What I've been up to lately

My blog posting has been a little sparse lately so I thought I'd catch you up on what's going on in my life lately. My hubby and I returned from our annual Tennessee Mountains trip on Wednesday of last week and I've been very busy since then catching up at work and at home.

1. Last weekend I did no sewing whatsoever!!! While we were gone on our trip my daughter was surprised with the opportunity to have her piano moved from our house to her house and to have it tuned. It turns out that a good friend's father moves and tunes pianos for a living and was going to be in my area on Tuesday of last week. My son was home that day and could be here to let him in. It all worked out beautifully.

So now I have a spot in my sewing room for a cutting table. I am excited about this and am looking forward to hubby helping me to come up with a plan for this. I would love one that has storage underneath. We also plan to put shelves on the wall above the cutting table.

One thing I had to get done last Saturday was to clean up the sewing room because moving the piano left a mess. My son had moved the things on and under the piano out of the way and of course there was dirt on the floor where the piano had been, as well as the rest of the floor.

2. While I was in Sevierville, Tennessee I visited The Cherry Pit Quilt store. I love this store. I can't afford most of what is in there, but its so much fun to browse around and get ideas. I did purchase some Fat Quarters that I hope to use in the Cozy Cabins Quilt I posted about recently. I've decided to use pink/rose and browns as the main colors. I'm going to the fabric department at Walmart soon to purchase some more matching colors. I need some solids, checks, etc. I already have some solid black fabric to use for the center square of the blocks.

3. We've already had snow flurries twice!!! The winter is looking like it might be severe just like the Farmer's Almanac predicted. So I guess it doesn't make sense that I have waited until now to get in the mood to work in the yard. Last Saturday I spent about an hour and a half working in a flower bed in my front yard that has been neglected this whole summer. I had to wear a coat and gloves since it was very cold that day. I made a lot of progress and have already purchased purple pansies to plant this weekend when I get time. During the work week its dark when I get home, so I need to do this when I'm off work. I'll have a 4 day weekend this weekend so I hope to finish getting this flower bed in shape. I'll post before and after pictures later this weekend.

4. CVS and Walgreens. I've gotten some great deals this week. The problem I usually have is that by the time I get to the stores the good stuff is gone. This week I went to Walgreens before work on Monday and to CVS at lunch time on Monday and was able to find all of the items I planned to buy. At CVS I had $30.00 in extra bucks to spend. I only spent 80 cents our of pocket on the first order after coupons and extra bucks. This means I had about 35 dollars worth of merchandise for 80 cents! Then another $25.00 worth of extra bucks printed out and I used them toward my second transaction. I only spent 37 cents on that one and had to grab a candy bar to fill in enough to use the extra bucks. AND I still got $26.00 worth of more extra bucks that printed out after the second transaction. I hope to roll these over again this weekend because CVS is offering a BUNCH of free after extra bucks items Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Well, that's all I've got time for this morning!