Dear John

How was your weekend?
My weekend was occupied by "House Cleaning". (hehe) As I have not been able to do it (seriously) for a long time, I started cleaning and reorganizing in each room since I was out of work. So I started cleaning the basement first. I threw out many clutters and donated a lot of my daughter's old clothes, shoes, and toys. They were almost brand new as we have only her. I had her choose what to keep and what not to keep among her old toys, especially her stuffed animals and small stuff were outrageously too many to keep. She bravely (to me surprisingly) got rid of more than half of those stuff.
Then I reorganized the kitchen stuff. I wish we could afford to remodel our kitchen to a gorgeous gourmet kitchen... I just moved around the cabinet and the table to make a little more room. I did the same thing in the living room. Since I moved the sofa and chairs in the different position, the room looks much homier and cozy. I should have taken "before" pictures for all rooms...
Anyway, that is what I've been doing lately. My sewing room will be the last to take care of, though. I will need to buy some storage boxes for stash I have been saving. This process will never end.

Last but not least, I started reading books. It sounds so ridiculous but it is seriously true yet embarrassing to me. I just never made time to read books except for "quilt books and magazines" for a while. When I took my daughter and her friend to the pool across from our house, I did not swim but read the book called "Dear John" by Nicholas Sparks. I bought this book last summer at Detroit airport on our way to Japan for visit, but never read it in the flight. Then I just remembered this book the other day and took it to the pool. It was very nice and sunny day and I was wearing sunglasses which I was so glad to do so because I was able to hide my tears as I was reading this book. I don't know if any of you has read his books, but I was totally hooked about this story. I ended up reading the rest all night on the very next day. My husband got up and found me reading the book around 5am... It never happened to me like this before!!! Today I found out the movie of this book is being made and released next year. I am so excited about to see the movie as well.

Well, my job hunting has not been successful yet, but I am just enjoying this great time off and refreshing my mind by changing a little of my life style.

By the way, I finally finished to quilt the Irish chain quilt. I still have to bind it and it will be completed. 5 yeas old quilt will be reborn soon.

Happy quilting!!

Summer Project

First of all, I deeply apologize for not responding to your comment for the last couple posts.
I am so grateful for receiving all of your warm comment, concerns, and encouragement for me.
Thank you so much.

I have been dealing with some issues relating to my work and I just wanted to be isolated from anybody for a while. I just did not want to talk about my situation.
My situation is not getting better yet as far as job hunting, just hoping to hear from any recruiters for more realistic offer for now.

Instead of feeling down, (it's not my thing anyway), I am just enjoying a "Staying-home-mom" role with my daughter. Since our budget is getting tight, I decided to utilize this time to sew her summer clothes. So last week we went to JoAnn and bought a few patterns and made this dress. I let her pick the fabric this time. It is just amazing to see now I can let her do things like that!!
It took me a couple of days to make this dress and it was a lot of fun making it. I guess polka dot is coming back popular this summer.

When she spins, the dress spins with her!! (hehe) Very cute and I am so pleased with the result.

As far as quilt project, I just finished all quilting parts on the Irish chain quilt top except for the border yesterday. It was long way to come but I can see the goal now. I will concentrate on this quilt until I finish it so I will not work on other UFOs for now.


Happy quilting!!

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July!!

Independence Day parade in my local town.
Just a fun being there but great reminder why we can celebrate today.
Thank you for many men and women in uniforms as well as veterans.

Happy quilting!!