Crafty Saturday

It was a very busy in our house this week! We started off with Andy having a minor surgery (everything went well and he is fine now!), on Thursday our computer quit working and on Friday our water heater went out again! Thankfully we got everything fixed before Saturday and we were ready to relax for the weekend. We had an amazingly crafty Saturday that even Andy got involved in!

I have an entire craft room in our house and yet I tend to move everything out into the family room so that I can be closer to Andy and the TV. I've recently taken over our dinning room table. There are about four projects going on here and I made progress on each of them over the weekend!

This pile of apples has been calling Andy's name to make into an apple pie. If you know my history with pies you know why I have been putting him off for a while now. I finally made a deal that if he makes the crust I will take care of everything else.

The most successful pie our house has ever seen! It took some good team work (and a lot of cleaning up the kitchen afterwards!)

Andy's birthday was a couple weeks ago and my sister sent him a personal ice cream maker. Another part of our successful Saturday was going to the grocery store so we finally got some ingredients to make ice cream.

We finished the day off with a dinner date, movie and Andy eating his homemade ice cream with apple pie!

I'm excited to have Monday off to spend some more time sewing, sewing and more sewing! Hopefully this week turns out to be as good as the weekend was.

Hmmm...

I know it has been forever since I updated but I had time to update tonight and couldn't think of anything to write about! I have about a million things going on but am in the middle of everything and have nothing completed to show! When I don't have a crazy timeline of Christmas it takes a lot longer for things to get done around here. I have been working like crazy and spent most of tonight coloring a book to share with my students (Andy says that coloring can't be considered work but when it's 30 pages it is!)

I did finally go through and update the blogs that I visit daily! One blog that I recently stumbled on is Life In Grace. I LOVE it!! The first post that I read was about her house tragically burning down right before Christmas. After reading that post I had to know more and spent an entire night reading. I recommend it as a great read!

On the topic of reading (and more randomness), for the first time since summer I had time to pick up a book and read it. I had heard about the book "The Help" and checked it out from the library. It was amazing and really worth reading. I spent hours each night because I literally could not put it down!

Promise to be back later with something more interesting for ya!

I-Spy Quilts!

I'm finally posting pictures of the I-Spy quilts that I made for James and Makenna for Christmas! I read about these quilts a while ago and was itching on getting my hands on a bunch of different fabrics. I posted a while ago about how I was able to get all of the different fabrics using a fabric swap from Obsessively Stitching. Andy helped me a ton with doing all of the measurements. These were the first quilts that I made without using a very specific tutorial.

There are almost 200 different fabrics!

They were not the most exciting thing on Christmas morning but once the hype of all the toys settled down they enjoyed playing with them.

The backing one each of them:

Each individual square was straight line quilted around.

I know they are not perfect but I feel so much pride and joy when I look at them after putting hours and hours of hard work into making them. I hope that James and Makenna enjoy them for years!

2010 Year in Review

I can't believe that it is over already but we had a wonderful year with some big changes! Here are a few of the things the we did and accomplished in 2010!

I completed my first quilt! I have now become addicted and spent all day today working on quilt #5.

We spent a few different weekends on the Oregon coast. Went on a few day trips, a few shopping trips, and a few family getaways!

Biggest news of the year: WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!! It was all God's planning and a huge blessing. It was also a big huge pain almost every step of the process. We have been living here now since May 3rd and are enjoying (almost) every moment of home ownership!

Along with the house came our first garden. It came and went quickly! The only thing that survived were these tomatoes.

We spent a wonderful week at the coast with most of the Wallace family celebrating my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. As my Dad says, "we had a family reunion and only one person got shot!" That should tell you how the week went :)

Andy started a new hobby of brewing beer. He takes over the kitchen for a couple of weeks at a time and is really enjoying the process. He even tried a pumpkin beer for the holidays!

I completed my first year of teaching! It was a wonderful year that I was both happy and sad to see end. These two women were a huge part of what made it a success. This picture was taken on a field trip to the Salem Public Library where the three of us and 20 pre-schoolers rode on 2 city buses to get there and 2 to get home with bus transfers in the middle. It was a miracle that we all made it back!

We celebrated our one year wedding anniversary! We took a trip to Seattle to celebrate. We enjoyed a Mariners baseball game, walking through Pikes place, and riding up to the top of the space needle.

We also took a second trip to Seattle with friends in September.

James and Makenna spent a whole week with us in the middle of summer! We jam packed the week with fun Salem activities ending with a trip with mom to the Portland Zoo. It was successful enough that I think it might happen again this summer.

Andy started a new job at Frito Lay. He has been there for 4 or 5 months now. He has really early mornings that took a while for us to get use to but he really enjoys the work.

We repainted and gave our back room a face lift! My favorite part of being a home owner is decorating!

The Oregon Ducks were number one in the BCS for the first time ever! They are headed to the national championship on January 10th. Andy is ecstatic and counting down the days!

That was our 2010! There were lots of changes but all for the good and we are looking forward to all that will come in 2011! We hope everyone has a safe and fun New Years Eve!

Merry Christmas Eve!!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!! At 6 o'clock tonight I finally finished making my last Christmas present! I can't wait to show off how they all look after they are given tomorrow. I thought I would show what our tree and some of our decorations looked like this year. In our tiny apartment last year we had enough decorations to fill everything, this year we barley had enough for one room. I'm excited to see if I can find any good deals after Christmas!

We got to do Christmas lights outside for the first time

2010 Christmas Tree

This beautiful wreath was sold through the Women's Bible study that I attend to support missions in Costa Rica.

A few of the small decorations from inside the house:

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Reply

Could we at least put up a picture of what it looked like when I was done. Or at least a picture of what I looked like when I was done. And I disagree, home ownership is more fun in the winter because it isn't a spectator sport.

Winter :(

Owning a house in the winter is not as much fun as owning a house in the summer! This is what our back patio looks like right now:

Andy has been on the roof blowing all of the leaves out of the gutters with a leaf blower for the last hour! He knows that he has to blow all of these leaves off the patio before he is done and then my patio should at least look decent again.

Quilt updates: 1 down, 1 to go before Christmas and still 2 after

Our Christmas tree and lights update is coming soon!