Scooter Rally Wore Me Out!

This has been a sloooooowww week! I'm still tired from everything I did last week! I had a ton of little jobs to do last week, along with the big stuff, and a few last minute projects we added. 

We like to add personalized stuff to the rally bags, and this year was no exception. 

DD#1's family made these awesome wooden ornaments for the rally. They have a fancy laser etcher engraver printer, and they were nice enough to make an ornament to go in every rally bag. 

We made custom candy bar wrappers to put around Hershey bars.

 

One of the last minute projects was something I was calling a MacGyver kit. DH wanted to put zip ties in the rally bags, but he was trying to think of a fun way to add them. I suggested adding some duct tape as well, and the idea took flight. We decided to add a glow stick and a piece of bubble gum too, because if you're trying to fix something on the fly, you never know, gum might come in handy. Since the theme of the rally was steampunk, I decided to design an old time medicine label for the kit.

Why Dr. Herringbone? Well, I had been looking at a bunch of images of herringbone quilts the day prior, and doctor names with body parts in them is just funny to me. We stuck the label and items in a small baggie, and they were a big hit. 

This is how the table toppers and centerpieces looked on the tables. 

My sister had made enough of these centerpieces to put one on each table. For the dinner we added a LED votive candle inside. My sister is the Queen of Upcycling. The containers are Crystal Light containers. The robots and animals are made from used wine corks and misc. electric pieces. Every robot and animal was different. The roses that totally look like leather, are made from toilet paper tubes! She has such incredible talent, and works in a completely different creative wheelhouse than I do.

My sister also made a ton of steampunk accessories for the photo booth had.

This is DD#2 and family, they were a huge help for many parts of the rally.

Here is DD#2 with Mr. Z, our oldest grandchild. We borrowed him for a good part of the week as a helper.

These are some of my "adopted" family. Not legally adopted, just adopted in our hearts and they come to most family events. 

Here are DH and I dressed in our steampunk costumes. My sister made most of our accessories as well, not all, but most. 

Besides the rally bags, and running registration and just making sure things ran smoothly, we made a meal to feed everyone Saturday night. DH smoked brisket and pulled pork. I made baked beans, pasta salad, and homemade rolls, which we served with a huge vegetable tray. For dessert I made some vegan GF apple butter-oat bars, and DD#2 made so many mini cupcakes!

I'm not sure why but I only have photos of two of the three kinds she made. She loves making up cupcake flavors, and for the rally she made Smoked Bourbon Butterscotch, Lavender Earl Grey with Blackberry Buttercream, and Coffee cupcakes with Cookie Buttercream. My personal favorite was the coffee cupcakes, but I run on caffeine so it had a definite advantage 😉

We had lots of food left over, so I gave all of my helpers food to take home. 

DH and I are holding up the quilt with the winner of it. That's Erin from Sikk Scooters in Los Angeles, and now the quilt I made is hanging in their scooter shop. We raised $981 for the local food bank!

Mostly this week has been a rest week. I did finish quilt Mr. LJ's quilt this morning, and I need to get it bound and washed before his birthday party on Sunday. Quilting his quilt is the only sewing I've done this week. 

I did pull some fabrics with Bonnie Hunter's mystery in mind. Her colors will work great with men's shirts, and that's still in my mind, but I prefer using different colors to hers. 

I'm thinking the solid purple as my background, the dark and light teals as my blues, and the peach instead of red. I'm only going scrappy on the teals. I debated not going scrappy at all, and these were my choices for that.

I'm still not 100% decided. I'm not sure if I'll even do it at all. I'll decide when I see the first the clue on the 24th. My right arm is just eaten up with tendonitis right now, but I can usually cut Bonnie's quilts with my Studio cutter. Rotary cutting and FMQ is hardest on my arm. Most of the next quilts in the queue can be cut with my Studio cutter, which I can easily do with my left arm. Piecing doesn't really aggravate my arm much, so as long as I can do a minimal amount of cutting and take a break from FMQ, I should heal up. It's really a matter of icing it several times a day and cutting way back on activity with that arm to get the inflammation down. My sewing and cutting rooms are a mess, so spending some time tidying up is a good use of time, as well as cleaning out my computer. Google keeps telling me I'm out of space for photos, so it's time to cull the ones I don't want anymore, and that always takes much longer than I expect! I can press fabric left handed, so I'm thinking getting myself a few projects cut out with the Studio cutter will make for a good start on 2024 goals.