Christmas Vacation Projects

A busy Christmas vacation, the Momcat kept me on my toes with different projects up in my office/studio. 

In addition to getting the final supplies to get several projects wrapped up and my supplies a bit better organized, we also got two projects started AND finished!

First, we turned an old bulletin board into a fabric colored French board. 

We used fabric we got from the Discount Table at the LQS, magenta gross grain ribbon, an old roll of polyester batting, and brass thumb tacks. I'm super happy with the way that it turned out, and can't wait to use it! We hung it up on the wall that is directly behind the chair at my sewing machine in the little sewing nook in my office.

The second project we worked on is a baby quilt for a friend. I found the cutest little charm pack at the LSQ from the Moda line "Love U."

Following the instructions from CrazyMomQuilt's Tutorial for a coin quilt, we put it together!

It went together super fast, and we're both very happy with how it turned out. We found the blue and orange solids in my stash, so we decided to use two different fabrics since I didn't have enough of the blue. The only thing I have left to finish on the top is to sew a border of the orange fabric on both the top and the bottom.

Here's a close up of the fabric line. Aren't those owls and snails the cutest!!

Christmas Traditions

My parents and baby brother came out to Indiana-land for Christmas this year, our first in the new house. One of our big family traditions is the annual sugar cookie baking and decorating on Christmas Eve. A mandatory family activity, it has become more entertaining now that all family members are old enough to consume more festive beverages.

Each person in the family has assigned tasks. The Momcat rolls out the cookie dough and supervises me and BabyBrother while we take turns cutting out shapes. In addition to the traditional cookie shapes, we also have special items such as the Christmas duck, Christmas elephant, and Christmas upper peninsula Michigan. Really these are just normal items, but we get away with making them by adding the word "Christmas" in front of them. I think we started doing them just to bug the Momcat, but now they are an engrained family tradition.

This year Daddo took the lead on adding the food coloring to the frosting.

He clearly took this assigned task very seriously. 

Finally, Daddo, BabyBrother, the N-boy and I sit down to decorate the cookies. I make cute little snowmen, and happy angels and pretty Christmas tress. Daddo makes axe-murder snowmen and incandescent light bulbs. Sigh.

The only rule is that they all have to be decorated before anyone is allowed to quit. 

I have pictures of the finished cookies. But I've decided that they are too disturbing and un-festive (see note above on axe murdering snowman) to post.

 So instead, I will end with pictures of me and BabyBrother with our cousins son, who is the cutest little almost three year old! 

Baby Brother's College Graduation

A busy week and weekend here as Baby Brother graduated from college. Congrats to him!  The graduation itself was on Friday, so I took the day off work to go into Chicago to attend the ceremony and to help him pack up his stuff. He'll be storing some of his things back at our house until he moves into a new apartment to start his JOB on January 4!! Woohoo!!

Momcat and Daddo were quite proud of their little boy!

Baby brother was just happy to be done with college.

I was helpful as always.

Fall in Indiana

Well I am ashamed that it has been two months since I have posted ANYTHING on my blog. And this is despite the Momcat asking me about when I'm going to post something pretty much every time I talk.

It's been a busy busy fall. Here are a few things that the N-boy and I have been up to:

Going to a hockey game.

Shopping at the Farmer's Market.

Raking leaves (the new house came with trees....and lots of leaves!)

Dressing up for Halloween as Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible.

Cooking (and eating) at Cooking Club. The N-boy was delegated to the "Man Club" for this. But he still got to eat!

We dog sat for an hour at work. Isn't he cute!

I attended a conference, and am graduating from a professional development program!

Our good friends got married! Yay!

So it's been busy. I've also gotten some crafting done, including the completion of the ever elusive baby quilt! I'm taking pictures of it tonight and will post pictures tomorrow! Woohoo for getting things off my UFO list! Of course, I keep thinking of new projects I want/need to start!

Getting my mojo back, part 1

My first dishcloth! For BabyBrother's Easter Basket.

2009 has been a very tough and unpleasant year so far, and it is really only within the last three weeks that things have started to look up. I don't think I'll go into the details today, but my husband's very serious health problems have literally torn my family apart. I am thankful for the support I've received from friends, familiy and support group. And very very happy that things are finally starting to improve for us all.

Due to the unpleasant-ness of the year, I hadn't really been working on any of my hobbies since January. When I was home (at my parent's house) over Christmas, my mom (Momcat) and I had a great time going to Archiver's and working on our scrapbooks. Momcat worked on pictures from a vacation that she and Daddo (I'll let you guess who that one is) took to Estes Park, CO and I worked on my wedding pictures. Nevermind that I've been married for almost three years, I was very happy to work on things. But then when I got back home after Christmas and everything fell apart I couldn't work on anything. N-boy got very sick and eventually moved out, so I didn't even want to look at anything that had pictures of us being happy. I didn't work on the baby quilt for the baby born last September, or any of my other projects. It was unfun, to say the least.

Then Momcat suggested I put all of my ongoing projects away and start a new project. So I did, knitting BabyBrother a dishcloth as part of his Easter basket. Gee, that was nice. So I started another dishcloth and began thinking about other things I could do.

Then Momcat came out to visit me for a few extra days before we headed down to Paducah for the AQS show and we rearranged and organized all of my crafting area. I'd inherited some fabric from my grandmother and had all kinds of projects and things stuffed into boxes and corners. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any pictures of the "before" but here's what if looks like now in the after:

And with Momcat's help I made this from the pretty Michael Miller fabric. I've got one from each season to put up, and blue curtains to go behind them, as well.


So that was step one to being a more productive person. Tomorrow, the insipration of the AQS show.