Sunday, January 26, 2014

Christmas card demographics - 2013

I was a little late getting my Christmas cards out this year.  It was a busy time of year and honestly, I wasn’t much in the mood to do them so it was more of a chore than anything.  I hate that I felt like that but December (and November) were a bit stressful for me.  Hopefully this year will be better.

Anyway, despite not really being in the mood to do them, I still sent out 139 Christmas cards.  And we received 65 of them.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one not in the mood to do cards this year…

So here’s where our cards went in 2013.

Italy – 14

Korea – 3

Belgium – 2

Australia – 1

Spain – 1

Sweden – 1

Netherlands – 1

England – 1

Vatican – 1

IL – 26

IA – 16

AZ – 15

WI – 6

TX – 6

CO – 5

FL – 5

MO – 3

IN – 3

NV – 3

CA – 3

NM – 2

MS – 2

TN – 2

OK – 2

And one to NE, WA, OR, SD, UT, ND, VA, MN, GA, NC, OH, AL and SC.

 

I meant to take a picture of all of the ones we received before I took them all off the wall but I forgot to.  Rats.  Hopefully I’ll remember to next year!

Monday, January 20, 2014

Rachel’s quilt

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One of my good friends from IA is having a baby boy soon.  I made her this chevron quilt and I’m happy with the way it turned out.  It was harder than I thought it would be to keep all the pieces together in the correct order and some of my seams aren’t perfect, but they never are all perfect.  I love the colors of this quilt though.  I ended up just quilting it by following the chevrons in the middle which was also a bit of a learning process.  But it didn’t take too long and was fun to do.  I really need to get ahead on my baby quilt collection so I’m not so rushed to get them done when my friends are due.  But by the time I have time to actually get ahead on my quilting, my friends will be long done having babies.  That’s just the way life seems to work.

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Jerome, Arizona

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Jerome is a small town located in the Black Hills of Yavapai County not too far from Sedona.  We actually saw it in the distance when we were visiting Tuzigoot and decided to go check it out, and I’m so glad we did.  It’s a really neat town and it REALLY reminded me of a western version of my hometown of Galena, IL.  It had a historic main street, just like Galena and is mainly on a hill, just like Galena, although Jerome is much smaller than Galena is.  It was mainly a mining town back in the 1920’s and was home to more than 1000 people back then, but has less than 500 people living there now.

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We decided to go check out the ghost town, and it was a lot of fun!  I recently read an article about it and it said that if you’re traveling with a photographer, expect them to disappear until their camera runs out of memory, and that is very much true.  I could have spent HOURS in this place taking photos of all of the neat things Don Robertson (the owner) had laying around.

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The ghost town is actually a suburb of Jerome, called Haynes, and it was originated by Haynes Copper Company in 1890, when they were searching for copper that is known to be in the area.  They missed the copper but they did find gold.

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This school house was moved from Flagstaff to here, but Don built many of the buildings on the property himself.  He says he only collects rare things, but since I’m not well versed in old cars, I have no clue if these are true or not.  I really want my dad to go see all of this stuff because he would know about these old cars.

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Mark was in pig heaven when we encountered this trailer full of alligator juniper wood.  It was even better that it was fairly cheap.  We already had 6 people and all of our junk in the car, but we managed to fit a few pieces of this stuff in between everyone and everything else and Mark was a happy camper.  And I was happy because he now knows how I feel when I go into a fabric shop.  He could have stayed in this little shack for a good hour inspecting all the wood, and that’s exactly how I feel when I get into fabric shops.  I’m glad he has a hobby that he likes.

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Here’s the old entrance to the mine and they even have a place where you can pan for gold (for $10 I think, maybe $5).  They had a bunch of goats you can feed also, and chickens, and their donkey also.

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There was just neat stuff all over this place and we spent a few hours wandering around it and looking at everything, although I feel like we didn’t really get to see everything because there’s just so much to look at!  (Dad, most of these pictures are for you!)

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I didn’t even get a chance to go into these buildings, but I’m sure there was lots of cool stuff to look at!

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I can’t remember what the thing on the left is below, but the thing on the right is a 1914 sawmill that they still use every day to cut lumber orders of the juniper.  It was running a little when we got there but by the time we got up to this section of the property they weren’t running it.  Luckily, we ran into Don while we were there and he started it up for us and showed us how this one worked, and the one below that he built from a submarine engine.  Both were pretty darn neat to see, even if they were loud.  Ben wasn’t a huge fan of the noise.

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We had fun petting the donkey and he was even braying for us a little bit, which is hilarious to hear.  I kinda want a donkey.  They’re adorable.  Almost as cute as my kid.

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I decided not to carry my camera with me around Jerome when we visited the town, but it was really need to see.  Such old buildings and you can almost feel the history surround you.  If you want to read more about the history of Jerome, you can go HERE.  In short, it was named after a New York lawyer who financed the United Verde Copper Company, that mined hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 19th century.  Today it’s a really artsy town with lots of chic little restaurants and art galleries.  Again, reminds me a lot of Galena.  I’m excited to go back again.

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If you’re every in the Phoenix, Sedona, Prescott area in Arizona, I would HIGHLY encourage you to check out Jerome and the  Gold King Mine ghost town.  It is one of my favorite places we’ve visited so far in AZ!!

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Sunday, January 19, 2014

Tuzigoot National Monument

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On our way from Sedona to Jerome (back in November…..) we stopped at Tuzigoot National Monument.  This part of Arizona has beautiful landscape and these first pictures were all taken from the car.

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Tuzigoot is a 3 story pueblo built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400.  It means, in Apache, “crooked water”, as it is very near the Verde River.

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The pueblo originally was made of 110 rooms and the site currently contains 42 acres.  When they discovered this, the company that owned the land sold it to the state for $1 so they could excavate it.

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It was a bit chilly up there, but the views were beautiful.  I miss the fall colors so much in Phoenix, but it’s good to know they’re not too far away!  And that field down on the left center had horses running around in it.  So pretty!

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The Verde River

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Clarkdale, AZ

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**These photos were taken mid-November.  I’m just way behind on my editing and blogging.**