Ali made his first toy!

I can't believe it is 11:22pm! Where has my day gone! It has been a busy day for me. For starters, Ali was so impressed with the Chatty Crafters yesterday that he was dying to make a toy for himself. He used the fabrics and felt that Isra and Sharon gave him. As we speak, he is sleeping with both my newly made RAZZIE and his yet to be named Monkey. He has cut out two more softies for us to work on tomorrow! It was really hard to work with the fleece. Ali also took the pictures that he is not showing his Chandler Bing smile in! Any Friends fans? Then you know what I mean!

Here is Ali with his creation today. He really did do most of it. Mom here had to help out a bit but I am really proud of him as he is of himself!

Here is the backside. I made a yo-yo from scratch and just eyeballed it! I have a handy yo-yo maker but who the heck knows where it is!

Here is a backside view.

And a front side view!

Here is RAZZIE with her new little friend! Ali has not named her yet....

Chatty Crafter's Morning 8/26

Yesterday, the Chatty Crafters met up at Isra's house to work on a Softie which is a toy. Her sister Sharon is visiting and will be leaving already (boohoo!) on Friday. She was so gracious and patient to teach us how to make this little doll. I, unfortunately, came to class without any precut anything and both Sharon and Isra helped me get caught up in no time! Thank you!!

Here we are from left to right: Sharon, me, Laila, Nima (welcome!) and Isra sitting down.

Here are our creations all in a row! Aren't they lovely?? From left to right they are:

Mine, Laila's, Isra's and Nima's.

Alia's

Laila's

Isra's

Nima's

Then, we came home and Uki inspected her but was not bothered!

Also, Isra opened up a LOT of fabric and let us have a look. Laila also brought some scraps and I took a little from each pile, thanks Ladies! Sharon gave lots of scraps of felt to Ali whom was sooo impressed with the whole morning. Even Amal got some stash! Laila gave me a baggie full of SELVEDGES! Yummy!! Thanks so much ladies! What a lovely morning!

We missed our Mayya and hope to see you soon!

Busy Days!

The holy month of Ramadan started last Saturday and I have been very busy! For those readers that might not know what this is, you can find some information here. I have been fasting successfully and the amount of cooking required is, let's say a lot! I have been busy cleaning the house during the days too and one room that I am working on is my sewing room that doubles as a Ladies Majlis (where female visitors sit). Why is it that every time I attempt cleaning I make a bigger mess! I do feel good so far but I am far from being finished! I want to SEW! I want to open my BERNINA!

The only things I have been able to work on are my Hardanger project which is a frame for Ali and I started knitting a washcloth and took it apart and then made a different one. I finished that this morning in the wee hours!

See you soon!

Here is my progress on my Hardanger thus far. It is a bit wrinkly! It is finally taking shape!

Here is the first attempt at knitting a washcloth. I just was experimenting. Love Uki's tail!

That face, I posted this mainly cuz she is so cute!

Then, this is the finished project. You can see clearly where I screwed up! When I started decreasing my stitches, I did not ADD the stitches to make the holes! You can see where I remembered! I can't wait to use it. This is the first knitting project I have ever finished!

I made a Stacked Coins Quilt Ceramic Plate!

Last week the kids and I had a lovely afternoon at Cafe' Ceramique. We ate lunch and then painted.

I wanted a plate to serve yummies on when I have guests and ended up with this!

The top view. It is actually turned around. The right hand side should be the top.

The backside. I wrote BIG!

This is my creative photo to show off the sides. All in all, it was a great afternoon with my babes!

Good News For My Family

This is so cool.

Dinner tonight was Tacos in Pasta Shells

Tacos in Pasta Shells, photo courtesy of Allrecipes. They took a better one than I did!

My sister made this for me years ago and I LOVED it! I came back to the Middle East, at the time, Saudi Arabia, and found all the ingredients there and came home one day and made it for my husband.

It sucked!

I forgot to cook the pasta shells. Hello! Needless to say, the dude was not happy! I called my sister crying my eyes out and racking up the phone bill and she laughed at me, albeit, very kindly and we figured what I did.

I come to Oman and they never ever sold the jumbo pasta shells until a few months ago. I think I bought most of the packets! So, we had this for dinner tonight.

Give it a try...and let me know!

1 1/4 pounds lean ground beef

1 (3 oz.) package cream cheese with chives, cubed and softened

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. chili powder

18 uncooked pasta shells - COOK, RINSE AND DRAIN!!

2 Tbsp. butter, melted

1 cup prepared taco sauce

1 cup (4 oz.) shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup (4 oz.) shredded Monterey Jack cheese

1 1/2 cups crushed tortilla chips (I used Doritos)

1 cup sour cream

3 green onions, chopped

Extra Ingredients:

lettuce

olives (optional)

tomatoes

Dice these up for garnish.

Cook beef until brown. Reduce flame to medium-low and add cream cheese, salt and chili powder. Simmer for 5 minutes. Toss shells with butter then fill with the beef mixture. Arrange shells in buttered 13x9 pan. Pour taco sauce over each shell. Cover with foil. Bake at 350*F for 15 minutes. Uncover, top with cheese. Bake for 15 minutes more or until bubbly. Top with the onions and chips. Garnish with lettuce, olives and tomatoes and sour cream.

Enjoy!

I finished! No, not a quilt but a BOOK!

I joined another book club.  I have had one meeting and I finished the book.  It was really good and I can't wait for the conversation over it.  It is called Identical Strangers.  It is about two identical twin sisters who find each other at 35 and all that comes with it.  It was a good read.

Look what I got!

Isn't this the cutest panel of fabric? I got about up to the bottom of the tire of the next panel on top. You can't see it, it is on my couch. I chose this piece cuz I was given a choice and I'm an opportunist and took the more abundant fabric. You know you all would have done the same! I thought the extra bits would go great in my spiderweb or for the project I'm going to do.

Now, I wanted to make a huge floor pillow for my three year old adorable nephew. My daughter insists on a quilt. Not sure what I will do. It's so cute and he LOVES Cars!!

Mission accomplished!

I gave Maya the gloves and she is pondering what this is....

Here is Naina, she is so excited!
Maya is opening them...
Maya is trying to figure out the three fingers cut out...

The Happy Ladies!

What a lovely surprise for them!  Apologies to Maya for getting her eyes closed!  Now, we are planning a day for them to come over and get a stippling lesson!  Yikes!

See ya!

I'm delivering my gift today!

Good Morning!  I am so excited to be delivering my little gift to Maya and Naina this morning at our Hardanger meeting!  We will be meeting at PDO (Petroleum Development Oman) at the golf club and Naina is hosting.  Anyway, stay tuned as I will enlist Amu to photograph the event. I hope these ladies will be very, very happy as they are waiting to order some quilting gloves and have been inspired by my Raspberries and Chocolate quilt to try and stipple. I will show them the proper machine quilting gloves first and then give them the driving gloves that I got at Daiso the other day!

Fons & Porter Quilting Gloves

Daiso 600 baisa Driving Gloves a.k.a. NEW QUILTING GLOVES!!!

I wrote on the covers for the girls.  It is hard to see! They will be so happy!  It feels good too to be able to make someone happy, be thoughtful, and be inspirational and to blog about it!

Stay tuned til later today!!....

edit:  I check and recheck my posts.  I noticed, hey!  I have two signatures!  Do you all?

Mystery Quilt/Summer Challenge...here we go!!

Hello!  I just wanted to post about my Summer Challenge.  In the local Guild, we joined a Mystery Quilt oh, hmm, last Fall.  Of course, I had to join but, of course, this got put on the back burner!  I ran out of the purple fabric.  Do I need more?  Uh, yeah.  Have any??

So, in May, when the guild had its' last meeting for the season; we signed up to work on a WIP (work in progress), and I signed on to finish this puppy by the meeting in September.  The penalty for NOT finishing over the summer months is to pay the guild's kitty 10 OR (approx. $30)!  What? I ain't payin' NO BODY NO HOW nothin'!!!!  So, I better get to work.

Crap!  I lost clue three but lovely Maya got it to me and then I have been hem-hawing about my choice of fabs. I think I used one in the Reversible Quilt (golden color)!! We had to make 12 of these.

CLUE ONE...

Then, we took some more fabric and made 48 of these. 

CLUE TWO... 

Stay tuned for CLUE THREE...

Thanks for stopping by...

Ruwi Trip yesterday!

Well, look at this loot!  We went in to Ruwi with lovely Isra, and her equally lovely sister Sharon, whom is visiting, and my baby girl and Laila met us.  We missed Mayya but maybe next time!  We went to Ruwi, which is like a suburb of Muscat, and they have lots of shopping with little treasures and headaches!  Anyway, I did not find any deals on fabrics this trip but the others did!  

We then went on to Daiso, a Japanese $1 store!  I hit the jackpot!  That is 18.600 OR or about a little less than $60!!

I found a hideous pink ant-slip sheet which I plan on putting under my sewing machine.  From the left to the right, I got a really cool bodkin.  I, hey, it's not here!  I got another bodkin but Isra, wise Isra, remembered that I said I wanted a bodkin for making rugs out of fabric and she showed me the one on the left and thought it might work better for me.  Stay tuned as I will have to try out both and figure out only then which one is better!  Then, the black triangle thingy's, well, Lynne Edwards in all her widsom, advised us students back in January that we should somehow tilt our machines from the back towards us in order to save our backs!  Let's see if this works for me.  Then, the ultimate are these grippy driver's gloves that have the fingers cut out.  This will be used for machine quilting!  I got sooooo excited I bought a pair for me, a pair for me again, with the fingers, a pair of pink ones for Amu with fingers and with cut out fingers, a pair for Maya (shhh....I'll give them to her next Sunday!) and also a pair for Naina (shh, same story as for Maya).

So, whew.  Next...

Oh, this is my booty.  Ooh, I got an aluminum bag that we used this morning and it worked just fine!  There is the bodkin sort of right in the middle and on the top and some other goodies that I won't bore you with!
This is what Ali got.  Some cool colored pencils and some double sided tape that he LOVES to borrow from me, so now he has his own!  He 'mini-fractured' his left foot a while ago and then goes and does it again and we just took him for another check up and the xrays show that the sliver that separated is joined to the big bone but the ligaments or muscle is still very swollen and sore and will be for some time!  He loves to milk his injuries so I got him the bandage.  He was not impressed but just you wait and see, Mami knows best, as I know he will whip it out when school starts the little stinker!

This is Amal's booty.  She got a pretty folder for school and she is extremely conscious of the environment and all that so the pencils suit her.  Of course, we got a pair for Ali.  She is off to Milan mid September so got these sketching pencils.  She got a cute little guy for her backpack.

Sharon advised Amal to get little containers and I am so glad she did and probably will be sending her well wishes and 'Sharon is so cool' sentiments when I hear how wonderful they served Amal in Milan!  She got a few containers for different lotions and creams and shampoos and the sort!  I can't wait for her to have this experience!  I might need you local ladies to support me though because she has never left me for more than three days!

Much to my horror yesterday when I was showing Ali all this stuff, one of my gloves only had one glove in the package!  We had quite a day this morning mapping a road trip to Maya's for our Saturday with the local gals, and my butt fell asleep!  (Driving for over an hour!) Then, the kids were zoned to the max so I bypassed Ramis, another cheapy store but with lots of household stuff and some good finds occasionally.  Well, we got on the highway and there were sooo many accidents!  Ramadan has not even started! Yes, during this holy month, because people are fasting, there tend to be more accidents.  Ok, moving right along, we went to the video store and it was closed so we went to the other side of town and went back to Daiso, oh, only after Al Araimi in Qurm to get more Yu Gi Oh cards for Ali, then I exchanged my glove for two gloves and they were cool about it.

Man, this is too long!  I need to go and get some other work done!

Thanks for stopping by and leave me a comment man!!