I found a neat little downloadable program called "The Hat" that has solved my problems in deciding what to do with all the ideas in my head and all the stash in my pantry and thought I'd share it with you.
http://download.cnet.com/The-Hat/300...-10074565.html
Essentially it pulls names out of a virtual hat and was originally created to help teachers randomly pair up kids, but it will use two sets of anything.
I put all my "collections" (eg. flamingos, stonehenge, dogs) of fabrics in one column and all the kinds of quilts I'd like to try my hand at in the other (eg. Lady liberty, mariner's compass, drunkard's path). Hit go and it will pop out random pairings. If I'm feeling really creative, I will make myself do something with the first pairing even if at first it doesn't seem like it will work, other times I just scan the list and see what takes my eye. Even if I don't use any of them, I find that it jumpstarts something for me.