Hello :)

Sorry I have been gone for so long! I am working as a nanny this summer and at the craft store and It has been awesomely, ridiculously busy.... good busy though.
The family I am working for is great, I am loving being a part of their family. I am working with the little girl whom I worked with all spring- she will be 7 this month, and her brother who is 8. I very lovingly refer to them as "the kid" and "kid 2"- to their face I call them various things (dude, their names, princess cupcake, goofball, silly, kiddo, captain wonderful, professor, etc.) They are busy so a lot of shuttling from thing to thing, but a lot of swimming, walks on the trail, playing, crafting, baking... Exhausted but loving it.
We got our own apartment- from here on out referred to as the Chateau. It rocks. It has a ton of closets and they are all like Harry Potter Tents- they appear small and normal, but in reality are massive and allow for storage of all of our stuff, truly miraculous. That being said we are trying to get the end of things unpacked and organized and I have quite a few projects and life to share :). I also have a "studio" room in the apt and it is shaping into such a great space. It feels SO good to easily find my materials and easy to clean up now that they all have a home. My work space is HUGE too, compared to all previous homes and that makes it easy to work as well.
I will try to take pictures in the next few days, I have a few more things that need put away/swept/hung up/etc.
My first sewing project for my new house was coasters! :) I had some wooden frame coasters and they were in pretty poor shape. I decided we needed to move on to better. I am a coaster enforcer and who wants to bring attention to those.... forever ago I had seen a make it Monday tutorial about pinwheel coasters. I had linen for a future project. How great is that! I didn't even buy anything for this project! The tutorial has a pattern but I haven't hooked up the printer, so I made my own. They turned out great! I love my scraps. Here they are in their coaster glory- ready to save my coffee table from the evils of the condensation that hold such power here in the shallow south.

P.P.S. We got new blank tea towels in a work and I am the embroidery expert (!?) so I got to sew flowers on the sample. It's cute.

Irony

Ironically I have hardly crafted since I last posted. I am living in "the derby city" and although the rest of the world is oblivious the Kentucky Derby is in 2 weekends, my "part-time" job is not so part time as I help sell hats to half the crowd. They are crazy! Gotta love hats.... anyways I wanted to post the few bday gifts I managed to complete and my squares from the quilt along.... I love them, so I am sad that I haven't had time to do anything... Oh well. :) Soon enough I guess.




I did make these birthday sleeves. :) I like the yellow and black scraps, but I love the random scraps one and I think that my boss loved it too... so that's good. I started sorting my scraps when i was working on them and had to quit because I didn't have time.... I am looking forward to going through them though.... and I my next project for me involves lots of scraps, but it might be awhile...

While in CO I worked on my blocks and I worked on another pixel pillow. This one is for another groomsman's bday and I had a plan to not chain piece insanity for this one. I had to have it finished the day after we got back. I used fusible webbing. It took longer than I thought but definitely less than the last. It is more consistent than the last. The image is the "keyblade" from Kingdom Hearts (another video game).

P.S. I do have a job interview with a local district for a job for next year.... if you could keep it in your prayers.

COLORADO!!!!!

So we managed to come to Colorado for part of my spring break!!! I am here almost a week and Britton was here Friday until today. We had a great time!

Friday night my parents got symphony tickets. It was Rodgers and Hammerstein night at the symphony. They played clips from the movies and played parts of the score. It was awesome. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

We have had a bunch of quality time with one of my bf's Kimmi and her kiddos. Her eldest was our flower girl and it's crazy to see how grown up she is. We went to Casa Bonita- Britton had never had the privilege or experience. It is "the Disneyland of Mexican Restaurants." We had a lot of fun!
It is so nice to have a break and have time off with my husband and visit my parents. Colorado has also lived up to it's infamous spring weather.... snow days intermingled with days in the 70's! crazy fun! :) I love sunshine and am looking forward to the remaining days of my break.

I also am working on this quilt at Oh Franssion (she is amazing!) .... I am loving it and enjoying my fabric pics, but feeling very behind :) Oh, well.

Fell off the Planet...

So sorry I have missing all month. I have not had the time to craft and blog so crafting won out. I tried to post once and couldn't get the pictures to load and give up. SO I am going to try to post a few posts now and have a bunch of pictures.
3 weeks ago I ended up in urgent care, twice.... first I had a sinus and upper respiratory infection and then I had type A influenza. I slept a lot. I was down for the count. I ate 2 boxes of Popsicles in 3 days.... gross! But i bounced back and have managed to finish/start quite a few new things.
I managed a trip to my local quilt store for their fat quarter sale. I had a gift certificate from Christmas and so I managed to get quite a lot for just a little! :) Woot! I got all these and then the black and whites for my mod-quilt.
I finally finished all the auction stuff just in time for the auction. I re-did the onsies and tried to straighten the anchors using interfacing (I also added the borders and stitching.) They are still crooked- but they were cute and sold well with the adorable bibs. I made up my own pattern- similar to one I had used last year, and they turned out really great.
We started this teepee as the room's dontation to the auction. I put together the components of it and the kids decorated it. Well they liked it so much that we decided to keep it in the room. It's definately a fun hiding place.
I made this scarflette and coffee cozy for a girl in my small group. I had to learn how to purl... (it's a knit/purl repeating pattern) it turned out great.... even if it is just in time for spring! I started with this pattern but I had an odd number of rows, instead of even, because of the odd I ended up with kinda of a checkerboard pattern, instead of the ridges. I think I like it better! I am still a little slow but I will definately need one in my closet in the fall and it would be a good gift.
I patchworked this cozy and lined it with black polka-dots. It turned out cool and it was nice to only use scraps.
A girl at work is adopting 2 kiddos from Ethiopia. They had a shower at work and I wanted to do something other than baby blankets. I saw something similar... somewhere... I can't find it. and was inspired to make these for her kiddos- Madalyn and Carson. I wanted to make the boy one without an animal so I settled on an acorn. The nursery colors are pink, blue and brown. I used almost all scraps and frames with mattes that I found on clearance.

Auction and Extras...

So I got most of my stuff for the school auction made (can you tell we are the anchors?). Lots of key fobs, some future anchor onsies, (they need future still :) ) some coffee sleeves (they still need buttons). Another birthday sleeve, and new sleeves for kelly and I! :) We've misplaced ours... she asked for a new one and I needed an excuse to make myself another one.
I have 1 of my 4 chair cushions done, The rest are cut out and ready to pin. Hopefully I can show you them in a few weeks all finished and attached to their chairs!


PS. I couldn't load pictures last night and it's still being annoying tonight. I added buttons to all the sleeves. Kelly's and mine need larger buttons but all I could find were some little ones, so they will work for now. I have the rest of the cushions pinned too... we'll see how long it takes to reach that goal. Auction stuff has priority. Last night we hung out with some of our small group friends, and today we had UofL tickets and "family" dinner with some good friends. It was a great way to finish/start our week.

Valentine Catch Up!

I am a slacker :) sorry, a busy slacker. I have been somewhat productive, but between both jobs I haven't had time to craft and blog... so crafting it has been.
These are my valentine candy cane lolly-pops, (made using this tutorial) They broke prior to eating. Oh, well. They were cute for awhile.
This is similar to my sisters valentines with a U of L theme. It was for Britton's Aunt Debbie- we are housesitting for them again and I am so thankful!
These are my standard go to kid valentines- I made them for our class. Butterflies made with hearts and a stick of Big Red gum. They work and are fun!
This is Britton's valentine- it's link from Zelda. I am working on a larger Mario one, (which has been the big project lately.) Sorry this is such a bad picture, my camera battery died for awhile. These are my amazing valentine flowers! I love my husband, he did great this year. I felt like my gift was a little puny, we'll have to work on that. He picked out these flowers and had them assembled, he wanted to get close to my wedding flowers. They were beautiful!
He also got me a Nike + to go with the little ipod. It's a sensor that goes in your shoes and connects to a receiver in my iPod The sensor tracks your run, then sends the data to your iPod. It was on my list and I am hopeing it helps me get more active again.

I don't own the fancy Nike shoes that go with it, so I used a tutorial to make a pocket for my sensor that goes on my shoe laces. It looks a little bulky but it will work fine, and I love that I had fabric that matches my shoes :) I just finished it, so I'll let you know how it works :).

We went to a great pizza place for our valentines dinner. :) You can eat in a car. We ate in the trunk! :) It was fun and the pizza was great!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

I can finally post my sister's valentines. :) I made one key fob for Christmas, so this was just refining what I had learned. Kelly's matches her Birthday clutch and Kristy's is made with duvet scraps. I figured I'd stick with things I thought they'd love. I needed a keychain too, so happy groundhog's day to me. Mine is a fabric Britton bought me on clearance early in the fall. I hadn't used it yet and I really like it.

Their cards are variations on the square/ zig-zag cards I've made, but with hearts. I think they're cute. Happy Valentine's Day!