12 posts tagged “fun”

Wednesday's funeral for our friend Tom was a very proper Catholic funeral, but by no means Tom's idea of a party.  Saturday night his friends decided to correct that situation by sending him off with a bang (both literally and figuratively).

Tom believed in buying his beer by the keg and had just brought home a new one before he left on his trip to Missouri.  We tapped it for him and did our best to drink it all.

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One of his buddies brought over his grill and a little food (what you see here is just the tip of the iceberg).

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Several people also brought fireworks and guns.  In fact, I had my first experience with a shotgun (I'd only fired pistols and rifles before). 

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Shortly before dark Ken set off and acetylene bomb. [1]  He's been talking about them as long as I've known him, but this was his first chance since then to set one off. The fuse he used to try to light it was the wrong kind of string (it was all he could find) and it didn't go off.  Not to be defeated, Ken and Dave lit a couple of roman candles and shot at it until they hit it and it went off.  I must say, it was very impressive.  I was sitting about 50 feet away from it and felt the shock wave from the blast.

After dark we went out to one of the ponds on the property and the guys spent nearly two hours setting off fireworks.  Some of the aerials they had were more impressive than what we saw at the ballgame the night before (I heard one estimate that they had spent about $700 on fireworks, but I don't know if that's accurate or not.)

All in all, it was a party that Tom could be proud of.



This afternoon we went over to Darcy's new house to celebrate Claire's 11th birthday which was actually on July 4.  The house is about 90 years old and has tons of personality

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but we were happy to see all those squealing girls go home.

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[1] Ken's acetylene bomb
    You need:
    One large plastic trash bag
    An acetylene torch
    twine (that stiff brown stuff you use for mailing)
    WD-40
    lighter

Light the torch and adjust until you have a good blue flame.  Whack the torch against concrete so that the flame goes out but the gas is still flowing.  Fill the trash bag with this air/acetylene mixture.  Close the trash bag and tie it off with the twine.  Be sure to leave a fuse about 10 feet long.  Douse the fuse with WD-40.  Place the trash bag in a large open area.  Be sure the fuse is stretched out straight in the direction you are going to run.  Light the end of the fuse.  RUN! 

A fun day was had by all.  Well, except for the part Jonah slept through.  But he really liked the rest of it.

Pretty bird

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Hey, baby...

Ninner, ninner, ninner. You can't eat us!

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A lot of these pictures were taken at the new Oklahoma Trails exhibit.  It's huge.  I don't think we saw much more than a third of the entire zoo today.  Good thing we bought a membership so we can go back another day to see what all we missed!

Today is my day to watch Jonah.  Grampa Kenny is playing hooky from work and we're going to the zoo.  Hope to have pictures later.

Jonah wants to say something--"b  b b  c vubnnnnnnny hyjuiiuyhgbfgbj"

I'm on my way out the door for a big weekend of quilting.  40 women at a church camp in Perkins, OK with a fabulous quilt store just 6 blocks away!  Lots of food, lots of friends (new and old), and lots and lots of sewing.  I'll take pictures and let you know about all the fun after I get home Saturday evening.

Sweatshop

I had some of my friends over for the weekend for a quilt camp.  It was kinda like having my own little sweatshop except I didn't get to keep what they made.  They loved working in my studio and can't wait to come back.  From left to right they are Laura, May, Linda, Marcia (my sister), Toni, and Becky.  We ate too much food and got lots of work done.  Since they were taking up all the table space I quilted all weekend.  First I did a quilt for one of Toni's daughters to raffle off for the Brain Tumor Association.

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And was able to finish the weekend off with a quilt for myself that's almost done.

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I mentioned the other day that I spent my weekend at quilt camp (the things we girls do for fun!).  Toni is getting ready to go up to Canada for a few weeks and will be missing three organized camps sponsored by quilt shops so she decided that she needed to have one of her own before she goes.  We started arriving at her house a little past noon on Thursday.  There were 7 of us including Toni on Thursday.  Even Linda was there (she was playing hooky from teaching 2nd grade).  Pam was supposed to be there, but Ponca City was covered with ice and she couldn't get out until Friday morning.  Becky and I spent the night with Toni.  Friday morning we were all back to our sewing and Pam arrived shortly before lunch time.  She stayed the night at Toni's but had to leave Saturday afternoon to go stay with her dad a couple of nights.  Everyone went home Saturday evening except for me.  I spent one more night with Toni and helped her clean up before I came home Sunday morning.

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I got lots of sewing done over the weekend.  I started off working on postcards.  First I experimented with some gel pens I had purchased to see if they would show up on the dark blue background of the cards I had already made.  They did and I was able to fill in the bare spots with colored stars so they now look much better.  Then I proceeded to fuse more of the blue fabric onto Timtex so that I can make some more cards.  I only had enough fusible web to cover 8 cards and then I was done with postcards until I could go shopping.

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Next I moved on to doing something with the leftover fabric from a Jinny Beyer kit I had put together for the quilt shop.  I recut the leftover triangles into a usable shape and sewed them together into a kaleidoscope block format.  Figured out what I want to do with them next, but didn't have the fabric I needed so that project got put on hold until I could go shopping.

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I then moved on to a quilt that I had started making in 2006.  10 of 20 blocks were done when I had to put it aside.  I now have all 20 blocks finished as well as the smaller blocks that will go in the four corners.  It was about 9:00 Saturday night when I finished those up so I stopped there.

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All in all it was a highly productive weekend.  In addition to all of that work I did the two fractures while I was teaching class on Saturday.  We have time for one more camp before Toni leaves on her trip.  It will be at my house in two weeks.

At least, that's what my customers always told me.  Every Wednesday at my shop was Girls' Day Out.  They would come in the morning (or whenever they could get there) and sew all day.  It wasn't unusual for me to find some of the girls waiting in the parking lot when I arrived for work in the morning.  Most weeks we didn't turn out the lights and lock the door until after 10:00pm. 

Even with my shop now closed the tradition has continued.  During the early fall one of the girls in the group made her tax offices available to us as they were only open on Thursday (now it's tax season and they are open everyday).  Once Michelle got her shop addition completed we have been meeting at her quilt store.

I now thoroughly enjoy getting to be one of the girls and just sew all day.  In order to keep from feeling like I'm playing hooky for the day I usually take a work related project with me.  Today I did not.  For the first time since the beginning of September I took work that was just for me!  One of my quilt guilds has decided to start a block of the month project and I am participating.  I got 4 applique blocks fused together and ready for stitching.  Next week I'll do the 4 pieced blocks and I will be done for January and February.

As I was preparing to close the shop I promised myself that I could start making fabric postcards.  Today I got my first 4 cards finished and ready to mail.

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...really are the best.      

Wint-o-green lifesavers

First the details:

1.  I keep a bag of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers in my car at all times (bad habit I picked up from my husband).

2.  This morning when I left to run my errands the air temp (and, therefore, the inside of my car and all it's contents) was in the mid 20's.

3.   I eat a lot of Lifesavers when I drive.

Now for the fun:

When you warm up a cold Lifesaver very quickly (such as what happens when you pop it into your mouth) it heats up unevenly.  This creates thermal stress fractures in the candy.  They will begin to form within seconds of popping the candy into your mouth.  If you listen very carefully you can hear the cracks forming in the candy.  Sometimes you can even feel the vibrations on your tongue.  Continue to gently suck on the candy and after a couple of minutes (you must be patient for this part) the candy will actually separate along the fracture lines.  On a really cold day you may end up with a dozen pieces of candy. 

Too impatient to wait for a cold morning?  Put them in the freezer for a couple of hours.

Don't like wintergreen?  I suspect any flavor will work (though I haven't tried them myself).

Ain't science fun!!

My sweet little baby is getting so big!  We had a good time this evening.

Such a cute baby!

Jonah eats dinner