Casselman Sibling Retreat 2012

It's that time again...time for a Casselman Sibling retreat.

Each year one of the siblings are in charge of planning and executing the event. This year it was Blake's turn.

We made Salt Lake our headquarters and ate dinner, breakfast and dinner together. We played games, all sorts, and enjoyed chatting and catching up with everyone.

Saturday afternoon we drove up to Park City for shopping, a movie AND the Alpine Slide.

We hit the Spiderman matinee.

It was awesome!!

I enjoyed the movie so much.

Then we ventured over to the Alpine Slide.

I last went down the Alpine Slide when I was a Young Single Adult and we went to Park City for our summer trip.

That was ages and eons ago.

The slide is still there and is still fun.

We waited in line to get on the ski lift to take us up the mountain to the starting point.

Halfway up the mountain, the lift just stopped.

It was a little unnerving.

It did give me a minute to take some shots of the rest of our group behind us...albeit blurry.

Love this man...

Waiting for the instructor to impart her words of wisdom and warning.

Waiting...

And more waiting...

And then we were off.

You are in control of your sled.

Push forward on the hand grip and you go forward.

Pull backward on the hand grip and you stop.

Here we are coming in to the finish line:

All in all we had a great time. The siblings have a good time getting together and we always do fun things.

Brad, you're next. Where are we going and what are we going to do?

My Girlfriend's Quilt Shop Trunk Show

I am a black sheep in my family.

What I mean is:

I have 4 sisters and they are all extremely talented and creative.

Me?

Well, as a child I would cry buckets of tears whenever my mom would take me to a fabric store.

I hated them.

Profusely.

I also hated to sew.

Immensely.

My dad finally told my mom in not so many words that she needed to bribe me to learn to sew. He told her to buy whatever fabric my heart desired IF I would sew it up.

I remember distinctly the first dress I ever sewed. It had a very difficult placket right up the front. I'm not sure how many times I unpicked and resewed that placket but when I was done I was so proud.

I wore that dress alot.

And my love affair with sewing began.

However, my love affair does have limits. I don't want to sew every minute.

I don't even want to sew for weeks at a time.

But when I do, I feel creative and powerful. I love to sew. My heart has a need to create.

Somehow, my sisters got the sewing bug in a big way. They know their sewing machines like the back of their hands. They get up early to sew, they stay up late to sew.

My sister, Mary, sews alot. And I mean alot. As in, extensively.

She began sewing quilts around 10 years ago. As the years have progressed, her love for sewing and piecing quilts has grown to epic proportions.

There is a quilt shop in Logan called "My Girlfriend's Quilt Shop". It is my second favorite quilt store I have ever visited.

They have an upstairs where they host different quilting artists to display their work in a trunk show.

They asked Mary to show some of her quilts in a trunk show during the first two weeks in July.

My mom and I drove up to Logan last week to enjoy the fruits of Mary's labors.

Here are some pictures of what we enjoyed. Please recognize that the pictures don't really do much justice to the actual beauty that is represented here.

Do you see Mona Lisa? That quilt is made up of hundreds of tiny rectangles set in such a way as to look like Mona.

My mom walked around and counted up the finished products. Thirty one!!!

There were 31 completed, beautiful quilts on display.

The funny thing is that this is only a small portion of the actual number of quilts Mary has pieced since she began quilting.

So now you know why I am the black sheep in my family.

I love to sew, just not as much as all my other sisters.

After we gazed at all the beautiful handiwork of my sister my mom and I drove to the Copper Mill for lunch.

My mom and ALLof her daughters were there. It was a special treat for me.

Rose brought her two kids, Kit and Matt.

Kit was my buddy during lunch.

We were brought fresh homemade rolls with delicious raspberry jam while we were waiting for our meals.

Can you see the evidence of raspberry jam on Kit's face?

I gave her a hotel room key to keep her entertained. You would have thought that I gave her a million dolllars.

I guess I will save all my hotel room keys for future use...

Our day in Logan was wonderful and made even better by the the fact that there was a sidewalk sale going on in downtown Logan.

Bernina, the fabric store, had all their fabric 30% off. Um, I bought fabric. And notions. And found the next big purchase I need to make:

A sewing machine!

My machine is 30 years old. It's an amazing piece of equipment but it doesn't do the blanket stitch. And I want my machine to do the blanket stitch.

So, I am saving all my spare money so I can buy a new machine. And maybe it will turn my sheepy color gray...

What's more American than baseball?

A business friend of Boyd's invited us to the Bees game Saturday night.

He had rented a suite right along the first base line.

The suite came along with hamburgers, hot dogs and various side dishes.

We watched the game against Tacoma. The Bees got slaughtered...11 to 5.

It was still a great game. After all, isn't everything better with a little food attached to it?

I ate a hot dog, nachos and seven-layer dip with tortilla chips.

I felt very American and patriotic.

But the best part was to come.

After the game was over they shut off the lights and began one of the most amazing fireworks displays that I have ever seen.

It was like a 20 minute finale.

I have a fireworks setting on my camera and the pictures come out really cool. Here are my two favorites.

I didn't want to spend the whole time photographing. I wanted to see the fireworks with my own two eyes and not miss anything.

You miss things when you are staring through a camera lens. So I only took pictures for the first few minutes.

So what's more American than baseball, hot dogs and fireworks? Not much!

Happy Independence Day!

Rain, rain come and stay

I am sitting here at my computer desk with the door wide open listening to the rain.

It is one of my favorite weather patterns...rain in the summer.

The sound of the rain gently falling in the trees, on the lawn and patio is so soothing and inspiring.

Plus it gives all my flowers a drink so I don't have to.

Rain, rain come and stay.

Bless our lives another day.

Weekend Treat

Have you ever heard of Matt Townsend?

He does "Date Nights".

Date nights are a 2 hour entertaining marriage seminar where Matt spends time teaching about important ways to keep your marriage healthy.

I purchased one back in January for the Valentine's Date Night.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to go until the one in June.

Boyd made arrangements before we left to eat at Smoky Mountain Pizzeria and spend the night at the Marriot Suites.

We started our date at Smoky Mountain Pizzeria.

Their pizza is amazing! We ordered a large and between us both we polished it off!

Besides that, I have never liked cold pizza so I ate my half of the pizza while it was still hot.

After we checked into our hotel we made our way to the Date Night.

It was so good and so helpful. I learned a lot about ways to be a better spouse.

If you ever have a chance to hear Matt Townsend, either on the radio, the internet or in person, DO IT!

Back at the hotel, I thought it might be a good idea to eat popcorn at 10:00 and watch a movie with Boyd.

Sometime in the middle of the night, my stomach rebelled.

I felt horrible.

Even when I woke up I felt horrible.

I just didn't eat much...the whole day.

We got dressed and drove up to Park City to visit the outlets and Historic Main Street. We browsed the art galleries and enjoyed the talents of so many people.

We had a blast the entire weekend.

So the moral of this story is: go see Matt Townsend, don't eat popcorn at 10:00 p.m. and enjoy time with your significant other.

Annual Barrett Quilting Retreat

Or...My luckiest day ever!

I should have zipped up to Idaho and bought a lottery ticket.

I will explain later.

We held our annual quilting retreat at the same place, Mendon Station. It is a perfect place for all sorts of family gatherings.

My sister, Mary, is pretty much the person in charge, and my other sister, Rose, helps her out a ton.

This year we all worked on 24 inch quilt blocks in a pattern called "Swoon".

Mary had everything cut out and laid out ready to sew. All of the quilt squares were done in cream, solid and a 30's reproduction print.

I got the green square.

This is my work in progress.

This is me with the finished product.

At this point I had fallen deeply in love with my square and wanted it. BAD!

However, it was not to be.

My sister, Carolyn, working on her block.

Carolyn's daughters, Lori and Rebekah.

My sister, Heather, and her daughter, Maria. I was basically in a race with Heather. I wanted to finish my block before she did.

However, she sneaked back to her machine while I was drooling over the Mary Kay makeup that Rebekah sells and she finished up before me.

Bleh!

I think it's funny that they sewed the purple block and they were both wearing purple.

All of the fam that went to the retreat.

We played a game called "Fat Quarter Poker". Basically everyone brought 3 fat quarters in 30's prints and we rolled dice to see who would win.

Maria! She was the lucky winner! She got 30...yes, 30 fat quarters.

I tried not to be too jealous...

These are some of the finished "Swoon" blocks.

Mary put everyone's name that sewed on the blocks in a drawing and then drew out the first name.

ME! My name was drawn!!!

However, since I won the quilt blocks last year they discarded my name (with my permission, of course) and drew again.

MARIA! THE ONE WHO ONE ALL THE FAT QUARTERS!

They discarded her name also.

The next name drawn was ROSE!

We all happily consented that she should be the recipient of the blocks.

She doesn't look one bit upset about it.

All during the day, names were drawn for prizes.

My name was drawn for a bunch of fat quarters and a new type of pen that the ink disappears when you iron it.

I was thrilled because I wanted one of those pens.

Then we showed off quilts.

This is one Carolyn had sewn.

Another one of Carolyn's quilts.

Our cousin, Eileen, put this quilt top together.

We all love Eileen and her family.

Mary did this little patriotic beauty.

All in all we had a delightful day.

And to cap everything off, I bought some lipstick from Rebekah.

If you bought some makeup your name got put in a drawing for a 76 Trombones table runner.

The winner?

You guessed it!

Me!

Not sure how I ended up being the lucky person whose name continued to get drawn but boy. I should have bought a lottery ticket!