Happy New Year -Welcome 2015

New Years Eve this year is at our home in Waterloo. We have been alternating with the Westphal's since 1991. The years have involved all our children and celebration of the new year usually around 9pm so we all could get home before 11pm.

This year: Kevin, Patti, Hannah, Cherith, Dan and myself.

Dinner was turkey breast with all the trimmings. Games played were Family Feud, Categorically Speaking and Hugger Mugger. We had are usually New Years celebration with champagne with the Holzhueter glasses.

So what are the next quilting projects and projects from the past

Today decided to sandwich my "jelly roll race 2" made from Downton Abbey fabrics form the countess inspired. I will plan on doing the baptist fan quilting as free quilting by Bonnie Hunter.

I also have decided to add some of my quilts from the past. Here is a favorite and was a tea pot exchange from several other quilters. I believe this was machine quilted..not the best, but I still like the quilt.

And the final project was basting 10 Dutch Treat blocks for travel to Arizona in February to April. Must have some hand sewing to do during trip. Will not take the sewing machine this year.

Cannot wait to travel here. It has been a long time! Will be house hunting as well!

Will work on some "ohmygosh" quilt blocks while listening to TV.

Abi's quilt is finished...Packers division champions..."unbroken"

Just shy of a year since beginning this quilt. This was Bonnie Hunter's mystery last year, the first time I did it with her following. Enjoyed the pattern so much decided it would make a great Packer quilt for Abi. Sewing did not take long, but the hand quilting did, just with other projects I was working on. This past fall decided to concentrate on doing the quilting during Packer games. I actually finished the binding last evening and did the cutim quilt label today with the fancy stiching on my fairly new sewing machine. ( I won a football contest 2 years ago and with the winning bought my computer singer sewing machine which I love..just have not done machine quilting yet...)

Yesterday the Green Bay Packers claimed another division championship. So the season continues. So if they make the Super Bowl they will travel to Arizona and will will miss them by 2 weeks as we will travel down February 20th. We'll see how this turns out.

We saw the movie "unbroken" today. I predict that the movie will win an Oscar. Great story and well directed movie.

View from Mt Lemon I. Arizona. Getting axious to travel here. Will have to wait until next year and finishing out my remaining time at work as a Clinic Resouce Leader (RN). Uncertain what direction the organization will go. All I know is I am already being "shamed" for leaving. Un- invites to meetings has already begun. I am ready to move on.

Tomorrow will work on some "Dutch Treat" blocks and maybe sandwich a quilt I sewed using the jelly roll race using Downton Abbey fabrics. Maybe can be a hand quilting project for travel to Arizona.

Early retirement on the horizon.

I have been following a few blogs and what is so neat about it is that it is a documentation of life events and travels. So officially I willbe retiring from nursing January 30th 2015😄. While this is going to be hard to let go all my nursing dreams for the future, I embrace the next chapter of my and my sweetie's life.

Our first trip planned will be to an old stomping ground we frequented years ago Tucson Arizona. We are renting for six weeks and will use some of the time looking at homes/or condo that we might purchase for yearly trips or if we want to travel there other times. Our plan is to drive taking three days. Dan has already mapped our course and made reservations at hotels. Hannah and Abigail will be flying down for spring break at different times. This will be Abigail's first time traveling on plane by herself with a transfer at Denver...so hopefully that will all go well.

So a quilting friend had mentioned "letterboxing". Not to sure what this is but found that there are many letterboxes hidden on trails in Tuscon and it sounds like a lot of fun. So I have  signed uo on group and there are about 200 letterboxes with various lengths of walking. We could probably do 3-4 per week and it is free except for park pass. We probably would invest in this as I would love to do more walking if my knee can hold up.

So today I will start this blog and attempt frequent updates.

Today we are headed to Keith and Lori's to celebrate Christmas with Dan's side of the family. Good food and family games into the evening for some. Cousins always have a good time together.

Abigail just told us about her and Cameron snowboarding at Cascade Mt. yesterday. Lots of falls and bruises but had a good time.