We've Made The Move to Idaho! AND A #GIVEAWAY!

 

THE WINNER OF THE GIVEAWAY IS MARY ANNE FOX. 

CONGRATULATIONS!

Well 2020 has certainly been an interesting year for us. I haven't been blogging too much this year, my plate has been full. As many have been and are currently doing, we have made the move from California to Idaho. It's very different living in a neighborhood again after so many years of living in the forest. We couldn't be happier! We have the most amazing and wonderful neighbors, everyone has been by to introduce themselves with plates of cookies, boxes of donuts, loaves of bread and more. It feels incredible to live in a place where you don't have to worry about a forest fire racing through or the power being arbitrarily being shut off for days at a time. I could go on and on about the multitude of benefits to us living here but nuff said. It was a good move.

We are very close to the Teton's National Park and Yellowstone.

The day trips have been enjoyable and it has been amazing to see the fall colors of the trees.

The move was a lot of work. Packing on the other end, letting go of many things and unpacking on this end. The majority of the boxes on the street level have been unpacked and put away, there are still a few, which I hope to have done this week. The upstairs is another story...LOL. We ordered four bookcases for all my books and I fear we are still in need of another! 

I did get the pantry painted, new hardware installed on the door so it would shut and just yesterday installed a new low profile LED light fixture. It's like daylight in there now! We hung some more pictures in our library yesterday and took down the black drapery rods, pulled the molly bolt fasteners, sanded and spackled up the holes. Today I will touch up the area with paint.  

There is another cold storage area in our basement, so this pantry gets used for everyday stuff.

Today, I am planning on working on my temporary sewing room which I have located upstairs in one of our four bedrooms. We will be finishing the basement with sheetrock and putting in another bathroom (it's already plumbed for one), once that is completed and flooring is in, then that will become my studio. I will have plenty of room for my longarm and all the rest. (oh my gosh, that means I have to move all of this down two flights of stairs!!!)

I lost 15 pounds the first month here, just running up and down the stairs! Imagine that!!! So our first winter in Idaho. We have already experienced a bit of snow, the winds and cold.  I'm great with all of that.  Our truck was totaled the second week we were here (there are some crazy drivers out there, it's like running a gauntlet...if you are from out of state and just moving here, drive very, very, very, defensively. Also, change your license plate the minute you arrive. Just trust me on that. Most folks are very nice but there are some that are not happy with folks relocating here and if they see your plate...well. And one more bit of advice, I don't like to get political on my blog I'll just repeat what was said to us...leave your liberal politics in the state where you left them...they will not be appreciated by anyone up here. Your gonna fit right in! LOL.

Well, that brings you up to date on things here. I'm gonna see if I can make some sense of this sewing room mess today! Wish me luck!!!

And now you know why I haven't been posting much quilting as of late...LOL.

Let's do a #GIVEAWAY! One lucky quilter will receive a surprise box filled with fun and fabric! You don't want to miss this one!

To enter:

1.  Leave a comment below

2.  Like our Facebook or Instagram page or both!

3.  Leave a comment on either of those pages.

4.  for extra entry Upload a photo of a current or past project that you

     are working on to our Facebook page.

There is NEVER anything to purchase, No One will contact you, this is not sponsored by anyone other than us and there are NO Gimmicks. It's just a fun giveaway to encourage a love of quilting.  That's all! Good Luck Quilters!!!

Winner will be drawn at random on December 11th and announced on December 12th here on our blog as well as on our Facebook page and our Instagram page. 

Light The World 2020, One by One, Hope Shines Bright!

And The Winner of the NEW Brother Sewing Machine is...

WIN THIS MACHINE!

UPDATE: The Winner is Sue Whiteley

Congratulations Sue!

John and I are headed out to Idaho this week for a little vacation and of course I'm going to stop at my favorite little quilt shop, Daydreams Quilt N Sew. I want to spend a day sewing at Annalee's shop and just enjoying myself. Isn't that what vacations are all about? Didn't want to haul my machine on the plane and tote it across Idaho so I have ordered up this Brother Project Runway CS5055PRW sewing machine to be delivered to the shop today and it will be there when I come to spend the day next Tuesday, June 19th. I will sew on it that day and we will give it away on June 20th. (that way I don't have to ship it home either...lol)  It's a perfect machine for a quilting retreat, a first time quilter or even just as a back-up to your grand sewing machine. Here are just some of the features...

• Brother™ Project Runway™ model delivers couture-level, consistent stitch quality
• 50 stitches – customize in style with built-in clothing, decorative, heirloom and quilting stitches
• Includes complete designer sewing and finishing solutions, with 6 specialty feet, accompanying stitches, and specialty needles. Enjoy designer features for blind hems, zippers, overcasting edges, sewing on buttons, knits and stretch fabrics, twin needle top stitching, and more
• Professional, elegant buttonholes – 5 one-step buttonholes automatically sized to fit your specific buttons, for truly custom results
• Reliable, easy threading of both top thread and bobbin – for consistent, high quality stitching. Please note: this machine is recommended for use in countries that do not support 120V AC, even if a voltage adapter is in use

Daydreams Quilt N Sew, 802 Pancheri Drive, Idaho Falls, Idaho

HOW TO ENTER:

1) Come into Annalee Leonard's shop Daydreams Quilt N Sew, located at 802 Pancheri Drive, Idaho Falls, Idaho anytime from June 13th until June 19th and you will automatically be entered. You do not have to purchase anything.


2) If you make a purchase at Daydreams Quilt N Sew, either in the store or online at their website https://www.daydreamsquilts.com/ from June 13th until the end of the business day on June 19th, you will be awarded additional entries as follows:

      Purchase up to $20. will be awarded 5 additional entries
      Purchase over  $20. and under $50. will be awarded 10 additional entries
      Purchase over $50 and up will be awarded 20 additional entries

Online orders, please type SISTER in the comments section of your order.


3) You can receive an additional free entry by going online to either our Facebook page Sister of The Divide or Daydreams Quilt and Sew's Facebook page and under the post with the picture shown above, TAG your friends or SHARE on your Facebook page.

There you have it!  Drawing will be held on June 20th, you need not be present to win.

I will be in the shop all day on Tuesday, June 19th, sewing my happy little heart out. I hope you will come on into the shop and say hello! I'd love to meet you.

John and I are so looking forward to our trip, we will be visiting friends and scouting locations for our retirement home, wheee! I'll post pictures of our travels on our Facebook site. Keep stitching! I'll see you in Idaho at!

Idaho - It's Not Just About The Potatoes!

Summer Trip To Idaho

Did you know that about 1/3 of the potatoes grown in the US are grown in Idaho? That's around 27 billion potatoes annually! 

This past month my husband John and I took a trip to Idaho to scout potential retirement locations.We flew into Boise, rented a car and started our trek. Boise, I'm afraid is not for us...just way too much like Sacramento...a new housing tract on every corner. They are having a boom and we don't want to be part of it. No offense Boise, it's just not for us.  So after an overnight stay, we jumped in the car and headed out to see the surrounding areas. The name Idaho comes from the Native American word Idaahe which means "the land of many waters" and it aptly describes this beautiful state.

  

Garden Valley, Idaho

     First stop: Garden Valley and I successfully sniffed out a sweet little quilt shop there called Stitch n Snip. It didn't look like much from the outside but the inside was just packed with fun! Every nook and cranny was filled with goodies

Stitch n Snip Quilt Shop Garden Valley, Idaho

The Payette River was flowing at full force with all the snow melt this year.

The second day, we took a leisurely drive through Emmett Valley and Payette where we had lunch at the local A and W restaurant...what fun! It was like traveling back in time. Phones at the booths to order your meal and it was delicious! Not much going on in that town, mostly bars and banks on the main street and no quilt shops.

After lunch we piled back into the car and decided that we should take off to McCall and see what that was about. The drive was pretty as we passed through Council, Idaho.

Very much like the Lake Tahoe area here in California. There was a spillway from the lake into the river, just like at Tahoe.

Just past the spillway was a lovely little park complete with picnic tables and benches to sit on, a pretty sandy beach if you wanted to enjoy the water.

The view was so serene and lovely. Blue blue sky with white billowy clouds. We enjoyed some time there and John got some puppy time in with some locals who had brought their whole litter to the beach.

I could have stayed there all day, but I am married to a city boy and he has to keep on the move...LOL. 

Back to Boise and up early the next day to start our trek to the East side of Idaho, with a stop off at Twin Falls. To get to the falls you drive right by the beautiful Twin Falls LDS Temple.

A short drive further and you arrive at the falls. How to describe this...it's like a combination of Niagara Falls and a mini Grand Canyon all in one. We are arriving late in the season and the full flow of the water is not as evident but it is still impressive none the less.

 Here is a photo of the falls in full flow.

Looking down from the falls you can see the canyon the water has carved.

Nice lunch in town at a fairly new restaurant McAllister's Deli. Delicious food and I can highly recommend a stop there for lunch!

Back on the road and off we go, lots of farm fields before our next stop at American Falls. Again, we are late in the season and there is no water coming over the falls. You can see the old power house which is in disrepair and no longer used. Above the dam is a large reservoir providing water to the surrounding farm lands.

To give you some perspective of how large this reservoir is, this is a photo taken from space.

Back in the car and we continue our drive to Pocatello and on to Idaho Falls and our destination for the next several days, Rigby.

We arrived at sunset to our friends the Morrows, home in Rigby and were very happy to hit the sack that night. This will serve as our base from which to explore the surrounding area.

Rigby is a sweet little town, don't blink you'll miss it! Rigby is most famous as the birthplace of television! Who knew?! Rigby was founded by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1884 and a significant number of it's residents as well as those of the outlying communities are LDS. It seems as though there is a chapel on every block! A young man that was in our Ward in Ukiah, as a little boy, years ago, Jason Richardson, is now the Mayor of Rigby and his father who served as our Bishop, Darwin Richardson, along with his sweet mother Nina have just recently relocated to the area. 

Rigby is high on our desired locations. We jump in the car and we are off to St. Anthony to peek at a house that I saw online...unfortunately it was sold, which is okay...we are not ready to move just yet, but it was a lovely cottage and another perfectly beautiful small town. We are up here and the Teton's are just over the hill...so we take off for parts as yet unknown to us to discover a breathtaking view. We drive along though back roads and farm lands as far as one can see and as we crest the hill...this is the view that meets us.

There is a roadside pull off and we do just that, to enjoy the view. Remember I said I was married to a city boy...okay, that's enough time at the pull out, lets continue...LOL So we drive down into the valley below and continue to make a circle through the Teton Valley up over highway 31 to Swan Valley and back down to Idaho Falls. 

We had to stop at the Little Quilt Shop in Idaho Falls! Daydreams Quilt N Sew.

What a sweet shop! There was an ample selection of a variety of fabrics, a little something for everyone. Lots of great patterns, notions and creative inspiration!  John struck up a conversation with shop owner and pattern designer Annalee Leonard. "Are you from Oregon?" she asked. "No, we are from California, a little town called Foresthill" he says. I am looking at the fabric and I hear a voice from the back of the store yell out "Sister of The Divide!" My husband looked at me startled to think that someone in Idaho might actually know who I am.  I was just as stunned and excited to meet, Jeanette Hanson. Well, there was a group of gals in the shop and they were sewing in the back and so we just made ourselves at home and enjoyed talking with all of them. Picking their brains about the surrounding area and becoming even more convinced that this is where we should be. We looked like hell's half acre (as you do when you are doing a marathon drive by in Idaho) but they made us feel so at home. I could have broken out my machine and just spent the afternoon stitching happily with all of them.

I wanted to get something special to memorialize our trip and provide a giveaway for the folks that follow us on facebook as well as here on our blog. Annalee was kind enough to provide two of her patterns, one for the quilt below and another one which I will be giving away this next month.

If you would like to purchase Annalee's pattern which is called "S'more Fun" you can visit her site here: 

S'more Fun Pattern Purchase

Be sure to explore her website Daydreams Quilt N Sew

She has lots of great patterns, beautiful fabrics, Riley Blake, Moda and more, including wide quilt backs, quilt kits, specialty rulers and a nice selection of notions.

Be sure to check back with us in August when we will be giving away Annalee's pattern "Farm Grown" along with some fun fabric!

I had so much fun making my own S'more Fun quilt top. It's in my pile to quilt on the longarm and will be a fun memory of our trip to Idaho!

Time to head home. We are up early and heading off to Boise to catch our flight. A quick stop for breakfast in Blackfoot at the Homestead Restaurant. OMGosh the cinnamon rolls were to die for!

Our next stop on the trip back to Boise will be Rupert. We have been instructed by Annalee to be sure to visit "The Gathering Place" It's her quiltshop on steroids she says. And so we are off!

Downtown Rupert...not much to write home to mom about. I'm looking at the block that the quilt store is on and it's mostly bars. At the very end of the block is a nondescript building with the signage that reads "The Gathering Place". This must be it. Doesn't look like much from the outside, nothing special in the way of window dressing. Quite the contrary, you would never know it's a quilt shop, it could just be another one of the bars on that street.

Getting out of the car, the first thing that you notice is the distinct smell of cows, yes, that's right, there is either a feed lot or a dairy or a manure processing facility close by. I'm thinking, hmmm.

Well, I walked through the doors with my husband in tow and was immediately thrown into total overwhelm. This is the largest quilt shop in Idaho with over 17,000 bolts of fabric. YUP, overwhelm. John looked at the glazed look on my face and told me he would be out in the car taking a nap, take as long as I liked. Well, I knew we only had an hour to spend there and that is certainly nowhere near enough time to do that place justice. The building is cleverly divided into "rooms" and sectioned areas for particular focus. There is a room dedicated to "modern" fabrics, an area for "traditional" fabrics, an area for "juvenile" fabrics and on and on and on. There was just too much to see and I was just as tired as John, so I made a quick dash through the store to get the overlay and then circled back to the items that I wanted. You really need several days...a week even to check it all out.  I'm sure once we move there, if I can't find it at Annalee's I'll be making a trip to Rupert.

Back to Boise up early the next day for our flight back to Reno, Nevada.

And a two hour drive home from the airport in Reno...There is still snow on the mountains!

Planning another trip soon to continue our scouting!