Fun times in Amish country!

Deb and I spent a few days at our friend's B&B this past week and as always, it was awesome!  We stay at Sheep Hill Bed and Breakfast whenever we are visiting Lancaster and it is a fabulous experience every time.  They had no real snow this winter, but of course we brought some with us!  It snowed all day on Monday, but it was not bad for traveling and shopping.  The only weird thing was that almost everything was closed for the snowstorm!!  We were like, "This is not even snow!!"  Holy cow, it was strange.  The roads were perfectly clean all day.  About 85% of stores and restaurants were closed!

The first night out, we went to a wonderful restaurant called Greenfields.  This was what the Bloody Mary looked like!  It was a meal in itself...bacon included.  It was our first time there, but we will be back.

A normal sight while in town!  It is nice (except for the manure!).

On the last night there, we found this little restaurant in Lancaster city.  It was called Horse Inn.  The fun part was finding it, which was like impossible!  There is a parking lot, but no restaurant!  Anyway, it is between two alleys with no street signs, or anything.  It was like being in the movie "Labyrinth" where you just mysteriously end up inside.  Once in there, you sit in a horse stall for dinner.  The food was amazing!  The service was excellent.  A fun experience.

View from my window in the B&B.

Full view of our little stall!  This was such a memorable time!

On the last night, we went to see NOAH at Sight and Sound Theater.  This is what the theater looks like.  It is on top of a hill and can be seen everywhere!  Magnificent.  The show was amazing, as usual.  We try to see whatever is showing when we are in town.  Tickets are hard to get, so we order ahead.

There is a great quilt shop about 30 minutes from our home base.  It is a great shop run by Mennonites (I think!  They might be Amish).  There is so much fabric in there.  Next to the shop is this deer farm.  They are beautiful animals, and very friendly.

Since being home, I have been cleaning, cooking and sewing my little head off.  I was having a terrible time with my new embroidery machine (and having sleepless nights over it) but have since discovered that ALL of the problems with shredding threads were from my iron-on Sulky stabilizer!!  That probably explains why my last machine was doing the same thing!  So, now that that is taken care of, I am embroidering all day and night.  I have made dozens of embroideries since realizing the problem.  Will show some tomorrow for Easter!! Hope you all have a wonderful day.  Easter is one of my favorites because of what it means to me as a Christian. 

Bedroom almost done! Some fun pillows!

I have been feeling a little funky for the past two days (might have been around a few sick people, I think), so it was fun to come home from work and have a package waiting for me!! My mom loves to make pillows and made these for me!  The chicken fabric is so cute!

Tomorrow Ken is moving us back into our bedroom!  He did such a great job painting the walls/ceiling and refinishing the floor.  It looks so pretty and fresh in there.  Wish I could put a bed in there and nothing else.  The furniture we have is too big for such a little bedroom, but we have made-do for all of these years, so it will have to go back in.

The paint looks a little neonish here, but it is really very soft in appearance.  The lighting made this part look too bright!

The other pillow from mom!  I just love them!

The walls are a very pale yellow and the trim is about 3 shades darker.  It looks to nice that I cannot wait to sleep in there and wake up in such a happy room!

So, tomorrow night it's back to our room.  I need to buy new sheets for the bed tomorrow after school.  I got bleach on the old ones when I was washing the ceiling. 

Baby girl quilt with a twist of Shakespeare

My friend Katie is having a baby girl next month and she just loves cats, so I found these great embroideries at Embroidery Library a while back and decided that as an English teacher, I had to have them.  Katie teaches math in our building (as does my best buddy Katy, who is also pregnant right now! I hope it's not catching!) and she is just the cutest little thing with her very, very (did I say VERY) round belly!  She will love this baby quilt for her little girl.

This fabric line is so colorful and modern that I thought it was perfect for a modern little baby.  The blocks are all simple four patches that I made by following directions on Missouri Quilt Company's youtube videos.  They have something for everyone.

The shower for Katie is this Wednesday, so I am trying to get it done by then.  Of course, then I will be making a baby quilt for the other Katy, so the baby fun just keeps coming.  Isn't it nice to see the young people having babies?  It makes me feel so hopeful for the future.

Today Kenny primed the walls in our room and right now he is painting the ceiling for the second time.  Aside from peeling the wallpaper, I have done very little up there.  It seems weird for me to do so little.  However, watching Kenny (and Rob when he was here) do so much hard work made me tired.  Guess that's sort of like pitching in!  Hope you are all having a good weekend!

Superbaby quilt for superbaby Jake!

One of my best friends from work is having a baby this spring!!  She and her husband are really good friends of ours, so I actually know their hobbies and likes, etc. which made this quilt a lot of fun to make.  Her husband is a total comic book junkie and loves all things superhero-ish.  I looked online and got this great Marvel comics fabric and I got some nice embroideries with superbaby stuff and then I got to work!  I had to design the quilt to make sure I got good use of the main fabric so that it could be really seen.

Then I added little touches with my new Ellisimo that included things like the baby's own superbaby website.  That was fun to sew out.

Just needs a binding now!  The shower is tomorrow afternoon, so that's no problem.

This is a quilt I made years ago and finally sent to be quilted.  It's just so springlike, isn't it?  Janet from Farmhouse Quilts did it for me.  She does great stuff!

The house is still a dusty mess, but Ken has the floors almost ready to be finished.  I am estimating that we will be able to live in there for good again in about 10 days since there is wait time between coats on the floor, primer on the walls and all of that work that is left to be done.   So today I quilted the baby quilt, will bind it and get a few other things done.  I know that the baby's dad will love this quilt.  That's why it's a little bigger than a baby-size.  I thought he might use it too!