I know everyone has this sort of day. There's even a saying that goes with it: "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

Today I got my braces off! If you've been counting you know I only had them on for a few months. Like maybe 2 1/2 very expensive months. But my top front teeth had been moved out of their original position by a deformed bite guard and, happily, my teeth really wanted to move back into positon. I'd share a photo of my teeth but really, who needs to see that?

This afternoon I went to the eye doctor about the on-going conjunctivitis in my right eye. Guess what – that's not what it is! Today my eye had goo, lots of goo (I'm sorry if you don't like thinking about this sort of thing). In layman's terms (because I can't remember the actual diagnosis) the bottom of the drain from my tear duct that drains into my sinuses is completely blocked. And it's infected. And I need surgery to fix it. And I can't travel for 5 days after the surgery. I leave in 3 days for Canada and then France. Oh my.

After much discussion we all decided that I could leave town, use antibiotic eye drops, take antibiotics, and pray that everything is OK until mid-May when I am home for 2 weeks. But my braces are off!

So. no gross photos of teeth or eyes. I'll leave you with this. It's a photo that mom and I took with several others to be framed by The Frame Team. This is me and my sister when we were little.

And because I was soooo cute back in the day, here I am in a princess dress!

It almost makes me want to grow my hair long again.

Kathy suggested that I post a photo that better shows the scale of these little houses. My hands are sort of average-size…

A 4" block is pretty small!

After much thought I've about decided on the quiet background.

I'll admit that the busier backgrounds are what I use more often, but scale is imporatant. As you look at the pictures you may not be feeling the impact of the small scale that I get when I stand right in front of these houses.

The reverse appliqued window to the right of the door is just a tad over 1/4" x 1/4". I still have to add the trees and that will fill the blocks even more. I'm leaning toward rickrack and/or ribbon for 'grass'. The embellishments will be in scale with the houses. The more I looked at the busier backgrounds the more I worried that the cute details would be lost.

The thing to remember is that you want the applique to take center stage, not the background. I say this in classes and I realized yesterday that I needed to say it to myself as well. Whatcha think?

I've been working on the house quilt. My initial thought was to use these backgrounds with strong, mostly solid fabrics for the houses.

Then I started putting houses on them I wondered if they were too busy…

…so I changed some. This is a bit better.

I have the backgrounds cut at 6" x 6". They finish at 4" x 4" so there is a lot of fabric there that will be gone later. The thing is that I don't want the houses to be overshadowed by the background. So I tried this, which was OK.

And I tried this which is good but a little boring.

While the houses really show up on this last, quiet dot I'm torn because I like the second set of busy backgrounds too. But I plan to use some embellishments on this quilt and they might get lost if the backgrounds are too busy. Feel free to let me know which one(s) you prefer.

Austin College (where Steve works) celebrated April Fool's Day with its 4th Parade of Fools breast cancer fund raiser last Friday. Sadlly, I missed this parade.

This year six faculty and staff dressed up in costume for the parade.  Steve wasn't actually one of the six – he tells me he was a prop, playing Patsy to John McGinn's King Arthur of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame. Steve already had the coconut halves and a backpack so there you go!

Here is another shot. Notice the concentration and obvious skill with coconuts!

Just in case you can't remember the sound of Patsy, you can hear it at the beginning of the movie clip  from YouTube, below.

Mom’s albums are at my house because there isn’t room for them in the duplex. Lucky me!

We spotted this photo of my mom and dad on their honeymoon. I don’t remember ever seeing either mom or dad on a bike – but this proves that they rode a bike at least once!

I think this photo was taken in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1954.