I know we are still a couple weeks out from Halloween but I was walking Mike this morning (more on that later) and discovered a house in my neighborhood that is winning Halloween in my opinion! Here are the photos which of course do not do their whole spooky vibe justice:
Can you imagine being a 6-year old kid on Halloween and your parents are trying to convince you to go up to that front door and ask for candy!?!? I would be like “H*ll to the No” (why yes, I would be swearing as a 6-year old kid if asked to go up to that front door – ha!).
Image credit: Avera Health
The family that owns this house has likely spent thousands of dollars on Halloween and clearly loves this holiday! The decorations are HUGE and very high quality, nearly (low budget) movie set quality on some pieces (like I said, the photos do not do it justice).
So earlier in this post I mentioned I was walking Mike. Some of you might remember in January 2023 I had a terrible twist/fall on ice and broke my left ankle in two places requiring surgery for my complex fracture. It’s been a long road to recovery but I am now regularly walking Mike again and able to go on long-ish walks. I am so grateful as it was the first time in my adult life (January to April 2023) that I could not go on daily walks. It was a rough time mentally, physically and even “spiritually” for me – going on daily walks is everything to me.
I’ll write more about Halloween later in this month, I’ve been thinking about some sweet memories from life in Oregon related to Halloween and will share in another post.
Mike the Miniature Schnauzer was going to do a guest blog post (like he’s done in these other posts in this category – Miniature Schnauzer Adventures) but this is his current situation which doesn’t lend itself to typing 😉 :
He’s of course playing ball even though he is in a cone (which we have renamed “the scoop” instead of “the cone of shame” as he uses it to scoop up the ball from the ground, ha!). Mike had a “hot spot” on his leg he was bothering, it opened up and now he is on antibiotics after a veterninary appointment and has to wear “the scoop” for a week while it heals.
A week ago we took Mike to the mall and he spent time in Macy’s department store.
Mike’s life has really evolved from when my late husband Terry’s and I adopted him from a rescue organization out of Portland, Oregon in September 2014. When we first got him he was suffering with anxiety and behavioral issues (you can read more of Mike’s story on this old post – Taking Chances: The Mike Hogan Chronicles).
Back in 2014 when we first adopted him I would have never imagined a time when he would go in a backpack to a department store. We were just trying to train him to walk on a leash and not be so incredibly aggressive when another dog (or human) walked by when he was on leash!
And now he goes to home improvement stores all the time in his box and gets pets from other customers and the staff at the store while being pushed in the shopping cart.
And he gets to go to department stores like Macy’s(okay now I am back to connecting this post into the title of this post, ha!) in his backpack!
A lot of this evolution is thanks to John from early on in our relationship encouraged me to give Mike a chance to have new experiences. I also have to thank my sister who encouraged me to take Mike to the Nordstrom’s Rack when she first visited me in May 2019 when I had just moved to Denver.
Previously the only store experiences Mike had were at quilt shops when Terry and I went quilt shop hopping. He was in the backpack on Terry’s back and no one could come near him!
So here is Mike at Macy’s last week:
People would come up behind John and pet Mike no problem.
Mike was pretty mellow and didn’t mind going up and down the department store escalators:
Mike even got to hang out in the mall Foodcourt after all that shopping at Macy’s:
Yes we let him have a little taste of our french fries, he’d been a good boy!
I just realized I adopted Mike nearly a year after starting my blog. Wow how time flies!
Do you love buttons as much as I do? I thought it would be fun to re-post this post from October 2016 on my button collection (smile)
BUTTONS (Repost post from October 26, 2016)
I just wanted to randomly post about one of my guilty pleasures in life – buttons!
I did not to intend to collect buttons, my button collection just sort of crept up on me…
Trying to be organized with my button collection
I am not sure how it began but I remember as a little girl playing with my grandmother’s button jar and being fascinated.
Then, many years later, my love of buttons was rekindled when I started making miniature kimono wallhangings and wanted to embellish them with interesting buttons.
Miniature Kimono with an antique button
I began picking up interesting buttons here and there – from craft shows, from shift shops, antique shops, and from a bookstore.
Card of antique buttons picked up at a used bookstore
I was even lucky enough to have a friend who let me raid her old button collection in search of cool buttons for miniature kimonos.
A couple of these buttons were raided from my friend’s antique button collection
This past May, my friend Dana, who was my “secret quilt sister” at our annual quilting retreat, surprised me with an “Vintage Button Jar” as part of my gift.
The jar contained lots of fun buttons such as the ones below:
Some cool large buttons courtesy of my friend Dana
Upon returning home from the retreat I attempted to cram my entire button collection into my new “Vintage Button Jar” but my collection was overflowing from the jar.
So now I keep the jar in my sewing studio to hold small packages and cards of special buttons.
Anyone else have an issue with buttons? Any secret (or not so secret) collectors?
It’s been a while since I’ve written any posts for my blogging topic category – The Library Stackwhere I share my latest stack of local library books I’ve borrowed; and this might be my last “library stack” post for a very long time.
Why? Because I overdid it this time…
A couple weeks (or a month ago), I went for a wander in our local Barnes & Noble bookstore and spent way too long in the Interior Decorating/Home Improvement section with lots of new and yummy design books.
Above is a small sampling of the two bookcases in Barnes & Nobles filled with new interior design books.
I noted many of the new book titles, went home and reserved them at the library. Little did I know they would all come in so fast…and continuously.
This was the first library stack:
I didn’t take any more photos but the books kept coming in until my stack was over 20+ books before I left for my trip to Montréal a couple weeks ago. While I was in Montréalbooks I had on hold kept coming available and John had to keep going to the library to pick them up each time I got a new e-mail until I returned to the US. It was getting ridiculous.
When I got back from my trip I tried to flip through as many books (drinking a lot of tea!) as I could knowing some I had to return in 21 days AND that more books kept coming in.
How did this happen? I don’t remember reserving that many Interior Design books but I think I made a mistake when I was putting books on hold and accidentally checked a whole screen page listing of books instead of just the one (or several books) I wanted on that page of the library listing.
I ended up with over 35+ library books which I had to make into 3 stacks!
After a while I became fatigued with Interior Design books and realized I’d really overdone it this time. I ended up returning all the books before their 21 day loan was up including 10+ books I didn’t even flip through.
Of all those library books, in the TRIPLE STACK, my two favorites were these two, I really enjoyed looking through these gorgeous books:
I enjoyed them on the front porch during a lovely day with milder weather.
But I think my “library stack” era has ended (or at least on hiatus for some time) and I am just going to focus on reading the books and magazines in my home library for now. I am currently quite disinterested in any home design suggestions – ha!
In honor of the 10th anniversary month of my blog, I am going to attempt blog everyday for the month of October. I’ll be catching up on adventures I’ve not yet shared. Perhaps eventually I’ll share my latest textile project(s) when I get back to working on them…
ANOTHER QUILT RETREAT IN MY HOME (SORT OF)
Back in May I had a “Scrap Happy Quilt Retreat” at my home for my friends D and K, who are both quilters – see series of posts in this blog category Scrap Happy Quilt Retreat, if you’d like to read about our “fabric-scrap-wrangling adventures.
My friends MJ and J got interested in “retreating” at my house – J is a quilter and MJ is not. I met J through MJ and MJ is a long time very dear friend of mine that I met when I lived in Bend, Oregon 2005 – 2018. We planned the retreat for late August 2023.
I thought it would work – MJ and J would come for 5 days and J and I would working on scrappy freeform log cabin quilts while MJ did some other craft and just hang out with us. MJ joked that we were going to give her macaroni, non-toxic glue, popsicle sticks and fingers paints (like in Kindergarten) to work with – ha!
I’ll share what MJ actually ended up doing later in this post (she creatively made her own retreat!) when our retreat in August happened.
But first I will share the huge fabric scrap pile J and I had to work with during the 5 days in August we had the retreat: it was a combination of my scrap pile and scraps that J brought:
I helped J find some type of inspiration fabric scrap in the pile that had a color palette (as how else to you start sifting through that “hot mess” to design a scrap quilt?). Once she found an inspirational scrap, she started pulling from the scrap pile fabric scraps that coordinated with the scrap to create a palette.
J took off and ran with the concept and before I knew it she was covering my design wall with her improvisational combinations:
Which evolved into these blocks:
I’ll share her pieced quilt top someday in a follow up post when she completes it (if she doesn’t mind me sharing the photo).
What did I work on? I started a new freeform scrappy log cabin but I didn’t like the direction it was going; and after a couple days working on it I recycled it into the scrap pile (and didn’t take any photos of it).
So what did MJ work on? Well not any crafts, ha! She abandoned us in my studio and ended up having a cooking retreat with my husband John.
Like the retreat I had in May with my friends D and K, John did all the cooking. MJ helped John do all the cooking and got cooking lessons from him on some of his specialities. Here they are in a lesson:
She also enjoyed hanging out with Mike our dog (MJ is a “dog person”) and binge watching Netflix shows. Here life is very busy back in Central Oregon and she enjoyed just relaxing and helping cook as her “retreat”, while J and I were upstairs in the “quilters sweatshop” working on our scrappy projects!
MJ also ran errands to the home improvement store with John and Mike, and she got trained on how to push Mike around in his box in the shopping cart as John does!
We had a “make/top your own pizza night” for dinner one night, it was so fun. John and MJ pre-baked the pizza crusts and we got to add our own toppings and hang around the oven waiting for our delicious combinations!
We got out of the house and spent a couple hours or a 1/2 day on various adventures.
One day we went to Castle Rock, CO and visited The Barn, a consignment/antique venue (sort of like a nicely curated flea market), that I love and is so fun to wander.
Here are some boots at The Barn I just could not live without (just kidding, definitely not my style):
It is such a fun wander to meandering around The Barn; and as mentioned on their website: “When you walk into The Barn you may feel many things. Among these feelings could be a sense of comfort…..like you have come home. Many customers express these sentiments…it has come to be known as ‘Barn Therapy’.”
After The Barn we had cocktails and delicious appetizers at the Ecclasia Marketacross the street, sitting in the Sinners & Saints/Gluttony & Graze area of the market on the comfy sofas.
We also stopped at my favorite indie bookstore in Castle Rock – Sudden Fiction Books.
All of us brought books and J bought so many books we wondered how she’d get them all in her suitcase (she did ship them home), especially some amazing Children’s books for her grandkids. This little bookshop has an amazing curated collection.
They also had this adorable little miniature room display (that lit up) inside one of their bookcases!
One day I did take J to a quilt shop – we visited Holly’s Cabin quilt shop and J was amazing by their extensive collection of curated Kaffe Fassett fabrics on display:
We had beautiful weather (though a little warm in the afternoons) while MJ and J visited. Every morning MJ (who loves to walk like I do) and I took Mike on a couple mile stroll around my neighborhood. John introduced me to what we call “the nature hike” near our house – miles and miles of wooded trails surrounding and connecting different neighborhoods. I’ll share photos from my new favorite daily walk/hike someday.
This is a pretty nice way to start October, which is the 10th Anniversary of my tierneycreates blog month (first blog post on October 27, 2013): Issue 28 of Quiltfolk Magazine – Colorado – hits newsstands today, October 1, 2023, and is available for purchase online.
Before I go any further, I want to give credit to those involved with the article:
Photography: The photographer was Melanie Zacek (Instagram: @melanie.zacek), and her stylist was Kimberlee Zacek (Instagram: @kimberleezacek)
Writer: The writer who did my interview was Dr. Sharbreon Plummer (Instagram: @sharbreon)
Guess what? Quiltfolk has provided me with a 20% coupon code (TierneyQF28) to share with family, friends and my social media family (those of you who have been with my blog a long time, we are practically family now aren’t we…or am I delusional, ha!):
I thought it was creative that they took one of the photos from the photoshoot for the article and made it into the coupon 🙂
Here is the link if you are interested in the issue (hey we can still be social media friends even if you do not read the article, no obligation): Link to Issue 28: Colorado Info/Purchase page: https://www.quiltfolk.com/issue-28-colorado/
Although they are providing me with three (3) free copies of the issue since I am one of the quilter’s featured in it, I did go out to this link to buy another copy with the coupon code and discovered it worked for the year subscription also, so I got that instead.
Additionally I discovered they were having quite the special deal for their introductory $80 per year subscription price: besides the 4 quarterly issues include in the subscription, you could get one back issue for free (and Issue 28 – Colorado was one of the choices…) but you also got some free fabric (Riley Blake Shades of Autumn 5″ squares) and the ability to buy 2 more back issues 60% off! Not sure how long this deal is going to be active but wanted to make you aware of it.
I know I sound like a salesperson for Quiltfolk, but I just wanted you to be aware of this awesome deal.
Quiltfolk provided me with the photos from my photoshoot to share what I wanted on social media. I’ve selected a few of my favorites to share with you.
In the photo above they made me take off my glasses because of the glare from the sun causing my lenses to be very dark (they are Transition lenses). I never take off my glasses, I’ve been wearing them since 2nd grade and I feel naked without them, so I was trying to control my super awkward feeling!
Well that’s my big announcement to start October 2023 and my 10th Anniversary Month of being a blogger!
tierneycreates 