Hubble Highlights

Using Soul Blossoms fabric and some Zen Grey for the background, my Hubble is complete!

I think I'm going without borders again.  I just like that look right now.

The big prints were a change of pace for me.

The parade with Sinta and Sherri will be a blast since there were different patterns to choose from this month. Be sure to go over and check it out in the next few days!

 It's time for me to make the Hot Dog Mummies and the Pumpkin Cheese Ball for tonight, so I've got to make this quick!

Have a fun and frightful evening!

The Halloween Post

Happy Halloween tomorrow!

I just finished this cute pumpkin wall hanging kit and I thought I'd share it. 

It's called Pumpkin Grins.

I did some swirl quilting with spiderwebs in the corners.  

I spent lots of time on those spiderwebs that you really can't see.  I considered quilting them with grey thread then I chickened out.

I was happy with the swirls.

This is the first time I used Aurifil thread and I really liked the look of it.

Copper decided to photobomb this shot.

And no Halloween post would be complete without a few carved pumpkins.

A  custom made roller coaster and a Minion from Despicable Me.

 Halloween night we'll be giving out Halloween jelly beans along with some of our neighbors......

Oops! ha! ha!  We aren't giving out neighbors! Sitting in the driveway with the neighbors I mean!

What will you be doing for Halloween fun?

Butterflies!

Last week the monarch butterflies appeared!

Before I left the house to run a few errands, I noticed the chrysalises looked like this. 

Not much time left!   

When I returned a few hours later, this is what I found!    

After awhile it was time to warm up the wings.

My youngest son got home from school before the last butterfly flew away.

He's the one who picked out the milkweed and chose where to plant them.

While he was looking at the last butterfly, it flew over and landed on him for a minute, right before it flew away as if to say, "Thank you!" before it began it's journey.

Hubble, Halloween, and an update

Here's my Hubble in progress.

I'm using Soul Blossoms like Carrie did, but I'm changing it up with a grey background.

I had a Soul Blossoms layer cake that I cut up.  I was thinking that I use so much white.  I wanted to use something different than my usual background. 

I may be regretting that when I go to do the quilting.  You're going to be able to see every stitch on this solid fabric.

  

I threw this picture in there so you could get a look at my new carpet.

I'm just loving it!

Okay, more new carpet and more Hubble progress.

I've got the whole thing on the floor now.

Is anyone else putting it all together before sewing any of the star points into sections?

I'm not sure if this was a good idea, but I wanted to make sure that like fabrics wouldn't be near each other.

I'll let you know how that works out for me....... 

It suddenly dawned on me that there are only a few weeks left until Halloween, so if I wanted to get this orange and black project finished up in time, I'd better get started on it.

So I set Hubble aside, or I should say I stepped over Hubble, and got to work.

More on that later.........

I have some caterpillar progress to show too!

I was able to get a picture of the guy above as he made his "J" and later when he formed this chrysalis. 

We started out by seeing five caterpillars, two have wondered off somewhere else....... at least I hope so.........to become butterflies.

Now we have three soon-to-be butterflies!

Hopefully I can get a picture of them as they come out, but I know that happens fast, so we'll see if I can catch it! 

 Here's the milkweed plant they were eating in the back, and the iris they decided to form their chrysalises on in the front.

In years past we would leave the milkweed in pots and bring them in once we saw eggs or caterpillars.  But wow those caterpillars are messy!

So, since we were planning a long vacation and cleaning up after the caterpillars is something I could pass on for a year or so, we planted the milkweed in the ground this spring.

Soon after, we cut it way back to remove any leaves that could have had pesticides on them.  Fresh clean stems and leaves quickly grew back. 

Pesticides do nothing for encouraging butterflies to lay eggs on your milkweed plants.

That's how we got to this point and I'll be sure to let you know how things go from here! 

Recovered from the weekend

Well it was another soccer tournament weekend for us.

  To sum it up, it rained, and rained, and rained.  Oh, there was some lightning too. The boys do play through the rain, but lightning is when they call it quits. So it was home earlier than expected on Saturday, then back to the fields on Sunday. Three more games in the mud, which ended with our team winning the tournament! 

Woo hoo!

The boys were so happy!

  Many, many evenings of difficult practice paid off! 

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this sign.

I wasn't too happy about seeing it as we arrived at the soccer fields.

I guess you are supposed to watch where you're walking?

Yikes!!

Ironically enough, we didn't see any snakes at the fields last weekend, but we saw one on Monday morning when we were walking the dog.  A big one.

I'm not a fan of snakes.   

  

And yes, you know over the weekend they wore that white uniform I talk about........in the  mud.

Lucky for me, they only wore it one out of five games.  It certainly could have been worse.  I'm not even going to show you the white socks. My stain stick is going to get a workout. 

This one really wasn't even too muddy compared to others I saw. It was bad.

Now the uniform is clean, hopefully we are snake free, the kids are off to school, and I'm working on Hubble this afternoon.

I'll be back with pictures of my Hubble progress and a caterpillar update soon!   

Munchies

They're here!

  Today we discovered some welcomed visitors in our yard.

 In the spring we planted milkweed hoping to attract Monarch butterflies.

We waited and we waited. And then we waited some more. We decided they weren't coming this year. 

I guess we were wrong!

This guy isn't even on the milkweed.

He may be getting ready to make his chrysalis.  See the silky material on the right?

I'll let you know what happens!