Formations is officially done, and was gifted as a wedding present.  I finished it Wednesday, and the wedding was Friday.  Whew!

 

 

My first harvest of green beans! They were so trasty blanched and mixed with sauteed mushrooms, onions and garlic!

Some of the flowers I saw in the redwoods.   

 

Some photos from my trip... 

The elk were hanging out under the trees, quite a ways from the visitor's center.

It was cold and windy on the beach and Margene didn't want to go for a walk with us, so Jordan and I wandered around a bit.

We hit several redwood groves, and other places like Trees of Mystery, to give Jordan a good feel for the redwoods.

We also drove through the Avenue of the Giants- I hadn't been there since I was a kid!

I took a quick trip to the coast over Memorial Day weekend - leaving Sunday morning and coming back Tuesday afternoon.  Margene, Jordan, and I went to Brookings, then to Garberville, then home. The focus of the trip was to take Jordan to see the redwoods.  He had been super impressed with one of the large pine trees he saw at the McCloud Middle Falls trail on their last trip, and Margene and I had just shook our heads - wait until you see a "big" tree....he was definitely impressed with the redwoods! 

 

My new project hasn't gotten anymore work done on it, but the kittens like is "as is". 

My lilies are blooming!  They are also blocking the water from the sprinkler onto my other plants, which luckily are in pots.  I need to move my flower garden around, at least while the lilies are blooming. 

That's it, AJ is officially grounded - he can't borrow my car anymore.....He took my Mazda to Sac last weekend instead of the Volvo because it gets better gas mileage and returned it with a quarter of a tank of gas, a nail in the tire, and a broken windshield, lol!  The gas was intentional - gas was $1.00 more a gallon there so he just got enough to get home where it's "only" $5.50 a gallon, not $6.50.  The nail and windshield, not so much.  The nail was just a slow leak that Les Schwab fixed for me on Monday, and I have an appointment on Wednesday for the windshield.The joys of driving I5..... 

Cindy M and I took the dogs out for a hike on Monday up to Whiskeytown Falls.  It was beautiful - a cool windy morning, but sunny.   

Ripley decided she did NOT want to ride in the back seat with Cooper and Roo.  On the way up, she half-crawled her way into my lap for the ride, so on the way home, I just let her share the front seat with me.  Since she had gotten a drink in the creek, I was wet, hairy, and hot sitting with her on my lap, draped over me to stick her nose out the window, but she was happy!

 

I'm working on the quilting for the Formation quilt - all straight line quilting, which looks really nice, but I needed a break from sewing straight lines for hours. They had a mini-mystery quilt last weekend, and I had got fabric for it, but hadn't participated.  I got the blocks done last night, now just need to put it together.  It's about 22 by 22 inches when done - a cute table topper. 

I had a little help (as usual) when working on it.  James decided to take a nap on my ironing board.  Not much disturbs her, either!  I had to keep moving her tail out of my way when I was pressing. 

I almost got to put a quilt sandwich together without help....almost.  I got to the final step - getting the backing on (hopefully on straight) before I had a visitor. 

This one will be straight-line quilted, running along the sides of the triangles.  I got about half of it marked up so far.

 

And I found a baby zucchini!  The last couple of years I couldn't even grow a decent zucchini (and I thought they were kind of like unwanted weeds - they grew all by themselves), so I think I waited too long to bring in new dirt.  Yes, I add fertilizer every year, but obviously not the right stuff.  This year, along with new dirt, I also added 1/4 cubic yard of mushroom loam.  It's working! 

Cindy M has been taking Alli on walks for Special Olympics, but I think we have come to the end of them, unless they move them inside.  We've been up into the 90's this week - and it's on mid-May....

Here they went to Lema Ranch ( a beautiful walk!) I don't think Alli is impressed, but, she is walking!

 

 

The garden is taking off - the new soil I put in is really helping this year.  I have tomatoes set, the eggplants are blooming, the beans and peppers are blooming, and I harvested my first pepper on Sunday to go with my brunch.  Even the zucchinis are blooming, but the plants are so big this year that I can't get a good photo of them.  

 

Happy Mother's Day!  

I mentioned to AJ last week that I was gong to do a small brunch for Mother's Day, and I got the deer-in-the-headlights look.  Yes, Mother's Day is Sunday, and no, I don't want anything...whew!  
 

Another quilt under construction - slowly under construction.  I haven't made much time for sewing lately, and it's showing.  My yard looks good, but my quilting projects are building up.  This quilt is all from scraps of leftover fabric.  I'll have to by backing fabric, since I don't have big pieces of fabric in my stash, but the rest will us up a little bit of my stash.  (Not that much, but it does make be feel better to use what I have....)

The Formations quilt top is done - now it's "just" the quilting and binding to be done.  I still have a quilt on my quilt frame (and it's been there for a few weeks) that I haven't touched, and now have added another one to the list of "ready to quilt". 

 

Yesterday was Alli's 29th birthday - and she celebrated all day!  Her day program got her a Dutch Bros coffee, a hamburger and fries for lunch (she didn't eat the hamburger, just the fries) and I baked 14 dozen sugar cookies Monday night and took them in for her class to decorate and eat.  Needless to say, with all that, she did not eat her real lunch, and crashed from her sugar high about 5:00.  Waiting for her birthday pizza was almost too much for her.  After pizza, she calmed down enough to enjoy her chocolate creme pie though.