I did it!  It is finished - and it turned out pretty well for an experiment.  Putting the appliques on the fleece saved me time, since making the afghan takes me 3-4 weeks, but it wasn't as fast as I thought it would be.  I thought I could just whip this out in a week or so - Not!  The top has blue fringe on it, I just couldn't get a good picture of it (and Jasper wanted to be in the picture too).

Happy birthday Allison!  My baby is 15 today!  What a thought!  Though there are some days I feel my age (this week was one of them) I can't believe how fast the time has gone by.  Maybe if Alli was 'normal' I would have an easier time believing she was 15....I don't know.  She was having an off day this week, and yelled at me on the bus and stamped her foot, so....she must be 15 - the teenage hormones are running rampant!  She was so funny - I think she stamped her foot at me because I laughed when she yelled at me - she actually growled rather than yelled, but she was just so cute when she was mad!!! And that made her madder!  Yep, definitely teenage angst going on here.

Once again, the week flew by.  I had a medical procedure (that darn colonoscopy - I told you that I felt my age this week.  At my last doctor's appointment, Dr. S told me I needed one, now that I was 50!)  Dr. D told me after the procedure that everything looked good and he would see me in 10 years, so....I'm done with that.  Since I had that on Friday, I missed Thursday afternoon and Friday at work, so I was going in early and staying late to get caught up (and maybe ahead??) before I left.  That pretty much killed the week for me.  

In my spare time, I was trying to get that darn afghan finished.  It still isn't done!  If I could have stayed awake a few more minutes last night, I could have had it almost finished, but I ran out of yarn (of course) for the green side of the fringe.  I could have finished the blue side, but....I gave up and went to bed.  If everything had gone smoothly yesterday, I could have gotten it done (except for the missing yarn).  I spent quite a bit of time yesterday saying "well, that didn't work the way I wanted it to."  This is the first time I have used fleece as the backing.  I thought it would be faster, and it may have been, but the mechanics of it threw me.  Of course, part of that was my stupidity, not mechanics, but whatever!  

I decided to put the backing on in a way to leave the edgings out, not turning inside of the blanket.  That way, I could use my brand new "skip" rotary cutter and make holes along the edge and put in fringe.  That is all well and good - until I used my brand new skip rotary cutter, and for some unknown reason, didn't take the old blade out.  What?  I needed to take the old one out?  I had done several test strips to make sure it was going to work, really!  I have no idea why, when I went to work on the afghan, I put the rotary cutter together like that!!!  OMG!  I spent the next hour or so ripping out the seam I had put in so I could re-cut, re-seam and then try the skip cutter again, solo.  It worked just like my practice strips then, imagine!  It really did work out well, I think.  Final pircutres when I get it completely finished.

Last weekend, I managed to get some flowers planted:

Impatients in the front flower bed.

Petunias and Flocks (I think that is what they were - now I forget!) in the front flower bed.

My Columbine is blooming!

My Sterling roses

I planted Impatients around the pool the weekend before

My Scentamental roses

My Lincoln roses

My petunias that wintered over by the guest house.

I managed to cross a few things off my to-do list over the weekend.  I spent yesterday afternoon cleaning out a flower bed and planting flowers in it, and in the front flower beds.  If they all live, that is all the planting I am dong this year, I think.  I would really like to put in a garden, I just don't think I will spend the time in it once it is planted (i.e. I hate to weed!!!)  I got the tree and leaves put on the afghan, and part of one giraffe.  Hopefully I can get the giraffes on tonight.  I am planning on picking up the backing material today.  I also spent a couple of hours out in the garage.  I inherited the Boy Scout's new and used clothing.  AJ and I went through and inventoried it.  I thought we were all done, and AJ found three more boxes to do.  They can wait!  I'll get them next weekend.

The boys and I went for a walk yesterday afternoon.  They were busy skipping rocks, and I was watching a killdeer across the creek from us.

I have way under-estimated the time needed for the afghan!  I MIGHT get it finished today - we'll see.  I do need to put a back on it, so I will need a trip in to town for the material.  That's IF I get to that point.  Right now, I have probably 3/4 of the tree on.  I still need to put 40 or so leaves on, sew the giraffes, the grass, actually make the clouds, and then sew them on.  Probably not all happening today!!!  Oh well - it was a self-imposed deadline any way, so no harm, no foul, I just won't get it done.    We'll see how far I do get on it.  Maybe I'll surprise myself!

Here are pictures from Baltimore.  We didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing - we were actually working!  The conference kept us busy most of the time - from breakfast at 7:30 till dinner/entertainment until 9:30.  No wonder I was pooped when we got back.

This is the "Inner Harbor" of Baltimore, and the Constellation - the last sailing war ship.

Out in the harbor were the pedal boats - too much fun!  You could rent plain old pedal boats, but I didn't see many of them.

Wednesday night, dinner was at the National Aquarium.  It was closed to the public, so we have 'heavy  hors d'oeuvre' and all the wandering around the aquarium we wanted from 6:30 to 9:30.  The 'heavy  hors d'oeuvre' weren't that heavy - we walked back to the hotel afterwards (all of three blocks, I think) and stopped at Cheesecakes for dinner, we were still hungry!!  The aquarium was very cool - I had hoped to go there anyway/

We did wander around a bit when we first got in to town - the area around the Inner Harbor has all been redone so it looks old.  From what I understand, it used to be an area that no one wanted to go visit.

I'm procrastinating.  I have (almost) all of the parts made for the baby afghan, and have started sewing them on the fleece.  I'm taking a quick break - time for some chocolate and some ice tea!  I need to find my white yarn to make the clouds, and then I really will have all the parts made.  So far, so good - it looks okay on the fleece.  It is a lot easier to sew onto the fleece than a crocheted afghan. I do wish I had started it early enough to have done the whole thing, but....I didn't.  

I didn't take as many pictures the second day we were in DC (yes, ALL the picture up to now have been from the first day!!!)  The picture below of the Metro is late Sunday night, the rest are from Monday.  We decided, looking at the weather forecast, to do the outside things on Sunday, and do the museums on Monday.  Monday was supposed to be in the 90's.  Way too hot for us, since we were still used to the cool weather in Redding.  It turned out to be a good decision.  We spent the morning at the American History Museum (we saw the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner) and the afternoon at the Air and Space Museum.  Too much in either place to see in just a few hours, but we tried.  Our brains were on overload, so we caught the Metro to the ballpark, had dinner, and watched the Nationals play a game.  It was my first professional ball game - fun!!

Here is the Metro late on a Sunday night - I think we were pretty much the only people getting on at our stop.  Monday was a holiday in DC.

At the Air and Space Museum, they had a display for the P47 Thunderbolt - the plane that Ralph's Dad flew in WWII.  I don't see a lot of mention about it, and was surprised to see that it was credited in destroying more German fighters in the Spring on 1944 than the P51 Mustang.

Here we are at the ball park!

I'm glad it's Friday - I need a break!  The week flew by, it was a busy one.  Work was hectic - we had auditors in (a normal occurrence any more - there are so many different agencies that come in that it seems like we always have one set either coming or going.) and they reviewed over 200 loan files in under 3 days.  What took so much time for me was that the files had to be arranged in a specific order.  The files were pulled from three offices and sent to us, and we had the pleasure of arranging them all.  The auditors left yesterday, so now we get to unravel everything and send the files back to their respective homes. We have another set of auditors coming in a couple of weeks, so we will get to start all over again.

I'm looking forward to the weekend.  My new house-cleaner came this week, so the house still looks good - I hope to get some crafting time in this weekend.  My list of crafting to-do's is growing:

1)  Finish baby afghan for co-worker - she's due in less than 3 weeks!

2)  Bookmarks for the book club - we meet in a little over 3 weeks.  The books this time are the Hunger Games Trilogy, and I actually found a crochet pattern for the Mockingjay pin on line that I am converting to a book mark.  Too cute!!!  I have the prototype done for the most part.  Now I need to fine tune it a bit so it looks a little better!

3)  Finish the quilt I have started.

4)  Start the next quilt.  We meet in 2 weeks, and I haven't even started the next quilt!!!  

5)  I started a sweater for me while I was in DC - I need to pull that out and add some more rows to it.  

6)  Make some baby booties and toys to go along with the afghan that I don't have finished yet.

7)  Make some baby booties and toys to go along with an afghan that I do have finished.  That little girl is due in June.

I think I may be in trouble - there isn't enough time this weekend to do all of these, even if I don't have to clean house.  Since the weather is supposed to be nice, I would also like to get some more flowers planted outside.  I got the patio and pool area planted last week.  Now I need to plant the front area and the flower area.  Yep, I'm definitely out of time!

I pulled out another set of photos - the last of our first day of sightseeing.  The Jefferson Memorial:

The Vietnam Memorial - It was just turning dusk when we got there.

The Washington Memorial and the Capital lit at night.  I tried for a better picture, but....it just wasn't working for me.

The Memorial for the signers of the Declaration of Independence - it was fully dark by the time we made it here, so I couldn't get a good photo of the Memorial.