I am here at YD's and brought the ladybug quilt I finished. My MD and I surprised her at her baby shower Sunday. It was quite the wild time, flying through a thunderstorm, sleeping in Reno, Nevada being woken by three earthquakes the night before we left....getting lost in the rental car trying to get back to the hotel, not using the Garmin correctly....(called daughter and she told me to flip open the Garmin so it could work right instead of just turning it on!)

Anyway I am trying to conserve money as best I can on this trip. Our flights were $240.00 round trip Reno to Raleigh on Delta, rental car $200.00 for eight days Mazda 6, from Enterprise, a full $200.00 less than Hertz. We stayed the night in Raleigh, driving down to Jacksonville Sunday, the day of the baby shower and will spend one night on Sunday before flying home Monday,May 5th.

We are going to the commissary tomorrow to grocery shop. We didn't buy food on the plane and luckily the hotel had a microwave and a small "market" so we had frozen Lean Cuisines in our hotel room Saturday night, flying in at 10:53 EST. It was only 7:00 p.m. to us so dinner was not that late.

It is also nice to have a reality check and see what my daughter has for the baby. I am relieved almost that she has no sweaters yet since I have two different ones half made that will be perfect for the winter, at least I don't feel like I wasted the money on yarn, like I did a bunch of newborn onesies (she must have about 20 of them!).

of California... over 70 degrees today. And what was I doing? Running errands in town. Went to lunch with DH, took a thank you gift (brownie bites from Costco) to DH's insurance agent who helped me get his Cal-Osha Injury Prevention Plan done.

Then I went to the fabric store to find something to make latest Ally quilt more girly. I found some lavender flannel gingham to put in between the rows. I used a 50% off coupon to get the backing for the quilt in the last post. I am spluring and having that quilt professionally quilted by a fabulous artist who uses a machine, but she is very good with the machine!



Tomorrow is a sock knitting class I plan to go to, but in the meantime, we have a dinner invite at our neighbor's house.

Well practically found money... I was going through DH's business file to find some information I needed to update his CCR on line for a government contract. Anyway I found $125.00 worth of gift certificates for a local grocery store that we must have stuck in there since we buy them each year for both ourselves and our employees as Christmas bonuses. These were from December 2006. What a nice surprise!

Also I already finished Ally's first quilt, well the top anyway! I finished it up over the weekend:


My daughter also picked out the fabric for the next quilt and yesterday I purchased an additional piece of fabric for contrast, which is the white with polka dots.



I also picked out two pieces of fabric for little summery dresses for summer 2009. The patterns were purchased for 99 cents a piece, the Easter fabric was 60% off and the other piece was 40% off. The two pieces of fabric, one 2 yard piece and 1.375 yards were $10.52. Not dirt cheap, but cheap enough, plus it will fulfill my need to create.





Dinner tonight is leftover chicken/asparagus lasagna from Copykat.com and a mini-loaf of bread along with olive oil sauteed broccoli and orange bell pepper with a splash of garlic salt.

I am interested to see how long I can stretch the $125.00 in gift certificates.

Lastly, instead of paying for a beginning quilting class and hauling my machine out to the local adult ed class, I have committed to spending Wednesday evenings for two hours to sewing. I'm ready!