Frustration

So today I set out to sign up for my spring semester here at our local college, Copper Mountain College....what a hot mess that was. I get there, have to hike all the way up the road with a heavy baby in my arms, wait in line for over an hour, only to be told that all of the classes I need are filled. Then to make matters worse, the woman behind the counter was beyond rude and said "Well this is your responsibility, we started registering 6 weeks ago" Okay, so I'll take that one on the chin..however, had the school gotten their crap together and gotten the schedule out on time without having to change everything at the last minute, I probally would have been better prepared. Furthurmore, we have like a tenth of the classes being offered this semester than what we're used to. Apparently we don't have the funding for teachers and classes. While I can appreciate that and even understand it, what I don't understand is why we have a freaking sports stadium, a solar powered parking lot, and some weird ass trash cans that nobody knows what they do.....other than cost a lot of money. Supposedly, the story is, the school was given an obscene amount of grant money that was only allowed to be used to build a sports stadium and make all kinds of changes to the campus. What really amazes me is that we are unable to fund education but we are able to fund a sport stadium to be built at a community college that is located in the middle of the desert. Most of us who are students at this college are adults who are going to school while we work and raise our families...We're not competing in school sports. That makes this stupid stadium completely unnecesary. If I were a politician in charge of handing out money to schools, I'd make sure it was used for important reality based things...like you know, education. We don't need a sports stadium, we don't need trash cans with cutting edge technology, we might need a solar powered parking lot though I don't know why.....What I do know that we need is better classrooms, more class offerings, quality professors such as Professor Cathy Itnyre, and for goodness sake, new carpet because that nasty glowing orange crap makes me sick to my stomach when I have to sit there staring at it for hours during my class.
To add to my fantastic day, I was already mad about my classes being full, which means I have to take this semester off, then I had to go to the grocery store. I was sitting in my car in front of an open spot waiting for this guy to pass so I could pull in. This jerk proceeds to pull into the spot I was waiting for, and then gives me a smug little "F You" look. I being the calm docile person I am, gave him the finger, yelled a couple of obscenities out the window, and decided to go to another grocery store because I knew if I ran into that dude, I was gonna clock him with a can of corn. As I'm driving away barking a few choice words I realize that my 10 month old, Matthew, is in the backseat trying to imitate the funny little four letter word Mommy keeps repeating...suffice the say, I felt so guilty so now I'm swearing to only use that word when absolutely necessary.
I guess if there's an upside to today, it's that I have about four months to catch up on all of my household projects before I have to dedicate myself to school again.

How to properly display a quilt

Quilts are lovely when displayed on walls, but they are beautiful wrapped around a sleeping Angel. Granted, I am biased but this pictures reminds me why I quilt, and even more importantly, why I treasure being a Mommy.

New Year, New Projects!

This is what has become of my treasured sewing room....I am grieving it's loss at the moment but also looking forward to what is to come.

The story behind this calamity is pretty simple. When we bought this house two years ago, it had enough rooms to allow for my husband and I to have seperate rooms to work in. Keith's room was his office and my room was my sewing room. I had everything exactly the way I wanted it and then we decided to expand our family. In March of 2009, our son Matthew was born and it became apparent that I was going to lose my sewing space because now we are up to 3 children and they need their space. My two oldest, my son Kevin who is 9, and my daughter Raine, who is 6, have become mortal enemies lately. Every minute of the day is nothing but fighting so I have decided that in an effort to curb the chaos, I am giving up my sewing room to Kevin. He has at that age where he really needs his own bedroom where he can get away from his obnoxious sister, and have a little quiet time and space to himself.

My dear husband Keith has agreed to give me a corner of his office for my computer and sewing desk. I still haven't figured out where I'm going to put everything but for right now, this is the idea that we're working with. Unfortunatly, the old sewing room ended up becoming a storage room to hide all the stuff we didn't want our guests to see over the holidays and now I have an even bigger problem to deal with.

This morning I walked into that room and immediatly felt overwhelmed. As I stood there staring at all the stuff I had to do, it occured to me that if I took pictures and posted them, I would feel like I was being held accountable for this project. So as I clear out that room and start reorganizing my sewing gear into my new space, I am going to try to take pics and post them. I want to be able to see my progress and I also think it might be fun to have a record of it. So here's to progress!

Wish me Luck!

-Dara

Lost Treasures

This is a quilt top that I actually made at least five years ago. It was intended to be a Christmas wallhanging. I just pulled it out of my UFO stash and felt almost a sadness that I had allowed something so pretty stay hidden away from the world. I, like most quilters, don't think that my work is anything special, but this particular piece was and still is.

The stars were paper pieced from Carol Doak's Stars book. I don't know where the book is off hand, but when I find it, I will make sure to post the name of the book because it is definatly one of the best star books out there. It has 50 different paper pieced blocks, each one named after a different state.

I spent hours upon hours working on this wallhanging. It only has nine blocks but each one of those blocks was a couple of days work. Not to mention, the amount of work it took to make up the pattern and decide on fabrics I wanted to put into it.

Once I had finished the top, I looked at it and decided that it wasn't finished just yet. I wanted to add some applique holly and berries just to give it a little extra pizazz....well that was my downfall. In order to do that, I had to learn how to applique. It took a long time to figure out and I ended up just tucking it away to work on for a rainy day. Well, it's rained quite a few times since then and I haven't finished the applique! HA HA

I have decided that it is going to get finished this year. It will be on my wall come Christmas time. It's too pretty not too and frankly, after all the work I have put into this lil' stinker, I would like to have the opportunity to brag a little!

With Stars in my Eyes,

-Dara