I Won This!

Just look at what

from Valley Lighting and Home Decor

(they have some beautiful products)

I cannot wait to use this to decorate in our future new (to us) home soon!! It's funny because at work there was the most beautiful Christmas Tree in the main lobby that was decorated in a fishing lodge type theme. Next to the tree was a fountain that had some lighted floral pieces around it and I just loved them. I was excited to find out about this giveaway yesterday at My Giveaway Today and I entered it just as I have entered most of their daily giveaways for awhile now. When I was reading about today's giveaway, I got the bottom to see that I had won yesterday's prize - so stoked!!

My First Time

This is kind of sad to say, but last night I made my first purchase from a fabric line (what did you think this post was about?). I guess that maybe I just was never comfortable in my abilities to use some of these nice fabrics so I always just bought some of the less expensive ones while swooning over the fabrics in online quilt shops and blogs.

My fabrics are coming out of this line, I didn't purchase all prints though.

photo: Fat Quarter Shop

I cannot wait until they arrive and I'm excited to figure out what type of quilt blocks I'm going to have my quilting group make for me out of these wonderful fabrics!

*Update: I should have clarified that this fabric will be used for blocks for my real live quilting group. My turn in Let's Bee Together isn't until later in the year and I won't be able to hold on to this fabric that long! I'll be excited to make another fun fabric purchase.

Baby Food Jars

Last year I posted this about a childhood Christmas decoration memory. My Dad read the post and we talked about the baby food jar Christmas tree decorations. Turns out he had been collecting baby food jars throughout the year and this was my Christmas present:

It's so fancy I asked "did you make this?" and even after he answered yes I had to say it again; "you really made this?" He just put a lot of time and effort into it, each jar has a little 'ornament' glued to the center of the inside and is filled with sparkly 'grass', they're sitting on a nice wooden base and even the back looks so professional, all of the lids are painted the same green as the base!

Thanks, Dad! I will treasure it always and hopefully my kids will remember always decorating with a baby food jar Christmas tree when they're all grown up!

January Bee Block for Let's Bee Together

I was hesitant to start making my first block for my online bee group, Let's Bee Together. I've been in a 'live' group for a year now but for some reason this online version was stressing me out 100 times more than any of the blocks I've done over the last year. A fellow bee member wrote this post, and as I was reading the first paragraph (before I started my block) I was laughing so hard because it was exactly how I felt!

It took me awhile to decide what block I wanted to make. I wanted to try something new (my first mistake?), but I wanted to be somewhat easy. I also looked for patterns that used 4 different colors, as that was what I had available to use in my block.

My block came from this tutorial at p.s i quilt, it was block 5 of the pinwheel sampler quilt. I swear that somewhere I read this was suppose to be a 12" finished block but now that I go back, I'm not seeing that - did I make it up, hoping that's what it was going to be because that's what I needed it to be? My block, as is, measures 12" square and for those of you non-quilters who may be reading, a finished block is the size a block is once it is in the finished quilt, so as just a block, it will be 1/2 inch larger because it allows for a 1/4 inch seam allowance. In other words, my block is 1/2 inch too small...so maybe I did make up the fact that I read the block was to be 12" finished, either that or I did something wrong (which is more likely to be the case in this situation). The picture below makes it look like my block was even smaller than 12" but I had the block a bit high on my mat so you could see the number.

Other than not turning out to be the size I had planned, I am happy with the block. The points came together nicely, for the most part and I just like the way it looks. I was a little concerned that the fabrics were a bit too busy to really notice the pattern, but I think it sort of makes it an illusion, at first you can't really tell that the yellow and purple floral prints are two different prints because the background color is less prominent than the actual flowers, but then at closer look you can see there really are 2 different colors there.

Here's hoping the recipient likes it and can make it work into her quilt even though it's a bit small!

2 years vs 5 years

Calvin was 2 in September and Hunter will be 5 in February.

For Christmas they each got a stick horse. Calvin named his Kiwi and Hunter's is Vaximus ("like Maximus, but with a V" as he would explain it).

They also each got a Kung Zhu. Calvin's goes by the name Bernie and Hunter's is Laser Point.

They each got a furry hand puppet critter. Calvin chose the name Franklin (after the turtle) and Hunter decided to call his Dollar Bill.

2010 - a Year of Photos

A photo of my boys from each month in 2010.

31

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband!

Love you!

Quilt Group Gathering

In September, our quilt group member who was suppose to host wasn't able to do so and nobody was ready to move up on such short notice so we had the gathering at my house and worked on some baby quilt tops for Project Linus. Everyone was asked to bring some boyish fabric and some girlish fabric cut into sizes indicated in this tutorial at Cluck Cluck Sew. Some people used scraps and some bought new fabric so in the end we had a huge assortment of fabrics. This is what our group has decided to do next year since we've all had our turns and we weren't really wanting to do another round for ourselves quite yet. We'll meet once a month (as we do now) and work on tops, once we have a bunch of tops done we'll have a day set aside to get them all tied. Here are some pictures of our day (which started at 10am and the last to leave my house was near 5pm):

Calvin Turned 2

My littlest baby turned 2 back in September. I can't believe how quickly children grow up, and it seems like once there is more than one it is even quicker!

Calvin hadn't taken a nap so he was definitely not in the partying mood. We lit the candles twice so he could blow them out - it was his favorite part and he had a meltdown when we told him he didn't need to do it again after the first time.

Hunting

My sister and I took our Hunter's Education back in August. We took a class that was a couple hours away from home so we went the day before and stayed overnight. It was fun to spend some time together!

(us in our fabulous -and safe- hats we got upon completion of our class)

I've gone hunting a few times, no luck with the big game but I did get my first grouse. The hubby and I went up for a long weekend without kids and it was fun to spend such quality time together.

(Had to get a new hat - couldn't do the orange, sorry)

(my first kill - tastes like chicken)

(Travis)

Bees

After seeing many online quilting bees, I started a quilting bee group for some of my local friends back in January (you can see my post about it here). I've been posting pictures of most of the blocks I have done for the other girls, but I never posted a picture of my finished quilt made from the blocks they did for me (in January).

I finished the quilt September 12th (yes, it really took me that long to finish it, not that I was actively working on it all that time) while my husband was away hunting one weekend. I decided I wanted to machine quilt this one - I had tied my first (and only other) quilt (pictures here). So I "stitched in the ditch" around each block and then connected each block at the corners with straight lines as well. The floral print of the quilt is from a vintage sheet, I ended up using a second sheet as the backing and binding for this quilt. The quilt is far from perfect. Most of our group members were very new to sewing/quilting (including myself) and my accuracy and technique for piecing the blocks together, quilting and the binding are definitely not the best, but I love it!

I just decided to join an online bee (see the new button on my sidebar?) and am really excited for it to start in January. It will be fun to 'meet' the people as they could be from anywhere in the world. I'll be sure to be posting lots about this bee in the future so stay tuned. I promise to be better about blogging - such a slacker I've been!