Some Quilts =)

http://quiltstory.blogspot.com/2011/01/absolutely-little-girls-quilt.html

http://cuttopieces.blogspot.com/2011/02/quilt-story-block-party.html

http://quiltstory.blogspot.com/2011/02/fabric-tuesday-23.html

http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2011/01/stars.html

Quilt & Sister Pics

Happy Thanksgiving and 116

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a fun day at Grammie's house. Grammie is our pastor's mom and she is so sweet to always invite us to their family get-togethers. =) I love that we know so many of the aunts and uncles (the pastor's siblings & spouses) and some of their kids. It's just fun. =)

I keep forgetting to blog that Emily's new favorite big number is 116. I guess she decided that 115 wasn't quite big enough. =P

I finished stitching the binding on Em's quilt today while we played Settlers and Carcassonne at Grammie's. Yay! Emmy is so happy about it. Now I need to get to work on Lainey's! =)

I got fabric to make Em her wedding dress for her birthday. The princess dress thing has become a tradition and when I asked Em what color she wanted it to be, she said she'd like a white wedding dress.

A new consequence for lies and whining has made a huge difference in our house: vinegar. My friend Emily told me she puts vinegar on a rag and cleans their mouth out if her kids let bad things come out of their mouth - including whining. I talked to Harp and we decided to give it a try. They HATE the vinegar. Em has caught herself so many times starting to have a bad attitude and then changing it right away. Yay!

Baby cries. Talk to ya later! =P

Pics

Emmy took the ones that aren't of her and Laine took the pic of Em. I still had the camera on the tripod from taking the pirate pics. =) Oh and I cropped them. =P

More Smiles & Cuteness

Bekah Jane smiled at me so much last night! I love it! She is a cutie pie! And ever since I blogged that her tummy was hurting, she's been just fine. Yay! Those were two rough days for her.

Lainey Joy has been trying all day to say "snuggle a snake." She can say "ssssssnuggle" and "sssssnake" but she just can't get it all out together. It's "nuggle a nake," "ssssnuggle a nake," or nuggle a ssssnake!" =P

My mom got the girls matching Christmas dresses today and they are SO cute. My dad just took some pics of them dressed up. =)

I have the first round of strips done for both girls' quilts. Now I need to cut those strips into strips and sew them together to piece the rest of the top. Well and then add a couple of borders. =P They are turning out cute so far!

Birthday Stuff, Quilt Stuff, Card Class Stuff

I'm working on invitations for Lainey's party. Yay! They are going to be simple, but cute. I'm using 2 colors of bling textured cardstock and I'm going to let the girls put brads in the corners (they LOVE to do brads). At Hobby Lobby yesterday, I grabbed some fake flowers to put in the middle of the flip flops, so if my straps look bad, that can cover it up. =P I like the black licorice idea. I think I'm going to do that. Thanks! =)

I finished the binding on the quilt for my sister. Yay! I need to take a pic before I send it off. The batteries for my flash are charging. It looks so pretty!

I picked up my check today for the card class and the total that people spent between the two classes was $300 exactly. How cool is that? I get 10% of whatever people buy, so that was an extra $30 for me. $135 for two classes isn't bad. Of course, I put more time into it than just being there for the classes. But it was fun. I got a few things while I still get my discount. ZipDry is $6-something now! I should have stocked up. Maybe I still will... I don't know if I want to teach another class before the baby is born. The only Tuesday I could teach one is Sept 22 and I don't even know that I'd do yet.

Quilting & My Silhouette!

Last night was craft night and even thought I printed all my pics, I decided to quilt. I will have to make sure I stay caught up this month with the scrapbook but I want to be able to send this off to my sister as soon as I can. I took the girls because Harp was going to pick the Davises up from the airport. We watched movies while I sewed. I made the binding, put it on, and stitched 1/4 of it down last night. Right now, I'm working on the next side and I'm about 1/2 done with that. Yay!

So last night while I was at craft night, Harper sniped me a Quickutz Silhouette on ebay. I am so excited to get it!! =) It's like a Cricut, only with no cartridges to buy. You can cut any true type font, any size, and make your own graphics from clip art or design them in GIMP or whatever. It ended up being like $226 or something with shipping - brand new. It retails at $369.99 (although I found some scrapbook stores online selling it for $269) so it was a good deal. Will I ever buy another sticker? =P

Well my fam is watching volleyball. At first Em was not excited about it but I explained some of the rules and now she is so into it that she wanted it paused when she went to get Lainey a Band-Aid. =P I'm working on the quilt. No, I'm blogging. But now I'm going to go work on the quilt. Later!

Quilt Day

Last night, I could not get to sleep. I didn't even take a nap yesterday, so it didn't make any sense, but I wasn't all that tired and the baby kept rearranging itself (like all-out somersaults, not just wiggling) so I finally got up and organized the fabric for my denim quilt. Which isn't really a quilt, it's a comforter cover, but it's pieced. Anyway. So today I have put together all of the strips and then I've put 9 of the strips together and have 5 more to sew on to finish the top. I'm going to line it and stitch in the ditch just along the length of the strips, so it doesn't fray. Then make the rest of the cover. I think I'm going to make a cover for my body pillow too because it needs one and I have lots of leftover denim. I could probably make 2 more quilts. I could make one for sure. I really underestimated what I had, lol.

Anyway while I was working on that, the lady that quilted the quilt for my sister called and she had it done and was coming to Derby to shop at our quilt shop. So we met there and I got that quilt. I have to sew the binding on and hand-stitch around the outside and then it's off to my sister. I'm going to finish up the denim part of the comforter really quickly because I have that thread on there and all the stuff taking over the living room and then I'll do the binding. I might wait until the kids are in bed tonight to hand stitch - I don't want to just sit there and do that all afternoon and be no fun.

Quilt for Laurin

Here is a pic of the middle of it, just pieced. I haven't decided if I'm putting a border on it or not, so maybe I'll still do that. =) I'll put it on our bed to see if I want a border or not. Or if you want one then tell me. =) It is all together other than a border now! Yay! =)

Various Updatish Sorts of Things

Garage Sale: Preparations are well under way. Today the chicas and I made three dozen pretzels. We only baked three of them (Lainey refused to eat hers - bonus! I love them (she's kind of an anti-bread girl anyway)) and we froze the rest. I am going to test it out tonight, cooking them out of the freezer. But I noticed a few weeks ago that they sell soft pretzels in the freezer section at Walmart (and dinner rolls!) so I thought it must be just fine to let them rise and then toss them in the freezer. The instructions on all those boxes just said stick them in the oven frozen. I guess I'll find out if it works. =P What doesn't work so well: freezing the pretzels onto waxed paper. It's kinda hard (okay nearly impossible) to peel the pretzels off without some paper sticking... Next two batches, maybe I'll try greased aluminum foil. At least (I think) the foil can be picked off after baking if it does stick. If anyone has any experience with this, clue me in, okay? I don't want to get stuck with metal pretzels. =P

When the girls wake up from their naps, I'm taking them to Alyssa's house to play while I borrow her truck, meet Luke at the church, and watch him load my tables for me. =P Then he'll follow me home, we'll get the tables in the garage, and I'll head back to get the girls. Or probably actually to stay and play because it probably won't take that long to get tables. It's going to be the second time I've dropped my kids off at a friend's house to play. The last time was in December. Weird, huh? It feels weird. Anyway, with tables the girls and I can start putting things on tables. They are all about helping with the garage sale and I love it! We made some signs today for various things and a sign for Emmy's little pretzel stand. =)

Quilting: I'm sooo close to done with that first quilt. I was all ready to say it is coming along wonderfully when I remembered the things I didn't like about it the other day, lol. I guess I'm over it. I didn't use spray basting (freaks me out when I'm pregnant) and I pinned but I had to repin after sewing some with the walking foot. I didn't quilt all the way across the quilt because I didn't want white stitches in the sashing (which is red with tiny white polka dots) so only the outside of the 9 squares are quilted and now I'm stippling the free space in those squares. Anyway a few of them turned out not entirely square because of the whole not going across the whole quilt thing... I don't really know what I would do next time to fix this problem. Except use spray basting... But anyway I think it won't be noticable once it's washed anyway and it's very, very cute. And I was thinkin' it's an old-fashioned style quilt (redwork in the squares) and I remember lots of things my grandma made that weren't 100% perfect but they still looked good anyway. So if she can do it, I can do it, right? =)

The Thumb: Emily completely and totally stopped sucking her thumb. Wait before you say yay... So the other day I was showing her how her thumb is almost completely healed and normal-looking like her other one. Well that afternoon, she popped her thumb into her mouth! Of course, Harp and I were shocked, and Harp asked why she did that. She said "Mommy said it was looking normal again!" He told her that didn't mean she could suck it, that she wasn't supposed to ever suck it again. I wish the face wasn't so vivid in my memory... She was SO sad. She didn't have a fit or anything, but she was very seriously struck with the realization that we meant she could never suck her thumb again. And she was very, very sad. She has snuck it in a few times since then and last night, for the first time in two weeks, she took the band-aid off and sucked her thumb. It makes me SO sad! She had stopped! Totally! And she is totally deciding to suck it. Harp said we'll just put the mitten back for a while. I hope it helps. But I really think the habit is broken at this point and she is just deciding to do it. She knows the dentist will still put the thing in her mouth if she doesn't stop completely and when she's reminded of that, she doesn't want to suck. But, still...

I dunno what else... Better go work on that quilt before kids get up. Later!

Quilt & Bonnet

This is the quilt I'm making for Ashley's baby. =) She is pregnant again, by the way - I don't know if I ever blogged that after she "officially" announced it. =) 15 weeks now. Yay! Em asked if this is for Ashley's baby that's in her belly and I told her nope it's for Ashley's baby that's in heaven already. She asked if it was coming out of her belly and I told her well sometimes they come out of your belly and sometimes God takes them right to heaven. And this baby he took right to heaven. But there's another baby growing in her belly now and it will probably come out. =P So now Emily talks about "the quilt for Ashley's baby that's in heaven." =)

I don't know how I'm going to bind it yet. I was thinking about piecing together the fabrics in the quilt for the binding. Kind of weird maybe and might be too bulky at the seams. But I don't want it to look too boyish or girlish. So maybe I should just do white. Tell me what you think, okay??

I found these purple petals and ribbons at a garage sale yesterday. So I whipped up another bonnet. =) Cute, huh? It's for my dad. But, Dad, you have to take a good picture of Lainey in it. =)

Hola

Last night Harper made me a super-yummy dinner. Spinach salad with strawberries and feta and homemade strawberry vinaigrette. A really really really good steak and mushrooms. And wine. Yum! =) And a mint chocolate chip banana split for dessert.

Today Em and I worked on the corner garden, pulling a few weeds and putting the grid up. We were going to plant it too but then Em peed and really wanted a bath, so we came in. It's still uncovered so I hope the cats don't find it. =\

We went to the quilt shop this morning to get ideas to quilt Ashley's quilt. The pattern was in a book I saw there so I was going to see how they quilted the quilts in the pictures but you could only tell in one of them and I didn't like it. I got some funky fabric - 3 coordinating prints with lady bugs and flowers and butterflies. Really bright and fun and they go with the St. Jude's fabrics, too. I have some of those left over.

I started quilting the border on Ashley's quilt. I'm not very good at free-motion quilting but I will have lots of practice on this. If you squint your eyes it looks okay, lol! No it's not really that bad but definitely not perfect.

Exercising Da Brain

This morning at church Neil gave Harp a brain teaser. I asked Harp what it was and he wouldn't tell me! He said he wanted to get a head start on it. lol

Harp took me out to Village Inn for lunch and told me there what the problem was. Of course, all I could do was work on it. =) I told Harper it was horrible because I couldn't fully focus my attention on ANYthing until I figured it out (it's just always going on in my brain!) but I couldn't focus all of my attention on the problem either because I have kids and stuff to do. It's painful! So Harp hung out with Em for a while when we got home so I could write a bunch of stuff down to see if I got it (it's not an in your head kind of puzzle). I didn't. But I managed to play in the sprinkler thing with Emily in between jotting things down that I thought of. lol Anyway then Harp went to the store, both girls were napping and I worked on it a little more and still didn't have it. I HAD to end it! I looked up the solution online. I would have loved to work on it long enough to do it on my own but it would have consumed me even more and I would have been a mentally absent Momma until I figured it out. Is anyone else like this? That is so why I majored in math. It's so fun!

Okay anyway I put an end to that and then had to figure out this border for Ashley's quilt. A lot to explain, but I ended up completely redrawing it using a compass and straight edge. Who said you don't use geometric constructions after high school geometry? They must not quilt. lol I think it's hilarious that the only time I have ever used a geometric construction in real life is to design a quilt border. But it was fun to do. =)

Shauna called everyone with skirts from the girls' section at Walmart and we all wore them to church today. lol I'm glad Nellie and Cori have them too 'cause all the others were 11ish. =) We took a picture. I'll have to load pics later. =)

Okay off to transfer the quilt border. This is going to be the coolest border I've ever made or else the biggest mess-up I've ever made on a quilt. =D

(Not So) Quick Update

Hey! Well Wed night was the girls' Bible study. Dawn and her kids didn't come again (that's half the kids) and Dawn was supposed to prepare the lesson, so we ended up just talking about what we've been reading in the Bible and what God has been showing us lately. It always turns out better that way for a small group anyway. I sort of wish sometimes that it wasn't such a big group. But I really do like having the Bradshaw girls come. Anyway Kathy (another mom) came and stayed the whole time and that was great! She doesn't go to our church, but she's in the same homeschool group as lots of people from our church. And her daughter Tori has been coming with Shauna to the study. Her family took the Zerger kids in for weeks at a time when Valeri was sick. They are a really sweet family. And she has 6 kids and is as cute and skinny as can be. =P Anyway so we did ironing. Most of the girls hadn't ironed before. And they liked it! If only their moms had known... =P And we did card making. Emily-O Claire saw this cute scrapbook kit at Walmart and said "Let's get it for the girls!" so I thought about it and thought about making cards and it was perfect. It had tons and tons of coordinating stuff in it and it was fun and funky... So we were going to split the girls into two groups so one could iron and the other could make cards and then switch them half way through. With 13 girls it would have been hard to keep things from getting chaotic with only two irons! =P But we ended up only having 5 or 6 girls I think. We still split up but it was good because everyone was occupied all the time. =)

Thursday I don't remember what we did in the morning but we went to a cookie shop in town and got a dozen cookies and took them to the Wisners' to share. CK always talks about this cookie shop and I finally thought about it long enough to get there and get cookies. =) It was good, but I like my snickerdoodles better (I load them with cinnamon and leave them a little doughy) and if I found a recipe I bet homemade molasses cookies are better too but these were still good. They tasted kinda packaged for a cookie shop. Maybe they weren't fresh or something because they were in sealed packages. Anyway I would go again if I didn't feel like making cookies. =P

I separated most of my tulip bulbs and then Harp came home - yay!! We were SO glad to see him! We waited outside for him. =) Then we stayed up late.

Friday was Harp's 9x80 day. We just hung out. I sewed some, Harp did some circuit stuff... Made a Walmart trip, I went to the library and stopped by a few garage sales. Found Em some roller skates (the blue and yellow ones that go on over your shoes) for 75 cents and a lobster costume for 75 cents. It fits Lainey and Em and it's way cute and I think it's especially funny because Em always talks about lobsters. And we have a tickle where we made a lobster claw and say "Lobster, lobster, comin' to get you!!" and then tickle with the lobster claw... =) Em says "yobsta!" I have pics of Em roller skating in her lobster costume.

Then Harp mowed. It was craft night, but I went to the church and realized when I got there that I didn't have the key. I didn't know Harp took it off his key ring. So I waited and nobody else came. Called a few people and everyone that I thought would come was busy because of graduations... So I just went home.

Today we went strawberry picking. It was so fun! Em wasn't into picking, but I would pick until my hands were full and then carry them to the box and Em would put them into the box and count them as she put them in. A few times, she counted correctly and stopped at the right time and even said it like the last number was the answer... But then other times it was "1, 2, 3, 10, 5!!" =) I love it. After a while, Em would count them "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6! Okay, let's go home!!!" Hehe. We only picked 8.5 pounds. Ashley and Samuel went and picked like 26 pounds. Or more. It was a whole lot!! =)

Then Ashley and Samuel came over and we talked while Em and Samuel played. Or, didn't play. Em was freaking out about Samuel even touching her roller skates. One time she even pushed him down because he was going to get them. Oh, no, girlie-O! The skates are in jail for a week. Now that I think about it, that's probably a really long time for a 2-year-old who just got her skates... She doesn't know what a week means so maybe I will shorten it.

I took a nap when the girls did today and still felt wiped. We went garage saling but none were open. Except one where we got stuff we didn't need. A cute hat for Laina and an outfit for Em. Then to the grocery store and home. Harp grilled burgers for dinner - mmm!

Then I put Lainey down and took another nap while Harp and Em went shopping for me for Mother's Day. They came home and wrapped my present and signed the card and Emily was SO excited to give it to me. I told her I should wait for Mother's Day to open it, so we'd open it in the morning, but I couldn't wait! She was sad to go to bed without seeing me open the present. =( She did a really good job not telling me what it was even though she picked it. She was a very good girl and didn't get out of bed even once tonight.

Harp was washing strawberries while I finished up the Mother's Day video for church. Once I started it rendering, we were going to eat strawberries, but we wanted to share with Em. So we woke her up (it was after 10, lol) and we all ate strawberries in her bed. She was incredibly cute and super-sweet and she asked if it was time to open my present. So I told her I really wanted to open it and asked Daddy if he thought it was okay and he said yes! So I opened it and it was a water sprayer thing for the yard, like to run through the sprinkler things. So fun! And stickers to scrapbook the pictures of us playing with it. =) We can't wait for tomorrow to play with it! I think it's cool that they got something for us to do all together. =) I love my girlie-Os!

Oh today I spray basted Ashley's quilt and Tatum's quilt. I decided not to do a border on Tatum's quilt and to bind it with the backing fabric. I've never done that before. I am quilting cool stuff on these quilts and I'm excited! I checked out a bunch of books from the library with designs. Okay it's 11:42 and that is insane. I am going to bed! Night!

Oh! And today Emily jumped!! Maybe she has before but this was the first time I witnessed what I would call an official jump. =P She has been trying for so long!! But never got both her feet to leave the ground at the same time. Okay anyway good night!

Kiona's Quilt

Here it is finished and a pic of Wiggly Moose. Em was so cute talking about giving Wiggly Moose to Kiona all week. We took the stuff to Sam yesterday at work. =) Oh, I never took a pic of the quilt label. Oops. I don't know if I blogged that I had to redo it. It said "Kiona Nicole Goin" & "November 2006" and it was way cute. But then another email went around that said Nichole. Eek! So I just cut it out and put one there that said "Kiona" "11-21-06" but it was a little crooked. Oh well. Maybe it's good that I don't have a pic. =)

Awwwwwwwww, More Cute Lainey Pics =)

Oh yeah and I finally finished sewing the binding on Lainey's quilt today. =)

Pics

Emily let Wiggly Seal and her snowman from Grammy play under the play gym and she gave the duck tummy time. =) She's really into giving her animals and babies tummy time. =)

The other night at Marble Slab. Mmmm! We had peanut butter ice cream with chocolate chips mixed in. And I had some bananas still in the car from when we went to the zoo so we ate it with bananas. Mmmmmm! I want more. =) Harper had vanilla cinnamon ice cream with bananas mixed in, which is what reminded me I had bananas in the car. Oops! It was good though. =)

Here is the top all put together. The binding will be the dark green.

Quilt

I have one square totally assembled and all of the 9-patches done. And everything is cut. It's kinda slow now because I have to draw lines on all the little triangle pieces. I'm just doing enough for one square and finishing one at a time now. =) I think it's cute though! =) I have no idea how I'm going to quilt this. Any thoughts?

Quiltin'

Yay! I have a reason to make a quilt. =) Sam, the guy whose desk is next to Harp's, had a baby today. Well, his wife did. And he didn't tell almost anyone she was pregnant! What?? Well I ran to the quilt shop when I heard. =) Harp took over dinner for me so I could go. It was fun to take just Lainey and get to snuggle her the whole time. =) It's going to be a 9-patch. Umm, here it is. It's going to be pink and green, though. It reminds me a little bit of the quilt Connie made for Lorna, only it's different. =) Anyway you might have guessed it's a girl. =) Her name is Kiona Nicole. Guess I'm gonna be piecing a quilt tonight while Harper plays Zelda. =) I played some Zelda today so he has to at least get to where I am. =)

Baby Quilts

When we were at Burlington Coat Factory getting the changing table for Lainey (did I blog about that?) I saw some way cute quilts that I'm going to take ideas from. They use lots of different kinds of fabric and chenille and stuff. Very cute. =)