Our Love... Our Life

The lastest challenge for Project Quilting is up for voting.  And there's an awesome prize for the public comments.  ;)  

As I waited last week for the new Project Quilting challenge rules I just hoped that it would be anything but a Valentine theme. The last few projects I made had been valentines and frankly, I was tired of them.  Call me a Valentine Grinch.  The rules came out and "Be My Valentine" was to be our inspiration.   Groan. Moan. Whine. When I got finished moaning and groaning I settled on a project and finally started to get into it.  Turns out I loved the process and, while it won't have a lot of public appeal, it's one of my favorite quilts.

I started with our wedding invitation.  I enlarged the graphic and traced it onto fabric with a brown pigma pen.

We chose these invitaions because that's how we felt.... like little kids playing dress up.  Little did we know!  That's just what we were.... so young and clueless!  But it sure turned out great.

Then I began creating squares that represented different parts of our life together.

We quickly became a family of five.  Sorry boys.  Aside from the button heads, they look like they are running around in their pajamas - poor choice of fabrics.

We didn't have a lot of extra money for entertainment.  Walks in the woods were free so we spend a lot of time doing just that, plus picnics, bike rides, cross country skiing, sledding.... we spent a LOT of time in the woods.

Car rides were another inexpensive form of entertainment for us.  (back in the old days when gas was so much cheaper!)  We would take long car rides and usually find somewhere to get out and walk for a while, or a park for the kids.

I rode all through my teen years and then Scott and I met on horseback. We rode for the first year we knew each other.  It got too expensive and we started a family so horses faded for a while.  When Justin was around 12 or so he wanted to learn to ride.  We took him and Adam for lessons and within in a year we were back into horses with three of our own boarded not far from home.  Trail rides, horse shows, teaching, hanging at the barn....

At some point we had enough money for a weekend home.  Not enough money for a lake home or anything like that, but we discovered that you could buy an old farm house for not too much.  Lots of room for the kids to run around and ride bikes and explore.  In the city we didn't let them roam to far at all so this was just right for us. 

There is a tree in the back yard of the second country home we had with our initials carved in it.  By this time the kids were getting older and didn't want to leave their friends to hang out with mom and dad miles away in the country.  Read 'boring'.  Sold the house. Sad dad.

Bird watching was one of the things we did in the woods.  The kids didn't quite share our enthusiam but did learn a lot about birds anyway.

This led to buying birds and then raising birds.  We had all kinds...  Cockatiels, parakeets, Nanday Conures, a Timneh Grey, Love Birds, and several different kinds of finches.  

 And then there were the other critters.  A stray dog and a stray cat started us off.  Then another stray dog joined with the first (literally!) and started a family.  They had two litters and we kept four of the puppies.  So at the farm we had six dogs and one cat.  Poor kitty sometimes thought he was a dog too.  Our pound is a wee bit smaller these days - but not much.

The farm.  Another old farm property we purchased just before retirement.  A place big enough to bring our horses to.  We turned it into the horse farm of our dreams, renovating the buildings with new stalls and other horsey things, added an outdoor and indoor arena, a few small fenced pastures and filled it with horses.  Even a few babies.  We lived our dream.  Awesome.

And this is how our family has grown.  An additional daughter and son came to us through marraige. And five beautiful grandchildren.   So blessed.

Our future is a blank canvas.

I can't wait to see what our Lord paints for us next!