I Love Fabric!

I am obsessed with fabric! Gorgeous, vibrant, good quality fabric, which usually means expensive fabric. Eeek! I said in my last post that I am in the middle of four different quilts and I am in love with all the fabrics that I have found for these quilts.

The first two are i-spy quilts for James and Makenna as Christmas presents. I first learned about i-spy quilts on a blog called Obsessively Stitching. I started collecting fabrics that I found on sale and got a bunch from my mother-in-law and one of her sisters. When I finally got to the point where I had enough I started cutting them. This was my stack 72 different squares for each quilt.

Right after I finished cutting and sewing half of the ones for the first quilt, I logged on to the Obsessively Stitching blog and found out that she was hosting an i-spy swap! You send her 20 cuts of 10 different fabrics and she sends you back 200 different fabrics!! Even though I was already started with the sewing, I couldn't pass up on the chance to have over 200 different fabrics for James and Kennas quilts. These are the 10 fabrics that I choose to send to her. I know James will love the bugs and Kenna will love the cats and animals! Most of them were fat quarters on sale at Craft Warehouse.

In less than two weeks I had this wonderful stack of fabrics at my doorstep!!

Here are some of my favorites! There is no way that I could have collected all these different types of fabrics before Christmas. I can't wait to show you the finished product!

The third quilt that I am working on is the first one that I am making just for me! For my birthday the Lynch family gave me a gift card to the Craft Warehouse. I am so glad I had a gift card because there is no way I could have justified spending as much on this fabric as I did. It's kind of hard to see the colors here but I love the soft brown and the pinks.

Yesterday I got all of the squares cut and am ready to start sewing this one. Cutting is my least favorite part so I tried to get it out of the way on all the quilts first. Here are a few of my favorites:

The fourth quilt was a huge surprise for me. I enter lots and lots of giveaways on blogs that I see but never expect to win anything. A while ago I got a surprise e-mail from a blog saying that I had won a layer cake of this beautiful Christmas fabric! A layer cake is 42 squares of fabric that usually give you one square from each of the fabrics in the line. I'm not sure what pattern I am going to use yet but I am excited that the fabric is already cut into good size squares!

I can't wait to show off the finished products! I will make sure to keep you updated on them as I go and hopefully they will be done before Christmas :) We are making homemade pizza right now and rented a redbox movie for the night. I just told Andy that I am thinking of cutting some more fabrics while I sit here and watch the movie. I told him that I am to the point where I am incapable of just sitting here without doing something. He said "you are your parent's child!"

Wowzer

Let me start by saying that my last blog was right before school started! No my life has not slown down since then! I am eagerly awaiting January when I anticipate a little more normalcy.

Before I show you a quick little project that I loved making, I wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to two amazing women. Kaitlin has been the one trying to get me back into my blog :) Her birthday is today! Ashley was the person who first introduced me to blogging! Her birthday is tomorrow! Happy birthday ladies!!

I use my ironing board often (not to iron clothes, that would be a silly thought). I iron lots and lots of fabric before I get started on any project. Our ironing board was ten dollars at target right after we got married and the cover never stays on it! I found a super simple pattern online and some cute fabric and after about an hour had a wonderful new cover.

Before:

After:

Doesn't it make ironing look a lot more fun? I'm using it to work on FOUR quilts before the end of the year! I pinkie promise that my next post will be this weekend!!

The Back Room!

According to my phone we have lived in our house for 146 days and I can finally say that our back room is done... almost :) It's the only room in the house that we have finished putting our own personal touch on. The front room is also done but we have done very little to it! I can never remember which one is living and which one is family so I just go by back and front!

I never took a before picture of it with our stuff in it so this is the picture from the real estate website before we bought it. Notice the green bottom and purple, yes I said purple, trim all the way around the room. I love the color on the bottom, it is the same color as our kitchen, but I thought that it didn't fit in this room and made your eyes go down instead of up.

And this is our finished product: LOVE!

We went with more neutral colors and a light bottom and darker top.

I wanted big eye catching art for above our fireplace but of course everything that I liked was super expensive. This was a DIY project that I found months ago on a blog and even though it's not perfect I think it works great in this space. Probably my favorite thing in our entire house! Might change some accessories around it but those will come over time.

Living room and dinning room are in one so this is the opposite side of the fireplace.

The new dinning room table that we searched for months for! I wanted 6 seats but it had to be compact because of the space. It also had to look good against the dark wood behind it. It is the first piece of real furniture that we have ever bought!

I said almost done because I still am searching for the perfect curtains on the back door. I want to add a pop of color and texture here but curtains are expensive so I have to find the perfect set.

An up close of the colors and the bottom half of the room.

Our first big room makeover that took 4 months to complete but turned out to be exactly what we wanted! Next summer we are getting new couches!!! I'm sure that will change the whole look of the room and more changes will come from that but for now we are happy with it!

Seattle

Wow have we been busy! I've had so little time to get online or blog since starting work again. I got moved to a new classroom that was re-modeled over the summer so we had a lot of work setting everything back up. Plus we have home visits for all 20 students, orientations, and everything else it takes to get ready before the school year starts! Today is the first day and I am nervous and really excited! I've met all the kids but it will be interesting to see how they all work together. Today is the hardest day of the year!

Last weekend we took a 24 hour getaway up to Seattle. Some friends from California just moved up to Portland and they wanted to catch a baseball game and see Seattle.

On Saturday we went to the baseball game and Sunday we walked through the Pike's Place Market, my favorite place in the city! This is us with Joanna and Duane in front of the Public Market sign and water front.

Of course I couldn't come home without more flowers! The rows and rows of inexpensive flowers that they have at the market are incredible! I'm telling you, if I lived in Seattle their would be fresh flowers on my table every week!

I got two this time because these ones were only $5!!

Pictures of our painted living room and dinning room table are coming soon. Now I have to head off to work!

The Fruits of my Labor

Back in May I was so excited about the start of our first garden. Sadly, it is now the end of summer and I have very little to report back about :( Our only plant that produced anything was the tomatoes and they are doing great!

This year most of our efforts went towards the inside of our house but next year I am determined to work on the outside. I think the reason that our plants didn't grow was because of the dirt that we used. Next year I want Andy to build up some planters and fill it will nice healthy soil! Maybe next year I will also remember to water everything on a consistent schedule :)

This is our blue ribbon winner for staying the most alive this summer:

This one comes in second (because it's the only one left). Are some tomatoes supposed to be orange? I know this is a different type of tomato plant from the other one but none of them seem to really be turning red.

Don't these look fabulous?! I also should give some credit to our squash plant. It is still alive but hasn't produced anything so it doesn't make it into this post. I also killed the flowers on our front porch :)

There is probably 50 more tomatoes that look like this and should be ready soon.

This is as far as they usually make it because I eat them before I even make it from the garden to the house :)

Day Six

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh MY! We spend seven hours at the zoo on Saturday! It was great to see how much more they talked about the animals this year from one year ago when we went and they just liked to look them. Here is a mild sampling of the over 200 pictures I took!

The Oregon Zoo has a lot of the animals "homes" and Makenna sat in every one of them! This is an eagles nest and she is pretending to be a bird.

Trying to catch a "fish" in the river and mom trying to keep them from falling in!

These were coyote skulls. This is where James announced to the poor high school worker that his Dad and Uncle Barry like to shoot Coyotes....

Makennas favorite animal, the polar bear!

Andy and I could have watched the elephants all day while James and Kenna were more interested in a squirrel at this point.

Driving through a safari and looking for lions and cheetahs!

I think this was a lions cave and Kenna was being a lion.

James was very interested in the insects and snakes!

This little otter was following whatever Andy or James was doing with their hand. Very cool!

To finish off the day we walked through the dinosaur exhibit. I still am not clear why their were fake (not even life size) dinosaurs at the zoo ??

The sign said "careful, spitting ahead"!! This guy is spitting out water as you walk past him.

James stood their and laughed at it for a really long time!

Running past and getting wet!

Gigantisouras! Kenna was scared and it was so loud that it was hurting James's ears!

We all had a blast and slept really well after seven hours of walking around in the heat! This morning we had one more game of cops and robbers before they packed everything up and headed home with mom! We loved all of the adventures and spending a whole week all alone with them. It was great but it is also great to have a quiet house again!

Thanks Mom and Dad for letting us borrow your kids for a week we are looking forward to doing it again next summer!