Thursday night Cindy M and I took the paddle boards out again, and, once again, I didn't go involuntarily swimming!!  I did have to take a break from standing, but not because my legs were tired,  my feet were!  I found myself gripping the board with my toes/feet so much (to keep from involuntarily swimming!)  that they were needing a break.  We've been paddling in the cove by the dock - the boats go out to the lake so it very calm - and each time we've seen wildlife, which just makes the lake trip that much better. This trip we saw a blue heron that we startled so it flew up into a tree (sorry to ruin your possible dinner, guy!) and deer.  We aren't sure if we saw one or two deer - there was one by the blue heron when we went by, and on our way back there was one a bit further down the lake shore.  Same one??  Hard to tell, no name tags were visible.  I do find I have a harder time taking pictures on the paddle board.  I'm not able to adjust the camera lens or twist around for a better shot (let's face it, I'm not able to do much more than look straight ahead!) so my photos fro the moment aren't as good as they could be.  Something to practice on!

 

For once, I'm ahead!  The Liberty Lady quilt is a "block a month" quilt, and I get the fabric for each block monthly.  I finished my August block and realized I had enough scraps left from other months to finish September's block too!  October's fabric is the border fabric, so I will have to wait on that, but I'm caught up until then, at least on the blocks.  It needs to be sewn together, but this is all the blocks up on the design board. 

The Frog baby quilt is done - just in time for the baby shower on Sunday! 

 

I made the final decision on how to put the Surf's Up quilt together, and sewed it together before I could change my mind again.  

 

I took the opportunity to sit out by the pool Sunday morning to do my puzzles, drink my coffee, and enjoy the cool start to the day (first load of laundry in the washer) and I had a companion. She looked like she was chilling too!

Why yes, I do!!!!  

I'm looking forward to retirement - no long living by the alarms that I have set on my phone for meetings and making sure I get myself to work on time, get Alli picked up on time, etc. (though I'll probably leave the last alarm on....)  I think that is what I'm looking forward to the most right now.  Middle management is pretty much nothing but meetings, I think.

What's a poor girl to do when the cat steals your bed????  And isn't even sorry about it?

I think I found the way I'm going to put the last Mystery Quilt together.  Someone else posted a picture of theirs that they rearranged the blocks a bit, and I really like how it looks with my blocks. 

For comparison, here are the other two mock-ups I did: 

I found a super quick and cute coaster pattern - it makes up in minutes and takes just five 5" square pieces of fabric - definitely a scrap-buster!  The pattern is here: Coasters and it's super easy!  A quick little project for when I have the sewing equivalent of writer's block. For me, it's often more of a "decisions, decisions" thing - when I finish up a project, which one do I jump into next?   

 I had offered to quilt a quilt top for a friend's mom, and I had to make myself do it before I quilted anything for me, or it would have sat there forever!  I could never be a professional quilter.  I'd rather work on my stuff!  But, once I finished it and before I jumped into the next project, I tried this little pattern out.  Now, on to the next project - quilting the baby frog quilt - the baby shower is less than 2 weeks away!!
 

This is what happens when you are folding the last load of laundry and get sidetracked.  When you get back, half the towels are unfolded or on the floor, stacks of towels are knocked over, and there's a black cat sleeping on the nest that they made for themselves. 

Allison's Day Program had a field trip on Friday to the local Aquatic Center (which I still refer to as the Plunge, making me instantly recognizable as having lived in Redding way too many years!  The Plunge was taken out and remade into the Aquatic Center in 1998 - AJ did his first swim lessons there, and when Alli and I did Mommy and Me classes, they were at the Enterprise High School.)  The day didn't start out well, but Alli evidently had a blast once she got to the Center!  

First, Alli's routine was off because she didn't go to the Day Program in the morning, but we followed our normal routine because I still had to go to work.  She was a bit agitated once she was ready to go and we didn't actually go anywhere until 9:45, but settled down a bit, watching TV.  Then, on my drive in, I got a text from the program manager - "Call me"....never a good sign. Turns out they had changed the time the group was supposed to be there but failed to tell her - a bit awkward I would say.  Bless Feather's heart, she can pivot on a penny, much less a dime.  Pizza was already ordered and they were going to eat lunch in the park before they went swimming, I just had to change the drop off location.  Alli had so much fun that she didn't want to leave when Cindy picked her up.  She actually refused to leave, not walking...  Cindy finally got her moving, and needless to say, she had an early evening - 3 hours outside in our heat, much less swimming and she was exhausted. 

 Summer is here.....and I'm done!  Bring on September!! 

AJ got a new paddle board so he could go out with me, and we took it for a test drive last night.  Whiskeytown Lake was beautiful, and it felt a lot cooler!  It was 105 in the parking lot when we got there, according to my watch, but getting a little wet and sitting in the water, it was perfect!  I didn't even go involuntarily swimming this time!  Of course, I didn't do a lot of stand-up paddling either. 

AJ's way of paddle boarding.....

We had a couple of ducks come see if we had anything to feed them.  They came straight at us - on a mission!!

They swam around us for bit, came in to visit and left empty-handed.

Here's the Sapphire Gem that's broody.  She sits in the coop - after she's moved the fake eggs into her cubby - as much as she can.  AJ and I take turns going out and moving her off the nest so she can get some water.  Every morning, I put three fake eggs in each cubby.  Every day she moves most of them so she can sit on them.

 

 

 A couple more cat blocks done on the "Summer Reading" quilt. 

I was vacuuming, and when I turned around, "someone" had knocked one of my plants onto the floor.  I have no idea which :someone" it was, but I have my suspicions! 

 

I finished the top for a baby quilt - it is adorable!!  Carolyn D's baby shower is in a couple of weeks, so I need to get it quilted pretty quickly, but the top turn out great!  I had a few issues - mainly remembering which green I was supposed to using.  I had to "unsew" quite a few places where I had the wrong green in, or worse, flipped the wrong way.  (One cheek of the frog did not want to play nice - I had it in wrong twice!).  The pattern is available through Etsy Etsy shop - Counted Quilts 

We are back to or normal summer temps now - nothing under 105 forecast for this next week - ugh!  Not my favorite time of year, but at least it waited until August to do that.  A couple of years ago we started in June with the 105+ days.  

One of my new chickens has become broody - odd for such a young hen.  It's my Sapphire Gem (a beautiful blue/gray) and she's just six months old and only been laying for a month.  I keep fake eggs in the nest to discourage the hens from pecking the real eggs, and she is gathering all the fake eggs to sit on.  Now she's staying on the nest as much as we'll let her.  We go out frequently during the day and move her, just to make sure she's drinking, and find her sitting on a dozen plus eggs.  She puffs up and growls at us when we move her and it takes her a while to get "unpuffed".  She looks so funny stomping around, all fluffed up.  Luckily all she does is growl at us.  (I have memories of being pecked by chickens when I gathered eggs as a kid.)

One of the Easter Eggers is laying double yolk eggs - the eggs are extra long.  Both are laying green eggs, so I hvae a nice collection of green and brown eggs this year.

Decisions, decisions!  The "reveal" is out for my mystery quilt, and I like both options!  I think I'm leaning toward the second quilt, dark spirals in the center.  I like the layout of options #3 and #4, but I don't like how the color of the background fabric on the side is highlighted.  You don't notice as much on options #1 and #2 that the background fabric is different (there are three different background fabrics and five different brown fabrics).  I'll leave it up for a while and see if I still like it after a week.  (And, after I finish up other projects - I have a few!)