Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Unplanned blogging break

Sorry for the unplanned blogging break... every moment has been filled with trying to get the kid's Christmas out the door. I uploaded pictures to Flickr earlier this week with intentions of sitting down and posting but somehow it didn't get done. But I'm here now! :0)

Thanks for all the comments on Becky's crazy quilt pillows. It is a good story, isn't it? I answered Debra's question about the background via email but for anyone else who is interested, the background of my blog is the birthday CQ wall hanging I made for my granddaughter, Sophia. If you would like to see more of it, it is on my Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/marty52/sets/72057594117867666/ .

I actually got quite a bit of organizing done in my workroom last weekend. I found most of my stash of different threads and organized them into 4 different color groups. Then I went and bought a four drawer set of plastic bins that I thought would be perfect. I took the grouped threads andd popped them in the bins; however, it was immediately obvious that I would have a terrible mess on my hands and that I needed to rethink things. So... I once again organized the threads, only this time it was by single colors. See?
Sorted threads
Yummy! That bit in the center is a skein of Noro Sakura yarn... OMG, it is gorgeous! I'm going to use it somehow... probably couching it on. Now I just have to find the perfect container to hold everything. It will need to have 12-14 drawers in it... I've been looking around at various office supply stores but so far haven't found anything. Oh, well, guess I need to keep shopping!

Then I moved on to the buttons. I had these sorted out but then a recent trip to the local Brass Armadillo Antique Mall yielded some more buttons so I had to rearrange the colors a bit. Then I went through all the little containers I have been using to hold project bits and pieces and put away all those buttons. More organization!
buttons
Sorry for the glare. I have another one of these containers up on the wall that I am going to try and use for my smaller beads. The hope is to get that done this weekend.

We also picked more pecans up this weekend. Our pecan tree has been dropping them fairly steadily the past month, but a lot of wind came through the other day and quite a few had dropped. Once we had them gathered I put them into an old dough bowl of my grandmother's and just had to take a picture to show.
Dec 2006 Pecans
They are very good... I was afraid they wouldn't be all filled out; however, the flood irrigation appears to do it's job very well. They were nice full, sweet pecans. Yay!

I have also been doing some Christmas baking to include in the Christmas boxes to the kids.
Christmas baking
Here we have Pumpkin Marmalade Bread and Toffee Sugar Cookies. Yummy, again! I don't bake as much as I used to... mainly because then Glenn and I eat it... well, y'know... quality control and all that!! ;0)

Now I just have to bake 20 small loaves of Pumpkin Marmalade Bread to include in the little gift bags for all Glenn's "kids" at work. He is the supervisor for 20 employees, mostly younger people, and "we" are putting together goody bags for them.

Once that is done, I can enjoy my five day weekend! Unfortunately, Glenn has to work a double shift on Christmas... sigh... but he is trying to get the 26th and 27th off so we can goof-off together. Either way, a goodly portion of this weekend will be spent... wait for it... getting my workroom organized! Hee!

In case I don't get back here before Christmas... let me just say Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa (is that right? must look that up) and any other happy and merry type activities you have planned around the Solstice! ENJOY!!!!!!!!!

7 comments:

Robin said...

Your side panels ~ the whole look of your blog ~ get my vote for best ever! Did you set it up yourself? Gorgeous!!! The best thing about it is that it gives continuous visual pleasure even when you post long text entries. Beautiful colors, CQ, embellishment, silk ribbon embroidery... WOW!

Button storage... Being a bead and button gal for over 20 years, I've gone through many storage variations. For buttons, I store each variety in 1.5 x 3 inch, 4 mil zip bags. These are grouped by type and color in pint sized zip bags. These are stored by type (glass, metal, platic, natural material, etc.) in Rubbermaid boxes. I've got thousands and thousands of buttons (I inherited part of a 3-generation collection), yet the storage area is quite small and compact. Might work to do threads that way too... Once you squeeze the extra air out of the zips, they are quite the space savers.

Merry Christmas to you too... Your family must delight in your baked goodies and look forward to them every year!

Robin said...

Ooops ~ correction to my above comment ~ small size zips are 2 x 3.5 inches.

dee said...

your side panels are so beautiful -what amazing talent you have. I'm in AWE...

Debra Dixon said...

I have all kinds of mismatched containers for my notions but think I am going to move towards Robin's solution eventually. My problem is that I like everything out on the table when I am working and that means I need a big table!

You will get there with the organization!

allie aller said...

I use the zip bag concept for my threads, too...not a perfect system, but I have a 1 gallon bag for each color...metallic, white, black, brown, yellow/orange, red/pink, purple, blue, green, and more green. I have found that I can go right to what I am looking for immediately, though they get a bit jumbled in the bag.
Love your button array, and the beads will look great all put away like that, too.
Your baking is awesome!

Rissa said...

Wow, you are a dynamo Marty! :-) The treats look so yummy!

Merry Chrisma-Hannu-Kwanz-ukkah to you too. LOL

Rian said...

Merry Christmas to you and yours Marty. All best wishes in the year to come.