Many an Ibis This Way Come!

Well, I thought Warren was just kidding when he said that he and Lisa came upon a large flock of Ibis just walking down the road. Then he told me they were out in front. Well, good thing I looked as there they were only there were only three that made it down here. I never expected to see Ibis here in NC as I think of them as a very tropical bird and according to my bird book, they are only up as far north as SC but we do live relatively close sooo.....

The weather remains wonderful as you can see! But tomorrow, heaven forbid, it is supposed to rain. As we rarely even have clouds, rain will be shocking! Hopefully, we will be heading over to see the NC Aquarium which is a stone's throw away! I am hoping the weather behaves enough so that we can walk around the Fort Fisher area as well.

Some Random Pictures from Kure Beach

This is a view of the new dining room furniture which arrived last Saturday. As you can see, we have installed most of the new blinds as well! It is nice not to sleep in a fishbowl anymore!

This is the the other corner of the living room where we put our old living room furniture from home. It looks like a nice cozy spot from which you can watch the dolphins now.
This is Warren and Lisa sitting outside on the ferry boat over to a town called Southport yesterday. Southport is a quaint little town on the North Carolina coast which was supposed to be a big seaport. It ended up being further up river in Wilmington instead. The ferry to Southport is about two miles from the house. There were antique shops lining both sides of the main street!!

This was the Southport ferry going in the opposite direction. It is closing down for the months of December and January for repairs and upgrades.

This is Lisa's very cute kitty Yahi making himself completely at home on the new sofa.

If I Had Microsoft Stock, I Would Sell It!

Postings will be a little slim for awhile as Microsoft has managed to clobber my computer and I can no longer use Windows and have to reload everything back on my computer! Of course I am away from home so don't have any software with me..... Thank goodness for Google!! Wish I could find a way to send a nice thank you note. Because I use Google mail (Gmail), all of my mail is safely on Google's computer and through experimentation, I found that I could get into my file system via Gmail when I have attachments.

So I am torn -- I can go back to original Windows (this is Vista by the way) and not have Word or Excel (they are home) or I can go through this back door which allows me an hour of Explorer at a time but then I will have Word and Excel and any other software I can initiate through my Gmail attachment! I also will have to pay for an external hard drive and for someone to copy all the files on my hard drive over to it so I won't lose anything.

It is chilly down here but we have almost a furnished house!! I will upload pictures later when I upload them to husband's computer, send them to myself, download to this computer and then use Blogger to get at them! Much too complicated!

We took the ferry yesterday to Southport but more on that later!

Kure Beach Week

Well, here is the garage as a staging area for all the stuff I had bought for the new house! We managed to completely fill the van plus have two kayaks and a wind surfer on top for Warren to play with at the beach! All the purchases met with Lisa's approval!

Well, after a rather lengthy drive, we arrived back at the beach house at dinnertime on Friday. I had studiously studied Wunderground.com to see the weather a the major towns along our route on the north end to make sure we wouldn't hit any major snow. Well, no snow until we were south of Harrisburg Pa and then some squalls and many accidents. We probably lost a half hour or more -- actually had to turn the car off a couple of times while they removed wreckage from the ditches. It was really pretty though just north of Harrisburg where there had obviously been recent snow but it was bright and sunny when we passed through. I always think the snow looks so pretty when it first clings to the trees and is all white and sparkles with the light!

It was a bit chilly our first full day but lots and lots of sunshine and today was even nicer! We have had the windows open both days as we have a southern exposure and no curtains yet so it gets nice and toasty without turning on the heat during the day. That same clear sky makes the nights a bit on the chilly side and we have had record cold the last couple of days (nice to know that 23 is record cold). Lisa arrived Saturday morning with her two kitties. They were totally traumatized by the new house and she was hoping they would acclimate at least some time before the end of the week. Her more pushy kitty was out and about after about 2 hours but it took until last night for her less adventuresome kitty to find his way upstairs (neither kitty had ever seen stairs before and her more aggressive kitty still is extremely cautious when going down the stairs). This morning when we came back from some shopping though, we found both curled up in what we called the "kid's room" as it has twin beds. So they have found their proper place and seem totally at home this morning! Ah, youth!

I Spy Many Too Many Hexagons

Well, I have been trying to get together projects for doing at the beach and the I Spy for both my daughter and the daughter of a close friend have risen high on the list! I spent much time tracing around a template and cutting out different objects from the novelty fabrics from friends as well as from my own stash! Oh My.... I then attached triangles to two opposing corners so that I could make them up in rows. I figured I had finally done enough for ONE quilt after leaving my daughter's a couple of weeks ago. I still had a ton of hexagons left.

Two tops later which are pretty good sized I still have 50 hexagons with triangles attached and enough for probably two more that don't have triangles attached. Guess the next few babies born to my daughter's friends will have "I Spy"s. I think I still owe her two quilts for recent births. I haven't put them altogether but have put them up on the design wall and then taken them down all nicely numbered and in rows so that I can mindlessly sew them together at the beach. I also have a quilt for quilting and of course will have about 30 books as I live in fear of running out of reading matter!!

Fall Migration at Genesee Valley Quilt Club

If you double click on the slideshow, you will see the album in total and you can see a larger slide show from that.

We had another lovely Fall Migration hosted by Roz Smith and Janet Root! There was a good crowd there, the food was very good and the company was great! People got a good deal accomplished in a relatively short period of time and we all got door prizes just for being there! These are always fun days and I highly recommend them as a way to get to know other club members!

The patterns that were featured this year with (of course) easy and quick directions for finishing them were Arabic Twist and Arabic Lattice.

Because of all the extreme busyness of the last few weeks, I just took in my "I Spy" to work on and got quite a bit done. It is ready to be sewn together into rows and into a top with a few "blocks" left over I am sure.


This is Marianne Smith's project for the day. They were stunning Mariner's Compasses. She has a wonderful color sense and I remember that from her Fall Migration project last year!


This is Jenna Darlak holding up one of her two completed table runners from the pattern!


This is one of the three alternative patterns for the day. It had a solid center and used dark and light values on opposing sides.


This was the one I intended to do but just didn't have the time to get my act together. Several in the group did this one or put a solid center in it but did it with the black and whites and brights.



This was a very whimsical version half square triangles in the center. I liked this one a lot as well and of course Janet's wonderful machine quilting.

A Lovely Lunch at Marcia's and GVQC's November Meeting

After arriving back in Rochester Tuesday night after a long drive from the beach house, I was far too late to participate in Priscilla's Koos jacket sew-in. I had seen the beginnings of her jacket on previous occasions and wanted to get a look at what the ladies were doing so I headed down for lunch with the crowd.
This is Donna Patrick modeling her purple jacket for us. It was from an earlier class with Priscilla and I loved what she did with the lining!

This is the back and sleeves from Priscilla's jacket. The bias binding around the shapes really has a nice look to it.

This is the front of Priscilla's jacket with her famous catchwords emblazoned in fabric on her design wall. She likes to let people know where her responsibilities begin and end!

This is the back of Pat Berardi's version of the Koos jacket and is equally stunning!

This is the front of Pat's jacket.

Today we had our monthly GVQC meeting and it was one of those Murphy's Law kind of days. I didn't have much time to get my computer stuff together for the meeting and was planning on printing everything this morning. Needless to say, nothing cooperated -- computers (2), printers (3) and software incompatibility made the job daunting. It is always non-stop questions when you get there so it was nice when the meeting actually begins!! Janet Root was our guest speaker today and she was delightful as I knew she would be (she was the one who introduced me to the club to begin with). It was nice to see so many of her quilts in one place.

I only took a few pictures today as I didn't get a chance to get to the back of the room before the crowds descended at lunch time but did get a few. The star quilt above is a stunning quilt made by Lisa Feor which was based on the mathmatical formula for shapes and proportions found in nature. It was made for one of her daughter's who is getting an MBA from the Simon School here in Rochester but who has two degrees in math as well. What a fitting subject and it was beautifully executed.

This was a quilt done by our own Judy Laurini who is known for her exquisite handwork. I am such a sucker for these radial symmetry quilts and I think Judy has caught the bug!

This is another quilt demonstrating radial symmetry only this used just four triangles while the above one is hexagon based (my favorite one patch)

Just a Small Town Gal

Well, coming from the large metropolis of Rochester, NY, I am finding it fun to quickly get to know my neighbors in Kure Beach -- which is 7/8 mile long and has a year round population of about 1800 people!! I have now met the people who own the other half of our duplex, their next door neighbors and the neighbors on the other side of us!! It's a small world as our neighbor who owns the house and empty lot next to us lives only three blocks from Lisa in Charlotte! The people behind us are also from Charlotte so Lisa will be able to carpool which will be nice for her! There are some fulltime people in the neighborhood as well as many of us part-timers so we can keep up with what is going on.

There is all sorts of neighborhood gossip, so we will have to behave down here or the world will shortly know! I had forgotten about small towns and how everyone knows everyone and most people are very accepting of new people!

It has been a fun day and our beds have arrived so no more sleeping on an air mattress!! I am patiently waiting for the living room to show up anytime now which will be nice!! The big room on the bottom floor keeps calling to me and asking to be a sewing room but I would have to buy out my daughter before that will happen!!! It would be perfect!! Nice and big and has tile floor and a bathroom right there! Maybe I can slowly but surely sneak in some sewing machines and tables.....


Our new tv stand minus a nice tv! We will be upgrading the tv to a wide screen with our next visit thanks to Lisa. This was our one big splurge as we liked the looks of this and it felt "beachy".

This is Warren enjoying the new living room furniture which is super comfy!

This is the kitchen looking a little lived in right now. We don't have wastepaper baskets or a recycling bin yet so we are improvising with trash bags and shopping bags!

This is one of the bedrooms with the new bed and a quilt gracing it (for now). It was my "quilt from hell" that has tons of pieces, all of which I had to trim!

An old high school classmate stopped by with his wife (John and Marilyn) this morning, so they were the first official visitors to the new house and they just had to take the tour. I of course wanted to show them the elevator but it was being used by the furniture guy who was also there. The weather, like the previous weekend, has been absolutely gorgeous -- t-shirts by noon even though it gets cold at night. There hasn't been a cloud in the sky at any time!

A Little Lax With My Blogs!

We have been very busy the past few days, picking out furniture for the new house and making arrangements for delivery from various furniture places! But we will finally have real beds, a sofa and some dining room furniture when we come back for Thanksgiving week!! The weather continues to be just beautiful and this northerner could get real used to living with this during the winter months!

Lisa leaves for Charlotte today but Warren and I will remain here and leave early Tuesday morning. Not only is furniture being delivered and set up tomorrow, but an old high school classmate and his wife are stopping by for a visit. They had bought a house just south of here last year and I read about it on our high school Yahoo list. So that will be fun. I have only seen him once in the past 45 years at the 35th high school reunion. I do remember his wife was a quilter and had a Bernina sewing machine which makes them a-okay in my book! It will be fun to hear more about the area. He and his family have vacationed down here since 1965 although they just bought the house last year.

This is the telephoto view of about where our house is with respect to the main pier in Kure Beach. You can't really see it in this picture but this is where the beach access is.

There were lots of fishermen out on this beautiful fall day. Fish were being caught only I couldn't tell you what kind. Yesterday we saw someone get a flounder from the beach.

Not sure what these very small birds were -- some sort of gull or tern I would guess but they were very small and not jittery like the little sandpipers we usually see.

I think this is some sort of sandpiper as well. It was a bit larger wading in the waves.

This is a bush growing in Lisa's back yard in Charlotte which I also couldn't identify but am sure it is something relatively common. We have seen a lot of it down here. I think I have seen oleander as well growing down here. Lots of painted daisies are growing up in the vacant lots as well as some palms and morning glories. I even saw a giant cactus reminiscent of the west -- it looked like a giant agave.

A Few Days Relaxing at LJ's

Well, the most exciting news of today is that Zann found out that she is going to have a baby girl in March!! Everything is good and she is sending video and pictures from the ultrasound which we should get when we arrive back in Rochester!! Her husband is just going to be a sucker for a little girl -- of this, I am totally sure!! So I will be grandmother to a little girl!

Well, after several cloudy Rochester days here in Charlotte, the nice weather has returned! The sky is a cerulean blue with all the beautiful leaves turning colors around us. The deer are out in numbers this week and I again saw them this morning -- I had seen them two days ago as well running through the woods -- too early to get a picture though!!

We are spending the weekdays here in Charlotte, trying to pick up some furniture and get some chores done around the house for Lisa while she works. She and I went to a great furniture store which they have here in the south called Rooms To Go. We bought a living room and a dining room for the new house and they will both be there by Thanksgiving. Now to get some beds.....

LJ's kitties continually entertain us with their antics although they sleep a lot more than they did when they were full-fledged kittens! They have very distinct kitty personalities now! They seem to know us now and go about their usual daily activities and follow us around. Their best time is spent out on Lisa's screened in porch. Her alpha cat is a chewer and he routinely pulls or pushes the screen to escape to the yard. Putting up new kitty-proof screening has been Warren's main task this week.

I, in the meantime, have been working on the "I Spy" quilt for my new grandchild to be. It is going surprisingly fast now that I have fussy cut the hexagons out of all the novelty fabrics. I just attach 60 degree triangles to two opposite sides making diamonds which go together very smoothly.

Although I try to be apolitical, have to say that I was very proud to be an American yesterday seeing an African American man elected to the presidency. No matter what your political affiliation, it shows that as a nation that we have made great strides in the past 50 years. Now let's hope that we can stay on the road to economic recovery (so I can afford my new house!)

The New House!!

This is a view from the deck of the new house. You can see that they will be building across the street so some of our view will be blocked but we will still have some.

This Warren and Lisa kite flying on the beach. It was a beautiful afternoon.

I loved all the different colors of houses down here. We have seen baby blue houses next to royal blue and then a deep purple or a lavender or yellow. It is wild!!

This is our beach access which is one block away.

I took this picture at 7 this morning as I looked out to the beach. The sun rose behind the house that you see so I didn't get to see it come up directly. Just had to see a sunrise the first day here!! My family objected to all my noise getting coffee ready first thing!!

Well, I sit here in the living room of my new house looking out the window across the deck to see the ocean! It doesn't hurt that it is a beautiful day with bright sunshine. You can actually see the dolphins bobbing up and down in the surf from here! The view in one direction is the ocean and there is a forever wild park area two blocks back in the other direction. It is a lovely residential area and much closer to the beach than I had thought - 250 steps -- I counted! We will be renting it out during the summer and wanted to know exactly how close it was to the beach access which is one short block away.

So, I am now the proud owner of a house with 3 palm trees and an elevator!! The ceilings are very high so there are two long flights of stairs to reach the living area. The bedrooms are mostly on the second floor (down a flight from the living area). There are bedrooms and bathrooms on every floor though. It was handy to have the elevator to bring up what little furniture and stuff we brought down here.

The NC acquarium is located about three miles down the road and lots of bike paths and water access in a park there. I haven't been down there but Warren and Lisa drove down when they were supposed to be getting lunch!

So far the only thing not working is the fancy oven which is brand new so a technician will be here Tuesday to fix it supposedly. Good thing I had brought along a little toaster oven!

Both Warren and I at separate times managed to lock outselves out on the decks. There is a dead bolt and a locking door knob. Even our front door doesn't have a locking door knob. It never occurred to me that you would be able to open the door to go out and not be able to come back in! Ooops.

A lot of pounding and yelling finally got the attention of my dear husband who thought it was kids banging on the door for Halloween!!! I guess I will never do that again!!

This is the picture of the infamous elevator that now defines me to my blogging friends!

This is a picture of one of the palm trees that sits at the entrance to the house.

This was our first view of the new house right before the realtor arrived to take Warren and I on the tour before we signed the papers.

This was a picture that Lisa took of me on the beach this afternoon. You can see that the weather is beautiful. There were lots of dolphins and pelicans hanging out today!

This picture was actually taken from the deck off the living room of the new house. Just one dorsal fin of many of the dolphins that were swimming by all afternoon!