Poor Colton

He's such a sick little guy. All day long he wants to be held & loved. As soon as I try to set him down, it's just constant crying. Which makes me feel so bad for him ... but seriously I have been so worn out because of it (I'm still not too hot myself). So the last two days I gave myself 15 minutes to just sit & sew a little bit while he naps. I can't iron unless they're all asleep (my sewing room is the kitchen table ... and the ironing board is in the middle of it all), so it's slow going. But I have 13 of the 20 blocks cut out, and almost 9 of those completely stitched up now ... here's hoping to a little bit of a break from the cold this weekend and a little sewing time for Mommy! :)

Thrifty Thursday

Two separate times now I have LOST my entry for today. Why?!? Something must be wrong with me, or it may be this cough thing. One week into it and it's very, very slowly getting better. After a sleepless night on Tuesday with Colton, we shut the door to his room, I slept in there too (just in case), turned up the humidifier and FINALLY got a decent night's sleep. Gotta love cold & flu season. LOL.

Anyways, I liked this bucket at Target (it's like $20 or $25), but would NEVER pay anything close to that. Found at Goodwill (with a small dent in the back corner) for $1.99. It's a perfect shade of green to go in Savannah's new room re-do. Now I'm just debating what it should hold ... right now it's just perfect for a place to put the random things I'm picking up for her room. Any other ideas?

I'm always behind the curve ...

Thanks for the love on the quilt! It was my first real quilting experience that was complicated & precise ... and I love it too! In fact, I love all the expensive quilt fabric in general and TOTALLY think it makes the quilt. LOL. I can't deny that Jo-Ann's fabrics just don't do it for me anymore.
But, I can't justify the price of $9+ a yard, and I can't afford it right now either. So, I have to save for fabrics I really love. And then wait, and wait and wait some more. Then, when it goes on sale I finally get it! :) Desperate Quilters had their ginger blossom fabric really at a great price & a lot of different selection left too! :) No, I'm not a paid advertisement, but really awesome service & a nice note included and look what I have now!!! It's such gorgeous stuff ... I'm so excited to have it! The goal this week (and probably next) is to do a simple patchwork blanket for Savannah's room. If I can stop coughing, and get the kids to rest like they need to. This cold (that hit with FULL force last friday) is just not getting better. Ugh.

First Quilt-a-long Finished (finally!)

Everyday last week (except Friday) was absolutely gorgeous. So, the kids were outside playing on their new swing set, having lunch on their little table and soaking up the sunshine. While I enjoyed a bit of a break, set up my sewing machine on the kitchen table and watched them while finishing up a very old WIP.

I made this quilt using a pile of fabric gifted to me from a dear friend (who has taught me everything I know about quilting), Jeanette. She had made a blanket for her niece & didn't like the color scheme requested for the blanket ... but I did. I finished just a few weeks behind that first quilt a long and then ... nothing. I took it out a couple of times meaning to finish it, in fact I even promised it to my Mom for her last birthday ... which was near the end of February. Then life happened, Ryan leaves town multiple times, I get pregnant, the holidays ... well, you know how it goes! The quilting only took me a little over a day to do ... with lots of breaks to care for the kids of course. I just did each block's design, but I like the way it makes the designs poof out a little.Then I finished binding it up this weekend. And I just love the way it turned out! :) Makes me wish I hadn't promised it away ...

A very slow WIP

So on Sundays, after getting home from church I am always tempted to pull out the sewing machine and take advantage of the WHOLE afternoon with no where to go and nothing in particular to do. But my goal for this year was to spend more quality time with my family and Sundays really are a perfect day to force family together time. So I've been working on a much overdue WIP just on Sundays. Here's the link to Hunter & Savannah's completed stitches. And I guess since baby #4 is on the way, it's a good thing to finish baby #3's, right? :) It'll be slow work, but at least it's an easy carry-around and can be picked up and put down very easily, so I'm still wherever the kids & husband are on Sunday. Still a part of the day and having family time, but me time too. :) I woke up this morning with almost no voice and feeling like a bus had run me over ... so today is a curl up on the couch & watch movie day with the kids ... I think I'll pull it out and get another section done today too.

Thrifty Thursday

So I've been trying to thrift a lot more ... hoping to find some cute things for Savannah's room. I was completely STOKED (yes I still use that word ... but only on SPECIAL occasions) about this find. I loved this chair, it was kind of pushed back in the linens section. I looked at it thinking, WOW! That looks just like a PBKids chair that I loved forever ... but it was $75 and who really can spend that on a pillow? Then, I looked at the tag on it and it was from Pottery Barn Teen!!! Score! :) And the best part, it was on sale 50% off ... so it was even better for only $2.50! :)

Then I've been trying to thrift some sheets for all these blankets I'm trying to finish ... I love the cute little print on this, it'll be perfect for my star quilt a long. :)

Mario Party Stuff ...

At the same time that I was putting together Hunter's party stuff, one of my friends from the ward called asking if I could help her put together a birthday party invite for her son's birthday/mario party. I was able to find a lot of the same graphics that the other card company had chosen & he liked a simple set up for his actual card. Here's the birthday party invite: Then I made up some cupcake toppers (which I also made for Hunter's birthday): and she also saw a fun idea to have mario on the placemats, so we made some graphics for that too. I've been surprised at just how hard it is to find mario stuff ... with all the little boys who are SOOOOO addicted to video games, you'd think there'd be more selection!

Now back to work on some quilting I'm doing ...

Wii party pics

So I made mii nametags for the kids.I enlarged one of the mii's & had the kids help me color it in. Then we played pin the wii remote on the mii. A scoreboard to keep track of their party winnings or losings.The cute cupcake toppers were found (and finally used). Then as the giveaway present ... cute little wii remote candy dispensers from K-Mart. He told me he thought it was an "awesome" party ... thanks Hunter. :)

A Wii Party

I let Savannah see the two choices & she loved the ginger blossom line ... now to just find a cute/not too time consuming pattern!
But for tonight and tomorrow, it's all about my little boy & his birthday party tomorrow. He's turned 6 on Sunday & decided that he wants a wii party.

Which is great, right? No real expensive jump house needed, just setting up & letting them play! Except there are no wii party things anywhere!!! Which has me searching for ideas ... hostess with the mostess had a fun bowling party set up on her site, but a lot of them will just add up $$$-wise too fast.

So ... I found this darling link, I can create little mii characters for each of the kids! AWESOME!!! I also picked up a large posterboard to make a mii character & let the kids play pin the wii remote on the mii ... I'm not great at freehand, so this may take a while. Food -4- Less has some darling little wii remote candy dispensers, whichn are only $2.99 in the store, and that will be the hand-out. Then I need to make a score board tonight & pick up soda, pizza and make nachos tomorrow. Not too intense, right???

Now to find more fun ideas ... wish me luck! :)

Debating on Christmas for 2009

So I have hopes for this year ... being more prepared and ready and starting early on projects that seem like good ideas. LOL. How long will that last? Who knows, in the mean time it's a good idea, right?

So I found links to some free BOM's from another the Crafty Stitcher's blog and these seem like cute, fun ideas that would make great Christmas gifts! :) So I downloaded the noah's ark stitcheries that she already has up and now it's time to find some nice, soft cream-y fabric to get started! I've been wanting a new project for Sundays, after church when we are all just relaxing together at home. I don't want to pull out my machine on those days, and stitching would be a perfect, "I'm still available if you want/need me" kind of idea.

There were two other fun ideas for free bom's on the crafty stitcher's blog ... but I think those might still be too advanced for me ... we'll have to see though! :)

Girly Room

So with the new year comes the undeniable urge to purge the un-needed and organize and decorate! We are working on making a sweet girl room for Savannah. With the new baby coming, she'll be moved back into her own room, with Colton being moved into the big boy room with Hunter. She is not going to love this idea though. So, Ryan suggested we try and decorate up her room and make it special for her, rather than a "Move over and make room" kind of deal.

So she wants a pink room, with hot pink walls too. We've collected enough "oops" paint from Lowe's that that part is taken care of ... but now what to do for the bedspread??? These are the two choices we're down to: Ginger Blossom by Sandi or the Swell line by Moda. I love the bold, funky-ness of the Ginger Blossom line, but I've collected a of light pastel-y green things from thrift store shopping that would fit well with the swell line I think.

And I want to order up the fabric this week! So, what do you think???

(Ginger blossom picture from Sandi's blog & Swell picture from the moda site)