Grow Your Blog

Congratulations to Brittany, of Pickles Quilting!  Brittany is the winner of the giveaway.  I'm off to my sewing/reading room to gather items that I think she will enjoy.  Thanks so much for joining in this giveaway!  The comments were so much fun. I've discovered several new to me blogs.  

In the evenings whle Dear Hubby watches TV, I read blogs.  This past year I've definitely read more blogs than actually writing blog posts.  My non-blogging definitely began when I agreed to co-chair the Programs Job for my local quilt guild (Gwinnett Quilters' Guild)  It has been lots of fun, lots of communicating and lots of personal growth.  I'm hoping to blog sometimes about the wonderful quilt teachers I've met because of this venture (Amy Bradley, Marie Bostwick, Mary Lou Weidman, Edytah Sitar, Muriel Pfaff, Jennifer Jangles, Paula Barnes, Lisa Bongean, Kathy Brown .....)   In addition to my guild work, we are currently living in two homes.  My dear hubby will retire in 3 months. At that point, the last phase of our moves will be completed. We sold our home in July, moved necessities into a rental home and moved the majority of our life to our retirement home at the lake.   We are at the rental house during the week and our retirement house on the weekend.  It's a hour and a half drive each way. We are leaving the suburbs of Atlanta for small town living. Our new home is near the Georgia/South Carolina border in the quaint town of Hartwell.  It's a new adventure for us, but one with many blessings!

In some of my blog readings, I ran across Grow Your Blog (http://vicki-2bagsfull.blogspot.com/2014/01/welcome-to-grow-your-blog-2014.html) Blog Party.  WOW!!!  Hundreds of blogs with many different areas of focus are in this hop.  It will take weeks to visit them all, but what fun !   Lots of new blogs to visit and new ones to follow!

I adore  blog giveaways. I enjoy hosting them and participating in entering them.  For this blog hop, I will have a giveaway.  I'm stealing this idea from another blogger.  I'll choose a winner on February 15th. To enter, tell me a bit about you. What are your interests, what do you like to read, what do you collect or just something to guide me. I'll select the giveaway prize on your interests.  If you like to read, I'll send you a book I enjoyed. If you are a fabric-holic like me, I'll send you some fabric some my stash.  If you are a cook, I'll send some of my DH's recipes (he's an awesome cook).  Get the idea? I'll try to cater the giveaway to your interests.  

Thanks so much for visiting my blog!  I'm off to a quilting retreat this week.  I'll read your posts, but won't be able to respond until next weekend.  Take care, dear friends!

Becky

The Quilting Booklady

Sew Mama Sew Give-away

It's giveaway week at Sew Mama Sew blog.  Blog giveaways are great fun.  It's a quick and fast way to meet new bloggers and discover new blogs.  If this is your first visit to my blog, WELCOME!  I've been on a bit of a blog holiday and hope to quickly get back to regular blogging.  Dear hubby and I have recently moved to the northeast corner of the state of Georgia.  We have a new Hometown. We are exploring the area, taking in new events, and meeting new folks. To celebrate our new Hometown, my giveaway includes two charm packs of  HOMETOWN by Sweetwater for Moda.  

Charm packs lend themselves to lots of projects. One of my favorite projects for charm pack  is the Schnibbles patterns by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.   This weekend has been cold and rainy. The Schnibble pattern  Winter White seemed the perfect pattern for Hometown and the weather in my new hometown.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment  telling me the name of your hometown and something about it.  For a second chance, leave an additional comment  about  your favorite Christmas movie.   Giveaway will end on Friday, December 13th.  The winner will be notified by email on Saturday , December 14th. International entries are welcome.

Visit the giveaway page at Sew Mama Sew. There are two categories of giveaways, supplies  and handmade items.  Good luck and enjoy visiting the many, many blogs!

Dusting off the Blog

Let's see if I even remember how to use Blogger :)  I'm trying this on my Ipad, so..... you may never actually see this :)  Lots of changes, lots to share with you. Hope you will reconnect and join me!  Merry Christmas!  

Let's start at the beginning...  We have moved.  Well stage one and two of our move has occurred. Stage three will happen in April.  Rather out of the blue, DH and I decided to look at homes. We lived in the Atlanta metro area and liked the idea of getting out of the business and traffic of the metro area.  We looked in several areas near our metro area, but decided to move 100 miles to a small town near the Georgia/South Carolina border and near Lake Hartwell, a man-made lake.  This is one of the views from our back porch, my favorite place to sit and drink coffee.  We purchased our retirement home in April. Our home sold in July. We moved most of our possessions to the new home in July. DH doesn't retire until April of 2014 so we are in a rental house during the week. During the weekend, we are at the retirement house.  Confusing, I know.  The boxes are mostly unpacked. Still have a couple in my new sewing room.  Maybe, knowing I want to show you the sewing room will encourage me to unpack and place the final items.  There is lots of mental organizing in trying to remember what items we need to transport between the houses.  This weekend, I forgot my warm pj's.  I do need another pair but for now I'm bringing the one pair back and forth.  Lots of instances of , "It's at the other house." We are loving discovering our new town.  There is an active retirement population as well as families who have been here for decades.  We are actually in a neighborhood. Our home has lake views on three sides, but we do not have a lake lot.  Even though we are in a neighborhood, we are out of town - "country-like."  There are cows across the street on a large estate.  "Town" is 4 miles away.  A city with everything we need and then some is 30 minutes away.  The best thing is that the local quilt shop is 3 miles from our new home. There is also a second shop fifteen minutes away.  Life is Good!

Snow Sewing ....Ellijay 2013

 This curve in the road among my quilting friends will now be known as "Jane's Curve." What began as an innocent little "field trip" to the quilt shop Country Stitches in Blue Ridge, Georgia became a "rescue mission" for Bob and Vickie, owners of Whitepath Lodge in Ellijay, GA.  We knew that snow was predicted for the afternoon hours. I had stalked weather.com and the weather reports for over a week before our sewing retreat. No one anticipated several inches of snow in a short amount of time in the morning hours. 

In an hour or two, it went from this beautiful scenario

to this

 dreamy wonderland. The ridge and road leading to Whitepath Lodge received the most snow in the county.  Jane took awesome care of us. Her Highlander did a superhero job of trying to get us up the hill. It was that extra yard of fabric that we purchased that did her in. (LOL)

Kristie, Brenda, Jane, Carla and Becky

Thank you ladies for a "field trip" to remember!