Snorkelling!

Tonight was an exciting night at the swimming pool. Savannah is super excited that her ears don't have tubes again because that means she can put her head under the water.

We let her take her snorkel gear to the pool to practice for our next vacation. She loves swimming with goggles, so we thought she'd like this even more. We were right. For awhile Rick pulled her around the pool while she floated. After the hot tub to warm up, she and Mummy went down the water slide, our usual 5 times.

After that we were in the hot tub a short time before she wanted to go back to the big pool. She kept getting her snorkel tube under the water, so I helped her keep it out and floated her around the pool again. After going around once I noticed she was relaxing more, so I let go of one of her hands. She didn't panic, so I switched hands. Still okay. Slowly I let go with both hands without her knowing. Success!

I took her hands and floated her around the pool another time. I mostly only held one hand at a time. Then in the shallow part we tried no hands again. This time Daddy saw it! After that, she didn't want me to hold her hands anymore. She had a hard time moving anywhere, but she did manage to get around a bit. I walked beside her and made sure she kept her snorkel tube above water. Of course I had to pull her out a time or two and help her clear out the tube, but on the whole she did great!

Our little fish is growing up. Pretty soon she'll be off to her own school! :D

Mum's Christmas Quilt

Some time ago I was going through things in my craft room and found a bunch of handkerchiefs that came from my Gramma's house. I decided they were too special and pretty to just leave laying in a drawer for the rest of my life. So, after some pondering, I decided to make my Mum a quilt out of them.

First I sewed them onto squares of white sheet material.

This is a close-up of the embroidered monogram of one of my Grampa's handkerchiefs.

As there were only 10 handkerchiefs and the quilt was going to have 12 squares, I had to figure out what to put in two more squares. My Gramma LOVED Lillies, so a Lily was a natural choice. First I drew a Lily on paper using this photo of one of my own Lillies to copy from.

I cut out the petals for patterns and then used them to applique orange material pieces onto my background material. Here is the pattern after I sewed the material onto the background.

Without the paper.

This is the finished Lily after I embroidered around each petal, made a stem, leaves, pistil and stamens.

This is what I wrote in the other square.

One of the handkerchiefs.

Finished quilt laying on our bed.

The finished quilt, hung in a doorway at Mum's for this photo.

A Little Christmas Fun!

These are a few photos of Savannah's play school Christmas concert day and one of a plate of goodies we gave to friends.

More quilts

These are a couple more quilts I did last summer. One for a boy I baby sit. The other for a friend's little boy.

Getting my Quilt ON!.... Catching up, sewing problems

This post was originally written at the end of September 2010. I didn't have the time then to upload the photos, so am finally getting around to it!....

I've been quilting up a storm again. Seems like now my craft room is more organized and clean, I actually feel like being in there now. It's been nice.

This is a quilt for the birthday party of a girl that Savannah goes to Gymnastics Playschool with.

The next is for a girl in our Joy School (home Playschool) from last year.

Keep in mind these parties are on the 3rd and 4th and Daddy's party is also on the 4th! I think we are going party crazy these days!!! :D Good times, good times.

We were party crazy those days, but it sure was fun! Now my sewing machines are all broken, so I'll have to get at least one fixed. I have 4 and none of them work right now. One is an Antique treadle sewing machine. It serves as an end table and storage area. One is a denim machine. Not sure what it's problem is. Something to do with the tension I think. It keeps breaking thread no matter what I set the knobs to. My "good" sewing machine seems to have a similar problem. My old one that used to belong to my Mother-in-Law broke a plastic piece that is supposed to hold the bobbin in place. I'm sure it has tension issues too. So I'll have to take those three in someday and see what my options are.