A visit from the family

A busy long weekend, had I. The momcat was in town for five days giving us plenty of time to cause lots of ruckus in the house. We got a lot done inside the house, and made some good progress on planning things to do outside the house in the yard. Pictures to follow this week of some of the interior decorating/organizing changes we made.

Somehow, I didn't take any pictures of the Momcat and I working our little tails off! I did, however, end up with a couple of BabyBrother who randomly showed up in town for an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. Nothing says fun at 7:00 am on a Saturday like receiving a text letting you know someone is coming to crash at your house! It was a very nice surprise, and it was good to see him.

He looks very thoughtful and intelligent here. Don't let that fool you. Just minutes before he was chasing a frisbee and then catching it while slamming face first into the ground.


Yay for BabyBrother. Come see us again anytime!

Farmer's Market, football and fun

A busy busy weekend here-although I have yet to get ANY work done on the baby quilt. Shame on me!

We did, however, make it to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning where as always we purchased lots of yummy things to eat this week. 

I really like that we can walk there now-it makes the whole experience that much better. 

We also got our traditional breakfast from the Polish Bakery that has a booth there.

I got the Cheese Danish and the N-boy got the Custard Paczki. Yum, yum, yum!

After the visit to the Farmer's Market we walked up to campus to join some of our friends for tailgating. 

At one point, a bagpiper walked by and my co-worker (who is VERY Scottish!) got him to stop and play for a bit. 

It was very fun and festive-I hope we get the opportunity to tailgate again. And then it was even better that we beat Michigan State! Woohoo! Go Irish! (And that that Daddo--my parents went to Michigan State for grad school and appear to only have become big proponents of their football team since we came to Notre Dame....suspicious)

Sunday started out slow with coffee and breakfast on our back patio, along with a good book.

 I'm currently reading the Calligrapher's Daughter. So far, so good. 

After that peaceful start to the morning I did some major cleaning around the house and then went over to the apartment, where I finished getting everything cleaned up. The N-boy stopped by after studying and helped me finish a few things up. It feels so good to have all of our stuff out of there! The day ended with watching the Bear's game at our friends' house (same friends) and eating home made pizza. 

This week-the Momcat comes for a visit! Woohoo! 

Finished for Friday: Unpacking!

Another Friday has arrived, and with it, Finished for Friday with threeundertwo over at Lit and Laundry. I'm always so proud when I have something to post for this event, and especially proud this week as we have finished unpacking!

I suppose in this technical sense we still do have a few random odds and ends that need to find a better/more permanent home. But I think we're at the point where I can count this as a victory. Now we just have to go back and finish cleaning the apartment and turn in our keys before we're completely done!

Although I don't have any pictures yet of the inside rooms, I thought I'd share my favorite moment of our move-in experience: the card catalog. Let's just say it was the last thing we moved in, it was very late, and it was very heavy. I've been forced to promise my coworker who helped us that I will never again purchase such heavy furniture from surplus, but will restrict myself to feather pillows and the like.


We had to take all 72 of the drawers out.


And assign two strong men to carry it.


And it was a tight fit getting through the front hall way.


But in the end we got it inside and it sure looks cute! Although we're not quite sure yet what will go inside. I'd originally wanted to put it upstairs in my craft room, but that idea was vetoed by the strong men pictured above.

Be sure to checkout the other finishes on Finished for Friday!

Operation Finish: Baby Quilt

For the rest of September, I am launching what my very own "Operation Finish" for my projects. I participated in Kim's Get it Finished in August and did complete my four candle mats. But I have many many more unfinished projects. Not as many as the Momcat (Hi, Mom!), but still, I'm too young to have so many unfinished projects.

So first up...the Amish Waves baby quilt.

This is a quilt that I started working on in February 2008 when I learned a friend from graduate school was pregnant. And now that same baby is over one year old. Oops.

I think the problem started when I chose the pattern of Amish Waves. I didn't want to make a traditional "baby" quilt, but instead of choosing something interesting yet not too hard, I had to choose the insane pattern where each 8 inch block has 48 tiny triangles around a big square. Really, the N-boy helped me choose this pattern so I blame him.

For a while I actually made pretty good progress-chose the pattern, chose the fabric, cut the triangles and started making blocks. Each full block (24 of them) took about two hours to make. Plus 16 half blocks. I actually did manage to get the top pieced before we left Silver Spring, MD to move to Indiana. And in Indiana I got it sandwiched and even got most of the in-the-ditch quilting done.

I love the scrappy look in this quilt. In addition to the fabrics that the N-boy and I selected, I also used scraps that belonged to my Grammy, who, alone with the Momcat, taught me how to quilt.

And then the N-boy got sick and everything fell apart this Spring and I didn't work on ANY projects for a long time. It was...un-fun to say the least. But now that he is doing much better and I'm in the new space it's time to get this puppy finished up and on the way to what is by now a very cute looking toddler.

I took the quilt in its current state to Quilt Guild last week and got some ideas for finishing it up. I'm going to quilt a square in the middle of each block center and then "piano keys" in the border. And then it just needs a binding, label and shipping box!

Goal: Finish quilt by 9:00 p.m. on Sunday!

Getting back to the blog...

Wow... I can't believe it has been so long since I have last posted. It's been very busy, moving into the new house, doing Fall Student Registration, and helping the N-boy get into his new routine for his fall schedule (which includes TA-ing!). 

I've also somehow ended up with a fairly busy social life and several groups of friends! It's not like I didn't have friends before, but when we've been moving around so frequently it's been hard to get too attached to anyone when I knew we'd just be moving on soon. But here I've managed to join: 

-a knitting club

- a quilt guild

-a book club

- a support group

- and now a brand new cooking club (inspired by the movie "Julie and Julia"

-and I'm taking a family education class through NAMI for the next 10 weeks. 

I'm not complaining-I really enjoy being busy and having lots of people to do things I like with, but it is busy. I've also got lots of projects and crafts going on, in addition to new things we'd like to do with the house. We're also working on re-organizing how we take care of household things given our new fall schedules. 

So, for today (and this is for you parents) we have pictures of the N-boy and I at closing:

A picture of me and our realtor at closing: 

And Norman the Penguin on our new Sink!!!

More to follow this week as I finish unpacking my craft room and get back to work on all of my projects!