Catchy Name Needed

I said when I started copying these over here that I had done a lot of them, but there were more than I realized!

Friday quilt five

Feb 2, 2007

1. What's your favorite music to quilt by? A baseball game on the radio  :)

2. Do you have a favorite type/style/line of fabric? If so, what?  I guess I'd go with batiks

3. Have you ever purchased a kit (with pre-cut fabric & pattern)? I don't think I have. I own one that my mother gave me; I'll get around to doing it one of these days. It would make a good baby quilt.

4. What is your least favorite color to work with? Plain muslin beige.

5. What is the weather like today where you are at? Good enough for quilting? Well, it is cold and rainy, so it would be a really good day to stay home and quilt, if I wasn't at work!

Late Friday Five

Feb 10, 2007

1. What is your favorite night to watch tv? I don't know if I have one - there isn't anything I am all that crazy about these days.
2. Show off your favorite quilt picture. Well, since we're talking about crazy quilts, here's a block:

3. Do you own any wearable quilts? Nope. I'm chunky enough without any help.
4. Do/have you crazy quilted? I've done a few blocks. It's fun but I don't know if I'll ever finish anything. (also it gets very expensive if you get into silks and vintage buttons and so forth)
5. In December's Edition of the Quilter's Home it mentions quilting tattoos. Do you tattoo? No. Fear of needles.

Saturday five (again)

Feb 17, 2007

1. What color is your mood today? Let's go with blue. Possibly a more cheerful blue than it would've been yesterday.

2. List your quilting/sewing purchases for this week. Purchases? I don't need purchases, I have aninheritance. (A freaking huge one, where quilting is concerned, too.)

3. What new project (UFO) did you start? None. But I did work on the organizing some more.

4. Did you accomplish extra quilting time this week due to the weather where you are? No, didn't even (quite) freeze here.

5. Are you a member of calicocats or did you get this Friday Five from a friend? If you got it from a friend head over to calicocats and post your answers there as well! :D</lj></lj>   Oh, I'm a member. I think I've been one since day one.  :)

Friday five, back to the grind edition

Feb 23, 2007

(The title is because I'm back at work this week - sigh.)

1. Do you stay up late to finish quilting --- late, like 1-2am?  Not often - if I try to quilt when I'm tired I make mistakes. Like, really bad and/or stupid ones. It's not worth it.

2. What was/is your favorite quilting class? Hmm, I've enjoyed most of them. I seem to especially enjoy ones that aren't just about piecing - like Libbie Lehman's, and Melody Crust's, which is about coming up with your own quilting designs.

3. How many rotary cutting rules do you own? I can't possibly count because they're scattered all over the place, but at a guess I would say half a dozen. Possibly more.

4. Will you be watching the grammies Oscars this weekend? Always. Like somebody else said, my husband usually has control of the remote, but he loves movies and wouldn't dream of missing it.

5. What are your weekend plans? Buying a new (used) car! 'Cause my old one has gone to the great highway in the sky, or something like that. We have a loan pre-approved at the credit union and we are going shopping tomorrow. And Sunday I am taking a two-hour beading class. (And I also will have to make a trip over to my mother's house to oversee the extended family members who are going to be "cleaning up" over there. I don't trust them not to get carried away and throw away something that I want to keep!) I'm gonna be busy.

Friday again

Mar 2, 2007

1. What is your favorite day of the week? Friday, I guess - for the usual reasons. Weekend coming up and all that.

2. What's your favorite kind of fabric? Batiks. We'll go with batiks. I like a lot of kinds of fabric, actually.

3. Can you believe it's March already? Definitely not. I suspect that February 2007 is going to be the Lost Month in my memory.

4. What do you collect (besides fabric)? Junk.

5. Quickest project time (and picture please)? I tend not to do very fast projects. However, I guess this one qualifies: I decided to make crazy-quilted stockings for my co-workers a few years ago, and the seams are machine-embroidered. They were fast and they came out really cute.

Friday five

Mar 9, 2007

Friday five, again

Mar 16, 2007

1. What quilt/sewing project are you working on this week? I'm still in organizing mode. Also, I have a while to work on this, but I'm going to a retreat in late April and I need to start thinking about what I'm going to work on while there.

2. Show us a non-quilty picture (family, pet, house, garden)? Hmm, well, I think I used a garden picture a few weeks ago, so here's my husband instead. (I know a few of you have already seen this picture, but presumably a lot of people haven't!)



3. Do you believe in leprechauns? Um, no. I am generally something of a grinch about St. Patrick's Day, anyway. Particularly when people try to pinch me.

4. Have you been sick this winter? Yes. An awful lot. I had had a flu shot so instead I just had colds, one after the other.

5. Favorite quilting quote/saying. There's a quote about quilters being crazy because they cut fabric apart and then just sew it back together, which I like, but I can't remember how it goes exactly. (While attempting to google that, I came up with this page of general needlework & sewing quotes, which has some good ones.)

The Friday (Feet) Five

Friday five, paper-pieced edition

June 15, 2007

1. Have you ever tried to paper piece a quilt block before? Many times.

2. If not, why? If yes, what did you make? I think the first one I ever made was a bird for a block exchange. (I think I have a picture somewhere but I can't find it!) And in an extended fit of insanity, I paper-pieced 200 autumn leaf blocks. (see below) But I also paper-piece "normal" things like log cabins and flying geese sometimes. It's a little more time-consuming but it's really good if you're having trouble getting something to come out perfectly accurate.

3. Is there a paper piecing pattern you are dying to test out (post a picture or a link)? Not that I can think of.

4. Have you ever designed your own paper piecing patterns? I've drafted my own a few times - I wouldn't really say designed. I only would do it for very simple things like maybe flying geese or something like that.

5. Would you be willing to learn or teach someone about paper piecing? I could show somebody, sure.



Bound Friday five

June 22, 2007

1. Do you make your own binding or purchase it? You can purchase binding? -- No, I guess I knew that but I've never done it. I like to pick my own fabric.

2. Do you sew on your own binding or let the longarm machiner do it? Nobody else touches my quilts.  :)    (Not til they're finished, anyway!)

3. What method do you use to put binding on? I just cut straight strips, and I haven't done one lately so I can't remember how wide I cut them - 2-1/4"?? I cut the ends at a 45-degree angle, and usually it takes a couple of tries to get them all together correctly - I'm very bad at that for some reason. Then fold in half, iron and sew onto the front of the quilt. I like to sew the back side down by hand, I've seen some machine-sewn ones that look good but I don't do it that way myself.

4. Have you ever done strips/plaids on a bias binding? I don't do bias. Stripes running across on a straight binding look great, I've done that a number of times. Plaids would probably look better cut on the bias, although I've used them from time to time.

5. Have you ever made binding on a scallop edge? I've never made a quilt with a scallop edge. It's not really my style, although that's not to say I'd never do it. I might, someday!

Friday five - quilt shop edition

June 29, 2007

1. How many quilt shops are within 2 hours of your home? A lot. Well over a dozen, since the entire Houston metropolitan area is within that distance.

2. Have you been to them all?   No. I've been to all the ones that were on the old Houston-area shop hop, but I know there are some more that never got included. Now they have another shop hop, and I've only been to one on that list.

3. Have you visited other shops while on traveling in different states? Some, but not as much as I would like to.

4. What is your favorite quilt shop? Gosh, I don't know. They're all different. Plus it also varies by how well their buyer's taste is lining up with mine in any particular season. But the Quilt Store in Austin has always been a favorite. And Painted Pony and Sew Contempo, both on the south side of Houston.

5. Do you plan your trips around visiting quilt shops? No, but I should. I worry about dragging my husband too far out of the way and him being bored and so forth, but he drags me 1000 miles away once a year to see his parents, so it's really not too much to ask! It's my fault, I need to be more assertive about it.

Friday five, blocked out

July 6, 2007

1. Have you ever participated in a quilt block swap - online or with a guild? Yes, several.

2. Would you be interested in doing one? Not right now, no - maybe sometime in the future!

3. What reservations would you have to not participating in a swap? My problem with swaps is that I still have the blocks from the last couple of ones I did sitting around unfinished. I have sworn not to do any more until I put those together!

4. Ever hosted a swap before? Nope.

5. Where do you find online swaps? I've never actually done a block swap online - all mine have been through the quilt guild.

Brightly-colored Friday five

July 13, 2007

1. Do you notice yourself choosing light, medium, or darker tones the most? Medium to dark, I guess. I love jewel tones.

2. Which specific color group do you tend to gravitate towards? Blues and greens.

3. What colors/themes/genres fabrics do you consider "outside your comfort zone"? Nothing, really. I don't normally buy solids but that's because I don't like the feel of them - and they ravel too much - not because I don't like the colors.

4. Do you notice, over time, your color choices change? Oh heck yeah. I used to be much more conservative and - somebody wrote about this lately, was that here? - only buy the colors that I usually buy for clothes - which means no earth tones to speak of. Gradually I've expanded my taste, though.

5. Do you ever purchase fabric out side your comfort zone? See above. I learned to, yeah.

Completely batty friday five

Aug 3, 2007

1. What batting do you prefer to use? The original Warm & Natural, or other brands with a similar texture.

2. Do you purchase batting by the yard (off a bolt) or in a bag? I prefer bags.

3. Do you purchase batting for more than one project at a time? If I find a really good sale, yeah.

4. When do you purchase your backing (after a project is completed or while you are picking out all the fabric in the beginning of a project)? I am not a methodical person. I don't buy the whole project at one time. I do it whenever I think about it.

5. What do you do with all the leftover strips of batting? I hate to throw away anything useable, so if it's a big enough piece that I think it might be good for something, I keep it.

As you go back in time with these, I talk more and more about my mom, and "my mom's stuff" comes up a lot. If you don't know the history, she had died early in 2007, and I spent most of that year, off and on, cleaning out her townhouse. So that's why that looms so large here - "mom's stuff" has its own tag, isn't that sad?

Literary Friday five

Feb 1, 2008

1. Do you subscribe to quilt magazines (get them in your mail box monthly)? Definitely - they're much cheaper that way!

2. What is your favorite and why? It used to be QNM but they went downhill for a while. (And I haven't read one lately so I don't know if they've recovered.) I like Quilting Arts a lot for the artsy end of things. I'm not sure which one on the traditional side is my favorite these days - I like several of them.

3. Do you save all your magazines? No, I used to but they took up too much space. Nowadays I scan the stuff I'm interested in keeping.

4. Would you be interested in a magazine swap? I never thought about it, but maybe! How much does it cost to mail a magazine?

5. How many magazines to you purchase during a month (not including subscriptions)? Lately I've been buying a couple a month.

Oh, I haven't thought to pass this along: if you have a Sam's Club in your area, they have had quilting magazines mixed in with the rest of their magazines lately, and they're discounted quite a bit. So if you're too cheap to buy many at full price, like me, that's a way to get more of them without subscribing. And also, Amazon's 4-for-3 deal (basically, buy 3, get one free) is on single issues of magazines as well as paperbacks, and they also have quilt and craft magazines in their selection.

Embellished Friday five

(this one was already here on my LJ, which was what got me looking for the rest of them in the first place, so I won't copy-and-paste. The link should work.)

Chilly Friday five

Jan 18, 2008

1. What colors do you think of when I say "winter"? blue and white and silver, and combinations thereof (the icon notwithstanding)

2. What is your favorite winter bird? Um, I would say cardinals but we don't actually get them around here that I've seen. I live in a weird place. Sometimes in the winter I see white pelicans!

3. Have you ever done a "winter" specific quilt/project? No, but one of these days I want to. Something with a snowflake theme - although I really have no idea what!

4. Do you get snow where you live? Not usually. There was a legendary snowfall here on Christmas Eve 2004, but I was in Austin at the time and it didn't snow there!

5. Do you sew/quilt more during this time of year? Well, I've been sewing the last few days and I hadn't been before that, so I guess this year the answer is yes. Typically, I don't think so, though.

Friday five, miscellaneous edition

Jan 11, 2008

1. What quilty web site will you hit today? I'm trying not to buy stuff unless I really need it, so I guess the one I'm most likely to hit is my own: Quilts Galore

2. Have you done the FabShop Hop recently? I start it but I never seem to finish - however, as it happens, I was just griping about it yesterday - that's over here too (at the bottom of that entry). (I should, however, add that the not-finishing is a recent development and I have finished several times before and won things a couple of times!)

3. Do you have current project on your design wall (can you show us a picture)? This picture was taken maybe a year ago, at my mom's house - however, those same 9 blocks are up on the new design wall, with some space between them because my intention is to start cutting sashing. (The sashing is going to be cranberry-colored.)



4. Have you signed up for any swaps for 2008? No, I have sworn not to do any more swaps until I do something with the swap blocks I already have! (Like the ones above.)

5. Are your December decorations still up? Part of them, yes, but I'm working on that. I had two (small) trees up - one is down and one is still up but I've started taking the decorations off. By my standards that's doing pretty well!

Slightly-belated Friday five

Dec 8, 2007

1. Do you decorate you home with quilts? Theoretically, yes. Actually, so far, no. We haven't put anything on the walls since we moved. We intend to eventually, though. I had one quilt on the wall in the old apartment, and I also brought several home that my mother had on her walls, especially this one:


I'm thinking it goes over the dining table. I have some blue & white plates that might look good with it, too.

2. Do you make wall quilts for holidays decorations? I haven't so far, in 10 years of quilting. I have some more Christmas quilts in the planning stages, but up to now I've made exactly one Christmas quilt, and it was a lap quilt.

3. Eggnog or Hot Cocoa I don't like eggnog, so I guess cocoa wins by default. I'd rather have wassail, though!

4. Do you own any green/red notions? Except for pincushions, I don't think so.

5. Picture time - share an image of how you celebrate December (it can be anything)
How about nutcrackers?

(These were also my mom's, but are now on my china cabinet.)

Holiday Friday five

Nov 30, 2007

1. Do you have a holiday stash? Yes, a rather large one.

2. Do you use quilty related holiday items (cards, gifts, etc.)? Sometimes, if I think they're particularly cute. I don't use quilt stuff just for the sake of using it, though. (That said, my aunt is probably going to get something Jim Shore for Christmas!)

3. Do you have a wish list that you share with family and friends? Not usually on paper, but I do let my husband know what I have in mind.

4. Are you done with your holiday sewing/quilting? All I have is one thing to do (a binding), and no, I haven't done it yet.

5. Red/Green/Gold or Blue/White/Silver? I guess I'd go with blue/white/silver, but I like both.

A couple more - I will probably add more later.

Colorful Friday Five - Apr 18, 2008

1. What is your favorite color? I like practically all colors, and the answer to this tends to vary according to when you ask me, but I have been very drawn to green lately. So let's go with green.
2. What is your less favorite color? Beige.
3. What is you favorite color combo? I love blue and green.
4. What is your less favorite color combo? I'm sorry to have to say this, but I loathe red, white and blue unless you vary the colors somewhat.
5. Show us a picture of your favorite colorful quilt (yours or someone's else):
Well, this has to be one of them:

Made by Sonia Brown, who I think may have a book out with this in it.
(Made by Sonia Brown, quilted by Cathy Franks; from the exhibit "In the American Tradition IV" at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.)


Friday Five, Mar 9, 2008

1. Have you ever made a garment that incorporated quilting techniques? I don't really make garments any more. For one thing, I am a 'big' girl, and quilted clothing just adds more bulk. I don't think quilted clothing is very flattering to most people unless they're really skinny or the clothing is really, really well cut.

2. Have you ever cut yourself with your rotary cutter? Or sewn yourself? Or other quilting related injury? I am pretty paranoid about my rotary cutter because I could totally see myself doing one of those things. I have cut myself but only very slightly. And amazingly, I have never sewn through my finger.

3. Have you ever 'called in sick' in order to stay home and quilt? Not that I can recall. But for years I never quilted at home much anyway, I always did most of my quilting at my mom's house. (And she would've yelled at me if I did that!)

4. What color would you never use in a quilt? I will use absolutely any color. (I probably would not make a whole quilt out of, oh, say, puke green. But small amounts of it? definitely.)

5. Have you ever put in a 'joke' in one of your projects? Like putting a meat-shaped piece of fabric in a quilt intended for a vegan? Well, I made a quilt that ended up being called "The Kitchen Sink Quilt" because I put all sorts of bits and pieces of different things into it.

Also, a friend and I made a quilt for another friend whose nickname was "guppy" and we put a fish fabric on the back and I quilted a tiny fish on the front.

(The first half of my trip to Dallas is here.)

Tuesday 8pm, Love Field gate #2
I was very early getting to the airport and my plane may or may not be late. It's supposed to be at 9:00 and it said 9:30 when I got here, but here at the gate it still says 9:00, so who knows. I ought to be studying but I looked at coding stuff all day and I can't make myself look at more right now. Maybe in a while I'll give it a try. I'm lucky I don't have a major splitting headache because I've been up since before 7, and I haven't gotten a full night of sleep the past two nights, although I think I might've gotten something like 6 hours each night, which isn't too bad. I went to sleep somewhere around 12:30 last night, but I woke up several times, too.

I just this minute finished a book about quilting that I've had for over a year, so hey, progress! It's not about quilting so much as it's about quilters, interviews with a lot of them. It was published by the UT Press, which ought to tell you it's not the average quilting book right there. I got it as a door prize at the spring quilt retreat, either last year or the year before. I know I didn't go this year, so I'm sure about that one, but I can't remember for sure about 2008. So anyway, I've had this book for at least a year and a half. And it turned out to be good, and also some of the people in the book are people I know, which made it extra-interesting.

So I was really worried that the seminar today would be mega-deadly-boring, but it wasn't bad at all, it turned out. It got dull at times, but there's not much that I can sit and listen to somebody talk about all day and not have my mind wander at some point. So that was okay.

(It's 8:25 now, and the 7:25 flight to Albuquerque and LA, which was at the same gate, is just now boarding. A lot of flights are delayed. My first thought was that it had just been raining in Houston, but that's not the problem with this one unless they came from there... which is possible. Southwest shuttles flights between Houston and Dallas every hour or so. I think in the old days it was every half an hour but they've reduced it some.)

I am looking down at myself and I am so color-coordinated it's scary. I talked about my LLBean coat and sweater and they are both purple. Not the same shade of purple - the coat is sort of a dull lilac and the sweater is a brighter marled purple - and then I went and wore a purple shirt today, too, a cute embroidered one that I bought at Sears, of all places. I hardly ever go in Sears, and for that matter I've hardly bought any clothes in the past year at all, but this shirt is one of the few things I did buy. And I also bought some socks someplace just last week that are purple (not really entirely a coincidence, it's just now gotten cold enough that socks are making their way onto my radar) so of course I put them on too. Then - this is the part that's a coincidence - the seminar people gave us a tote bag when we checked in that is - guess what - purple. It's a dark purple almost the same as my shirt. Seriously, I look down and I'm embarrassed.

The seminar cost several hundred dollars so they could afford to give us a tote bag. They did give us 2010 CPT books that were worth close to half of what we paid, though, that was what made me decide it was worth it. They also bound the handouts for the class into a softbound book, which is a new one on me. The book was 150 pages so I guess that means there were nearly 300 slides. Jesus. (The controversy of the year is apparently that Medicare will no longer pay for consults effective Jan 1. I am taking the class that's on the hospital side so this had flown under my radar until now, but the physician side was buzzing about it. So we spent quite a long while talking about that.)

It's now close to 9:00, and I just got up and went to the restroom and I'm so tired the tendons at the back of my ankle hurt when I walk. (That's the Achilles tendon, right? and I should know that by now, shouldn't I?) And it's not like I've walked that much today - how did sitting at a table looking at slides make my feet tired? Anyway, the plane is supposed to be here any minute, which is why I was getting in the last-minute potty break. They were saying 9:15 the last I heard.

Love Field is noticeably old, although of course they keep it pretty well-maintained. My seatmate yesterday, who lived in Dallas, said that they were building a new terminal that's supposed to be done in 2012, which is - coincidentally - when they Wright Amendment finally expires. I forget what the Wright Amendment does except that it puts a bunch of restrictions on this airport. I guess maybe they were trying to get people to use DFW when it was new? (I was just out at DFW and everybody is still complaining about it, 40 years or so in.)

I think I have a court date - May 1. (Remember that this is probate court we're talking about, so in this case a court date is a good thing.) It still has to be confirmed, but from what the lawyer was saying, it sounded like the confirmation had more to do with exactly what time we would be there than with what date. So yay! I might not have to pay next month's townhouse maintenance fee out of my own money!

As you may or may not have noticed, I haven't had a lot to say lately. I've been pretty busy at work, and that's where I tend to post the most. And as long as I keep playing AutoAssault all obsessively, don't expect to see me posting much from home. (I have been playing AA so much that I have 3 characters over level 20 now - my human is at 30, my mutant is right behind at 29, and my biomek is at 21 or so.) Also I have commitments two of the next four weekends, which is unusual for me. Next weekend I am going to a quilt retreat, and two weeks after that I am going to see my aunt - which may also involve quilting. I haven't done much quilting in a long time - not since my mom got really sick last fall - so it should be good to get going on that again.

I have been reading people's entries from Holidailies, of course, and people's entries from my Livejournal friendslist, and a number of these people are knitters and talk about going to Stitch & Bitch. And it makes me jealous. I'm tempted to take up knitting just so I can go to Stitch & Bitch, which is silly, because I don't want to knit. I don't even know if there is a Stitch & Bitch here. I just want to go.

There are quilting bees, of course, which amount to the same thing, but I haven't found the right group. I probably haven't tried hard enough. I went to a bee that met once a month in Clear Lake for a couple of years, and I liked it, but what I need is one in Galveston. I guess I'm going to have to start going to the Galveston quilt guild again, and get into the bees from there. I didn't really try when I joined the one time before.

A couple of my work friends have joined a group that meets once a month and makes handmade cards. I think it's some kind of commerical thing like Creative Memories, except for cards instead of for scrapbooking. They've invited me to go and I think I might, after Christmas. You are expected to buy something, of course, but apparently not an onerous amount of stuff, and if I'm really thinking about making my own Christmas cards next year, I ought to get some supplies for this anyway.


What this is about, at least partly, is that I think I need more girlfriends. I don't need really super-close friends at this point, I'm too independent and prickly to want a whole lot of close friends who will be all in my business and need a lot of friendship-maintaining, plus I'm not at a point in my life, with my mother and everything, where I have a lot of energy for that kind of thing. But I could really use some not-quite-so-close ones.

Does that sound sort of heartless? I wonder. I don't think that's how I mean it. You can't just create a good friend overnight, anyway.

I'm off to the spring quilt retreat in the morning. Three days of chattering women - remind me again why I like to do this? No, it'll be fun. Really, it will. And my mom is going, which makes me happy all by itself.

(It's only 30 miles away, though, and I'm going to be REALLY, REALLY tempted to come running home tomorrow night, just long enough to get laid. I have to think of something I can forget that would be absolutely necessary to come home to get.)

And no, I haven't packed - why do you ask?

It was really hard to go back to work last week. Why is it that after a whole week off you still want another one? I have another one in three weeks but that seems far, far away even though I know damn well it will be here before we know it.

Plus, what with my mother and everything, the last month or six weeks just feels like lost time. She is much better, though. I am going to go with her to her appointment at M.D. Anderson on Thursday. We are thinking that she will end up having radiation, whether the tumor is malignant or not - it needs to be shrunk or presumably the seizures will continue. ("And," I said yesterday, "you'd never be able to drive again." That made her laugh. She hates not being able to drive.) I don't think I ever got around to saying that the neurologist finaly told her that even if the tumor did turn out to be malignant, the prognosis is still very good. That was nice to hear.

We went to the department Christmas party Friday night but it was boring and we left really early. The last two years they've put the dance floor up on the 3rd floor and nobody has danced. There's a play-money casino but that doesn't interest me much, so the only part that's left is eating and talking to people. We did that for an hour and a half and then we bailed. I did get to wear my turquoise shirt and matching earrings that I bought for Vegas, at least. (The long dangly earrings are my favorite part of that outfit!)

Yesterday I went over to Mom's as usual. I took her to Quakertown Quilts to get her angel. First we went to Perry's to get lunch, though; they have the best hamburgers. I tend to forget about going there, we really should do it more often. I hadn't been to Quakertown in ages and I bought more fabric than I intended - although I can't really use Quakertown in particular as an excuse since I bought a whole yard of Amy Butler paisleys (in two colors) and they have those everywhere.

I never did do any sewing - I cut more strips instead. Not that I was actually running out of strips, I was just running out of different ones. I didn't want to repeat too much. And I sorted all my strips into cool and warm. (Is that obsessive?)

I was thinking about going to Half-Price Books but it was raining when I left and so I drove on back to Galveston. In Galveston it wasn't raining, though, so I decided to go to Target. And then when I got there I decided to go to Pier 1, too. It's right next to Target and I'd only been in there once since it opened last summer. I'm not that crazy about their stuff, normally, but I know they always have cute ornaments. I ended up buying a ton of stuff at Pier 1 and more stuff at Target. Several small gifts - for my co-workers and Rob's too, a pretty trivet for my mom, and a green ceramic candlestick that I think my sister will like. I haven't stopped to figure out what other gifts I need; I'm going to have to do that soon.