since we have a high ceiling a tall tree looks nice, but we don't like to give up too much floor space to a tree that is tall. Also I don't like to give up the money for the tall trees. This is why going to a tree farm in North Carolina can be a good opportunity to save some money. There are trees that are specially tagged as less than market grade or in the real world, are seconds. That just means even though they are tall, there is something wrong with them. They usually are not as full as the "perfect" full market grade trees. We've been getting this type of trees for the last 3 years and it means getting a $100+ tree for $60. We've always been very pleased with this type of tree, but this year it meant being taken up to a section of the farm that wasn't yet open for sale. They open up different sections of the farm as the week-ends pass toward Christmas. This keeps the buyers in certain areas and helps to plan how they will harvest the trees. So we were driven up to a hill that would come open in a couple of days and there we had a huge choice of trees. Since the fellow with the chain saw was waiting on us to make up our minds, I didn't have a chance to take a picture of our tree before it was cut down.
But here it is in our house, lights and garland already on and ready for the decorations.

And here is the best ever use for the old floppy disks that we use to use before the CD and DVD's came around.

They make great shims for leveling up the Christmas tree. Just add or remove as needed to get things all level. (Fay, you would have loved this recycling for sure!)

So now the tree is all decorated and I'm going to post a closeup view of the various decorations that hang on the tree. Most (not all) of the decorations have a story attached or are meaningful in some way or another. I'll try to post one every couple of days between now and Christmas and then the full tree on Christmas Day.

Thanksgiving Festivities

Thanksgiving was a great time! Don is the head chef here and he knows how to keep things running smoothly. The problem is that we end up with huge quantities of food, but no one complains too much while they are eating it. It's afterwards that we hear the moans and groans ...

He got up at 4am to begin his cooking. His assistant (me) got down to help at about 8am and by that time he had things well under control.

We roasted a 24 pound turkey in our oven. Meanwhile, outside in the smokers Don had an additional 3 turkeys smoking. One for us, and the other two for the children's in-laws. He also had the ham, venison (deer) and for a friend two ducks and a goose. All of the meat came out beautiful! Golden brown and very good.

In addition to our Thanksgiving festivities, we also added in early Christmas gifts. Since Jason and Rachel are expecting our first grandchild around December 10th, these Christmas presents needed to be opened up now.

Can you guess what there are?

Elise and Josh are trying to figure out how to work their present.

Rachel finds reading the manual the best way to learn how to operate theirs. (My personal favorite, always works for me.)

Each family got the exact same things, even wrapped identically.

Have you figured out what was all wrapped up? Video Camcorders. They are super small, and fit in the palm of your hand. These have Hard Disk, so there are no tapes or disks. So now we can capture all the special moments of our grandchildren and as Rachel said, now baby Faith can come. They have everything they need for her arrival.

So we ate, and laughed, and ate, and talked, and ate and well ate some more. But when it was all said and done, everyone was full and had a great time.

Last Barbeque Contest for this Season

The first week-end of November is usually our last Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) contest of the season. There isn't a specific season for barbecue, but for us who don't want to compete in the snow, this was the last contest of the year. At home, cooking barbeque happens all year long regardless of the weather.
So our last contest was the Hog Happnin' in Shelby, NC (Matt Brinton's home town and where Mom Brinton lives). The contest is for a great charity and is truly a great southern cultural experience complete with lawn mower races and car show. Although we didn't win any awards our ribs placed 12th out of 64 teams. And the best fun is having family and friends there to share in all the fun (work).

Every BBQ Contest begins days before in our kitchen.
Sauces, Rubs and various other things have to be prepared before we ever even leave our house.

File folders folded and used to hold ziploc bags for dyeing fabric also came in handy for holding up the ziploc bags to pour our marinade into. (Thanks to Carol Soderlund's ingenuity from one of her dye classes. She's awesome and Fay was very nice to share this tidbit with me.)

Then when we arrive there is lots and lots of set up of equipment and preparations. This time we were graced with the help of my brother, Jonathan and his wife. We gave Beth the camera and asked her to take lots of pictures. We usually are much too busy to get very many photos so her work was very much appreciated!

Jonathan was in his element! Here he is rigging up makeshift wind breakers to keep the cookers warm during the record below freezing temperatures during the night. He is great with improvising and anticipating the need. Great team player!

More Barbeque Pictures

The sides are all up on our awning and Don has a heater running to keep the chill off. The temperatures set new record lows for that night that were well below freezing.

Elise loves to go through our gift bag of treats to see what was given to her and her husband, Josh is just hoping there's nothing there to take home to their small bungalow.

The contest is actually two days long with the real action happening on Saturday when the turn in of entries takes place beginning at 12noon.

Here we are busy preparing our box for turn in.

The rest of the team looks on with encouragement and hopes of being called into action to taste the product to help determine which entry that's the best for turning in.

Grandma always willing to do her part for the team!

And my niece, Natalie, is a Barbecue Judge in the making. She says she'd be a great judge because she knows what she likes and she doesn't mind telling people. (I'm sure her parents would agree.) Is she busy texting her opinions of our cooking to her friends?

And as the judge in training sits and waits, (what all great judges practice doing!) the work continues.

Jonathan is surprised to see how serious and meticulous all of the preparations are.

There's a bonus sauce competition so we leave that to our other team members, Beth and Elise. What will they concoct on the spot?

So even though we didn't win any awards for this contest we did end up with some very fine barbeque to eat which is a great reward in itself!

Happy Me!

This may not be big news to everyone, but to me it's as Barney Fife would say - "It's Big, It's Real Big!"
I don't have a picture to go along with this news - but I do have visuals! Look to the right and hopefully you're seeing my links now working! It's taken me several weeks and several tries, but finally I've learned how to edit my links and we don't have the "Edit Me" links there anymore! I've broken them up into two categories so far: Family and Art - you should know the difference, and if not then hey just click on them and see where they take you. I'm so thrilled and I actually figured this out all by myself. Now I'll have to go back and cancel a few request for help!

Mooresville Centerpiece Quilters Guild 2006 Show

I've had a few request for pictures of some of the other quilts that were in the show where my quilts hung. It was a small show as far as the quilt world goes, but for the size of the guild, it was very nicely done with several quilts. I thought a very nice extra touch was that every quilt that was entered in the show had a flower ribbon attached. That was a very nice way to acknowledge everyone's efforts.

This quilt by Jean Funderburk won first place in the small wall hanging applique category and also the judges choice award for the whole show.

This Second Place in the applique small wall hanging category was done by Jean Sherrill

Then my quilt, "Metal Fruit" was third in the appliqued Small Wall Hanging Category.

(The face at the bottom right corner was not part of my quilt, it was a wooden stand holding a piece of quilted clothing.)

The other category was Pieced Small wall hanging. This size is the same as the applique small wall hanging category, but the method of construction is differend.

First place in this category is called "Let It Snow" and was done by Christine Schotz. You may want to click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see the quilting (stitching) design.

Then finally my quilt, "Shattered Darkness" ended up coming in second in the Pieced Small Wall Hanging category even though it has a yellow ribbon in this picture, that turned out to be a mistake.

Don's New BBQ Cookers/Smokers

This Blog is mostly about my quilting, dyeing and assorted attempts at art. But every now and again there will be a post about our other hobby, barbeque. Barbecue needs a little explanation even for all the American readers. If you live up north, barbecue is a verb and it's a means of cooking something on an outdoor grill with a fire directly beneath the meat. The cooking is fast and they call that barbecueing. But down here in the south, barbecue, barbeque, or bbq (all various ways to spell it and we usually use the last two ways) is a noun. It's what we eat. We eat bbq. It's cooked on a smoker (or grill) with indirect heat. That means the heat is usually very low and it takes many hours, so it's slow. That's slow and low and that's how you get great bbq to eat. The verb we'd use is smoking barbeque or cooking barbeque, but we'd never say that we're barbecueing barbeque. (Are you thoroughly confused yet?) When we cook a steak or hamburger, we grill it on a grill. Don, my husband, is the one who is into barbeque and here is one of his newest pieces of barbeque equipment, the smoker or cooker.

The front view of the cooker.

It has a mechanism in it that rotates the food around similar to a ferris wheel with the meat on racks. It's designed to move the meat around so that it cooks more evenly.

This is the inside view of the cooker with the meat cooking. It takes about 10 or 12 hours to cook a beef brisket or pork butt (which is actually the shoulder section of the hog.)

The fire box is located in the back and the best part is the smoke that moves across the meat and gives the BBQ its great smoked flavor depending on what type of wood or fuel is used.


Don checking the fire to make sure there are plenty of hot coals to keep everything at just the right temperature to get great BBQ

So for most readers, if you've read this far, than you've probably already learned much more about BBQ than you'd ever really wanted to know.

Art Quilt Inspiration

Every artist, especially those who work in the abstract, is asked, "where do you come up with the ideas?" Well here is what I do. I carry my digital camera, which is very compact, everywhere with me. I also have a very small sketch pad that I always carry with me. When I see something artsy, I photograph it or sketch it out or both. Here are two photos of carpet that is in a place of business. Fay, you remember me telling you about being afraid of getting caught with a camera and taking pictures. Well no one ever said a thing to me about not being allowed to take pictures. So this is actually two different sections of the carpet. One part is in the long hallway leading to the lobby.

Then you walk through fancy doors and this second picture is of the carpet in that area.


It's all monochromatic greys, but the composition was great. I love the way the values (lights and darks) work together. So I took a photo and some day you might see one of my pieces that resembles something similar to this carpet. The pictures will serve as a trigger to get me going, at least that's what I hope!