Slowly but surely

A little girl in this house turned three on Tuesday! We celebrated at home with presents and cake, but we will have a birthday party with some other family members on Saturday. With Ben being gone for work again, I have slowly but surely been getting ready for the requested "Princess and Dragon" birthday party. These little beauties will be the gift bags for the Princess and her little dragon cousins!

I used Jeni's pattern over at In Color Order. I met Jeni through my local modern quilt guild and honestly, you will not find a nicer girl! She is uber-talented and full of great ideas. If you haven't seen her blog yet, go now! I have made the drawstring bag before using the free tutorial on her blog. It is so easy and quick. The first one I made I picked fabric, cut my fabric, and finished sewing the bag together in the hour my daughter "napped". Awesome! She sells a pattern with eight different sizes that I ended up buying because I wanted a different size than the free tutorial size. I was going to try and make up my own measurements, but I figured the cost of the pattern was definitely worth the amount of time (and frustration!) I would save. I ended up making six, two for the princesses and four for the dragons that will be in attendance. My son has already told me that he is going to use his to carry his nerf darts around the back yard. I think that means he likes it! I can't wait to fill them up with goodies for the party. But for now I need to get going on the shopping list so there will be food for the little princesses and dragons to eat!

Sneak Peek

One down, five more to go...

Small Projects and WIPs

I have finished a few of the projects on my small projects sew along list. The sew along is being hosted by Amanda over at crazy mom quilts. I'm also going to be participating in the Let's Get Acquainted! Blog Hop hosted by Beth over at Plum and June. I am really looking forward to "meeting" some wonderful new bloggers! One of the things we are encouraged to do while it is our turn in the hop is create a mosaic. Since my beloved Picnik is no longer an option, I decided to give Big Huge Labs a try at the recommendation of Beth. Hooray! It was easy and quick! I think I *just* may survive without Picnik;)

That wonky star above is my May block for the Stash Bee. This was my first time using Kona Coal (I know, I know, what took me so long to fall for gray...) and I have lots of projects planned using gray as a background now! The little wristlet pouch and lanyards were made for the teachers at my son's school. The lanyards are for the two lone men on staff. I should have taken a better picture, but there are washers attached to each item with the teacher's name on them. A friend showed me how to make the personalized charms that are so popular using her metal stamp set. It was so easy! I am glad she showed me how to do it because we were able to give each lovely teacher something personalized on a very slim budget.

The name tag in the bottom row has been finished for some time now. It is for our Madison Modern Quilt Guild, but I haven't been able to make the past few meetings. It looks like I should be able to make the May meeting so perhaps I should add a fabric flower or something in honor of it's first appearance at a meeting...hmm. Yep. I'll add that to the project list! The last two pics in the mosaic feature the backpack I made for my nephew. My niece finally made her appearance and since I already gave my sister her quilt, I thought I would take something special in for my nephew. I followed this tutorial from Anna and I am pretty happy with how it turned out. It took me less than an hour and a half to finish it. Woo hoo! And I have enough fabric from the old khakis to make another one, too. Bonus! Next time, however, I will make sure that my directional prints are in fact going the correct way. Oops. I'm pretty sure Nathan didn't mind though and the Sesame Street music books he found inside more than made up for it:) I tried to get a picture of the backpack on Abigail before we went into Milwaukee to see my sister and her new bundle of joy, but she was more interested in showing me the picture she created for her new cousin!

Now for the WIPs! I am starting two quilts this week. Ambitious, yes, since I usually only have one quilt going at a time, but I am so excited about both of them that I can't help it! The fabrics above have been cut from my charms I received from the over the rainbow charm swap hosted by Bianca. I'm going to make a rainbow stacked coins quilt. I am going to start piecing these together tonight and also order more Kona coal for the border...

And these stacks. Sigh. These beautiful stacks were in my mailbox today. I was a bit worried when I was ordering these since it is sometimes hard to see color combinations on your computer screen. But I am very happy with the look of these!!! I have a very special project for these and I can't wait to share it in another post. This one is long enough!

**I'm also editing my small project list in this post**

Small Projects Sew Along

I've decided to participate in Amanda Jean's small projects sew along. I feel very overwhelmed right now with house projects, Charlie's school year winding up, PTO responsibilities....I thrive on making lists so the idea of making a list of small things that I can accomplish this month was very appealing! I by no means think that I will get this all finished and I am pretty sure that I will add more things to this list and that's okay.  I've crossed off the first thing on my project list, too! I took pictures of my cousin's twins on their First Communion day. I bought inexpensive photo albums and made matching covers for them. They will be shipped tomorrow along with the photos of their big day. Hope they like them!

Here's to a crafty (and maybe organized???) May!

My project list:

1. Photo albums for the twins' First Communion

2. Gift bags for Abbie's birthday

3. Dress for Abbie's birthday

4. Scooter basket for Charles

5. Purse for Amy

6. Purse for me

7. Wallet for Abbie

8. Picnic blanket

9. Reading pillow for Charles

10. Bed pillow for Abbie

11. Lanyard for male teachers at Charlie's school

12. Backpack for Nathan (for when his little sister arrives!)
13. Covers for the kitchen mixer, sewing machine, and silhouette
14. Reusable snack bags

April 2012

April? Where did you go?

I sit here on May 2 looking at pictures of my babies from the past month. It is Mom's birthday, the eighth we have spent without her. Although I miss her dearly, looking at all of the pictures of my happy and healthy children, I know that they have the best angel looking out for them. Abigail requested we make cookies to celebrate her birthday today. Does she just want to lick the bowl? Probably! But did she melt my heart anyways? You bet! Charlie requested that he is home to help, so we will be doing that after school today. 

Now...back to April! We packed a lot of fun into it! We took advantage of awesome spring break weather. We took a tour of Miller Park and the kids loved it as much as we did! Easter activities included dying eggs, which Abigail has requested we do again several times in the past few weeks, egg hunt at church AND Grandma's farm, kite flying, and the normal run around the farm with all the cousins! That is definitely Charlie's favorite thing to do on the farm! I'm quite proud of the dress that I made Abigail for Easter. I'm even more proud that Charlie wore the matching tie I made him:) Hopefully he'll let me make him another next year...

As we head into May, our schedules seem to be filling up as the weather warms up again. We spend more time outside and really only turn on the TV to catch part of the Brewer's game. That can only mean one thing...summer is right around the corner!