Pets on Quilts Show!

I was surfing around the blogs I follow here on Blogger and saw this post on That Girl...That Quilt where she entered her doggy and her quilts into an awesome show, hosted by SewCalGal called Pets on Quilts!




I thought to myself, "Hmmmm....I have pets, I have quilts, I have pictures of my pets on quilts, I should enter!  Yey!"  So, here is my entry!

I am so lucky to have this cat quilt that my mom and I (but mostly my mom) made when I was 16:  

Sorry for the poor quality, the weather outside is gloomy
and rainy right now so we had to take this picture inside.

I'm now 30 so this quilt is almost 15 years old!  My mom was just getting into quilting at the time so she used pretty much what she had in her stash and fabric from thrift store clothes that I liked.  We weren't well versed in the wearing of fabric at that time so we didn't know the thrift store fabric would wear away.  But, since the original pattern for the quilt called for patches on the kitties anyway, when the fabrics started wearing away, I just asked my mom to add more patches!

A thrift store fabric kitty with patches.

The kitties are appliqued on using fusible interfacing (I think - it was so long ago) and the stitching around each cat is the blanket stitch.  I have to say here that helping out with the blanket stitch is pretty much where my help ended.  The piecing of each block, sashing, borders and binding were all done by my mom.  She actually got the quilt quilted for free by a man who was going around and showing off his quilting machine!  :P

The official name for this quilt is "16 Memory Cats" because it represents 16 different people in my life who were important to me when I was 16 years old.  :)  The unofficial name for this quilt is "The Kitty Quilt."  It's not just named that because it had kitties on it, but because it is SO hard to keep kitties OFF it!  Even while trying to photograph this quilt, I couldn't keep my girl kitty Anu away:

Anu looking pretty on The Kitty Quilt!  :)

My other two cats, Zorro and Quixote are brothers from the same litter.   You can tell it's getting cold outside when my boys start cuddling.  Usually it's on The Kitty Quilt.  :)

Zorro is on the left, Quixote is on the right.
(Both of them are squinting from the flash.)

Now, Quixote isn't much of a lap kitty unless it's cold outside, but Zorro follows The Kitty Quilt quilt from lap to lap.  I have to mention here that The Kitty Quilt is also our healing quilt.  If you are sick, recovering from surgery or just down in the dumps, put this quilt over you and instantly the world is a better place!  And, where ever this quilt goes, so does Zorro!

Snuggling into The Kitty Quilt on my lap while I was sick once.

I gave The Kitty Quilt to my mom back in October so she could add more patches and fix a big hole on the back up by the top of the quilt.  I got it back just recently in July and you should have SEEN Zorro's face when it came out of the bag!  He was SO excited and almost jumped on my lap before my lap was even covered!  LOL  I think he loves this quilt almost as much as I do.  :)

STRETCH!

Thanks for visiting!

Let the re-re-re-reintroducing begin!

Quixote (Tabby) and Zorro (Tuxedo).

So, when I moved in with my husband, I came with two cats and my husband came with one.  My two cats, Zorro and Quixote, are brothers and have lived with each other their entire cat lives.  They have been through a lot with me together and have moved around with me a lot.  They have even lived with other cats from when we lived with a friend and when we lived at my parents' house.  My husband's kitty, Anu, hadn't been with my husband very long, hadn't lived with any other cats and she is half the size of my boys.

Anu on Hubby

All was well with our little blended family for the good part of a year.

Then the aggression started between Zorro and Anu.  At first, we weren't sure which kitty was being the aggressor so we really couldn't fix the situation.  Because we didn't fix the situation, it got worse.  And then, it got really WORSE.  It got so bad that Anu stopped using the litter box because she was afraid of Zorro.  That is when we figured out that Zorro was the aggressor and Anu was reacting to the aggression by growling and hissing, therefore reinforcing Zorro's aggression.

We still aren't sure what caused Zorro's aggression in the first place.  He's normally a scared-of-all-things-including-the-vacuum-cleaner-other cats-and-new-people cat.  And he's NEVER been aggressive toward me or any other cat!  Sure his brother and him have had sibling tiffs, but they have never gotten mean.  I think the catalyst was misdirected aggression from seeing an animal through the window outside, getting territorial, Anu coming by to investigate and the aggression being directed to her instead of the animal outside.  So she hissed and growled and the cycle started...and continued...

Anyway, we tried to reintroduce them a couple of times before we moved to a larger house.  Then we moved to a larger house, reintroduced them again and thought things would be better since the house was bigger and there was more space for everyone.  It wasn't.  It kept getting worse.  There were more fights in the middle of the night.  More inappropriate bathroom behavior.  Less happiness all around.

So, off to the vet went Zorro and Anu!  I explained everything to the vet and she gave me some good pointers and some medication for both the cats.  Anu's helps with fear based aggression and the medication Zorro got helped with plain old aggression.  Well, Zorro's medication turned him into an anorexic, anxiety ridden cat in the matter of days so we stopped his and gave him Rescue Remedy instead.  The Rescue Remedy seems to be helping him calm down, be less aggressive and just calmer all around.  Anu's medication has helped her gain her spunky, playful and confident self back!

So..phase two started today.  Reintroducing the cats again, but this time in their carriers.

Zorro's on the left
Anu's on the right

I guess this helps both the cats get used to the sight of each other again but in a safe way.  They aren't too happy about this though.  Zorro hates being in the carrier, (but is being surprisingly quiet about it) and Anu hasn't stopped her low grade growl since we started this a couple of hours ago.  She won't even LOOK in Zorro's direction!

Anu ignoring Zorro

Zorro being pitiful..

LOL!!

 *AHEM*  I mean, poor kitties!

*snicker*

I am such a mean kitty mommy!!

A Charming Work in Progress

Remember this picture?  That bin Anu is sitting on is full of charm squares.  I love charm squares but I realized about two weeks ago that I had filled up this box that I had specifically designated for charm packs and was quickly running out of room to store anymore.

 So, inspired by this post from crazy mom quilts, I decided to make a raggedy quilt out of my charm packs.  To start the project, I went through my charm packs, picked the packs I liked then went through the packs themselves and picked out the individual charms I liked.  I didn't have any neutral flannel in my stash so I decided to use two of the the rejected charms as the filler.

 I sewed the charms corner to corner making an X and stacked them up for some neat pictures.  I love all the bright colors coming through in this picture!  :)

  Once the charms were all sewn together, I laid them out on the floor of the sewing room to check the size.  At this time, another of my kitty helpers, Quixote decided to put in his two cents.

Apparently he didn't like that charm in that space!  :P

I ended up sewing the charms together randomly and have gotten 6 rows sewn and a few more pinned, so far.  Here are the sewn rows pinned up on my design wall.  I love how it's turning out!

 Every square is different on the front as well as the back.  

 Even after making this quilt, the charm pack bin is still over half full!!  Maybe I should make another one?

I still have to sew some more rows, sew the rows together, snip all the seam allowances and then wash it.  I think it's too heavy for my washer though...  More pictures to follow when it's completed!  Thanks for visiting!  :)

Sewing room!

Hi all!  I finally put my sewing room together and couldn't wait to post some pictures!  Check it out!  :)

My sewing station.  I got that table at a yard sale for like $2!  Like my red chair?  I got a pair of them for $40 at an antique store in Clovis.  They are sturdy, comfortable and the perfect shade of red.  The curtains were free and from my parents who didn't need them any more.  Also, I know it's night time, but the window really does bring in a lot of light during the day.  :)

My kitty helper, Anu.  :)  Take note of that bin she's sitting on - it's FULL of charm packs - I will write more on those later.

 My design wall - a flannel backed table cloth that I found at a thrift store for only $1!

  The ceilings in my room are slanted, but on this side they are SUPER tall!  My lantern is about 24 inches wide and fits nicely above my window so it doesn't block light coming in and it provides nice light for when I want to sew after the sun goes down.  I got the parasol at the Renaissance Festival in Mesa, AZ.

 My inspiration board and ironing station...and a step ladder that fits my computer perfectly so I can watch Netflix or listen to Pandora while I sew.  My sewing room is pretty much the ONLY room in the house not wired for cable.

 My cutting station and my small stash.  The fabric banner above my cutting table was made by my sister-in-law for my bridal shower.  I love it so much and couldn't WAIT to finally have a sewing room to hang it up!  Also, see that door?  It's only about three feet high and hides a closet behind it and is as long as the wall.  I can envision a nice stash growing in that closet...  :)

 This is a picture to show the slant of the ceiling..and the cute clock I bought to put over the door.  It's tiny but works!  :)

What do you think?!  Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you enjoyed the tour!  :)

An Awesome Story + Wish List Wednesday! :)

The only reason I am able to bust out a blog right now is because it's SUPER slow at work. Today is my last day here anyway, so they can't really do anything about me blogging at work. :P

Anyway, there is a lot going on here in my world. First, I got a teaching job on the reservation in Whiteriver, AZ. I'll be teaching 6th grade at an awesome school with an awesome principal! I'm sad to leave this wonderful job here though. Everyone I have had the pleasure of working with has been wonderful and this is, by far, one of the best places I have ever worked. But, the budget is all crazy and I didn't know if there was going to be enough money for me to work here next year. So, I ran across this teaching job and couldn't pass it up even though it was for this year. I mean, I have gone through ALL the education and was really tired of feeling like I wasted my time (and money!) by not having a job in my chosen field. This was my chance! And I took it. :)

The only problem was that Whiteriver is 2 hours away from where we are now. This meant that if my husband couldn't get out of his teaching contract in the middle of the year, that we would be long distance. Again. We actually met on eHarmony and spent the first two years of our relationship long distance. But now it was different because we were married - newly married - and didn't really want to be apart. So he hmmmed and hahhhed for a couple of days until I quietly reminded him to just look at the job openings for the Jr. High. Sure enough, there was a 7th grade English Teacher position available. He applied for it and was told that the teacher currently in the position hadn't passed her teaching exams yet, was going to take them again so P would have to wait until they knew if she had passed or not. But, they wanted him to come in for an interview anyway. So he went. Two days later they were calling him to offer him the job! YES! We won't have to be long distance again! :)

After we got hired in Whiteriver, we told our prospective bosses that we would be leaving and they were both really stressed out about finding replacements for us on such short notice. However, everything has been working out so far. My replacement happens to be the person *I* replaced when I got hired here. She was planning on retiring but after only a few months she realized that she really couldn't afford retirement and was looking for another job. That's lined up already, she is coming back on 12/27/10 so there won't be any down time here. P's replacement happens to be the daughter of one of the ladies that work in the office at his school who was really down on her luck and desperately looking for a job. She is highly qualified and can step in a week after break. P only has to provide one week of substitute lesson plans and then he's gone from that school! He's looking forward to there being more support and resources available to him in his new school. He's also happy that he only has to teach and plan for one grade level and one reading intervention group. I am nervous and excited all in one. I can't wait to attack that classroom and make it MINE! I have all these ideas for classroom management, a bunch of positive reinforcement ideas and just ideas to help all my students be the best they can be! :) I'm also really excited to be stepping into my chosen carrier. I guess there is a reason for all those years of waiting for something to happen. I think I was supposed to wait until Whiteriver was ready for me. It feels like we are both being pushed there by cosmic forces since everything is just lining up so nicely.

Except for housing. We already gave 30 days notice at the place we are living now and currently we don't have a forwarding address. There is teacher housing on the reservation available for the teachers, but it's full. I even called the district to double check this and they haven't called me back. We tried to get into this awesome house on Saturday but even though we got along great with the owner’s wife and her dog, and it looked like we were for sure getting the house, two days later her husband told us that we couldn't move in because of our cats and the bad tenant that had lived there before who had animals. Oh well, on to our second choice - a four-bedroom town house for like WAY cheap. They require a pet deposit, but we can handle that. So, we applied but the woman who takes care of the rentals wasn't in the office yesterday so we are playing the waiting game again. In the mean time we heard back from one company who said they had two places that were okay with our pets so we might go back up tomorrow and look at those. We did see one place that we could move into right away but it was old, dinghy and dark...it just didn't feel right. I guess it would be okay for short term, but I don't want to move that many more times in our life. Especially if we have to do it ourselves again. :P So we are hoping on the town house or there being some place just as nice to look at tomorrow.

Oh and did I mention we both start January 3rd?! Yeah. We have less that TWO WEEKS to pack AND move AND unpack AND put our classrooms together! Sheesh! Also right in the middle there is Christmas. We got invited to Christmas dinner and we are supposed to bring deviled eggs so we have to make those at some point...one thing at a time...one thing at a time!

I just want to ask, and I don't do this very often, but if you could just pray to whatever god/goddess/being you believe in - or if you don't believe in anything just send out some positive energies toward us during this stressful time. Everything is just working out so nicely so far, just help us keep the flow going regarding this situation. We need to find a place to live this week so focus on that for us if you can. Thank you all so very much!

You are all invited over for dinner!

It might be in a cardboard box though... :P

And on to this week's Wish List Wednesday! Last week I asked for more time, and that was to finish out my Christmas presents and get them out. I'm happy to say that I got that time and the presents should be arriving at my parents' house today via UPS. Yey! This week I have been having a lot of problems with my kitties getting fur balls and leaving presents for us all over the house. I think it's the changing weather. They don't know if they should be growing their winter coats or shedding them! Also, most of the places P and I have been looking to move into have all had light carpeting. Who would be so stupid as to put light colored carpeting in a RENTAL?! It just shows everything. So, because of the light carpeting, and the kitties, I would like to wish for a Bissell Spot Bot! It's like a handy dandy little portable carpet cleaner. It's also lightweight and will even fit on stairs. You just fill it with cleaner and water (I plan on using warm water and vinegar), place it on the stain, push a button and it does all the work! Whoo hoo!! It even comes in RED! SEE?!


Isn't it just cute?!

*DROOL* Perty huh? Okay, that's enough of that. :P I do really love it though. I have heard that the only thing people have problems with is that the reservoir is small and it leaves a lot of water in the carpet after cleaning. But that handy dandy hose there is supposed to suck the water back out of the carpet so I'm not sure what the issue is. Anyway, that's my Wish List Wednesday! Can somebody say, "Housewarming Present?!" :P

I think I'm going to start a "Blogs of Note" section that lists some of the blogs or even websites I come across that I find interesting enough to share.  Here's today's:

I'm not sure if my sis-in-law over at Lilac Barries is doing a WLW this week, but go check out her blog anyway because she's kind of all sorts of awesome. :) Also, check out Rants From Mommyland. The ladies over there have a wonderfully heart warming blog entry called There's Something About Target... that will make you tear up and smile from ear to ear!  If you didn't know about this blog already, Hyperbole and a Half has a new blog entry called The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas that had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt last night!  I love her stories, she is a great writer.  :)  Last but not least, Moda Bake Shop has an advent quilt project up.  A great project for next year since Christmas is like 2 days away.  I think it's adorable and the pockets go together so easily!

And that's it for today - I know it was a lot.  :)  I should blog more often...

PS - did you know that there is a spell check option in the top right hand corner of the composition box?  I didn't!  And all this time I've been cutting and pasting my blogs into Word to check the spelling which really messes with my formatting...*shaking head*

Lazy, Grumpy Saturday

Today started out pretty lazy and grumpy.  Not sure why, but I woke up with a bone to pick with anyone who crossed my path.  Even my fluffy, black and white kitty Zorro wasn't left out of the wrath - he got cuddled and squeezed like a baby when he decided to join me in the bathroom this morning, which he LOVES (insert sarcasm) btw.  After a while of sitting around and watching "stupid HGTV" (it's not normally stupid, this was the grump talking!) and complaining about there not being a decent coffee/donut/bookstore places in either of the two stupid towns we live by or the stupid town we live in, P mentioned that we could go to Hastings in Flagstaff to see if we could sell some of our books and DVDs that we never read/watch or just don't need/like any more.

I perked up with the mention of Flagstaff.  I love Flagstaff - or Flag as the locals call it.  It is a college town with a diverse population, various places to eat, coffee houses, bookstores, TRADER JOE'S, Target and a bunch of other things we don't have here in our po-dunk town.  In fact, it was a HUGE deal when the ONLY coffee shop type place - not attached to a grocery store or gas station - opened here.  People acted as if they had never heard of such a place, "WHAT? A coffee huh?  You mean it's not in the Walmart?!"  (insert a horrible Arizonian accent here)  Ahem...anyway, back to Flagstaff.  So, P and I hopped in the car, plugged in the iPod and turned on the audio book we are listening too.  (Aren't we cute?!  We listen to audio books together!  I know, I know, *gag*)  We took the long way, passed a prison, drove through Winslow, saw really neat landscapes with low shrubs, red soil and a bunch of random trailers just kind of plopped in the middle of nowhere - and people actually live in them!  We also came across a school bus stop just kind of there in the middle of the road.  I guess enough people live randomly out in the desert that they decided to build a school?

When we got to Flagstaff, we hung out at Hastings and drooled over books, magazines and various other fun stuffs one might find in a REAL BOOK STORE.  We ended up walking out with only two magazines and store credit for the books and DVDs we sold.  We are planning on using the credit maybe for the kids for Christmas?  We'll see...a couple of books were calling my name today...and my bookshelves are looking kind of bare now with ALL the books I got rid of...  :P  After Hastings, we found ourselves a bit peckish (I swear internet spell-checker, peckish is a word and it's spelled correctly!  Stop squiggly-underlining it in red!) and ended up at Granny's Closet.  (I will write more on this restaurant in a Friday Review Day post, but yes, it does have a giant Lumberjack outside it)  After dinner, we went to Walmart and exchanged some horrible pants for a small cat food dispenser type thing and vitamins.  We then drove home the faster way through Camp Verde since we had to make it home in time to meet Dad online for SNL.  I am SO glad I made it in time for SNL because Betty White was the host!  She is so funny!  After SNL, I decided to write this blog entry and here we are.

So that was how my Lazy and Grumpy Day turned into a Not So Lazy, Pretty Awesome Day!

*That's right!  You're eyes aren't deceiving you - that is a Lumberjack label!  

I do plan to write a Lumberjack post someday.