Vacation

We are off to Palm Springs for Spring break!

Cool chick quilt

My Friend Suzanne found this free pattern on line over a year ago, she told me about it and I printed it out, but never made it. At a St. Patrick's day party my very talented friend Suzanne brought me some bright yellow fuzzy fabric to use for the chick. I was so excited about this, and the idea of using grass fabric, I couldn't sleep and started making it the next morning.



I let my girls design several of the eggs in the quilt. I ironed muslin onto freezer paper and gave them fabric markers and fabric crayons. They had so much fun and are very proud of their contributions to the quilt.



The patterns is for 11 eggs and one chick, but I did 24 eggs because I wanted it bigger. If you have ever paper pieced anything, this is a VERY easy pattern and goes together quickly.

My Grandpa Bud and Hollywood

What an amazing day. Where to start?

My Grandfather did special effects and photographic effects for several big movies. The photo above is the bridge he blew up in The Wild Bunch. The director (Sam Peckinpah) was so happy with his work that he insisted Bud get a credit. Bud became the first from Warner Brother's special effects to get his name on a Warner Bros. film.

Several years ago The Warner Brothers museum contacted my Mom about her father and wanted to know if she would be willing to loan them some of his items for their museam. My Mother was more then happy to and has loaned them several items.

Jump forward 15 years...my Mom, sister and I are all back in Burbank for my Aunt's funeral. My Mom called the curator and asked if she could bring her grandkids by to view the exhibit. He said that they currently have all the Harry Potter costumes and props on display, but he would be happy to take us to the studio archives to see their Great Grandfather's things. First we took all the kids to see the Harry Potter exibit- oh so cool. Everything is out not under glass, so children are normally not permitted, but with the curator as our tour guide all our children we able to go. It was quite the olympic event making sure the younger ones did not touch anything. We were not allowed to take any photos, but he had someone take a polaroid of each o the kids with the sorting hat on. Then we did a group photo with the hat on my Mom. They also had a display with tons of stuff from the show Friends. Oh I loved it!







After we finished at the Museum we all drove to the archives. This was a huge unmarked building in Burbank just filled with unbelievable treasures.
Such a once in a lifetime opportunity.



There was a wall full of original schetches, he pulled out one of Scooby Doo. As the curator he was full of all kids of intresting facts. Like that when they presented the original concept for Scooby Doo it was not well liked, so they added a dog and called it Scooby Doo.



These were some items that were on a shelf next to the boxes with my Mom's name all over them. If you can zoon in on the photo, you may recognize some of the films... My Fair Lady... Casablanca, ever heard of those?



An original movie poster from one of my Grandfather's movies.



Next the highlight of the day for me. We are ohhing and aweing over all the cool stuff and he starts taking out some paper filing boxes and looking through a file, He pulled out my Grandfather's employment information. The original paper he filled out when he started with Warner Brothers, his pay information. It was so cool to see his handwriting. I was completly shocked to see that he made $675 a week in 1969! ***Edit**it was 1949. My Mom used to joke that he made $100 a day and her Mom spent $110 dollars a day. I just thought that was a figure of speech.



Here are a few props you might recognize:


One of the red scooters from Willy Wonka with the fake glue on back that they used to put up the signs. We also saw a Wonka bar and some Umpa Lumpa glasses on someone's desk. So cool!





The outfit that our Governor used to wear


A huge room with racks and racks up to the celing with clothes from TV shows (like Friends) and tons of movies.




The clothes from Willy Wonka


Ruby in front of the bat girl costume


We ended the day with dinner at the Bob's Big Boy on Riverside- one of my favorite places to eat as a kid.






I took so many photos and saw so many cool things, it was really an amazing day, I hope that my kids will remember. I'm sure my plethora of photos will help.

***EDIT- I forgot to mention that Ruby pointed to the original Wonder Woman costume on a mannequin and told the curator "That is not modest", he agreed.

My Aunt Alice

It was only about 2 weeks ago that I posted about our family reunion to show my Aunt Alice how much we all love her.



Eight days after that reunion she passed away. I don't think anyone expected her to go so quickly. Her Daughter described her death as a "beautiful death, if death can be beautiful". She was surrounded by her family and lots of love. Her Funeral was today, so again my Mom flew into town and my Sister drove down with her whole family.

It was a large very traditional Catholic church funeral mass. My kids had tons of questions about what was going on and unfortunately I could only answer a few of them. At the church my girls kept looking at me like "why are you crying?". At one point Lucy took a Kleenex out of my purse and was dabbing under her eyes. She was not crying at all but just thought that was the thing to do since I kept doing it.

At the graveside although I had drilled my girls not to stand on grave markers, Lucy did. I love this photo of her checking out this marker, it is actually where Aunt Alice's parents are laid to rest.



Afterwards they had a beautiful lunch served in the same backyard that we stood two weeks ago as Alice passed out bags of her jewelry to all the women and girls in the family. At the time it felt so sad and awkward but today as I saw all the granddaughters wearing her necklaces and pins ect. It felt just right and I know that's how Alice would have wanted it.


Again we took a photo of all the grandkids, this time without Alice. After everyone snapped a bunch of photos we told them to do whatever they wanted, this was my favorite photo of them all.

I know that we should celebrate the person's life and I know that she is happier now and this was a blessing because she was so sick, but I am still terribly sad and know (from loosing my own Father) how hard it is going to be for her daughters and her grandkids.

Welcome to the jungle!

Every time I pick Lucy up from Preschool we walk through the jungle. There is a little path along the side of the school that has cement stepping stones. The plants are usually wet and sometimes she almost gets lost in them, but it is her favorite part of the day.



I have started parking at the end of the path (the opposite direction of where I pick her up) just so we can go through the jungle on the way to the car. I love how excited she gets every time.



Ruby went this same preschool 2 years ago. I used to park far away from the path and I would get really bugged when she wanted to go "get dirty". I tried to distract her so I would not have to wait for her to walk the whole path. I am so thankful that I have mellowed out with time and each child, I wish it would have happened sooner.

So now I just watch all the other Moms try to keep their kids out of the wet bushes while I go through the jungle with Lucy.

The BIG reward.

I never loose my keys. Really, I still have the same key chain that I got from Sundance 14 years ago. Last night I lost my keys. We only have one key to my car so this was obviously a problem. I searched the house all night and morning and in desperation told the kids that whoever found my keys would get a HUGE reward. About two hours later Haley found my keys. For her HUGE reward she choose going to the Library to get 20 books. When I was 8 years old I would have considered this a cruel and unusual punishment, but to her this was a HUGE reward. I seriously can't relate.

Heart block exchange

Our quilt group got together tonight to exchange our heart blocks.
I love them all and can't wait to get them together in a quilt!

You can check out some of the exchanges we have done at http://theblockexchange.blogspot.com/

Good mail

I received good mail from someone I do not even know. It completely made my day. It was so fun to read through her blog and get to know her and see photos of one of my favorite places in New Orleans. Thanks Natasha!



It totally made me want to pay it forward, so I did.


Good mail, Good day!

More good advice...

My friend Diane S. gave me some great advice.

1. To quit coloring my hair myself and get it done professionally. I did not realize how bad my hair looked until I had it done right and then looked at old photos. Thank heavens she said something.

2. To buy a Food Savor. She was always telling me how wonderful they are and how she uses hers for everything. I finally got one (about 2 years ago) and it quickly became one of my favorite things. I can't tell you how much time this little machine saves me. I buy everything in bulk, cook it and vacuum it into portions that we use. It takes a couple of hours of cooking once a month then super fast dinners for the rest of the month. Here are a few things that I do with it.

Ground turkey(big 4 pack from Costco)- I cook it all at the same time but will make some seasoned with taco seasoning, some with onions, garlic and celery (spagetti ect) and leave some plain for chili or whatever.
Chicken- I buy raw chicken breasts and cook them, shread them and then bag then in spacific amounts that I need for recipies (chicken enchaladas, tortillia soup etc). Sometime I take the raw chicken and put it in the bag with a marinade, vacuum it, then I can just cook it in the bag and it comes out so juicy. I also will cut up chicken and put teryocky sauce in with it so it's ready to go for stir fry.
Ham-I buy one of those big hams at Costco that you bake with the glaze on it. I will make it for dinner then bag up the rest in to 5 bags with glaze and I have 5 ham dinners that I can cook up in minutes. My kids love ham!

Do I sound like Rachel Ray?



I vacuumed our food and clothes for our 72 emergency kits and was able to easily fit all the supplies and first aid for each person in a backpack. I also vacuumed Lucy's emergency earthquake supplies required for her preschool.




Fyi-I have the big machine(V2490) that they sell at Costco, My Mom bought a smaller version for herself and she doesn't like it at all.