Christmas pictures...

Quote for the Day:

Christmas is not an external event at all, 

but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.
Freya Stark

If you've been wondering where I've been...well...between having computer issues, getting ready for Christmas, and frantically finishing up the Sunflower quilt to make room for Holiday guests, I've been busy!  :)  I didn't forget my readers, though, and I hope you haven't forgotten me, either!  :)

Erin, Dale and Sera came home from Tennessee to celebrate Christmas with us and we had a great visit!  :)  Since I got such a late start on Christmas decorating because kitchen construction items have been strewn about the house for month, now, I only put up the Christmas tree, and a couple of items on the porch... 

 

On Christmas Eve, Sera went outside and put "reindeer food" on the lawn!  Reindeer food consists of oats and red glitter.  The reindeer see the red glitter from the sky and know to stop at that house, and the oats for them to nibble on when they land!  :)

She was also sure to leave cookies and milk out for Santa!  It all must have worked, because there were plenty of gifts to open the next morning!  :)

This is Daisy...their dog...who kept on eye on all the activities!  :)

 

She was particularly interested in what Andy was opening...

 

All in all, it was a very nice Christmas and visit even if Erin & I did come down with colds on Christmas day.  

Erin, Dale and Sera left today to return their home.  The house is again quiet.   And I'm going to miss them all very much until the next time we get to see them!

Loretta

Book Review Time...

Quote for the Day:

"The worth of a book is to be measured by
what you can carry away from it." 

~James Bryce

I just finished reading "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers, and felt that I MUST tell you about it!

• Synopsis:  Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun (pronounced "Zaytoon") run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.

This book was RIVETING!  All I can say is WOW!  We all heard the "news" coming out of New Orleans during the time that followed hurricane Katrina.  This book debunks some of that news, but then gives a whole new view of the lawlessness that really did occur...part of which was perpetrated by those sent to enforce the law.  It's scarey to think that any of this could happen right here in the USA.  Aren't we supposed to be all about "human rights" in this country? 

NOLA Now: A trip with Zeitoun is a video interview with Mr. Zeitounin 2010 where he takes the interviewer to places that were mentioned in the book.

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough!  Trust me, about half-way through this book, you won't be able to put it down!



Loretta

Sunday Couponing...

Quote for the Day:

Negligient:  adj.

Absentmindedly answering the door 

when wearing only a nightgown.

This morning when I was getting my coupons and lists ready to go shopping, my printer decided that it was no longer going to respond to the commands of the computer.  I tried re-installing the software for the printer, but to no avail.  :(  

Luckily, everything is still under warranty and so a call to Dell technical service and 1.5 hours online with a really nice lady from India...and the printer is back up and working just fine!  

I love how they can do a remote access to your computer and do everything themselves!  How many of you remember the "olden" days...before remote access...when the technician would say, "okay, now left click the start button...now open the program...do you see a the word "file" at the top of the page...left-click on that..."  That was soooooooo frustrating because they never believed you when you said you had done what they had told you to do but you still weren't getting the desired results.  :(  And if you had to call multiple times for the same issue, you had to redo the first 15 steps EACH time.  "Yes, we tried that before...and it didn't work then, either."  GRRRR...it was so frustrating!  But now...BAM...you establish a connection with them and let THEM deal with it!  Soooooooooo much better!!!!

So now the printer is back working just fine...taking orders from the computer and printing out the way it should!  :)  

Last Sunday was the Christmas party for the Recovery Room dept.  I had someone take the group picture for me...the first one was good but very blurry...so I'm stuck showing you the not-so-good-but-not-blurry one...

That would be me, second from the right in the front row...with my eyes closed.  :(  And just to be clear...that little girl on the far left is NOT an employee...she is the daughter of the lady in red to her left.  We may be desperate for help sometimes, but we haven't resorted to child labor, yet!  :)

If you look closely, in front of the second person from the left, front row, is an "orb".  (The white round thing down close to her feet.) 


I've labeled it in this picture...

If you've ever watched "Long Island Medium", you'll know that an "orb" is supposed to be the spirit presence of a deceased person.  I've seen her show pictures on her show and this is exactly what they look like.  She says it is NOT just something on the lens.   It is not present in the other picture that was blurry...I went back and checked.  I had heard this about orbs in pictures before watching that show, too.   Hmmm...just makes you wonder.  Who's to say for sure?  I know that I certainly don't have all the answers, so who am I to say "yay" or "nay" on this subject?


Well...onto my couponing deals today...

At Walgreens....

I got $51.90 worth of product, paid $2.58 out-of-pocket, got $14.50 back in Register Rewards, making this trip an $11.92 moneymaker for me.  :)

At Rite Aid...

I got $27.97 worth of product, paid $7.34 out-of-pocket, got $3.00 back in +Up Rewards, making this trip a net cost of $4.34.  :)  

I think my Christmas stocking candy is purchased for the year!  LOL

Loretta

Picture Day...

Quote for the Day:

"Scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts

is to make males stupid."
~Dave Barry

Today was Picture Day!!!

I got all dressed up and took "the girls" to get their annual picture taken.  I thought the red bows I attached made them look particularly festive!  :)

I told the mammography techician to make sure that the pictures turned out nice because this was going to be our Christmas card picture this year!   She thought the idea of this being our Christmas card picture was funny and commented that some people might get more than they bargained for when they opened up the envelope!  LOL

For those young'uns of you who haven't had a mammogram, yet, here is a list of exercises that you can work on to prepare you for when you have to have the actual test:

How to Prepare for a Mammogram  

Many women are afraid of their first mammogram, but there is no need to worry. By taking a few minutes each day for a week preceding the exam and doing the following exercises, you will be totally
prepared for the test.

And best of all, you can do these simple exercises right in your home.

EXERCISE ONE:

Open your refrigerator door and insert one breast in door. Shut as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure. Hold that position for five seconds. Repeat again in case the first time wasn't effective enough.

EXERCISE TWO:

Visit your garage at 3 AM when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Take off all your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat with the other breast.

EXERCISE THREE:

Freeze two metal bookends over night. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room.  Press the bookends against one of your breasts. Smash the bookends together as hard as you can. Set up an appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again.

YOU ARE NOW TOTALLY PREPARED!!!

 

Though I'm not sure one is ever "totally prepared" for this type of torture, I am thankful that we have the technology to diagnose breast cancer early!  So please, Ladies, get your mammograms!  :)

And I'll leave you with this final thought...

Loretta

Do You See What I See....

Quote for the Day:

"Do you see what I see, way up in the sky, little lamb?"

~Do You Hear What I Hear, lyrics

This is what I saw this past weekend...

...that's right...that white along the left side of the picture is the batting at the top of the Sunflower Quilt, which means that I am coming to the end of this quilt and only have about 14" left to quilt on it!    :)  I'm moving right along on it and should have it done and out of the frame before company comes for Christmas!  

That's a good thing!  Because then the roller part of the frame gets turned straight up and down and the whole frame slides up against the wall and out of the way...making room for the bed we put up for guests!   I can do this with a quilt on the frame, but it is easier to do, and you don't "tweak" the quilt top, if there is no quilt on the frame at the time.

Last July, when I went to the estate auction of the quilter and got a great haul, I ended up finding 5-6 pair of scissors among the items I bought.  Two of the pairs were Ginghers, which is an expensive brand and highly treasured by quilters and sewers.   This is one of those pair of Ginghers scissors...

Aren't they adorable?  They are a 4" pair of embroidery scissors.  They are razor sharp and have a nice weight to them, so you can tell right away that they are made with quality materials.  :)  I love the "fabric" design on the handles.

In fact, I like that fabric design so well, that lo and behold...I have some that is almost identical to it in this quilt! 
  

When I lay my scissors on that particular fabric, they become "camouflaged".  The design is almost identical but the scissors are slightly more peachy whereas the fabric is pink.  Still...I thought the coincidence was humorous!  :)

Okay, so it's the simple things that make me smile!  :)  As long as we keep smiling, I guess that's the important part!  :)


Loretta

It's the Little Things...

Quote for the Day:

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."

~Marian Wright Edelman

Erin, Dale and Sara are coming home for Christmas, so we are looking at how we can get some of the kitchen renovation materials that are currently sitting in the entry way and dining room out of the way as much as possible.  It's one thing for us to live "around" them, but they take up so much space that when you have company, they really decrease your amount of available space.  :(   Plus, we need to make a space to put up the Christmas tree!  :D

We are going to try to go ahead and put up the wall cabinets that will go on the opposite wall of the kitchen which will not only get them out of the entry way, but also provide us immediately with additional storage.  That's a good thing!  :)

In the meantime, today we attached the rest of the hardware to the cabinets that have already been installed since the end of May!  :)

I love the antiqued bronze pulls...they remind of of what you would find on a drawer in an old office, library, or hardware store!   :)

Close up of lower cabinets...

Close up of wall cabinets...

Don't they look GREAT???  I LOVE them!

After installing the hardware, we went through the old drawer-full of plastic lids and pared it down to fit the current drawer, which is much smaller.  We had a lot of lids that had lost their containers, so we ended up throwing out about 1/2 of a garbage bagful of orphan plastic lids.  So now we have removed 3 more of the drawers that were sitting in the dining room...(1 drawer had the plastic lids but we had it sitting on top of two empty drawers so we wouldn't have to bend over as much to get things in and out of it.)

I did my coupon shopping today at Walgreen's and Rite Aid and got some very good deals for my money!  :)

At Walgreen's, I got $56.34 worth of product, paid $33.25 out-of-pocket, got $32.00 back in Register Rewards, so all of this only cost me $1.25!!  :)

Walgreen's...

At Rite Aid, I got $58.59 worth of product, paid $5.35 out-of-pocket, got $11.99 back in +Up Rewards and SCR's, making this a $6.64 money-maker for me!  :)

Rite Aid...

Loretta

My First Quilt...

Quote of the Day:

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

~Confucius 

Over at Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog she posted about her first quilt and offered to let her followers link up a post about our first quilt, so I thought I'd do just that!  :)

Before I had ever quilted my first quilt, I had embroidered 2 quilt tops that my Aunt Priscilla then hand-quilted for me.  The first of those two was this full-sized sunflower quilt...
 

I started embroidering this pre-printed top in 1978 when I graduated high school...but with 5 years of college, a new marriage, starting a career and having 2 children...it didn't get finished till 1991.  It took Aunt Priscilla 3 weeks to hand-quilt it!  LOL

My dad came from a Mennonite family and quilting ran through their veins like blood runs through everybody else's.  LOL  

The second quilt top that I embroidered was a set of 6 blocks with animals pre-printed on them that I then joined together to make a quilt top for my then unborn first child, a son.  I did these while I was pregnant with him, sent them to Aunt Priscilla, who then added a border to it and then quilted it, along with 3 other of my aunts.  They each embroidered their name in the four front corners of the border!  :)     Because of the "specialness" of this quilt... having all the Aunt's names embroidered on it... I never did use it...it remained stored away where Paul couldn't spit up on it or have a diaper leak on it.  Today, this quilt is with my son and daughter-in-law, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it to post.  :(

Up till this point, I had only embroidered the quilt tops and had not actually "quilted" them. 

When I was pregnant with my second and last child, I decided to embroider a pre-printed top for her, too.  However, since I was working full-time, suffering with 7 months of morning sickness, maintaining a household, and raising a toddler, I didn't get the embroidering done till she was about 4-5 years old!  :(  

By this time, I was beginning to get interested in learning how to quilt and decided that I'd "learn" on this quilt.  I called my Aunt Priscilla and, over the phone, asked her a million questions about hand-quilting.  She was patient and answered them all!  I bought a simple round hoop for a few dollars at the local fabric/craft store, polyester batting, some hand-quilting thread, a package of "betweens" needles, and some fabric from the "$2 Fabric Store" for the border and backing!  No, really...there was a store that sold "seconds", etc, and the name of the store was "$2 Fabric Store" and all fabric was $2/yard or less!  I don't even know if the fabric was 100% cotton or not.  The fabric was NOT good quality, but I was cheap and I about fainted the first time I went into a true "quilt fabric store" and saw that in the early 1990's they were charging $6-8/yard of fabric.  (This was southern California.)  HOLY MOLY!!!  I had been fabric sewing since 1975 and had NEVER paid those prices for fabric!  HIGHWAY ROBBERY!  LOL

Anyway...my kids were past the toddler stage so I was able to spend some time hand-quilting this quilt, and was able to complete it over the course of a summer...

Nobody told me that you needed to have dense quilting when using polyester batting to keep it from shifting inside the quilt!  YIKES! 

By the time this quilt was finished...in 1993, according to my primitive label, LOL...Erin was 6 years old, so never actually used this quilt, either!  

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me...oh, the things I've learned since then!  :D

Loretta

Post-Thanksgiving Post...

Quote for the Day:

"On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families 

sit down to dinner at the same moment -- halftime.  

~Author Unknown

For my US readers...Happy Black Friday!  I hope that if you went out and braved the crowds that you at least got some good deals.  :)

I was warm and snug in my bed....there was nothing out there I needed.  I have done the "Black Friday" early-morning shopping thing a handful of times in my life when there were good deals on electronics that I wanted/needed....but not for several years now.

Although we didn't have the traditional Thanksgiving turkey meal yesterday, I wanted to share a really cool recipe to use up those leftovers.  We've made this before and, trust me, it is delicious...even though it doesn't sound like it would be.  LOL

Take all your leftovers...mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, veggies, gravy, turkey, and even your leftover cranberry sauce!  EVERYTHING!!!  Yes, the cranberry sauce, too!  :)  Put it all in the crockpot and cook on low all for about 6 hours.  Serve with the leftover rolls!  :)  It makes the best stew/thick soup!

MMMMMMMMMMM...............  You're gonna have to trust me on this...it is WONDERFUL!   If you try it, please leave a comment to let me know what you think!  :)


Well...wish me luck...

I have another MRI this afternoon...this time of the pelvis.  "Something" showed up at the lower levels of the lumbar spine MRI on the right side so my doctor has ordered an MRI of the pelvis to see what it is...swelling, mass, lump?  We'll see....




Loretta

Where's Waldo???

Quote for the Day:

"Always gotta keep busy or the voices start telling me to do wild things."

~Steven Brown 

I've been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger!  
All of my non-work time and non-sleep time has been taken up working on a legal issue we are fighting right now.  I can't say anything at this time, but if it all works out in the end, I will blog about it.

Though I've had a few scarce moments to sneak into my quilting room and do a few hand-quilting stitches on the Sunflower Quilt, I've not had time to do much else, much less, time to take pictures and post about it.


Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA and I hope that everyone here in the USA has a great celebration...enjoy your time with friends and family...or just enjoy your day off of work, if you get it off.  :)


Blessings to all, please keep us in your prayers over this legal issue.

Loretta

A Baby Quilt Ready for Borders!

Quote for the Day:

"If you build it, they will come..."

~Field of Dreams

Yesterday I posted about using some leftover HST's to make a Carpenter's Star baby quilt.  I had all the blocks made and arranged on the design wall yesterday so today I sewed them together into an "almost finished" top.  It currently measures 36" X 36".  It still needs the borders, but I will decide on the color for them later...when I know what baby this is for.  :)

 

You see...I'm hoping for a new grandbaby in the next year or so...so I'm taking the advice that "The Voice" gave to Kevin Costner in "Field of Dreams"... "If you build it, they will come!"  I'm hoping that if I make a baby quilt, I'll get another grandbaby!  :)    Hey...it worked in the movie!  LOL

BTW...for the quilters that read my blog...
I have a tip for helping you keep the correct placement of the blocks when sewing a top together...especially when you are doing a scrappy quilt or one that you don't have a pattern for.

When my blocks are on the design wall, I take a picture with my digital camera so I look at the picture on the display screen (or you can upload it to your computer and look at it there).  I'm looking for "mistakes" in placement, color balance, etc.  For some reason, looking at them on a smaller scale like this shows up things that you don't see when you are looking at the larger item on the design wall.  When you have everything just as you want it, take a picture and print it out on regular paper.  (To save ink, I also use the "fast print" setting.)

Use your picture as a diagram to double check things as you are sewing the blocks together.  I invariably turn blocks or switch them up when joining them to each other.  But with the picture to look at, I can make sure everything is just where it is supposed to be before sewing them together.

And another tip...just because I appreciate my readers...
I fold quilt tops and drape them over the bar of a hanger to store them till I am ready to quilt them.  This prevents deep creases that come from folding and stacking them.  :)

That's all my tips for today, Folks!  If I gave you anymore at one time, I'd have to charge you for them!   LOL


By the way, Loretta...what time is it???

It's "Book Review" time!!!  :D    *band strikes up fast tempo music*

I just finished reading "All By My Selves" by Jeff Dunham.

It is his autobiography and was quite interesting.  I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.  Well...maybe 4.25 stars...
It was interesting AND funny...so that's a good combination for me!  :)   I like watching his work, so that made it even more appealing to me.

Remember, Folks...I don't charge any extra for the book reviews!  But you get what you pay for...so think about that...   :D


Loretta

What To Do With "Leftovers"???

Quote for the Day:

 “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years 

she served the family nothing but leftovers. 

The original meal has never been found.”

~Calvin Trillin 

No, no, no...not those kinds of leftovers!  

I'm talking about the "leftover" HST's (Half-Square Triangles) that I have from making this quilt...

A less frugal person might have thrown them away...but anybody who knows me, knows that I am not able to discard usable fabric!  :)  I paid good money for this fabric!  I can't throw it away!  

These are the blocks, or HST's as we quilters call them, that I had leftover.  I threw them on the design wall to see what I could do with them.  There were 44 of these 5" blocks.  Whatever I made with them would be either a lap quilt or a baby quilt.

After playing around with them and doing a little research on the internet the light bulb went on in my head!  

I have always wanted to do the "Carpenter's Star" pattern...and that pattern uses a lot of HST's!   I had to add just a couple more blocks to the mix to come up with this...

All of this was made from "leftovers" and scraps that I had in my stash!!  :)

It's not sewn together, yet, but the design is there...ready to be sewn together tomorrow!  

I would really like to make this a baby quilt.  Whether it's for a boy or girl will decide what color to do the outer border, but I can get the rest of it finished up to the borders.  

I know it's not the "traditional" baby quilt, in the normal "cutesy, babyish" way, but it does have blue, pink, yellow and light green in it...among other colors, too... so tell me what you think.  If someone gave it to you for your baby, would you like it?

I'd really like your feedback!  

Loretta

A Good Night's Rest...

Quote for the Day:

“There is only one thing people like that is good for them...

a good night's sleep”

~Edgar Watson Howe

This weekend was the end of Daylight Savings Time here in the USA, so I hope everyone remembered to turn their clocks back one hour!  I also hope you were able to enjoy that extra hour of sleep!  :)

Unless you are like me...I like to stay up late, so that extra hour for me was an extra hour I could stay up and quilt and still "go to bed at my normal time"!   :)

Either way, I hope you enjoyed your extra hour this weekend.  Today starts the days of the sun going down "early"...which means about 5:30 PM at our house.  There is a mountain behind our house so when the sun gets to a certain point on the horizon just past the top of that mountain, it's "down" for us.  During the dead of winter, this turns into about 4:15 PM for us.  :(


Last weekend when we went to Pittsburgh, we went to the Select Comfort Store, tried out their beds, and ordered us a mattress to fit into our existing bed frame.  It arrived on Wednesday in this big box...

Sleep Number beds come disassembled so you have to assemble them yourself, but the instructions are very clear and pretty easy to do. 

HOWEVER...before we could get to that point, Andy had to make some modifications to our existing bed frame...

Our bed was, originally, a waterbed that we purchased in December of 1986.  How do I remember the date???  Well, it was one month before Erin was born!  :)   Silly things like that stay in my brain for some reason!  LOL 

I love this bed!  I remember when our kids were young, on Sunday mornings both kids would come into our room and get on the bed and sit and play or talk with us.  It was kind of our ritual.   There are even teeth marks on the foot board from Erin!  I would put her on the bed to watch TV while I dressed and she would crawl down to the foot and try to "teethe" on it when she was cutting teeth.  :( 

It's these kinds of memories that make getting rid of this bed frame hard to do...so instead of buying a whole new bed...$$$...Andy had to make some adjustments to this one to hold the new mattress which is not as deep as the frame.

Anyway...back to the bed...we loved the waterbed very much, but when we moved into this house and our bedroom was on the second floor, we weren't sure that there was enough support below our floor to support the weight of a waterbed.  So at that time we went and got us a cheapo air mattress that was made to fit into a waterbed frame.  All the air was in one large chamber so that both people had to agree on the softness/firmness, which between Andy & me is not an easy decision.  To put the air into the mattress you had to use a manual pump that got difficult to operate once the mattress started getting full.  About twice a year or so we would have to "add" air to the mattress just because it would lose a little over time.  

We had placed a 4" memory foam topper on top of the mattress, so it wasn't too bad to sleep on...unless it was down on air...in which case, it "hammocked".  Until more air was added...which meant stripping the entire bed to get to the air inlet hole...the bed was VERY uncomfortable.  Needless to say, the whole thing was a hassle to deal with...thus causing us to make a decision to buy a new mattress.

This is what the frame looked like after removing the old air mattress and liner...

Andy needed to build up the base by 2" so the new mattress would be the same height as the side rails.  On top of the current base, he put some 2 X 4's and then some new plywood on top of those...

Now it was time to start assembling the components of the mattress that looked like this when we unpacked them...

Yeah...doesn't look like much, does it!  LOL  I didn't get a picture of the electric pump, but there was that, too.

We put the original waterbed liner back in the frame to protect the new mattress from the wood base.  Then came the outside of the mattress and the foam "walls"...

Then the air chambers...two of them...so we can each choose the firmness on our side of the bed...

There is another piece of foam that runs down between the two air chambers that you can't see in this picture.

Next we added the padded top that zips on...making it look like a regular mattress...

Sleep Number has a memory foam topper that you can buy and add to the mattress, but since we already had one, we just used it, instead.  I really need the memory foam to relieve the pressure points on my "curvy" body!   Regular mattress are hell for me to sleep on because they don't "give" enough and I'm constantly waking up from the pain caused on the pressure points and have to change positions, causing me to toss and turn a lot.  Doesn't make for good sleeping on vacations because hotel mattresses are too firm and feel like I'm sleeping on a slab of concrete.  :(    (BTW, Celeste...I LOVED the bed we slept on at your house because the mattress was SOFT!!)

Finally...our new bed is made and ready for that extra hour of sleep!

The instructions say to fill the air chambers completely and then, while laying on the bed, let the air out gradually until you get to your comfort level, which we did.  I let more air out of my side than Andy did on his. 

At first, I thought the mattress felt "harder" than our other mattress, even after letting air out, and I thought I would have trouble sleeping on it.  Just because it was "different", I did take a little longer to fall asleep, but once I did, I slept very well and woke up with NO STIFFNESS this morning!  Usually, I have trouble with my hips not wanting to straighten out immediately when I stand up...usually I have to take several steps before I can straighten out completely.  But not this morning!  YAY for that!   I'm hoping that this new mattress will help alleviate some of the pressure on my back and help with my back pain over time!

I'm looking forward to more REALLY GOOD nights of sleep on this bed and have high hopes for it!  :)


Loretta

Saturday, Oh Saturday...What a Day You Were...

Quote for the Day:

“Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you”

~Ogden Nash

Yesterday (Saturday) we had to go to PIttsburgh to take care of some business, so we decided to get an early start so we could go to some thrift stores while up there.  It's about 90 miles north of us, so we headed out about 8 AM.

As luck would have it, we also got our first snow of the season yesterday, making Route 119 north, the 2 lane road to get to the freeway, treacherous to travel!  :( 

After going about 10 miles on this road, we were the first people to come upon an accident.  The poor lady had spun out and ended up in the opposite ditch, facing the direction she had come from, her Honda Element now resting on it's passenger side.   She was wearing a seatbelt and it held her suspended firmly in place.  Because the car was up on it's side, she could't get out either door.  Soon after we stopped, another car containing two nurses on their way home from working night shift in Morgantown....a male and a female.  The male nurse and Andy were able to tip the car so it was back on all four tires, albeit, still at about a 70 degree angle so the driver still couldn't climb out of the driver's side.  However, she was able to climb out of the passenger's front window!  We helped her up the steeply banked ditch and let her come sit in our warm car while we waited for help to arrive.  The other couple that stopped to help then left and continued towards their nice warm beds.   One other guy in a pickup did stop to see if we needed anything, but by that time everything was under control.

The first emergency responders to respond to our 911 call were two volunteer firemen, each in their own personal vehicles.  One of them had still been in bed when he got the call!  :)

You can't really see it, but her car is just ahead and to the right of the fireman in the yellow vest.  Since the car was dark blue and all I had was my lousy camera phone, you really can't see the car.   

Thank you to other couple that stopped to help and God bless the volunteer firemen...and not just these two...but all who volunteer their services to help others.

What astounded me was how fast people were speeding down this road that was slippery with wet, slushy snow...even as they were passing by an accident and people on the side of the road.  My pant legs got splattered with road slush more than once from  people barreling down that road while we were there.  :(  

People, if you see an accident and persons along side the road, please, please, please SLOW DOWN so they don't fear for their lives!

After that excitement, we continued on to Pittsburgh, passed a house fire that firemen were working on, and found where we needed to go to take care of the "business" part of our trip.  

After taking care of everything, we found a place to eat lunch and then  programmed thrift store addresses into "Jill", our GPS unit, and headed out to see what we could find!  :D  (I had found a site online that you can put in a zip code and it will compile a list of thrift stores in the area, with addresses and hours of operation!)

We hit  four thrift stores and came out with some great bargains!  Some to keep, some for other family members, and some to resell.  

Here are just SOME of the items that we bought to "keep"... a pair of Hush Puppies leather, sheepskin-lined, ankle boots for me...$2.00!!!  A winter jacket for Andy...$3.00!!  Two Liz Claiborne tops for me...$5.00 total!!  Three matching woven throw rugs...$1.99 each!!!  (You can never have too many rugs!)  :)  Four mugs and a cheese server/dish with matching spatula...all of them are part of my Pfaltzgraff Winterberry Christmas dish set...$5.00 for the 4 mugs and cheese dish/spatula!!  (BTW, Andy got me these dishes...a place setting for four...for $5.00 at a yard sale!  I've been looking for more to go with them since then but this is the first time I've found any!) 

Oh...and one more item that we found....

Yep...that's right...a vintage, full-sized, hand-embroidered, hand-quilted quilt!!!!!!  It was VERY yellowed from age and had some spotting from storage...but I've bought enough vintage linens at auctions and sales to know that a good soaking in Oxi-clean will remove those stains and yellowing!  And it sure did in this case!!  Isn't it GORGEOUS!!!

I soaked it overnight last night and this is what it looks like this morning...

There is no label on the quilt, but in the doorway of the house it is handwritten in blue marker, "The Hamill's".

The hand quilting is 8 stitches per inch...a very respectable quilting job!

Oh...and the price???  $24.95!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  By the way...there are no pulled threads or other signs that this quilt has ever been used!!

I don't know who the "Hamill's" are, but shame on them for getting rid of this beautiful heirloom and disrespecting the person who put so much time, labor and love into this beautiful quilt.   Their ungratefulness is my gain!!!  

Two other people picked this quilt up and looked at it, but turned their noses up at it because of the "stains".  However, when I looked at it, I recognized that the "stains" were not really "stains", per se, and would come out with an Oxi-Clean soak.  However, even if they hadn't come out, I would have loved it either way!

Loretta