Monumental Experiences

Last week at this time I was laying in a hotel bed feeling resting my tired legs and feet with no idea of how really tired, sore and blessed I would soon become. We spent three days touring Washington DC and crammed in as many things as we could. If I were in better shape and it hadn't been 90 degrees for two of those days, I'm sure we could have crammed in a lot more, but I'm very grateful for the things we did see. Here are just a few of the highlights:

The first night we went to the National Mall via the Metro (below) and saw the Washington Monument, World War II Memorial and Lincoln Monument (above).

On our last morning we went to Arlington Memorial and saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy's graves, as well as the grave of a friend of my Mothers, who died in the Vietnam war. I will blog about him tomorrow on Flashback Friday.

We loved the National Museum of the American Indian. Throughout the trip the dear daughter pictured below read every plaque we didn't drag her away from. She was anxious to learn. What a great trait! Here she is pictured with a canoe which was made within the last 5 years. There were a number of different canoes made by different tribes. Each canoe was beautifully crafted. This beautiful fiber piece (below) was available for sale in the gift shop and I now wish I had a better picture but it was behind the counter and I'm not always a very good photographer. I'm also sad that I couldn't see the price. I wish I had asked. Now that I'm home I'm wishing I had purchased the piece. Such a beautiful piece of hand work.

This amazing woman (below), who is a Mayan Indian from Guatemala, gave a demonstration on the fabric weaving the woman in her village do. She said she learned from her grandmother. She said that her shirt was an everyday piece, and that the men in the village weave the fabric for the women's skirts. She also demonstrated how the woman wrap their hair and carry baskets on their head to carry items from one place to another. The long piece she used to wrap her hair takes two months to weave. I loved meeting her! She also wove the fabric that is laying on table behind her. She also said that her loom has been passed down for many generations.

The girls and I visited the National Museum of American History and we were very sad that my dear husband wasn't able to join us because we know he would have loved it! We saw the flag that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired Francis Scott Key to pen The Star Spangled Banner. We weren't allowed to take pictures of it because it is so frail.

There was also a wonderful exhibit about President Abraham Lincoln. Here is President Lincoln's top hat: The museum also had lots of contemporary history, including these wonderful Ruby Slippers worn by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz.

As well as this familiar face:

And there were a few things I found facinating that the girls passed by:

I remember my cousin having one of these in her home and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Hmm, I wonder whatever happened to it.

The girls and I went to zoo before the American History museum, and the escalator up to the surface from the Metro was one of the longest I have ever been on but apparently there is a longer one at the Pentagon.

I was very excited to see the Panda Bears. I felt bad for them as the temperature was 90 degrees on this day. An unusually hot spring day. The poor panda sat in the shade of the log and panted for a while before going back out to eat more. I understood exactly how he felt.

My oldest daughter always loves seeing the Elephants. There was a very large elephant exhibit under construction that will open in 2011 and she is thinking she will treat herself to another trip to DC for her college graduation.

Another highlight was when we were able to see the White House but sadly we did not see the President, his family or the new first dog. Later in the hotel we found out that

a small plane had strayed into the restricted airspace and we had just missed the evacuation by a few hours. We loved the Lincoln Memorial, especially since we saw it at night. The lighting on the statue of Lincoln is incredible at night, and we girls look pretty cute on the stairs of the monument too.

We looked at the Capitol from afar because we were just too tired to walk up to it. And when I say "we" I am using the word the way Queen would, which means that I was too tired.

See how beautiful the Lincoln Monument is at night?! Breathtaking.

This next photo needs a little explaining as it is now our family joke to eat at a Subway whenever we go on vacation. When we went to Oahu a few years back we went out to find a place to eat and after literally driving half way around the island and back we ended up at the Subway across the street from the hotel. Now if we are looking for a resturaunt and we see a Subway we just stop and eat fresh!

There were many beautiful stuffed animals as well as bones of animals at the National Museum of Natural History. The elephant in the front entry was a big hit with my oldest daughter. One of the twins liked this giant moose (elk?) and decided to pose, and her sisters decided to help her out.

There was also a beautiful exhibit of jewels and rocks, the star of which was The Hope Diamond. It is 45 and a bit carets. Amazing.

But with all these wonderful sights and memories, perhaps my favorite was this:

Ahhhhhh, my dogs are killing me.

Mothers around the world Relate

My girls and I found this figure at the National Museum of the American Indian, and she makes me laugh. I think perhaps some of you can relate.

Children climbing all over her, hands protecting the ones on the ground.

She is suppose to be a storyteller, but I beg to differ, I think she is a Mother.

I thought she was either about to yell at the children to get off of her (something I do a lot),

or yell at the world to get away from her children (something else I do a lot).

What do you think?

Making Memories

In 1986, my dear husband was working as a travel agent, and we were able to do a little bit of traveling. One of those trips was to Washington DC, and since we are in Washington DC today I thought it would be appropriate to show just a couple of the pictures we took once upon a time.

Thats me in the red coat. I loved that coat! These photos are bit dim as they were taken using my little Kodak instamatic camera. I need to learn how to restore photos with Photoshop to make these all look better!

One of the most moving parts of DC for me was when we visited the Vietnam War Memorial.

I was touched by the feeling of deep sadness in the air. My Mom's friend, Jim, died while serving in Vietnam and I did a rubbing of his name from the Memorial to give to her. Since Mom has now passed away, I have the rubbing as well as the flag from Jim's casket, a memorial card from his funeral at Arlington Memorial, and a few pictures of him in Vietnam. I'd like to look up his family one day soon and see if they would like to have the flag and photos. On a lighter note, here is my darling husband on the Mall with the Washington Memorial in the background. My toes get cold just looking at this picture! The weather was freezing when we were there. The weather should be warmer this time around.

And finally a picture of the Capitol. Hopefully we will be able to create lots more wonderful memories of DC as we try to cram everything we can into 3 1/2 days of sight seeing!

Sandstone Challenge

When I first heard the word for this challenge, I thought of Delicate Arch in Moab, and I thought most of us would think the same thing. Also, knowing what beautiful Batiks Anne has done on the subject of sandstone I felt a bit intimidated. I tried to "mix it up" by thinking of crazy things I could do to make Sandstone really different: make layers of sandstone in blue, or make the layers using zippers, or something not natural like a building made out of sandstone but in the end one of the things that kept calling me was petroglyphs. I found this cool petroglyph of Ghanaskidi, the Hump-backed God and really fell in love with the image. The second link is of the actual petroglyph and the first link is of a replica someone made which I translated into this reverse applique:

I really like how this turned out with the curls of the Batik behind the hand dyed fabric but I haven't quilted it yet because after talking with my son another idea kept bugging me. My son told me that sandstone wasn't an image for him, but rather a texture and so I played in my mind with different ideas of how I could create sandstone texture without actually gluing sand to the fabric. I came up with this:

Basically it is the same idea as that used in making faux chenille. I laid a large number of small scraps onto a piece of batting creating about three layers. The scraps were arranged in random directions. I then put a solid piece of fabric on the top and back and stitched lines all over the fabric in a pattern I had seen in many sandstone pictures on the Internet. After I stitched, I cut between the stitches and viola! multicolored layers of texture. They are soft layers, so maybe not the rough texture I was looking for tactically but more visually rough. Here is a close up of some of the cut through layers.

I really, really liked this idea and decided to try to take it one step further by making another layered sandstone quilt and then "carving" an arch from it and placing it on a sky:

However, I don't like this quilt as much as I like the plain sandstone because I used a printed batik for the outer layer instead of a solid. The under layers don't seem to show through as well, and the dark outer layer and dark blue background isn't enough of a contrast in value so the whole thing is reading dark to me. If I decide to do it again I'll change up the values. This might be something fun to try in a bigger size!
I can't wait to see what everyone else in the group has come up with!

Carnage and Color

I may have committed a crime against nature today.

I should have pruned this tree,

as well as my peach trees, back in January or February.

But there was always something else to be done:

sewing, quilting, reading, blogging, playing solitaire,

cleaning (not sure if I really did any of that), anything but pruning.

And so here it is a beautiful April day

and the birds are singing, bees are buzzing, and I am . . .

well, I really hope I didn't butchered the trees too badly.

Time will be the judge of my crime.
Time will show whether I killed the tree in it's prime

or
pruned it lovingly enough to give it the
air, space and room it needs to grow & develop.

While I await the verdict, the sun IS shining,
flowers ARE blooming, the bees ARE buzzing,
and all my windows are wide open
letting the stench of winter out of my house.

So, take a deep breath and enjoy the beauty of spring with me!

Even the dandelions are pretty today.Get off the computer and go soak up some sun!

Hanging with Friends

Some of my best teenage memories are from hanging with my friends, doing nothing in particular. I hope we all have great memories like these:

Here is my Mom being goofy with her friends Bonnie and Hilberta in May 1959.

Look at those great stripped leggings Mom is wearing!

Mom wrote on the back of one of these photos that it was a Sunday afternoon.

Bonnie, Mom and Gerry on Gerry's porch.

Mom, Hilberta and Gerry.

This is my favorite picture from the series.

Bonnie, Hilberta and Mom leaning in the corn. Not sure what they are pointing at, but if my mother is anything like her granddaughters then they are not pointing at anything! The pointing and looking is all to make the photo look interesting. My how times do not change at all!

What To Do With Bored Children

A few weeks ago I ran across a recipe at The Pioneer Woman.

She had a special visitor, Bakerella,

who has created a recipe for Cake Balls.

They looked so easy and fun that I filed away the idea to do with the kids during spring break.

Today I unloaded the file and we had a great time!

First bake a cake (we used a Devils Food mix) and let it cool.

Play a game of Monopoly Jr. while you wait for it to cool.

Once the cake is cool, crumple the cake into a bowl. The kids LOVED this part.

And yes, I made sure they had all washed their hands first!

Next dump in a tub of store bought frosting (we used cream cheese frosting).

I forgot to load the picture of them dumping in the frosting and it's too much of a pain to load a picture into the middle of a post so I'll just totally skip that photo!

They also enjoyed this part, and used a spatula to dump it in,

not their hands, as tempting as that was for them.

Mix the frosting and cake together until you get a nice crumbly mixture that sticks together.
Roll the cake into balls about the size of a quarter.

You'll end up with about 60 balls, more or less.

Put the balls into the fridge or freezer until they are firm.

Then melt dipping chocolate in the microwave, and dip the balls in!

Put the balls onto a piece of wax paper to cool, and then eat.

They are delicious!

We sure enjoyed them, even if they don't look as good as

The Pioneer Woman's or Bakerellas.

(Click on either of the above links for more elaborate directions.)

Give it a try and let us know how it comes out. If you feel really ambitious, try making some of the cake ball pops that Bakerella makes in all kinds of fancy shapes and sizes. They are so cute!

Another Fun Giveaway

Wondermommy is having a giveaway of a ModKid apron pattern, Good Folks fabric by Anna Maria Horner, and a Fledge/Studio Tantrum Feliz Pattern.

Good Luck to us all!

Fabric Give Away

The ladies at The Farm Chicks web journal are giving away TWO YARDS of Pixie Dust decorator fabrics in a giveaway this weekend. Click on the links and have a look. Very cute fabric. I hope I win!

Happy Easter

Every Easter we make a Lamb cake to enjoy and some years it tastes wonderful and looks beautiful and some years it does not. This year's doesn't look too bad from the front but it doesn't have a back. Poor Lamb. The pound cake recipe didn't have enough batter to make the cake raise up into the back of the mold. About a half hour after taking this picture, our Lamb tipped over backwards and lost his head. I really need a new recipe! Anyone have one I can try?