Another Day of This and That

Tried out the Juki quilting machine and let’s just say I’m not in love yet!  After having driven a Cadillac (my APQS longarm) it is hard to work with anything else.  I did load a Christmas wall hanging onto the Juki frame and quilted a couple of rows—nope, I’m not in love yet!

Packed up some items to return, printed off mailing labels, got some Christmas packages ready to mail and went into town late this afternoon.  Delivered my last two customer quilts.  Came home dodging deer all the way.

Michael did some getting ready to go stuff—he got the big Ford dually in the garage for the winter and packed some other things into the motorhome. 

The mattress in the motorhome belonged to Mike’s Mom and Dad—it was their guest bed and it was in our guest room until we put it in the motorhome to replace the original mattress (remember, this motorhome is a 1996!!).  It is a very firm mattress and even though I put one of those 3 inch dense foam pads from Costco on top, we both had trouble sleeping this summer.  When I attended that Private Quarters party a few weeks ago (very high end bedding) I drooled over their very expensive feather bed thinking I would like to put one on the motorhome bed to see if it would help.  Didn’t buy one of those expensive ones but got on Overstock.com and found a very reasonable featherbed.  The thing was delivered by the poor UPS man last week—it weighs a ton and today I struggled to get it into the motorhome and on the bed so it will fluff—it sure feels nice, hope it helps!

Emmi has this trait—she loves to dance around on her two back feet—she seems to be able to dance around for a long time before going back to all fours.  This morning she thought chewing on Dad’s glove as we walked was a good idea--

A week from today we hope to head to Billings, get Michael’s last two doctors appointments done with and travel on down the road. 

Last One Done

My last customer quilt came off the frame this afternoon!  Now I think I will work on some of my own stuff, maybe!

It started out to be a beautiful day, sunny and not as cold but we lost the sun about lunch time--it was still warmer than it has been.  Michael decided to cut into firewood some of the logs we brought home from Robyn and Claire’s.  Hopefully this load will last us until we leave.  He also put out large round bales for the horses. 

Lonn and LoraLee stopped by late this afternoon with their early Christmas present, a new Dodge truck!  I love the smell of a new vehicle!

These three ladies were taking a siesta waiting for the sun to hit them.

Ross can you see the whitetail buck in the photo above—he was after a doe who is just out of the picture.

What Did I Do Today?

The days just fly by and at the end I have to ask myself, “what did I do today?”  And I guess I did something—I cooked lunch and oatmeal/chocolate chip/pecan cookies for Nat.  I also made a new coffeecake that is just delicious—I was going to take some of the cake out to my friend Gemma’s and have coffee with she and her Mom but found out Gemma is in IL at a wedding.  Oh, well, more calories for Mike and I to eat!

Last night when I loaded wood into the stove downstairs I got a face full of wood smoke.  At 5am this morning I started sneezing, sneezing and sneezing some more.  Took half a benadryl and of course that made me sleepy so Michael and Emmi went on a walk and I went back to bed for a couple of hours. 

And that’s all for our day here in snowy Montana!

Another Cold One

Zero degrees when we got up, some sunshine and back down to about 10 degrees as I write this blog.  Eleven days and counting!

Finished Jill’s quilt today.  I decided not to post photos until the owner has seen the quilt and unfortunately I have forgotten to take some photos—I missed Jeane’s happy little snowman quilt, maybe I can sneak a photo next time I am out at her house.  And I loaded my last customer quilt onto the frame late this afternoon, YEA!

Michael puttered again and this afternoon began to putter dangerously!  In our basement there are three rooms, none of which is totally finished out.  My quilt studio uses one of the two larger rooms, Michael’s woodworking shop uses the other large room and the small room in the middle is our pantry/storage room.  This afternoon he decided to clean up and organize that room—don’t get me wrong, it needed cleaning—but-------I will have a hard time finding stuff for a while! 

We were able to take two walks today and this afternoon late I got some gorgeous photos.

This last photo is taken from outside our house looking in at the little Christmas tree.  The outside snow covered trees are reflected as well as the mountains in the distance.

We Were Short On Snow

NOT!  We got less than the 10 inches some were predicting and more than the 2 inches others were predicting, about 6-7 inches of fluffy, wet snow.  It stuck to poor Emmi like glue on our walk this morning. She doesn’t seem to mind.

This time of year our UPS man Bill is a busy dude!  At least now UPS has provided him with a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  He can at least get up our driveway and many other driveways in his delivery area.  The previous UPS normal panel trucks had to be chained up before navigating these steep driveways.  To make it easy on him, too, we unlock the door to the big barn down near the road and have told him to leave packages there if the driveway is too nasty. 

I hope to sleep like a baby tonight, my new pillows came today via Shirley.  Some Santa presents came in the mail, too.  I love this time of year!

I loaded Jill’s quilt onto the frame and came close to finishing it and would have if I had not had to do battle with insurance companies.  I thought I was the customer but the way the woman in Pennsylvania was talking to me maybe I was just a bum!  Yes, can anyone tell me why BCBS of MT claims are processed in Pennsylvania???? 

Michael and Emmi puttered today, it was a good day for puttering!  Michael accomplished a little, Emmi destroyed a little!

LoraLee was given a Kindle by her boss—she hasn’t used it and offered it to me for the winter.  Because we are no where near an AT&T cell tower, I had to download the book from Amazon through my computer then onto the Kindle.  I was successful with only ONE call to the Kindle store.  How cool is that??!!

A Fun Day In Bozeman

When I first moved to this area with Michael I met two sets of his friends right off the bat—first Jill and then Jeane and Steve.  Jill and Jeane have over the years become the greatest of friends and I enjoy their company tremendously.  They welcomed this city girl into their cowgirl world with open arms.  I spent the day in Bozeman with them, shopping and having lunch. 

Downtown Bozeman—there is usually a lot more snow in Bozeman than here as the elevation is higher—not this time, Bozeman has very little snow compared to what Big Timber received.  There are still HUGE piles of snow on the city streets in Big Timber where the plows just pushed all the snow—some of the piles are as big as Rollie’s truck!

Bozeman is a very touristy town and as a result has blocks and blocks of little fun shops and some great restaurants.  We had such a good time and I didn’t do too much damage to Michael’s wallet!  Found a stainless steel carafe for the motorhome and some cool Christmas presents. 

By the time we got back to Big Timber late this afternoon it had started to snow.  Maybe 2-4 inches we will get??

A tragedy happened here in Montana yesterday, a Montana state highway patrol officer was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop, may God be with his family, he was only 23 years old.  The last time a state trooper was shot in Montana was in 1978 and before that in 1946.  It just doesn’t happen here.  The man who shot the officer committed suicide. 

One of the neighboring ranches is owned by an elderly couple and Olaf is Norwegian—speaks with a heavy accent.  His wife’s name is Gladys—I would always see Olaf driving and Gladys opening the gates, even in the worst of weather, raging snowstorms, high winds, etc.  I asked Gladys one time, “why do you always ride as the passenger and have to get out and open the gates?”  Her reply, “because it is just easier to get out and open the gates than to listen to him complain about every bump and frozen cow patty I drive over.”  And, I cleaned up her language for the blog!  So, Al and Kelly, tell us why we see Kelly always opening and closing the gates!

Another One Finished

Two more to go, quilts that is.  I finished a sweet little Christmas quilt for my friend Jeane today—I smiled the whole time I was freehand quilting mittens all over the quilt—the fabric is jolly snowmen, winter scenes and pure white, the whole thing just made me happy! 

We had fairly nice weather today, over 30 degrees and only a little wind, snow was melting and dripping. 

For lunch today I made homemade bread and beef stew—very good and perfect food for this kind of weather.

Tomorrow Jeane is taking me to Bozeman for a belated birthday lunch (yes my birthday is in September but better late than never!)

George came up today and brought us really good bottles of wine as a gift for Michael plowing his driveway on Thanksgiving Day.  I think I have this story —straight--George’s daughter is a wine buyer for a chain of grocery stores in California, gives George great wine recommendations and all his friends and neighbors benefit! 

Emmi loves her ducks!  She is exercising Michael’s arms.