LakeViewQuilter

I live in the Pacific Northwest (USA) but have lived many other places in my life, including Washington state, up-state New York, Virginia, the Netherlands, and briefly in Indonesia.

I love to travel - both in the US and abroad. My husband and I took a trip to Belgium on one of our anniversaries (SO romantic!) but we especially love travelling in Mexico. Jon is fluent in Spanish, so we can really get the the neat, out-of-the-way places. And sometime in the near future we want to take our kids on the old school kind of driving summer trips we used to take as kids, driving to Yellowstone, stopping to see the World's Largest Ball of Twine, that kind of stuff!

I am married to a sweet man and we have two kids, a boy and a girl in elementary school. Between the two kids I spend most of my time at school, violin lessons, swim practice, baseball games, or riding lessons.

We recently added a toy Poodle to the mix. He's smaller than most people's cats, the color of a new penny (coppery red) and we don't know how we existed without him! His name is Caspian, after the prince in the Narnia series. It's great having kids who love to read! And funny to see who knows where the name comes from right off the bat.

My favorite colors are blue, orange, and pink. I have always loved butterflies and dragonflies. Chocolate (Good Chocolate) is a daily necessity.

I love embroidery work. As a kid I was addicted to Counted Crosstitch, but I now do mostly all redwork/bluework, along with whateverelse strikes my fancy.

I especially love to quilt and I've been quilting for nearly 20 years. The sweet mom of one of my best friends in Jr.High taught us both as teenagers - I think now it was to occupy us in the summer, but at the time I didn't realize how obnoxious we were! My quilting style varies from modern to traditional, bright to muted, depending on my mood. I don't like cheesy character or novelty print fabrics, and I'm a bit burned out by 30's repro fabrics. I had the chance once to attend a quilt show in Hawaii and was BLOWN AWAY by the amazing traditional hawaiian applique on display.

Because I can't sit still (and haven't made it through a DVD with my family in YEARS) I've gone crazy with crochet. I've never managed real competancy with knitting, but can rock stuff out with crochet. My kids have a pile of little Amigurumi and I have a constant supply of baby afgans to give out. Small projects appeal to me because they're quick, portable, and give me nearly instant gratification. (Don't tell, but I've even been known to sit my family near the back of the sanctuary so I can pull out my crochet during service without being too much of a spectical!)

I also Scrapbook. With my young kids it's hard to stay current. I always take more pixs than I seem to have time to scrap! Right now my mission is to use or pass on the ridiculous amount of scrapbooking materials I've collected. My friend has an online store, and after helping her do an inventory count it became clear I have more paper than she does!

Between kids, volunteering, and keeping the homefires burning, I need to keep myself sane. One way I do that is crafting (feeding my creative side) and the other is my bookclub.

We are 10 women and we call ourselves The Bookies. We meet once a month to eat, laugh, cry, and of course talk about the book we read! We even travel together every other year to Mexico, just us girls - no husbands, no kids.

I love the variety of books we choose in our bookclub because I'm such an eclectic reader myself. I love Romance (not too cheesey, please!) SciFi, Biography, Historical, Self-Help, Mystery, pretty much everything including the back of the cereal box. Many of the books I've loved in the last 10 years have actually been youth fiction. There is a lot of good stuff out there!

Percy Jackson series (Rick Riordan) BDB series (JR Ward) Little House series (Laura Ingalls Wilder *just re-read this with the kids!) Murder Boogies with Elvis (Anne George *Southern Sisters solving mysteries - Hilarious!) Confessions of a Jane Austin Addict (Laurie Viera Rigler)

Growing up we did not get to declare that any food was "Yucky," that we didn't "Like" someone, or that we ever "Hated" anything. Instead we were taught to say this or that "Is Not My Favorite". In part this was because we change, our tastes change, or maybe just broccoli changed between the mid-70s and the early-90s.

As an adult I appreciate the lack of negitivity in the statement, and have found myself enforcing it with my own kids. I try hard not to judge, to be open to others, and to be willing to try new things.

That being said - some things are still Not My Favorite.

White Chocolate * Cats * Fake Flowers * Strong Scents (some hand lotions and most candles knock me over with their potent smells!) * and Mean People! If you're gonna be nasty to someone or about someone, I don't have a place for you in my life.