"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are
new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."
I guess that's why a new year excites me so MUCH. If God's compassion and mercy is new every MORNING, how much greater is it in a new YEAR?
2010 was a good year but full of changes for me.
January started out poorly with lots of snow to add to my grief over the loss of my precious Grandmother.
February, March and most of April were spent looking for a part-time job. I began working for a popular retail store April 22 and have a new appreciation for people working minimum wage jobs. I won't bore you with my soap-box speeches on that subject!!
May was spent planting our VERY prolific garden.
The first week of June was spent in Myrtle Beach with friends but I received bad news while there that our sweet Scout had died.
In July I received my new Janome sewing machine and I wish I could say it has made a BIG difference in my quilting output but it hasn't yet. I spent a great deal of time canning strawberry jam, jalapeños, tomatoes and salsa. We were also getting our baby girl ready to go off to college. She left us on July 22 to attend school in Washington state. Talk about change!! It took me almost a month to be able to talk about her without crying. We had become so close these past 3 years since moving to Ohio. My, oh my, was that van loaded!!
August was spent working almost 30 hrs. a week and canning. Did I tell you our garden was VERY prolific? We ended up with 22 half pints of strawberry jam, 55 pints of salsa, 44 pints of tomatoes, 27 pints of jalapeños, and 4 quarts of green beans. Whew!!!
September was spent working with a short trip back to Illinois to visit friends.
October started out with a trip for me to visit our baby girl. It was great seeing all the places she talked about and meeting all her friends. Then after a week home I went with my sweet hubby on his business trip to Washington DC. What a week that was!! While he was sitting in meetings, I toured the Capitol, the White House, went to the top of the Washington Memorial, toured several of the Smithsonian's, several of the Art Galleries, the National Archives, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the Korean Memorial, the WWII memorial, Arlington Cemetery. I was so proud of myself for figuring out the Metro system. There is so much to see that even though I was going, going, going all day long for 5 days I feel like I missed so much. The architecture alone was amazing. I fell in love with DC and am looking forward to another visit soon, I hope!! Then after a week home we left AGAIN!! We took a long weekend and went to Florida to visit our oldest son and his fiancee. That was a quick trip but fun, fun, fun.
November and December are a blur. Working retail during the holiday season was crazy! My part-time job became as close to full-time as they could get without having to give me benefits. Needless to say, I was exhausted so the New Year rang itself in without me. I went to bed and slept 2010 out!! I did get some sewing done for Christmas.
These little goodie bags are a pattern from Better Homes & Gardens Quilts and More, Fall 2010 edition. Monica from Happy Zombie created them and as with everything she does, they are too cute for words!! I made 22 of them as gifts mostly for our baby girl's house-mates and friends at college. I filled each one with some shower gel, hand sanitizer, kleenex, and some sweets. They were a hit with the girls.
Excuse the picture, it's just the quilt top. I forgot to get a picture of the finished quilt. It was cut out, pieced, quilted and binding sewn on in less than 10 days while I worked 59 hours during that same 10 day period. I wrapped it on the 22nd and gave it to our middle son's girlfriend for Christmas. She was leaving to go home the next day. Nothing like getting it done at the last moment. But it was done! As you can guess, purple is her favorite color and I think she really liked it. I'll try to get her to get me some shots of it finished.
I even read 84 books in 2010. (Maybe that's part of the reason I didn't get too much sewing done.)
I'm really looking forward to what 2011 holds. I see many adventures coming in these next few months and hope to share those adventures with you on a more regular basis.
Thanks for stopping by!!
Happy Quilting!!
