Tennessee Part 1

We made our annual trek to Tennessee last week.

It was a full week of fun and camping.

On this particular trip we were plagued with bad weather.

It seemed to follow us around.

We survived and learned a few lessons along the way.

We always set up the tent before we head out on a trip.

It had been raining and we had to do this in the living room.

We forgot how big our tent was. We had to move the furniture!

Kind of ironic that we had to do the dry run inside because it was raining.

It's always an adventure trying to plan a camping trip not knowing how the weather will turn out.

This was our first camping trip where it rained more often than not.

We're not fans of soggy camping.

That's enough about our wet woes for now.

On to the trip!

We hadn't been through Madison, Indiana in a while so we made a planned stop.

We got pizza and ate by the fountain.

It was a perfect day for a picnic!

I'm not a fan of selfies.

Nolan is much better at it than I am.

He's so good at it we made him our selfie guy for the trip.

:)

This fountain is so pretty.

I hadn't noticed the faces around the wall of the pool until this year.

 It was a quick stop but beautiful none the less.

Crossing the Ohio River in Madison.

It's one of my favorite bridges.

Kentucky, here we come!

I'm collecting photos and ideas for a barn quilt...

or "old lady gang signs" as Dwayne calls them.

:)

Such a pretty hillside.

At some point we began to see mountains in the distance.

That's always exciting!

Graduation Quilt

I knew time would get away from me.

I finished this quilt before vacation.

It's a graduation quilt for our nephew that just graduated high school.

It took me about a year to make this.

It wasn't difficult but I knew I needed extra time to get it done.

(That also left me extra time to do other projects at the same time.)

Everything was done by machine except for the quilting.

I designed both the front and back in EQ8, my quilting software.

I also used foundation paper piecing to ensure accuracy in piecing the front.

There is a pair of mistakes in it but I chose to leave them as they are quite difficult to find.

Your best chance to try to find them is in the 7th photo. It's a lot like where's Waldo!

;-)

Our nephew likes purple so I set out to use that color but not make it girly.

The purple in this photo is about the closest to its true color.

I kind of label this kind of quilt a mullet quilt.

Business on the front and party on the back.

I collected some smaller pieces of fabric that represented things our nephew did or enjoyed.

Farming, golfing, and bacon with a few extras thrown in.

So technically it's a two sided quilt.

A close up of some of the fabrics.

Some of the stitching.

It took about 102 hours of hand quilting spread out over 94 days!

I went back to work a couple of weeks after I started quilting.

A lot of it was done on the weekends.

I finally left enough room for the binding and didn't lose a single point of my quilting!

That's a first for me.

I really liked this quilt and may make it again with different colors.

Although the next time I do I may try a quilt-as-you-go method.

quilt #27

Alec's Graduation Quilt

80" x 92"

(Truth be told... I forgot to measure it before I gifted it.

So the measurement is the intended size. I think it was really close.)

I also printed and pieced the label in the backing as opposed to adding it afterwards.

It worked well.

Alec with his quilt.

Back to Nature

This has nothing to do with natural life but I didn't know where else to stick it.

This is the view from my desk at work.

I have a desk, a folding table with a computer and two monitors (to the left), and a large drafting table (behind me).

Most days I prefer to face the window mostly because I have a window. :)

You can't really see them in this photo but there's a wind farm all over my view.

I'm not a fan (no pun intended). They mar the view of the country side.

It's been stormy lately and one storm was bad enough it blocked all of the turbines from sight.

The facility I work in is in the middle of farmland.

My window looks south toward a highway.

One of the stormy days I drove out of the storm on my way home from work.

There was a nice display of mammatus clouds.

I had to stop and get a photo.

The next day there was heavy rain at home and I drove out of that on my way to work.

The clouds were quite amazing.

I also had to stop and get some pictures.

Google Photos was kind enough to put these photos together for me to get a nice panorama.

I recently got a new phone and I have been enjoying the camera.

In my dream world I live in the mountains, quilt, and tinker with photography.

My dad was an amateur photographer. So I get it honest.

Our roses are blooming.

It was breezy when the first few blooms opened up.

I had to hold this one carefully between the thorns.

No wind!

We have dark pink.

 As well as a lighter pink. 

These are from our re-blooming lilac bush.

It blooms several times throughout the summer.

I love mushrooms!

My mother-in-law's poppies.

 I need to take some time to tinker with my phone's camera and see what it can do. 

A nest of robins in our crab apple tree. 

I could only get one bird to open it's mouth.

It amazes me how fast they grow!

Beautiful day.

 We usually see several tracks on our farm walks but snake tracks are rare.

We also saw turkey tracks the other day but I didn't get a picture.

Proud Parents

The month of May was a flurry of school activities and one costume dance.

The boys earned scholastic awards for their hard work in the school year.

Spanish 1

 

Chemistry 1

This was a pretty tough class and Nolan was surprised to get an award.

(We weren't. He worked super hard.)

Precalculus.

Another tough class.

U.S. History

National Honor Society

Art

Social Studies

Connor also received this medal for all around good choir something or other.

Like a good parent, I can't remember the name for this.

It has something to do with character, class performance, improvement, etc.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what happened to Connor's glasses...

he broke them right before the choir concert.

Actually, he broke them a month ago.

This night he happened to break something else on them which rendered them useless.

The good news was that his new glasses were in but we hadn't gotten them yet.

All cleaned up for a dance!

Nolan and Kaylee.

Now that the school year is done we have a freshman and a senior in the house.

Yikes!