skin tone batiks

This weekend, Carrie and Andrew went to Do At The Zoo in New Orleans last night.  It was very formal so Andrew wore a tux.  Bet he was handsome!  And we got to babysit Hugeaux the GrandDog.

For breakfast we had sweet potato flour pancakes with a bit of cinnamon.  Add some sugar free IHOP maple syrup on top.  Delish!

And I just got my Italy badge from Fitbit for walking the length of Italy!  736 miles in the last year.  Yes, we do walk a lot!

Since I have a deadline for the Carrie project, I headed over to Red Stick Quilt Shop and got some skin tone batiks.  I should have listened to Carol!

I manipulated the photo a bit, but could not find a way to polarize it.  I was able to change the colors and brightness enough so I can do what I need to do.

So what do you use to get a photo to polarize for you?

And I found a really nice piece for the top of the wedding dress.  It look "wedding dressy".

Today  will sketch the photo and break it into the various parts for the face construction. I am thinking I will use freezer paper for that.

A Little Elegance In My Life - and a wedding

Everyone needs a bit of elegance every once in a while.  So we got a few friends and headed out to one of the plantations for a really elegant dinner.  Did I say expensive? Oh, but it was good!

I  have shown you some of the Houmas House grounds before, during the day.  It is spectacular in a different way at night. We will have to go back soon and get some day photos again, he has added so much to the gardens.

We had an unbelievable dinner in an incredible setting.  Here are some night time beautiful night scenery.

Houmas House (Ho-mus with a short u) is over 250 years old and sits on 38 acres of what is now  lush beautiful gardens.  Kevin, who lives there full time, bought the property in 2003 and set about restoring it and putting in the gardens.


In the 1700s the Houmas Indians sold the land to Maurice Conway and Alexander Latil who erected the small house, which is now behind the main grand house.

The land was laid with sugar cane and the plantation flourished.  1n 1810, Revolutionary War hero
General Wade Hampton bought it and began building the main house.  In 1825 his daughter Caroline and her husband John Preston completed the house to the grandeur we see today.

Land holdings had increased to 300,000 acres.  In 1857, businessman John Burnside purchased the property and declared immunity under the British Crown to save the plantation from destruction during the Civil War. 

Burnside increased sugar production until Houmas House was the largest sugar producer in the country.  The town nearby is named Burnside; always wondered about that.

Burnside's successor grew sugar production to a record 20 million tons of sugar each year.  In 1927, the great Mississippi Flood devastated the area but the main house remained dry.  After that the plantation slowly fell into disrepair.

In 1940 it was purchased by New Orleanian George Crozat as a summer home.  After his death, his heirs opened the house to the public.

In 1963, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte with Bette Davis was filmed in the rooms of the Grand House.

You really can't see it but the photo on the right is the Pagoda Garden.  And on the left you can see the turret on the top of the Grand House behind the exotic rose trees. 

We took some time after dinner and walked through spectacular displays of lights without cheesy Christmas junk.  

The last photo is the side of the Grand House with the huge porches that wrap the white house. 

Tell you what, come and visit me and we can go out and see the gardens and tour the house!  If Kevin is home, he can show us the photos of the first wedding held there........his two dogs!

Wedding of Jason and Carrie in Denver

This is the reason we went to Colorado in the first place!  Wedding!  These are the parents of the 5 Colorado boys who will eventually receive the quilts I made.

They are both really happy people with lots of friends and a great family.  I am so glad they found each other.

Her name is Carrie so we now have MY Carrie and Jason's Carrie!

My Carrie has a renegade video of Frank and I dancing to MC Hammer's Hammer Time.  We were quite the dancers in the day! 

Jason and his Carrie at the Friday night dinner.

 Jason's mom Diane, who was married to my beloved cousin Terry.  She is now married to Rodney, who plays Cajun Music all over the US.  And collects and restores antique cars.  You gotta love this guy.

 My Carrie and her hubby Andrew. 

Jason and his Carrie dance their first steps as a married couple!

Here is the beautiful couple!  Don't you just love their smiles?

This is Jason's oldest son, Ethan.  And his girlfriend.  He is 14. 

 This is the littlest ladykiller, Lucas.  He was the ring bearer at my Carrie's wedding.  And the love of ALL the girls.  Just about every photo of my Carrie's wedding had Lucas in them!  He was all over those pretty girls!

Wedding Weekend in New Orleans

Not me!   I didn't get marred.  But a friend of mine did.  And they married in style!  The wedding was in the Old French Quarter at the famous  Arnaud's Restaurant (click to see the  history of this beautiful and old place)  and ( click HERE to read some history and some ghost stories.)  This is truly Old New Orleans!

Her father, a retired judge, married them.  The crabmeat was freeflowing, the crab claw dripped in butter, the alligator sauce poured over silken buttery grits.  And the gin was top quality.  After the cake was cut, the head waiter flamed some cafe brulot with brandy.  And he deftly ignited a long curled orange peel by pouring the brandy down the orange curl.  It perfectly flavored the dark chicory coffee.  I was in love!  Click here to see the recipe and a photo 


We spent the weekend in New Orleans on the 30th floor of the Marriott Hotel down in the French Quarter.  I don't have many photos of the wedding itself, but I do have some really fabulous photos of the zoo and the city.  I am going  to share them with you during the week.

First off, I have to tell you that I did not have any fabric go out and thankfully I resisted Frank's insistence that we head to the Quilted Owl and buy fabric there.  He REALLY wanted to go.  I am dead serious.  

 We went to the Audubon Zoo and walked around on Friday afternoon.  I have some totally fabulous shots of some really great animals. 

Like this guy.  He was so  handsome sitting sentinel on the top of his pole. 

He looks like the king of the jungle sitting there.  But look where he is.  He really is overseeing the entire zoo.  Pretty high up there!

This was his friend in the enclosure with him.  That is a face only a mother could love!  But she sure looks great with the sun reflecting through her beautiful fur. 

I am sure they don't brush their hair daily, like I do.    It looks like they do, I don't see any knots!  I would look like a wild woman without a brush!

But she looks gorgeous!

These are white pelicans.  Actually it is the same one pelican.  Once he figured out that we  had no pelican food he moved off.  I caught a shadow of the egret in the corner of the photo.

Nice!




This is the brown pelican. He is wallowing among the flamingos.  When he flew over to them they were not happy at all!  They thought he was invading their space and they set to honking. 

He paid no attention to them and they finally settled down.

While we are on birds.....check out this African White Vulture.  I have never seen a white vulture.  His head was orange and black.  He was incredibly beautiful and very vulture like.

I complain about this camera not being as nice as some I have had, then I get pictures like this.

And wait till you see some of the others this next week!  Check back in and enjoy!

Impetus for Randomness

I need an impetus to finish things that no longer interest me.  In that vein, I have invented a way to make myself do them!  It will clear out about 6 UFOs.

My nephew, well actually he is my cousin.  He is the son of my favorite boy cousin and grew up calling me Aunt Glenda.  His father and I were very close all of our growing up years.

Terry loved flying.  He became a pilot and flew commercial planes rather than passenger planes.  He would qualify on bigger and bigger planes, always flying.  He went though 3 marriages but never fell out of love with the sky. 

I still miss him, he had a heart attack in the Rome airport taking possession of his next flight.  Fitting, very fitting. He was where he wanted to be.

His son lives in Colorado now.  In July Jason is getting married to Carrie who is a dentist.  Together they have 5 kids, all boys!

So I figure I can pull together 5 boy quilts and a wedding quilt for the two of them!  Isn't that a lofty goal?

Here is number 1.  The blocks are a collection of years of randomly sewing together fabric from the scraps.  I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I have 50 that aren't girly girly.

Here are 24 blocks together so far.  I  am probably going to have to make a few more, I think I will need 64.  Each section is 4 by 4 or 16. But if I can do 8 by 7 it would be 56.  I think 8 by 6 would be too small.

Whew -- All that math!

Happy Anniversary!!!!

Today is our anniversary!  I remember that day like it was yesterday.  My mother made my dress and my bridesmaid and best friend's dress.  Frank's mother had near fainting spells because I did not want to marry in a church, so I relented and asked the Presbyterian Church at the end of the street to do the ceremony.  But that didn't make her any happier.  It seems that the Baptists really hate the Presbyterians almost as much as they hate the Catholics.  Of course the church people in my family were all Catholics, it should have tipped me off as to what the next years with that woman were to be like.

It was a pretty day.  The church was beautiful as well, Frank's curls were rampant!  Diane used to call him the Little Jewish Boy when the humidity was high.  And that was in 1972 when all the rage was long hair on the boys.  He was never able to have long stylish hair because of those curls, so when the styles changed, he gladly took the lead on short hair!  But check out Greg's long hair!  And the beauty that Diane was! 

My reception was at the Hilton Hotel by the Moisant Airfield in Kenner LA.  You know it today as Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans.  It was decidedly Italian with lots of alcohol.  My relative stole all the silver trays after the reception was over and my father had to bring all the stuff back to them the next week!

There we were, married and poor.  Barely a penny between us.  He was in school at LSU and I was working for my doctor uncle.  I was making $300 a month along with the gifts of food from my Aunt Edith.  We somehow made it all the way to today.

That is 43 years.  And a lot of water under the bridge!!!