We all had fun at today's annual Foothills party.  As official photographer, I made sure to snap photos of each of the four tables.  While I may not have gotten everyone (people were up and about) I did  capture most of the ladies.

This was my table -

Here are the other three:

The food was good (and plentiful) though the service was incredibly SLOW.

The quarterly drawing was held for the happy quilt Marcie made from my bright scraps and her gray fat-quarter winnings.  Until today only $32 worth of tickets had been sold, but there was a flurry of sales at the start of today's festivities and the new total approached $100.  Laura was just getting ready to do the drawing when Irene arrived (late) and she also bought tickets.

As long as Irene was already up there, Laura had her pull out the winning ticket.

From the shocked look on Irene's face, you can probably guess 

who ended up going home with the quilt!

Lots of festive garb and jewelry were on view today (I wore a penguin shirt and earrings) and I  

liked the beaded Santa earrings that Dee was sporting.

During the party Marcie got out her phone for something, and saw that she'd missed 2 calls from Mike.  Since he knew she'd be at the party she was concerned that he was calling because something was wrong.  Turns out he was at Costco, and had found the gift item he knew I was looking for.  (Marcie had planned to take me over there after the party.)  He wanted to know if it fit my specifications (it did) and should he pick it up for me (yes, thank you!)

Meals at Buca di Beppa are served family style, on platters that we passed around.  At the end of our luncheon the large quantity of food left on the platters was packed up in take-home containers.  Most of the women had left by the time we realized that there were leftovers to which we were 'entitled', so those of us still there scored big time.  (Tom was thrilled that he didn't have to cook tonight.) 

It was 3:30 by the time we got out of there; service at the restaurant had been incredibly SLOW.  Marcie and I then popped over to visit Mary.  We got to meet their new rescue Kirby (he's a sweet Golden), brought some of the leftovers (which she and Jack enjoyed for dinner), and had some other goodies for her.  You can see that she loved the owl pattern/kit Marcie had gotten for her.

Mary gave me a tutorial on the process of making the puff quilt, with samples for each of the various steps.  It does look easy, and I'm looking forward to playing with all of my dog fabrics! 

I surprised myself <G> by being able to crop today's photos on the iPad -

but <sigh> unfortunately encountered issues 

when I attempted to upload the pictures to the Foothills site.

  Eventually I called Jan; turns out she has had the same problem, and apparently you can't do it from an iPad or iPhone.  So once again it took extra steps, Alex, e-mailing each photo to myself and then saving in a folder on my laptop.  I really miss my camera!!!