Two of my favorite people

Thanks to my wonderful friends, Lu and Tom, I now have live in help!  Woohoo!

Meet Roo

Of course, all he does is vacuum but with these two hairballs, that is a BIG help!

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And, in other news, I finished this modern quilt - well all except the binding, which will be knife edge and therefore invisible on the front (in case you didn't know what a knife edge binding was, which I'm sure you do. and if not, you do now.)

It took me two days to quilt this freaking thing because the stitch lines are like 3/4 inch apart and I used almost an entire BIG spool of thread sewing them. I will not be enjoying the utter tedium of this type of quilting in the foreseeable future, that's for sure. Anyhoo, I do love these fabrics - something new and different for yours truly.

Here is the back. I had to piece a strip because I didn't have quite enough. And if anybody out there has this fabric, I need about a half yard more and I'll happily buy it from you. Shoot me an email.

Happy Birthday to Seth!!

My beautiful grand-nephew turns Fabulous FIVE today!

Love you, Sethers!!

Actually, it's going to be 82 degrees here in the fabulous Florida Keys today but here is what's happening to the north. Wow! (And they say there's no such thing as climate change!)

You may be asking yourself why my mom looks especially fabulous and that is because she was my date to the Bougainevillea Ball last night.

 We attended the silent auction, sipped champagne, danced to music by Pangea, ate filet mignon and lobster tail, drank wine and, because of the noise level, screamed at each other all night. This was made possible by my beautiful friend, Janine.

Did I mention that we were seated at the most exclusive table in the room of 530 guests? Well we were and it was divine, darling. Just like old times -- only better. After some trepidation yesterday, I'm feeling pretty happy today knowing that I've put yet another reminder of my husband behind me, replacing it with a sweet new memory: a date with my Mom.  

Yes! I OWN the ball!

First off, I just want to let you know that the reason I haven't been posting is not because I've been depressed. It's because I've been SO BUSY. Not five minutes to upload my pictures or write a few lines. This morning I am skipping my walk so I can share a few pictures. Think about how they do a recap before each Glee episode super fast and that is what this is. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter. So, this first shot is remarkable because it is a picture of FOG. And, we don't have fog in Key Largo. Ever. This is a shot from my front porch.

And, one of the reasons I've been so busy is because my gorgeous niece, Anna and my fabulous brother-in-law, Tom have been visiting.

And, my parents are here!! So happy to have them back in Florida. Here is my goofy dad in my hat (shout out, Gail, love my handmade hat!) during our cold spell here.

So, we all trooped over to Island Dolphin Care to watch Anna swim with the dolphins. It was absolutely wonderful. I cried practically the whole time. Which is ridiculous but I couldn't help it. And I had my sunglasses on so nobody knew.

ready to go

meeting Lotus

And the other reason I've been so busy is because I threw a party for my fabulous friends from water aerobics on the coldest day of the year! 32 of us crowded around patio heaters and had hot soup and hot cider and tons of fun.

Ok, so the day after the party, I drove Anna and Tom up to the Ft. Lauderdale airport  and said good-bye and then I drove to Bayside in Miami where I met up with Katrina, Sue and Joyce for lunch and

our view at lunch

a Duck Tour courtesy of Katrina! Here we are in our duck hats with our quackers. We managed to annoy the other passengers quite nicely. 

The tour went across the MacArthur Causeway, around South Beach and finally plunged into Biscayne Bay. We circled Star Island and viewed the houses of the stars and the rich and powerful and various filming locations and I would give you the details but instead, you should go to Miami and take the tour. (In other words, I can' remember them all.)

This multi-millionaire - can't remember who he is -
imported his palm trees from South Africa
because he wanted them to be uniform.
They looked fake!

Views from the water. And btw, I am not going to bore you with the nightmare traffic going home story. Suffice to say I would rather stick my knitting needles in my eyes than go back to Miami any time soon.

And finally, here is a picture I took on Sunday at Snapper's, aka Our Lady of Perpetual Mimosas.  Looking up from my seat at the bar. They finally took down my husband's license plate and put mine is in it's rightful place. Yeah!  Thank you, Janine!

And, that's what you missed on Glee!  er, I mean in Lizzie's little life.