What NOT To Do On a Cruise!

This is what we found NOT to do on a cruise. We did remember a few things from before, and learned a couple more after.

When they gather everyone up to board the ship -

DON'T GET THE PACKAGES - When everyone is gathered at the beginning on the cruise, they offer "packages" to purchase. One was a meal package for $75 which gives you 3 nights of dinning! What everyone doesn't know is that the dinning hall has the same food! And the dinning hall is FREE. We knew that one from the first cruise 10 years ago. But then they didn't have a package for the specialty restaurants. If one wants to do the restaurants, it costs around $30 per person for a night out. The dinning hall comes with your ticket, and the food there is awesome. The variety is there. If you don't like what you see, tell the waiter and he/she will bring you something you want.

DON'T get the drink packages - unless you love to drink and can drink all day. 10 years ago, the cost for soda (Coke) was to purchase a mug for $45. It could be refilled at any time. We bought one, and didn't get 3 drinking in it the whole trip. This trip was $8.55 per person per DAY! Add that up to around $60 or more. One would have to drink at least 5 drinks of soda a day to get their money worth out of it. We didn't get this....and I only drank coke twice - by buying it off ship and bring it on ship. One gal and her mom brought 2 cases of coke on board, and still bought 2 packages for the soda. Couldn't figure that one out!  The other 2 packages were $35 per person per day for just alcohol. Drinks are usually $10-15 a drink. One needs to drink 3 drinks a day (which would work for some). Then there was the $45 per day per person drinks. That was for both the water, coke, and alcohol. One would have to drink a lot for this. If one does cola only, the cost for those is $2 each drink (I believe). I didn't buy any drinks on the ship so can't really say the price. I watched some at our table buy wine at $9-20 a glass. Hard to say.

DON'T get into the "50% off" or "75% off" on watches! Patrick saw a watch that was listed as$650, marked down to 70% off. He paid $125 for the watch. Then when he got off ship, he checked on the internet and found he could buy that same watch for $89. They also have watch sets for 2 for $40. Patrick got one and I got another. When we checked them out in our rooms, realized they were cheap "ass" watches. The internet sells them for $10 or less. I got a necklaces and earrings with my set, so  figure that's worth $20 even if they were cheap. Watches were the only thing I found that were a rip off on the ship when it came to selling stuff. SOME jewelry was as well.

I did buy a bracelet for $99 that is supposed to be worth $165. Not sure if it's true, but I did like the bracelet and it's got very small diamonds in it. I can live with that.

ALWAYS REMEMBER -

Always remember whatever you do, it comes with the tag of "gratuity" for everyone. Everyone wants a tip and everyone tells you it's up to you to tip. They want those tips. We paid for the tip in the cost of the cruise. We also knew we could give more if we wanted to. The excursions is where we gave more to the ones who took us. That usually was the driver and the tour guide. When you get ready to leave the ship, then they remind you about the tips. EVERYONE wants tips and EVERYONE mentions the tips every chance they get.

EXCURSIONS -

Make sure you sign up for the excursions and any other trip with the cruise ship BEFORE you get one the ship. Otherwise you could miss out on the excursion all together.

DON'T sign up for the next cruise on the ship. I found that you can get a better deal when the prices are low. The cruise ships ALWAYS have deals for cruises. We got a better deal in Jan because they were having a huge sale. Think it was 75% off. They offer to give you $500 toward the services on board the ship if you sign up within 3 days. They have a way of making things look really good.

The whole idea of the ship is to get you to spend money.

DON'T do the Bingo - we did and it cost us $89 for three cards, and 3 dobs. We left he dobs on ship when we left. The next amount is around $110 for 1 electronic bingo game (36 games in ea) and 3 paper sheets. If you want more, it goes up. EACH TIME you pay this for BINGO. If you play the sheets, you get 6 games to a sheet compared to the electronic game piece. They have winnings of $100, $250, and $1000. It's only for 3 games. If you play the whole time on the ship - that would be at least a game a day....it would cost your around $600 or more.

Don't get me wrong, we had a great time, but at the same time, if you want to save money and spend it on the things you really want, then don't get hooked into the gimmicks they have on the ship.

Careful of shopping for diamonds. The guy on the cruise - I believe gets a % of what he helps sell - because I don't think he's helping his ship customers much. He can do deals for you, which is good. I just don't care for the "selling" tactics. It's a "sell," "sell," and "sell" It gets tiresome

They do sell clothing. Some good prices, some not so good.

Happy Cruising!

Finally Back from Cruise

We are BACK! It was an awesome time! I actually worked on my cross stitch piece.

This was the cruise ship we were on up till Sunday morning. We stayed in Galveston TX till Monday. This is "Liberty of the Seas" under Royal Caribbean.

We arrived the day before we were to leave. Our flight there was delayed and we ended up going to Denver instead of San Francisco.  We then went from Denver to Houston. The shuttle took us from the Airport to the hotel. It took us 2 hours to get to our Hotel.....which put us at 11 pm. Then we were up by 7 am and ready to go to the ship by 10 am. We ended up waiting till around noon to board because they were having issues with the ship. It got crowded in the room, but we finally were able to board by 1 pm. Hard to believe how many people were boarding before us that didn't make it till 5 mins before. Plus they had "Club members," "Platinum members," etc., that boarded before we did. Once we were on the ship, we went to get something to eat. We still had to wait till 1pm for our room.

When we got into the room, we found it to be perfect for us. We had a balcony that was small but awesome! We spend at good amount of time in the room and on the balcony.

We had a TV and a nice desk area here.

Our closet was big. So, we unloaded the suitcases and hung all the closet up. There was a save in this closet as well.

The show and toilet was on one side.

The sink area was perfect as well. We were able to put our meds and other things in the cabinet they had behind the mirror on the left side.

This is the view from the bed. It was small but comfortable. The couch on the right was comfortable but at the same time, a little stiff. My bad didn't care for it that much after awhile. I usually sat on the bed and worked on my cross stitch.

I had this much done after the flight to Houston.

This is where I finished before we left Houston. I had a day to work on it after we got off the ship and I was able to get more done on the flight. I'll post that later.

I'll be showing our cruise on here this week. Hope you enjoy it.

Happy Stitching - Happy Quilting!

Hoping To Be Busy

I'm hoping that while I was on the cruise, I actually got something done. I took a couple cross stitch projects with me. One I was hoping to work on, on the plane.

So, I was able to keep each day during my trip busy with things to post. I wanted to keep my blog going while we were gone.

I'm hoping to get back to posting on the 28th or 29th. Then I can post a ton of photos and comments on what we did while we were gone. I really had looked forward to this trip and I'm excited to get back and show what all we were able to enjoy on the cruise!

In the meantime....Stay Happy Quilting! and Happy Stitching!

QOV Quilts

Donna has been awesome getting quilts done for QOV! Quilts of Valor quilts are for veterans.

Here is one of the quilts that I'm dropping off at our next meeting.

This is another one.

Another quilt done with "cheater cloth" in the patriot colors.

I'm taking all these quilts to our meeting in June to be given to a Veteran. It's awesome to see all the quilts that our group gets done.

So, four quilts and two eagles are going to the next meeting. I need to do the binding of one of the quilts (will show later) and I have to do a pillow case for one of them as well. Each quilt gets a pillow case to go with it.

I feel awesome giving Veterans a gift of love and it makes us all Happy Quilting!

Trying to Decide....What Next

I went through a stack of magazines that I have downstairs. They are from the 1990's and I wanted to look for wedding announcements and baby announcements. The more I looked the less I saw of what I wanted.

But I did find.....

 A beautiful memorial for a Vet. I am going to do this, not sure who I'll put in he memorial part but have an idea.

This is my wonderful stack of magazines. Trust me, I have more! This was a small amount. So, I went through these and called it good. Wasn't wanting to keep going! lol

This one did catch my eye. I do like the looks and the saying of this one... so it's on my list of "maybe's."

As I was going through the magazines I found this!! It's the third one that goes with my "Love" and "Hope" pieces. Hope is the one I'm taking with me on the cruise.

This is a wedding piece. I'm not sure about this one, but will add it to my "maybe" list.

And of course I had to find one that "popped!" It was so pretty that I put this on the list of wanting to do. I love the colors and this is a Christmas piece. I do need to get a few more Christmas pieces to add to my walls during Christmas.

This is another Christmas piece. I love the snowmen and the way it's put together. This is really pretty and I think the blue will be awesome! So, another "want to do" piece!

After all that looking, those were the only ones I cam up with - go figure! I did see a lot of pretty pieces that would be awesome to do, but I'm not there yet. I do love the looks of these. I will have them on my list. I do have a lot on my list, so I'll just have to take one at a time!

I wish you as much fun looking for pieces as I had! This is fun to do and I find things I forgot about! Amazing what going through old magazines do!

May we all be Happy Stitching or even Happy Quilting!

One of My Techniques For Applique

I thought I would post one of the ways I do applique. Everyone has a technique or two that they like to use. I have been known to combine more than one technique.

This is the block I did for the quilt group a couple weeks ago.

In this technique of doing the pieces first before putting them down on the fabric. I copied the pieces on to freezer paper - with the shinny side down.

Then I iron the pieces to the fabric I'm going to use. In this case, the bird is my blue fabric. I ironed the pieces on the "right side" of the fabric.

I use "Elmers" school washable glue. Stick form. Then I put glue around the area where I want to fold the fabric back (edge for applique). As shown above.

Once I had part done, I did it to all the pieces. I then took the "shield" on the eagle, and glued it down (just one swipe) and appliqued it to the eagle. Neither are attached to the background yet.

This is what it looked liked after the shield was appliqued down. I find it's easier to applique the piece before putting it to the background. I have a lot less fabric to go through.

I then put the background fabric over the top of my design. I had good lighting to do this. I was able to see the pattern underneath. It gave me a "guide" of where to put the eagle.

Once I had it in the place I wanted it, I glued it down at the tail, wings and head.

Then I started to applique the piece down. I look for a straight area where I can start. I don't like to start on the areas where its a curve or a point. I like to work my way around the curves and get the points.

I tried to get my hubby to take a photo of how I do circles. But he didn't get the point of "close up." I fixed it though, I cropped it so you can see it better.

I use my thumb as a guide. I used the circle things and they worked - sort of - but I found I did a lot better circles by using my thumb as a guide. The curve of my fingernail has a natural curve and I can follow that better then trying to follow the round plastic pieces that I've ironed (with a sharp point in it). NOTE: I'm left handed - so my thumb looks like it's in the wrong position - but it's not.

I appliqued the stem around the top of the eagle. Then I started on the stars and circles (above). The star freezer paper came off, so I was still able to applique them done.

Even though the circles and the stars are light, I wanted to do something different. We were limited to the colors we had. There were more light colors then darker ones. The leaves are red.

And when I'm all done, it's ironed and ready for the next step.

I have many techniques and this is one. I could have used back-basting for the branch, but choose not to.

I live the end result and really happy with it.

Happy Quilting - Happy Stitching.

Projects That I had Framed

This is a short part of all the projects I had framed over the last month.

This was a class I took. It is Hungarian embroidery and they are Happy and Sad. I'm not sure which is which but I'll mark them on the back when I go down and get the information on when I finished the pieces.

This is the piece I finished 2015. I will try and remember to put the information down before I post this page. I loved this. Patrick original wanted green for the top matt. I went and had it changed to the purple. Now, I'm wondering if I made the right choice. I do love this piece. Our house is getting a make over with my pieces. We're starting to show my work on the walls. I love seeing them on the wall.

Nantucket Rose has finally been framed. She's not as big as my Quiltmaker but she's still just as pretty. Patrick put her on the wall.

Trying to remember if this is the Summer Cat or Spring Cat. I do love this piece as well. It's now framed and the frame has a "frame" to it that gives it character. I like the way it was done. Now I just need to do the next one and see about getting the same frame for it. Who knows, we'll see how that goes.

Don't forget to check out my flosstube!

Stay Happy Stitching!

Yet, Another UFO/WIP Creeped Up

As I'm cleaning out my quilt from and trying to get rid of stuff I won't work on, I found yet another UFO.

Over 20 years ago, I designed a quilt to make with some green leaf fabric. I tried a few different ways of putting it together. The main sewing was the paper piecing method on the sewing machine.

This was one of the blocks that I wanted to do. I had done it a couple of times. Each with a different idea. I throw out the others, because they were not put together.

BUT I did find that I had finished 56 9-patches.

I took all this over to moms and we talked about what we could do. I was hoping she would take it, but she figured I could finish this myself. I could - but really don't want to.

So, hopefully this summer I will take the 9-patches and add sashing with a green square in the corner. I have the borders already cut (from 20 years ago). So, this is another project that needs to be finished....one of these days. I may yet work on it after I get back from the Seminar!

May you have a great day and Happy Quilting! Happy Stitching!

Changed My Mind

In cleaning out my quilt room and finding some UFO's.

This one was one I that would be considered a SAL. (Stitch-a-long)

Mom's group saw this pattern and decided they wanted to make the quilt. We ordered 8 books and 8 of us decided we would make the quilt.

We talked about how we would do the center. But then most of us decided to do the flowers first. Some did pink and some did yellow. I decided to do blue. I believe 3 have finished all the flowers that go around in the border next to the center.

I actually finished 4 blocks. There are 3 different patterns for the flowers.

Block #5 is right here. Needs to be finished.

These are all the colors that I was going to use in the quilt. YEP, WAS GOING TO.

I took all the fabric and folded them to put them away. I also put the book in my bookshelf to call it good! I decided I will finish some blocks of flowers and see if I can put them in a different quilt top. Not something I'm wanting to do right away. I have added this to my quilting box. ANOTHER project that I'll be working on when with quilting friends.

I have tons of fabric for this quilt!

May you have a great day - Happy Quilting and/or Happy Stitching!

Found a UFO/WIP From A While Ago

As I cleaned out my quilt from I found some UFO's that I need to work on. So, since I'm gone this week, I'm posting a few of my UFO's and what I'm planning on doing!

I can't remember the pattern name of this one!

I started this around 1985. It's been that long. I hand pieced everyone of those pieces.

Each block is ready for hand piecing. I wanted a full size quilt out of this but now I'm thinking I'm going to add a few move blocks and then call it done! It's not going to be very big. I do believe these blocks are 10" finished.

There are two extra blocks already done. I put this pattern and stuff in my quilting box. That way I can think about working on them when I'm with my quilt groups. It should keep me busy for awhile.

Hope your Happy Quilting!

A Beautiful Day to Work Outside

Today was a beautiful day. It was one of those days where Patrick took part of the day off and worked in the yard. He was saying the garden is a piece of work! It's a big mess. Everything needs to be cleared out and it's going to take some work. All because it rained this year...and when I mean it rained, I mean it RAINED so much the first 5 months! It broke the record for WA state. We have had so much rain that it's equal to the normal up to Nov! We are 6 months ahead of all the rain we get for the year. The yard looks great now. The garden got sprayed.

I did a lot of cleaning. Laundry is almost caught up. I will do what we need later.

The folks will be back on Wednesday. It will be fun to see them again.

I will be doing more cleaning tonight. Then I'm going to start a cross stitch project. I KNOW, I really shouldn't start another project, but this one is small and I'm hoping it will only take a couple days and then it's done. I'll have plenty of time to work on it tomorrow.

I've been keeping a list of things for my next flosstube. I'm hoping to do that a week from Wednesday. I can't wait to do that one too! Plus that's the drawing time. Should be fun!

Happy Quilting - Happy Stitching!

Happy Birthday To ME!

Today I enjoyed a little more sleep then usual. My folks called before I had to go to Cherrills. We had a good chat and they will be back on Wednesday. It will be good to see them again, since they have been gone a month and then some. They are also getting ready to get a dog. Guess my niece is going to train a puppy for them and then in Aug when they go back done they will have a dog. Should be interesting. At least it will get dad out and walking again.

I then went over to Cherrill's to find Ruth there as well. They set up a Birthday TEA for me. I loved it!! There was a Birthday cake and gifts. Cherrill game me a box with a tea cup, tea strainer and a tea bag holder. It's awesome! I love the colors! Ruth gave me flowers and a card with $5 in it. It was so fun! We sat, chatted, and ate cake. I brought home a lot of the cake. It was one of the best Birthday cakes I've had - and one of my best Birthdays!

I didn't think to take a photo of it before we ate some! It was so funny!

Then came home and had to run to moms. I had to pick up some stuff for her client and then go back to the house and drop off what he gave me. I also picked up her mail. Then I headed to Walmart (I KNOW RIGHT!?) I picked up the extra stuff we needed for our trip. It went great. I was able to get out of there in a good time.

Came home and found a package at the door. Was thinking it was from Katt, but it was from Phil and Emily. I got a beautiful Bonsai plant. It was fun to it out of the box. I love this plant! Now I just need to keep it alive. The funny part was my thought went to Japan remembering the saying of a Bonsai that is a gift, is the giftee's life tree. When the person dies, so does the tree. Should be interesting! lol

Then Katt called. We had a good chat. She was wishing me a happy Birthday. Her gift won't be here till next week. Told her not to worry, it happens. We chatted for quiet a while and I really loved hearing from her. I do miss her.

Patrick came home and we went to the casino for supper. I wanted to go somewhere different. The casino has new restaurants lately. They remodeled them. After some thinking, I just wanted to go to the Deli and that's were we went. It was really good!

Came home and worked on packing. It's getting there.

I'm getting behind on my projects, but hopefully it will get me back to being Happy Stitching, Happy Quilting!

Getting Ready and Walking in Circles

This morning I was over at Cherrills helping her with genealogy. I spent two hours on genealogy. It was so much fun! She's learning how to find the information - yet she has written a few books on her family. She's working on another line of her family. We both have Taylor's in our lines. We haven't connected them yet.

Came home and worked on the quilt. I finished putting the label on and washed it. I need to take a photo of it and will do that tomorrow.

While that was washing, I was walking around in circles. Trying to remember what I need to take with me, what I want to do....ugh.

I decided to make sure I got this ready to work on. So, I've started this piece. This is where the background stuff comes in. The photo shows it as blue but it's color is grey. I may go look for a blue to use instead of the grey. I'm not liking the grey right now.

I then went back to work on my genealogy and found that my 10th gr-grandparents with the name of Fales. They also had FISHER, FALES, BROCK, and others. I'm back to the 1600's with them. It's amazing to find that they are in the same time as John Adams as well as the others. My family may have helped with the constitution. I'm going to do more digging to see. I do see where there are a few cousins that married. Not really what we want to find in our family, but it's there. I did find one of my ancestors did have slaves. Wasn't thrilled to see that, but I know that was what happened in that day and age.

I realize people today get upset and really hate having that in their family. I look at it as being the that time of life. Today we are better and don't have slaves. At the same time, I think of how those who came from slaves are awesome strong people that came out of hard times. If one really looks at the way life is, over the centuries there have been a lot of hatred and wars that our ancestors were strong and got through. We wouldn't be here today if our family line wasn't as strong as it is.

Life is good, Happy Stitching - Happy Quilting!

Working on My HAED Piece

This morning I was up early because Phil was coming to stop by on his way to work. I had an awesome visit with him. He's looking good. I do miss him! He gave me a table cloth for Mother's Day. I'm going to put it on the table Friday. We had a good visit and then he had to leave to head to work.

I went out to get Kitty out of the garage. I opened the door to find two cats and not one cat in the garage. Shock! That cat was laying close to Kitty. He just stared at me. I couldn't believe he wouldn't budge. So, I moved the mattresses and he finally moved but went further into the garage. Lucky me! So, I left the door open for him to get out and brought Kitty in the house for a little bit. After an hour I went out to see if he was still there. No sign of him. So......I put food down and water to see if he would eat it while the door was shut. When Kitty went in the garage tonight the food was still there and so was the water. Guess he's gone for now.

One or both of them made a mess in the garage. Patrick wasn't happen and cleaned it up when he got home.

I worked on my HAED (Heaven and Earth Designs) piece. I didn't get a photo, so will try and get one to post here. I found that parking wasn't going to work on this piece. It's got way too much confetti and it gets confusing where the next piece goes. So, I'm going to work with the parking I have parked and do one color at a time. I'll still work in the 10 x 10 area, but doing one color at a time will go faster and easier then parking and trying to figure out what I did wrong by putting a color in the wrong spot. I did get about 70 stitches done today with the parking. Then changed to using one color.

Once I got tired of that, I finished the binding on the one quilt.

Now I'm attaching the label on the back. Once that's done, I'll wash the quilt. It's coming along great. I have one more to bind and will wait to do that later.

We had bowling tonight and I bowled a 232, 198, 233. We won 2 games and they won one game and totals which gave them 6 points and we had 4 points. Totals equals 4 points. This is 9-pin no tap.  They had 220 handicap and we only had 3. Hopefully next week will b better.

In the meantime Happy Quilting, Happy Stitching!