September Goal

It's about that time to make my September goal! 

It's another small one due to our upcoming move, but I want to take these fabrics (JoAnns) and make this with it...

A Bright Corner's Holly Jolly Tree Skirt pattern 

... it will be a wedding present for a lovely friend! I'll only be able to get the top pieced and the binding cut, but I hope to have that done by the end of the month. I'll quilt it and finish it up after our move sometime!


Thanks again to Melissa and Shanna for hosting such a wonderful series... "A Lovely Year of Finishes."

 

I'm Almost Done! (July Goals)

Yup, that's right! I have a week until my friend's big day and all I have to do is finish the binding on all four table runners/toppers. I can do it!!

I finished the quilting quicker than I expected - it went much faster once I found the right combination of needle to fabric :) I still need to work on getting my stitches to look as nice on the back as on the front, but that did improve once I got rid of the hoop - but once I did that, the table runner got a little poofier. More practice needed I guess! I did like that I could quickly pick it up during Peanut's cat naps without taking the risk of waking her up by turning on the sewing machine.

Now to hand stitch the binding to the back - maybe I can finish a side before Peanut wakes up again!

*Edit from phone: Sure enough, after just finishing one side, I heard some one wake up! She's lucky she's cute :)

To see the entire story on my July goals, see this post...

July Goal!

Finally, I feel like I can join "A Lovely Year of Finishes" with Melissa and Shanna! I have four table runners/toppers that I started in June, but I really need to finish them by July 20 (or maybe a few days afterwards!). 

My usual wedding present for friends/family is a patchwork Christmas Tree Skirt - the pictures above show a few that I've made, including the one I made for myself (it's so fun to see the skirts in use!). This tradition started because it has always been Mom's go-to-gift. Plus, most of my friends don't have a lot of holiday decorations to start their new life with, so a tree skirt helps them get started in that department!

Well, the friend who is getting married on this month knows how to sew (I helped re-introduce her to this amazing hobby last year), and I think she would have more fun making her own tree skirt. Thus, she gets table toppers/runners instead (still holiday inspired, of course!).

I pulled fabric and I started planning. You can see my scratchings above. Grizz's engineering paper is perfect for quilt planning - it's just glorified graph paper, but it makes me feel official :) The plans originally included embroidered borders, but having never embroidered words before, I decided that trying one new thing (hand-quilting) was enough for this project's deadline!

I kept my fabric choices limited to my stash. Other than the Christmas Fabric (Dear Mr. Claus by Moda), all fabrics are either JoAnns or thrift store purchases. Thankfully I kept some holiday fabrics when I sent most of my stash home with my parents when they visited after Peanut was born. Why did I send fabric home? We have tentative plans of moving back to SD this fall!! Whoop whoop! 

Anyways, enough chatter... the details:

St. Patrick's Day.
Reverse Applique (first time skill!).
Hand Quilted with Embroidery Floss.
Left to do? Binding.

Easter/Spring.
Easy Patchwork.
Hand-quilting started with DMC Floss.
Overcame some early cutting/measuring difficulties.
Left to do? Finish quilting and attach binding.

Fourth Of July
Wonky Star (first time try!).
Left to do? Take out the safety pins and re-baste it... I experimented and tried to pin-baste it without taping down the back fabric - yikes! Since then, Grizz has bought me more masking tape and I can try again! I'm still deciding if I want to hand-quilt this one or machine quilt it... I also need to cut the scrappy binding and attach it!

Christmas.
Neighbor (Bride-to-Be) loved this fabric, so I cut into my fat-quarter bundle just for her :)
Machine-Appliqued the Santa and gift tags.
Left to Do? Baste, Quilt (Embroidery Floss) and Bind.



So, I have a lot left to do, but I have three weeks of nap time and daddy-time-with-Peanut to do it! Wish me luck :)

Also linking up with Fabric Tuesday and WIP Wednesday...

Instagrams...

... going all the way back to this past November! Yikes!

 Christmas Joy... hand-painted on old barnwood.

 Lefse! A Scandinavian tradition.

 Twilight :) Grizz is always nice enough to come with me.

 A Thanksgiving Prime Rib. The tape is on the oven to remind us "NOT TO OPEN IT."

 Fluff mail. So, yes, the plan as of now is to try out some cloth diapers. I'll let you know how it goes ;)

 Ultrasound flowers. Grizz is great.

 More Christmas projects. Still working on my painted handwriting.

 Some random breakfast.

 Spritz. Spritz. Spritz. Christmas COOKIES! Geez, I'm starting to crave sugary goodness...

 Alma Mater men's basketball team traveled to Big Sky Country. We gladly wore our blue and gold to support them.

 The crib is up!!

 More goodness from the Alma Mater. Family and friends know just exactly what Scooter needs to wear once he/she arrives!

 A snowy day from a third floor math classroom.

 Scooter's quilt top...

 Scooter's quilt top quilted.

 A January walk.

 A Birthday Snow (maybe three or four days after the nice walk in the previous picture).

En Route to Yellowstone.

And finally... today's project while watching Downton Abby on Netflix. Scooter has a new hat! (Removable flower depending on which gender Scooter surprises us with).

A Few Christmas Collages

Being home for a week for Christmas was so refreshing... of course, it was also hectic, but it was the good kind of hectic :) It was hectic just because we were trying to make sure we could see everyone we could. We both look forward when we can move back and we don't have to cram visiting everybody into a one-week period!

Here are some highlights... at least these are the highlights that I had a camera nearby to capture the scenes!

A Mid-Morning Walk while staying with Grizz's family.

 My mom was able to thoroughly enjoy her Christmas china (and matching silverware!). The pattern is Holiday by Lennox.

 Of course, throughout the week, we had at least four Christmas meals in a row... With my immediate family, the meal consisted of oyster stew, Swedish meatballs, and turkey for the main courses... but don't forget the yummy lefse!!!! Grizz's mom's prime rib was pretty amazing, too!

We are so blessed to have such wonderful family...

Christmas Starts Tomorrow!

 We fly home tomorrow to see both families! I've been waiting so long for this... sure we saw my side of the family in September, and we spent a two weeks back home at the beginning of August... but there is just something special with being able to celebrate Christmas with family. We are only staying a week, which means we fly back the day after Christmas, but I'm not complaining since we did find a pretty good deal on our tickets. I greatly look forward to the day when we move home and we can see family and friends whenever we want :)

The top picture is taken in front of our neighbor's tree... Grizz thought our tree was too messy. We had just gotten home from our Christmas Cantata (Grizz had a solo!). We were supposed to wear black, blue and/or white to match the books we were holding. Last night, I cleaned up the tree a bit, so I could try my hand at photographically capturing our second tree together. We also had fun playing with the tripod and the timer :)

Sadly, the ornaments are now all taken down, along with the rest of the Christmas decorations. To reduce a fire hazard of a live tree sitting in our apartment for a week without water, we decided it was best to take it down before our trip home. Without the tree up, I decided just to go ahead and take everything down. At least when we come back, the apartment will be clean so I can spend the rest of Christmas vacation creating and sewing!

I'll leave you with a few pictures of our drive to Missoula (we went there this weekend for a basketball game... our alma mater was playing!).

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas season and are able to spend lots of time with family and friends! 

Snowy Time Of Year

In our neck of the woods, we get snow and then it melts the following week... then we get some more snow and it melts again (even if 15 inches fell!). We both grew up getting snow and then it would stay so cold that the snow would stick around all winter, so this snowing and melting stuff has taken some getting used to! Thankfully, we're only about an hour away from a few different mountain ranges where the snow (usually) sticks around!

 The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Neighbor, Neighbor's Fiance, Grizz and I all took a drive to the national forest nearby... it was time to get our Christmas Trees! It was perfectly a winter wonderland that day with the snow lightly falling as we searched and searched for the perfect trees. Then, just two weekends ago, Grizz invited a few coworkers to go snowshoeing in a different mountain range. Only one took us up on the offer, and there wasn't enough snow to snowshoe. However, we still had fun just hiking around. Plus, it was perfect snow to make a snowwoman! (That's Barbara the snowwoman in the bottom corner!)

We hiked near a ski hill, which hasn't opened yet. The lift still made a great photo!

Here we are on the tree-cutting day. We love snow :)

While waiting for Neighbor and Fiance to cut their tree down, we attempted a bump picture. Sure, I have a fuzzy vest on top of two thin layers, but I will still claim it :) This was taken when I was almost at 20 weeks... today marks 22 weeks completed! Woot woot!

 Finally, here are a few pictures from Giant Springs, a local state park that is just gorgeous... especially after the first "big" snowstorm of the year that happened about a month ago. Again, we love snow :)

Some Christmas Joy

I don't know exactly how I feel about my first go at making collages over at PicMonkey. I love PicMonkey and I love how easy it is to arrange the photos into a collage (and thus less arranging while typing the blog post!). We'll see if I continue to use them :)

Anyways, here's a little sampling of the Christmas decor of the apartment... I've always loved decorating for Christmas! Even in college, I made sure that the dorm rooms and the houses I lived in were decorated! Thus, I've always lugged around a few totes of Christmas decorations. Thankfully, Grizz doesn't mind! 

The Dala Horse is my first try at making felt ornaments. I have a bit of Swedish in me, so I couldn't resist buying the pattern from Lova Handmade on Etsy! The button wreaths and the music balls were made last year, and the vintage ornaments were found this past summer at a garage sale - I couldn't pass them up!

I made the scrabble ornaments this past fall, and they will all be going out as gifts. It will be hard to see them go, but I hope the new owners will love them as much as I loved making them!

 Last but not least, at the top of the collage you'll see some painted barnwood signs that I created a few weeks ago (I pretty much took over the living room floor for several days as I painted and repainted until I was satisfied). They are the official greeters outside on our porch. And to top it all off, our tree has a fun garland this year :) We had our ultrasound last week, and Scooter is definitely the best addition to the tree for his or her "first" Christmas!

Christmas In July - Wrapping Paper

Last Friday, I set out with Neighbor and her mother for a morning of shopping - this included a few garage sales on the way to the mall. We found quite a few fun things (including a archery target for Grizz so he wouldn't feel left out while at work, ha!)

 I was so excited when I found these two boxes at one of the sales - it's cute, old wrapping paper! The lady of the sale didn't have any prices on things, and it seemed like she took any offer we gave her. Considering that, I should have tried to go for less, but I'm not going to complain since I got both boxes for just a dollar! Sure, one of the boxes was half gone, but I still think I did alright considering how much brand new wrapping paper is!

The half-used box also had a package of Christmas cards! Thus, I'm thinking a few of my girl friends are going to get these cute forest animals in the mail come December!

There was one sheet of stickers too - they are the kind that pop out and then you have to lick them. That kind always reminds me of the stickers we used at Sunday School when I was younger...

 Look at all that Christmas goodness! The picture doesn't even show all of the pieces in the boxes. I want to use them, I do, but I know it's going to be hard come gift-wrapping time to actually cute into some of these sheets!

Here are close-ups of just a few of the pieces... I promise I won't show you all of them!

 Ok, so this one might actually be easy to cut into... who ever thought Santa should be bright pink?! Perhaps I'll wrap our niece's gift in it. She loves pink and I think it would make her giggle. I can just hear her "Mama, Santa's not supposed to be pink!" :)

 To be honest, I might have walked right past the boxes, but when I looked in one of them, I saw that one sheet was full of game birds. And yes, this bird is very dear to my heart, so I couldn't pass them up! I'm thinking this will have to wrap my mom's gift :)

 This one just makes me laugh. It reminds me of Disney's Fantasia for some reason. I can just see these illustrations walking quickly about their Christmas business while Christmas carols are playing in the background!

 Here's what Santa is supposed to look like - a big red nose and a cheerful wink!

Then look at this cute snow-couple. *Sigh* Wrapping paper just isn't the same anymore!

 This little guy looks just like the youngest boy in Peter Pan - look at those pajamas!

And his sister gets the treat of putting the star on top of the tree. Perfect :)

 Ok, Ok, I promised I wouldn't show you all of the paper close up, so I'll stop with this one - just know that there are lots more sheets of lovely vintage goodness. I'm sure I'll get laughed at when I show up with gifts wrapped in old-fashioned paper, but I just can't help what I love!