I Like Thursday #18 - the heART edition

It's just about Thursday again, so time for another edition of things I like on Thursday!  Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day!  I live in the (not so small anymore) town of Loveland, Colorado.  With that name, you can imagine that we have special things going on around here when it comes to Valentine's Day. Actually, there are lots of things I like about Loveland, and the one I'm thinking about right now involves our public art program that is evident just about everywhere you go around our town.

Yesterday, I took my husband Mike with me on a scavenger hunt for examples of the public art we like so much.  These photos are from his camera.

Found on an empty wall in our little downtown.  People have painted tiles to create this mural.

For Valentine's Day, you can order a heart to be painted with a special message and posted on a pole somewhere around town.  If you look closely, you can see several of them.  They are all up and down the main roads through town.  It's always fun to read the messages as you drive through town this time of year, although you have to be careful to watch the road and not get too distracted!

These hearts are sponsored by businesses around town.  There are many of them, and it's quite a scavenger hunt to find them all.  I love the fun differences between them all.

 

We have lots of public sculpture as well.  There is a park not too far from our house that is dedicated to sculpture, and it is one of our favorite places to go for a walk.  The sculptures range from modern to funny to sweet to whimsical.  Here are a few of my favorites:

This guy's tiny head and body, and giant legs and feet just crack me up!

This one is found in the Children's Sculpture Garden at the park, and has been there since 1992.

Love these rabbits! They were newly installed in 2016.

This one always makes me happy - children having fun.  It was sponsored by a family who lost their daughter in an airplane crash years ago.

And one last photo - we have painted utility boxes all over the place.  This one celebrates the history of the cherry orchards that we used to have around here.  I don't think there are any left, which is kind of sad, but we still have a summer Cherry Pie Festival that is fun to go to.

Years ago, Loveland citizens voted in a 1% tax for the arts, and that is where most all of this public art comes from.  I love that about our town, and really enjoy the opportunities we have to see all different kinds of art.

Hope you are having a great week!  Be sure to visit LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color for more I Like Thursday fun!

I was in the mood for a mini...

So I made one!

It needed to be "sweet" for February, so I pulled out a mini charm pack of Vintage Picnic by Bonnie and Christine and a fat quarter of some Modern Background Paper.

The block is called "Circle of Squares," tutorial found here.  I got to it by way of Kathy who is making these blocks for her Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  It's a block I've been wanting to try, and is super simple. I can definitely see making a whole quilt of these blocks, but I know I won't get to it anytime soon.

Another fat quarter from Bonnie and Christine worked for the backing and binding!

Happy Valentines Day!

Love to all of you, my quilty friends!  See you over at Oh Scrap! for some quilty inspiration today!

Aquamarine for February

Angela at SoScrappy has chosen aquamarine for February for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so this week I added to my collection of maple leaves and nine patches.

I was having so much fun with these refreshing colors that I decided to make a 6 inch slab block to match them!

Making this slab block was kind of like stitching up a mini scrap vortex, all focused on one color, relaxing, and with no rules!  Just square it all up at the end.

So then I thought, why not make a few more to match my other leaves and nine patches!

Looks like I need to fill one more spot!

Sharing with the ScrapHappy Saturday linky over at SoScrappy!

I like Thursday #17 - the Sing Along Edition

Do you like Musical Theater?  I LOVE it!

Some friends and I have season tickets to our local dinner theater - a fun place called the Midtown Arts Center.  We've been members for years, and have attended so many wonderful performances there.  We've seen everything from "Cats" to "Aida" to "The Buddy Holly Story."  One of the things I enjoy about our dinner theater is that the actors are often also the wait staff, so you get to talk to them before the show and during the intermission.

Last week, we saw a show called "Million Dollar Quartet."

It's a show based on the true story of four famous musicians getting together in a recording studio for just one day back in 1956 and playing music together.  Even though quite a bit of the music was from "before my time" (lol!) it was still fabulous, especially because the four actors on stage played all of the music themselves and they were so good!!!

My husband doesn't go along for these shows, but I can talk him into getting tickets for other performances now and then.  Our favorite is Jersey Boys, which we've seen twice in Las Vegas, and also enjoyed the movie.

There is nothing like a show or movie that you can sing along with!  Here are a few of our favorites: 

Coming up this spring, Midtown Dinner Theater is performing the show, "Hair!"  This will be a first for me!  :)

As always, a big "Thank you!" to LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color for inspiring me to think about the good things in life and post about them every Thursday.  Be sure to check out LeeAnna's Thursday post, too!

The Hodgepodge Quilt, Part 2

I was having so much fun with this quilt, that I finished sewing the top together right after posting about it in the Oh Scrap linky party last Sunday!  When we woke up to a light dusting of snow Thursday morning (on top of the freezing rain from the night before, but that's another story), I just had to take it outside for a beauty shot in the yard.

I ended up piecing in two strips of some navy to make everything fit together correctly, which gives this quilt an asymmetrical design, and I like it!

I was actually really pleased with this picture because it shows off the different blues, greens, and turquoises that are in this quilt.  Plus a teeny, tiny bit of purple!

In keeping with the "Use it Up" theme of this quilt, I decided to piece the backing out of all of the bigger chunks of blues that I could find, so I've been working on that this week.

It's not quite long enough or wide enough yet, so I'll be adding a bit more to it before I can get the layers basted.  I will probably have to piece together some batting as well, but that's okay, too!

I'm thinking of donating this quilt to the nursing home where my MIL is currently spending some time, getting her strength back after multiple health concerns.  It's the perfect size for covering up when someone spends a lot of time sitting in a wheelchair or recliner, about 45 x 55.

Sharing with Oh Scrap today at Quilting is More Fun than Housework!  

A Rainbow Finish

At the beginning of this week, I was determined to Finish Something!  (You know the feeling!) There was only a little bit more hand quilting to be done on my Rainbow Log Cabins, so that was going to be the one.

I started this quilt in May of last year because the blocks were easy to make and my method of making them didn't require a lot of measuring or cutting with my rotary cutter, which was difficult with my broken wrist. After getting the top put together, I decided to experiment with hand quilting it, which I've never done much of.

It turned out to be a very enjoyable experiment!  (It was a good project for football season!)  I did straight stitching through all of the logs, which resulted in a square spiral in each block, and then used a template to mark leaf or orange peel shapes to quilt in the borders.  As I am such an untrained hand quilter, I knew this would be a learning experience, and it definitely was, but I'm very happy with the results.

I raided my leftover binding basket to make the binding, and it makes a fun scrappy addition to the quilt.

While hand stitching down the binding, I'm having fun visiting with these little guys.  There's more binding to be stitched and I'll work on that tonight along with a Longmire episode (or two!) on Netflix.

February's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is turquoise, and that happens to be one of my favorite blocks of this quilt.  I also love the low volume scraps that I used in each block! 

Sharing at the RSC linky tomorrow over at SoScrappy, and looking forward to seeing what other kinds of scrappy sewing have been going on this week!

I Like Thursday #16 - This and That

It's just about Thursday again, and I'm ready to share a few more things I like, from the past week!  But before I do, I realized that I completely forgot something I wanted to include in last week's Texas post that I liked seeing on our trip down there.

It's an alligator!  (in the wild!)  We, of course, had planned out some places to go for bird watching on this trip, but found this guy (or gal) instead!  We sat and watched as he or she lurked under the water in this pond for quite a while, then headed for the fallen trees, where several turtles were sunning themselves.  We expected to see him grab one of those turtles for lunch, but they weren't all at all worried about him!  For us Colorado folk, this was pretty exciting!

Now for this week's likes - 

I like our National Parks!  They are the protectors of the most beautiful places in this country of ours, and I think should be appreciated and cared for.  I am lucky to live not far from Rocky Mountain National Park, and my hubby and I enjoy going up there as often as we can, even in January!  Here was our view yesterday!

This is Long's Peak, one of our 14,000+ foot peaks in Colorado.

I like being the right age for this - a Senior Pass that enables me to go visit any National Park for free, for ever and ever!  That is a nice perk of being 62 and over!  :)

We also took a little road trip to Boulder, Colorado, the other day.  Boulder is a college town, the home of the University Of Colorado, and a fun place to visit where you can find interesting shops and restaurants.

Boulder is where the Celestial Seasonings Tea Headquarters are, and we needed to stock up on some of our favorite teas, so we stopped off there first.

I like bargains!  All the teas were on sale for just a little more than $1.00 a package, so we got four boxes of our favorite teas for less than $5.00!  Whoo hoo!

One of the reasons we were headed to Boulder was so that I could shop for a new pair of Crocs.  I found out last summer that you shouldn't leave your Crocs out in the sun because they change shape and will no longer be comfortable.  So, it was time for a new pair!

More bargains - the Crocs store we went to was, unfortunately, going out of business and everything was half off!  Whoo hoo #2!

I like wine-tasting.  One of our favorite local wineries, Bookcliff Vineyards, is in Boulder, and since we are members there, we get a free tasting once a month.  Saturday was a good day to visit the tasting room, so we enjoyed some sips of our favorite wines and brought home a bottle - one with my favorite name, "Friday's Folly!"

Fortunately, it tastes good on other days of the week, too!

On the way home, we always go through Lyons, Colorado, a small town on the very edge of the mountains that has one of my favorite quilt shops.  I really like Lyons Quilting!  I almost always have to stop at this quilt shop when we are driving through.  They have a great selection of fabric, and are the only place in my area where I know I can find any color of Kona cotton solids.  

I needed some Navy for a project I'm working on, and then I also picked out 5 fat quarters of other solids that I'm going to save for something... not sure what yet.

Happy Thursday - I hope you are having a great week!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color in celebrating things we like, love, enjoy, and are thankful for.  Be sure to check out LeeAnna's post today, too!