Glacier Wedding Eye-Candy

Just sit back and enjoy a "few" wedding day collages :)

 The couple in Two Medicine, where the actual ceremony took place.

 A romantic lace wedding gown on the beautiful bride and a handsome groom in an Air Force uniform.

 Bundt Cakes!

 The Reception Tent

Two of the centerpieces and a cute photo-prop sign...

 Tent Decor

 More Decorations 

 The Bride's Things

 Small Details

 I love watching the photographer work!

And finally, a little bit of scenery :)

July Goals Finished

I did it! I finished them the weekend before the wedding. I still can't believe I did it, especially since it was my first time hand-quilting! It feels good to follow through with a plan, even with a little one in the house... it can be done! 

(Thank goodness for naps and Daddy-time!).

 Easter. 

My favorite part is the tone-on-tone white crosses. 

 Christmas.

My favorite part is the singing Santa (Dear Mr. Claus from Moda).

Fourth of July.

My favorite part is the wonky star of course - first time ever sewing one of those!

St. Patrick's Day.

My favorite part is the reverse applique (I found some helpful hints here and here).

Goal Setting Post

Almost Finished Post

Thank you Melissa and Shanna for hosting "A Lovely Year of Finishes;" it definitely helps to have a little extra motivation!

I also have loved the Summer Series at Clover & Violet - so many fun project ideas for when you are on the go and you can't bring the sewing machine with you! I've linked up two of these table runners with them (the Christmas one and the St. Patrick's Day one)... go check out what everyone else has hand-crafted!

Also linking up with...

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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...

Gifts for Another Friend

Well, while Scooter continues to safely grow inside the bump, I'm enjoying sewing with my stash for Him/Her and for friends :)

 A friend back home had a Valentine's baby! They knew ahead of time that it was going to be a little mister, so I was able to use some more of my boyish flannel for both the burp cloths and bibs.

 I really enjoyed the few days that I was able to set up an assembly line for making several burp cloths and bibs. Thus, Scooter is set with plenty of these, plus I even have a few tucked away for future gifts! (Planning ahead!!)

 For the V-Day baby, we also gave a book titled "Who Pooped In The Park" that we found during our Yellowstone trip. Grizz grew up with V-Day baby's dad (they're actually second cousins), and they spent a lot of time exploring and getting dirty outdoors, so we thought the book was appropriate :)

A last minute addition to the gift package was a crocheted hat using some leftover yarn from this blanket I made last year. Crocheting is such a great activity while substitute teaching - especially if the students are watching a movie or I'm covering a study hall, or even during my prep period. I can whip out these hats pretty quickly! Scooter now has two :) I'll show the pictures another day... but now, I'm going to go do some freezer paper stenciling on some onesies that I dyed two weekends ago!

Yellowstone in Winter - Post 3

 The first afternoon was spent xc skiing. After we went a ways, we needed to stop since there were bison on the trail! I'm glad we didn't get as close as the guy in the middle of the picture...

 ... this was close enough! The bison left the trail, but they were still close by when we skied past.

 Our destination was to a geyser/spring that our bus driver told us about. It was really interesting. (Blacksand Pool)

Every so often, you could actually feel "booms" through the earth, which would be followed with the spring bubbling.

 Not only was it a booming pool, but it was pretty, too :)

 We decided to just go hiking the second day. We took the observation point trail(?) to the solitary geyser. I was the first to spot the above bison, which of course, was conveniently on the trail... everyone else though it was a rock at first!

 Unlike the bison the day before, this one did not show any interest in leaving the trail.

We were able to get a good rest in before we decided to go off trail up and around the blockage. We passed the bison with no incident!

 The Solitary Geyser. It would supposedly go off every five minutes with a spout a few feet in the air. We never did see it shoot up, but we did see plenty of bubbles!

We choose to make the loop instead of going back past the lone bison :)

So, that's all for the posts on Yellowstone. It definitely is worth a trip during the winter... fewer people and yet the scenery is still gorgeous!

Yellowstone Post #1
Yellowstone Post #2

Yellowstone in Winter... 2nd Post

In order to enter the park during the winter season, you either have to be on a snowmobile or your have to pay to ride a snowbus. 

Our snowbus was scheduled to leave West Yellowstone in the morning (we stayed there the night before). However, as we were starting to pack up (we had to drive about 4 blocks to where the snowbus was going to meet us), Grizz locked the keys inside the vehicle... while it was running! Thankfully, there was a repair shop next to our hotel, and Grizz was able to borrow a screwdriver and a flexible metal rod to break into our vehicle. Long story short, we still made it to the snowbus before it was scheduled to leave!

 Our snowbus was pretty much just a Chevy Suburban with four triangular treads instead of wheels. It was a full vehicle (11 people) for the two hour drive to Old Faithful, but it was nice to see the scenery and wildlife without worrying about the roads.

 We spent that afternoon cross-country skiing. Neighbor had never xc-skied before and it had been awhile since her fiance had tried it, so it was fun helping them learn. There were a lot of trails around Old Faithful for us to explore!

Thankfully, Scooter didn't slow me down too much... here's a 28 week bump picture :)

Yellowstone Post #1
Yellowstone Post #3

Math Friend's Baby Gifts!

One of my college friends is about ready to pop... another 10-14 days and there'll be a Baby-Math-Friend in the world! 

I knew I was going to be able to see her (along with another math friend) while spending 2 weeks visiting friends and family back home this summer, so I decided to have my gifts ready for her by then! Of course, I didn't finalize my plans until the week before we left. That's when I found this pin and I knew exactly what I was going to make!

 The pin links to a pattern, but I figured I could figure it out just by looking at the picture - I really enjoyed just winging it! It only took me a quick afternoon (the day before we left!).

I used a black towel from Target and the pink/red fabric I won not too long ago in a giveaway.

Because I haven't cut bias binding by myself in so long (and I was in too big of a rush to look up directions), I ended up messing up a few times, thus the waist straps had to be in a different fabric than the binding and the neck straps. Good thing I had quite a bit of fabric to choose from from that giveaway!

 I just used a kitchen apron to cut out the shape. In the pin, it appears like they kept the bottom of the towel intact, but that was too long, even for me... and Math Friend is a bit shorter. Thus, I just sewed it up and made pockets out of it :) I figured that was easier than cutting and hemming it!

 I've had these burp rags ready for awhile now - last winter I spent an afternoon just making up three sets for friends I knew who were expecting! Baby-Math-Friend's gender is a surprise, so this yellow animal print was perfect! I've made so many of these, that I don't need to look at a tutorial anymore... it's just a strip of flannel sewn to a cloth diaper from Walmart!

 Here are the two girls I visited. We had so much fun catching up and exploring the town where one of them teaches - the other is just about 40 minutes away. I can't even count how many hours the three of us, along with several other math guys and gals, spent studying during college. We had a tight-knit group of math majors, most of whom had plans on teaching... when studying Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis, it's important to have a great group of friends to be with!