Family Times

I've not been getting into the studio much lately, especially last weekend. Our youngest granddaughter celebrated her 7th birthday with a party on Saturday. She's the dark haired one in these pictures. Caki and Sophie are close in age and in love. What a pair!

This sweety is a fun-loving, never serious, darling. We love her so very much and had a fun time watching her and her friends run, jump, and play for a couple of hours. To bottle that energy!

On Sunday the oldest granddaughter celebrated her baby shower. Yes. BABY. Shower. I'm not believing it, still. The baby girl, Amelia, is due in April. If the baby looks anything like her mom, she will be stunningly beautiful. My sweet little Dusti is gorgeous and wonderful. It's difficult to believe that she's graduating, having a baby, and beginning her "grownup" life.  

Her shower was perfect--gray, white, and pinks. Her friends and mom decorated; my sister, Angie, made the cake; and a cousin made pretty cookies. There was party food of every kind and some delicious coffee-flavored punch. 

If it seems that I'm bragging, I suppose that I am. I love my boy and their wives, and my grands. Now there will soon be a great-grand. More family. More to love.

But none of them are giving me time in the studio. It's attend this, do that, can you, please help, and so on. The ME time is coming, however, with retirement this spring...right after the new tyke and Dusti's graduation. Will I make it till May? What do you think? 

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: O R I G A M I

Welcome to the origami version of Sunday Quilt Inspiration. Let's see what we can find. 

And of course, if it's Sunday, there have to be some quilts. You'll love these beauties. Spoiler alert: not all are whole quilts; some are blocks but that makes it easier to see the folds and seams.

The paper piece pattern for the beauty above!

Which is your favorite?

Welcome Parents Booth

the whole picture

Every year our school board puts on a parental involvement fair to encourage parents to learn more about our schools, our teachers, and our policies. There's all manner of legal must-do and better-not-do rules but I won't bore you with all that. 

I'd rather we just get to the finish of the week. It is sort of interesting in a how-are-we-going-to-pull-this-off kind of way. The central office, preschools, K-6 elementaries, and 7-12 high schools all have to create a booth where parents and community members can pick up information and learn about our services, special initiatives, and programs. 

I won the opportunity to head up a PFE committee. The perk: a half-day off to haul stuff to the venue and create the booth. The theme: Louisiana's Best. The plan: get a committee to help. The committee: administrators who didn't want to have to explain why there was no booth. Okay, then! We are ready to roll.

The front table for meet and greet

The first order of business was to bring everyone up to speed on all the details of the event itself. This event has become something of a keep-up-with-the-Jones kind of thing, but we weren't buying it. We decided we wanted to showcase our school and our new magnet status.

a large screen television to show
videos and pictures of our students.

That being said, we quickly came up with some ideas and pulled together a plan. On Wednesday I gathered all the red/white, panther-like, BHS stuff I could put my hands on. On Thursday I garnered some Louisiana trinkets and home decor stuff. By noon we were ready to go. Our counselor, teaming coach and I arrived at the venue and started setting up. 

The schools next door to us had gone all-out and set up banners, backdrops, pirogues, Spanish moss, bamboo, cypress knees, and a plethora of other stuff. "Too much," we said as we went about our business.

The main stage--mixing it up

We had fun and pulled together a great-looking booth. Parents and others came for visits, picked up information about our new magnet status, and learned about the Louisiana Quick Start Program. 

Decorating became easy as we had all the basic items. Once those were in place, we added Louisiana trinkets, mementos , and magnolia leaves to the mix. And, while we didn't have the biggest or the faniest booth, we are quite proud of the one we did have. 

Is it a finish in the technical sense of the word? Probably not, but it was difficult and creative. Besides, it's all I have for now!

Pin It Weekly #189

What a week! No time for pinning right now, but I managed a few minutes of play over the weekend. I've discovered that pinning on my phone is a good way to "pass the time" while I'm waiting in the checkout line or whatever in life requires that I wait. 

Don't you just love all the gadgets we have to entertain ourselves? It's probably healthier than getting angry because there are only two registers open. Here are a few things that I pinned while in said line.

At some point over the weekend, I remembered this orrery that we have in the backyard. I could not remember the name, so I went on an extended search to figure it out. Once I found it, I decided to pin a few; but where do you put some odd, random thing that you don't know anything about? Well, you make a board and you call it something like "armillary, orrery sphere." Then you pin 25. No, 50. (The line was really long.)

Of course, while you're there all sort of other cool stuff keeps interrupting your orrery search, so you toss in a few. But who wants a few where there are lots? No one. So you go for lots.

By now you're in it so deep that you keep pinning, even later at home. And you realize that you've found Pinterest gold, so you balance it out a little by adding in maps and globes, because the instruments are the reason you made it this far. You may as well map it out for everyone who follows, right? Besides you're close to 100 pins...

Finally, somehow, you pull yourself away from the now 200 pins and the insanity of searching, searching. (Oh wait, something new that's really old!) And you come back to the current century, despite how difficult it is to put away your technology. After all, you can't live in the past and use up all of your present because then you'll have no future. Or something like that. It's hard to reason when your head is this pinning!