NOT ON THE LIST.

Nope, this one was NOT on the list.

I double checked twice.
There is absolutely no mention of  No. 62: Raise baby chicks.
None.
(Click here for the real list.)

Peep peep peep.

There is a mention of entering something into the county fair.  That's No. 41.  But I really had jalapeño jelly in mind. Or maybe a quilt. Not laying hens. 

A quilt with Baby Clara wrapped inside: Yes.

Chickens: No.

And No. 39 is Grow a vegetable from scratch.
Not Grow a chicken from scratch.

But yesterday Bunny came home late from school with a big bucket, a waterer, a warming lamp, feed, fluff and not one but FOUR baby chicks.
Four of them.

Adorable. Peep.

Peep peep peep.

They are adorable.
They are upstairs in Bunny's room.
They are not my responsibility.
I keep repeating that to myself.

Adorable. Peep peep.

Peep peep peep.

There is some precedent for chicks in the house, I hate to say.
When I was little my brothers and I got baby chicks at Easter.
One of the chicks got eaten by the dog next door.
One followed my mother into the garage and she shut the door, not realizing he was behind her.
But mine….mine grew up!
And he was a rooster.
A rooster that crowed every morning on the backyard fence.
This was in Alamo Heights in San Antonio.
Not out in the country.
After the neighbors complained my father found "Chickie" a new home at the "chicken farm".
For a solid year after that ( maybe longer) my brothers delighted in exclaiming "O! It's Chickie" every time we had chicken for dinner.
Talk about traumatic.

Peep peep peep.

Anyway, there are chicks in the house.
Bunny assures me that she has some friends that will take them when they get to be teenagers.
She just wanted to enjoy the baby stage.
(Isn't that how everyone ends up with babies???)

Adorable.

And I'm trying to keep a sense of humor.
While I traumatize her.

Peep peep peep.

No. 8: Make baby quilts again...again!

No. 8: Make Baby Quilts Again...Again.

and...

Last chance to comment/sign up for the one year blogiversary give away.

Last April I made baby quilts for my great niece and nephew, Clara and Colby.  It was the first time in forever that I had sewn. And I had so much fun!

 Colby and Clara-  brand new.

Definitely the choosing of fabrics, the arranging of colors, the piecing and placing of the different patterns against each other appeals to me in many ways. And the fact that I end up with something useful is just the icing on the cake.

The fabrics for Avery's quilt. 

They took over the kitchen (only) table for weeks.

Good thing I'm not much of a cook!

Clara and Colby, who are fraternal twins, belong to my niece Amanda. Amanda has an identical twin, Allison.   Allison just had her second baby, Avery, a couple of weeks ago.   I love that these little cousins are so close in age, which is a good thing, because their mamas are very close.

Avery

So Baby Avery definitely needed her own quilt. I had brought some of the left over fabrics from the first two quilts with me to Colorado because I thought it would be kinda neat to have some overlap between the three. But there are also plenty of new fabrics mixed in. Avery's quilt is definitely her own, with a nod to Clara and Colby's.

Colby and Clara's quilts.

And now that Avery's quilt has been delivered, I can post pictures here.

 Avery's finished quilt-front...

and back.

Can you see the fabrics that are common to all three? 

And look:

Miss Avery lost in the middle of all that pattern.  Isn't she adorable?

I love that No. 8 is done, again.

Also, a reminder:
It's my one year blogiversary and I'm having a little give-away.

Just sign up for email delivery and leave me a comment that you did.

And/or join me on Google+ and -again- leave me a comment that you did.

AND/OR go to the Project Sixty by 60 Facebook page and like it.

Each comment will give you an entry. 

The prize is a $20.00 gift card to Amazon.com  OR- because of a couple of suggestions- a sketch of your choice. I'm pretty good with animals if you have always wanted a sketch of your cat or dog or aardvark.

You have through midnight on Nov. 27 to enter. (That's tonight!) Get on it. Winner announced on Friday, Nov. 29.

Odds and Ends...No. 8 and No. 49

Odds and Ends:

Working on No. 8 Redux  and also on
No. 49: Make a New Friend

(An old and a new challenge off my list.)

Last week my niece and her sweet husband had an adorable baby girl, Avery Jane. I can't wait to meet her but it will be a bit before I get to do that.
And that's okay.
By the time we see her in person she will be at that adorable cuddly baby stage and beyond fragile newborn.
But isn't she a beauty?

Avery on her birthday!

No.8: Make Baby Quilts Again has already been done (see here) for Avery's cousins but I did not want Miss Avery to feel left out. 

I am almost done with it and here is a little preview. 

Pink! 

I'll post a full pic once it has been delivered.   Don't want to totally spoil the surprise.

And Boy! Do I have a lot of pink fabric left over. Anyone need a baby quilt? For a small fee (actually a pretty large fee) I will happily make you one.

I've also been working on No.49: Make a New Friend.

This could be a hard one.   

I am in a new place so I was destined to meet new people and I have met lots of people-but meeting someone doesn't make them a friend. 

And there is that fine line between meeting someone and being friendly and meeting someone and being stalker-ish.

But I have met some wonderful people and I have been amazed at the kindness and inclusion I have felt. 

Having teenagers has certainly helped.  It truly does take a village to raise kids and all mamas can use some extra help.  Especially when we get the "But EVERYONE is doing it!" line.  

This came up last night and I was so happy to have Facebook messaging already set up with some of the other mamas. A quick message revealed that no, not everyone was going to be doing it. 

"It" in this instance was driving 3 hours away to a soccer game and either driving back another 3 hours through the mountains at 10:30pm or staying the night in a hotel and driving home in the morning- missing a half day of school.   No parents included. 

I don't think so.

And fortunately the other mamas didn't think so either. 

(Credit to the amazing Anne Taintor 

for this little mash-up of saying and photo. 

One of my favorites.)

Maybe not to full friend status yet- but I sure do appreciate people I can call on. 

Working on No. 49.  Just in case I have a body that needs to be disposed of. 

No. 16: Write a letter every day for a week

No.16: Write a letter every day for a week...


Do you love to get mail that isn't a bill?
Me, too.

I've noticed though that the letters that come in the mail are few and far between these days. Although I do admit we have gotten more letter mail here just because people are nice and miss us and don't want to be forgotten.

Isn't that great?

Tools of the trade

Bunny holds the prize for most letters.   Letters from girl friends, letters from traveling friends and even letters from boys.  (Along with roses- she's one lucky little girl.)

And because I don't want to be forgotten- I've been sending out some letters and cards.

So last week my challenge was to send out a letter a day.

Done!

I sent a letter to my son.

I sent a letter to my friend Cherrilla.

A letter far far away.

A letter to a neighbor.

Cards with notes to family.

A letter to a care taker.

And a couple of birthday cards with letters inside.

In my effort to keep the USPS afloat, I was a bit of an overachiever.  I did more than seven mailings.

Yay me!

And I have a few more in the works.

But the girlies are doing a cheer competition this weekend and they have been busy and when they are busy, I seem to be busy taking up the slack.

Cheerleaders on Parade.

This weekend they will be competing. 

Also Carlos has been bad, bad, bad.
He is acting out a bit because he does not like being kept on a leash or in the house all the time.  He had a run in with a neighbor and because I like my dog alive and not dead, he has been kept on a short leash- literally.
We walk two to three miles every day but that is not enough to keep him worn out.

Always scavenging food...

And so- to express his displeasure- he ate not one but TWO pans of brownies over the weekend.   And then he peed on a pile of clothes in Bunny's room WHILE I WAS WATCHING HIM.  Talk about deliberately misbehaving.  I swear it is like having a toddler.

So I had a bit of washing to do because when you interrupt a peeing dog---well,   it wasn't just the clothes that got wet. All the bedding was on the floor because I was in the process of changing sheets.
Grrrrr.

We are trying to come to a compromise.  I let him run on the property as long as he promises to come when called and not cross the street.   So far so good.

So ... more letters to be mailed.

And more challenges to accomplish.

Also, I am working on a repeat performance of No. 8: Make Baby Quilts Again.

Niece Allison is having a baby on Friday. This baby will be a biological half sibling to the twins that were born last Spring.   That's what happens when identical twin mamas have babies.  So, of course, this baby also needs a quilt.

In progress:

Do you think she might be having a girl? 

What will be next?

The Benefits of Friends

No. Eight: Make baby quilts again

No. 51: Learn to knit or crochet

No. 22:Surprise a friend in another city for lunch

I have never been very goal oriented. An aptitude test done in college had the counselor declaring me a hedonist. If it was fun, I would do it. Otherwise, maybe not.  Possibly he wasn’t the greatest career counselor but also possibly he was onto something.  I like fun.

I’ve always said my oldest brother got all the ambition ( that would be the lawyer brother, Steve) and the other two of us were just happy to "go along to get along".

 Paul, Me, Steve. 

See? Steve is wearing the Chief's hat.  (O wait. So am I.)

And Paul - always the renegade.

So it is odd that I am writing a blog on setting some goals and accomplishing them. Maybe I am just getting my ambition late in life.

But in a chat with my dear friend Cherrilla, my roommate from school in Mexico, we were discussing  kids, goals and the concept of writing down your list.

 Cherrilla on our San Miguel trip last May.

The glass is half full? Or half empty?

Or just really good fresh squeezed OJ?

We both decided our young adult children could really benefit from a list.

She also had the fabulous idea of having some friends over for wine and snackies and having everyone write their own list of  Sixty by Sixty things they want to do. Or Fifteen by Fifty or Nine by Ninety or you get the idea. And then sharing lists.

The other thing she said was “I can help you with Numbers 8 and 51.” 

She’s a quilter, she makes and sells magical baby quilts. (She also makes and sells this magical stuff.) I used to be a quilter; she could get me motivated again.  

Some of our quilts- her two on the left, my three on the right and foreground.

We do like ourselves a little color.

I have knitting needles and crochet hooks and have in my past at least learned the very basic rules of knitting. You cast on, knit two, purl one or something along those lines. She crochets. She said she would teach me. Number 51 could be history.

 Aren't these beauties? Definitely a story behind this set.

(The minor detail that she lives on the East Coast and I live in Texas will not be a problem. Maybe I will have to surprise her for lunch. Number 22.)

Then she mentioned a friend that speaks to the elderly where she lives and how it might be something for those in the Senior Center. Which got me to thinking: In your eighties or nineties, do you quit making goals or plans? Once getting around seems insurmountable, do you just stop trying?  

But what if you make your list and share it? 

And someone says “I can help you with that.”

So the surprise bonus to putting myself out here and declaring that there are things I want to do and learn is that people have responded.  People want to help or share their list or at least get in on the fun. 

“I can help you with that.” 

"This is what is on my list."

“Do you want to come with me to this?”  

“Put that on your list! I want to learn that, too. Let’s do it together.”

 I had no idea that this list would be a way to connect.

And that is so much fun. And I love fun.

What is on your list?