Trick or Treat!?!

Before and After. I bought this ugly cheap dress today and jazzed it up a bit. We had these wings laying around so I guess she was a fairy princess. I sewed these flowers on to cover up the picture on the front (they came from a Hawaiian lei, which was also laying around). I had to bring it up a lot too, so made it a bit puffy on the bottom. Very cute, we had lots of fun. This is her little loot bag I made. Not very big, we had to keep emptying it into the stroller (which I had Owen in hoping he would fall asleep, HA yeah right). This is our third year living on this block, it's amazing how much it's changed. The first year we literally only had three people come. This year I ran out of candy before 7:30!!! Happy Halloween everyone!

The Season

Eggnog, Christmas music, sleeping in. Here we come Christmas yipee!! I need to pace myself though, last year I was almost sick of Christmas festivities come January 1st. Almost. So this year I'm only allowing this nonsense on the weekends, maybe until my birthday (Dec. 13th, take note and buy gifts). The other five days a week it's regular cream in the coffee and no Christmas music. Although who would say no to sleeping in if the option was there? Today my kids slept 'till nine!!! How did I get that lucky? It's crazy I know.
I have allowed myself to do some Christmas prep, mostly just 'cause I'm crazy and obsessed. I started making a Christmas quilt. Here's a picture of the squares cut out. Just a bunch of cheap stuff from Fabricland. This was mainly for practice, but I'm starting to really like it. We started watching the Lost series on DVD, so now I'll have a cozy quilt to cuddle up with (and our awesome fake fireplace yay) Here's the kids and hubbie in front of the "fire" one blissful sleep-in morning. Here's a picture of the house we're framing next door to us. This is what Matthew does in real life, when he's not here feeding the baby or listening to Christmas music. He also started playing soccer again this year, exciting. I haven't gone to a game yet, they always start late, I'll have to just suck it up and get a babysitter someday.




Here's some quick pictures of the stupid baby blankie I finally conquered. I just couldn't figure out what to do with this, took it out a million times, then finally figured it out as I was falling asleep one day. And of course it was so simple. So here's Owens, and an girlie one I made for my friends baby. I think this will be the standard baby gift from now on. Sorry to ruin the surprise Linds;-)


Well I'm feeling pretty nauseous for some reason, so I'm gonna go eat some real food. Speaking of which that's another Christmas season thing I love, food, right now it's mainly citrus fruit. We don't eat it until nowish, and then it's such a treat. Today it's grapefruit, yum! I'm trying to clean and organize today and take a break from sewing. It's hard.

Grandpa's Plaids and other things

This post is a tribute to finished projects. Finishing things is a very big deal for me and must be celebrated. I never finish things. I haven't celebrated the finished bassinet here yet (I have on facebook in Owens baby album). So here's my little cuties with the finished product. The condensed story of this bed is this: While pregnant with Katelyn 3 or so years ago I saw this picture of this 400$ bed. Naturally I really wanted it, and naturally I wanted to make it instead of fork over the money. My wonderful husband did his part right away, cut out the wood and had it all ready. I bought the fabric and got together with my wonderful sewing friend Marilyn, but got stuck so I didn't finish it. Then when I was pregnant with Owen the plan was revived. It wasn't actually completely finished until after he was born. But now here it is and I'm hoping he can use it for as long as possible.

Ok, another finished project: Corryn's quilt. I think I told you about this a couple posts ago. So here it is all finished, I gave it to her last weekend. Considering I'm not a huge fan of different plaids this turned out pretty good. I like the pattern, it's an Amy Butler one. I saw the picture of this quilt but again, didn't want to actually buy the book with the pattern in it, so I just drew it up on graph paper. I think I'm always going to do that, it works well. Is that breaching any copy right laws? I hope not.


So now I'm starting new stuff:-) Sydney and Katelyn get to be flower girls next month and Shari and I are making the dresses. So that's one project. It's a simple pattern but apparently I'm a sewing reject and totally can't figure it out. I'm learning a lot, mostly patience. Don't want to give anything away on that though, so I'll post pictures after the wedding.
The other project is Owens quilt. I feel like I'm really doing stuff I like now. I got all this fabric on Etsy. I'm waiting for this fabric to fill in these blank spots in the picture. Hopefully that link up there worked so you can look at the picture if you so care to. Here's his quilt so far, can't wait to start sewing it together!! This poor boy plays on my childhood strawberry shortcake quilt, he needs something a little more boyish.


So with that, I'm outta here, I have some sewing to do. Needless to say my house is feeling very neglected lately. In fact the laundry got so bad Matthew was driven to do a few loads last night. Good method for getting out of laundry eh? But of course I have time to spruce up our fake fire place:-) It's not actually a fake fireplace. It's gas with fake logs. It's pretty cheesy to me, but still nice to have. I just like real logs that actually burn. Someday, someday.....
In other news I've had a headache for three days, I think it's a pinched nerve or something. That and the fact that there was only half a cup of coffee left by the time I got to it today, and it was cold. Boo. It's a good thing I have a sweet cuddly girl on my lap right now, otherwise I might be grumpy or something.

Some Things I Care About:

supporting local growers
healthy eating
chemical free cleaning
the three R's
being a responsible citizen
sharing what we have in order to build relationships (ex: lawnmower, why do we ALL have one???)
reteaching society what's right (from body image to money and everywhere in between)
supporting small businesses (boo Walmart)
growing food for ourselves
voting and being informed
basically just thinking about others more than ourselves. These are things that I think about more and more lately, and I'm sure I could add to the list if I sat here longer. As Christians especially we have a responsibility. Thats all for today, just me thinking out loud. More fun stuff soon. I started Owens quilt yay!

Sweet Life

Life is in one of those places right now. One of those sweet places that I hope everyone has once in awhile. Every thing clicks and feels right and I'm thankful for the smallest moments. I love finding myself here. I can't say it's any one thing, it's just the combination of everything going on right now.



I found eggnog at Costco last night. I'll be drinking my coffee with eggnog until January, yay! This is the coffee mug I got when I went to see my sis this summer. In the background of this pic is the sugar bowl from my childhood. Felicia wasn't impressed that I got it, just wait until it's time to hash out the piano. These are the projects I've been finishing. I took that quilting class a couple weeks ago. I did this baby quilt for that class. So this isn't a pattern I'd normally use, but I learned a lot by doing it. I really don't like the batting I used for either of these. It doesn't drape at all. The purple plaid one has a story behind it. My grandma gave me left over fabric from making shirts for grandpa. Corryn, my cousin, is sentimental and was Grandpas favorite, in a good way. So I made this quilt for her and put the solids in to try to tone down the plaids a bit. I'm giving it to her this weekend, so hopefully she doesn't read my blog;-) And in the plaid quilt picture you can see my awesome old school sewing machine. It's done many miles for me the past couple weeks. It's my best friends these days. I'm so excited to get these out of my way so I can start on Owens quilt. I decided on a pattern for his, but then changed my mind. I'll post on his quilt in the next couple days. He's awake and mad so I gotta cut this short.

Cuties and Recent Projects

In my last post I mentioned I would take a day off the computer. I did only take one day, even though my lack of attention to my blog makes it seem I've been away longer. All that crafty blog surfing payed off. I have been so inspired lately, and yes definitely found the pedal to my sewing machine. We have become good friends that machine and I. I've taken it apart and cleaned it and learned all of it's tweaks. I took a quilting class last week, I'll post pictures later of the little project I did. I've been dreaming up all kinds of projects. My favorite site lately is Purl Bee which also has some good links here Another good one is this blog with a lot of nice quilts. For someone who hasn't even finished a quilt yet, I have a pretty long list of quilts to make. I'm starting with two, one for each kid. I got my fabric from Etsy this week to get started.





This is what I've gotten so far (for fabric). I found this adorable and super easy pattern for a skirt. It took less than an hour to make it. I didn't actually like this green stuff for the quilt it was supposed to go with, so a skirt it is:-) Oh, and she is wearing a diaper again this week, yay! I'm a potty training failure:-) I just really needed to step back from this whole endeavor. The annoying thing is, she was doing SO well. I would say she was completely potty trained for two weeks. Then on Monday she started... well you know. Lets just say it was messy and I was very very angry. So now I like her again and we'll try this again in a few weeks.




Owens just such a little squishy lovey baby. I just can't get enough of this kid. I love this stage so much, it's the best. Minus the mashed food. Although he does look pretty cute with carrot mash all over him when he's grinning from ear to ear. Big gummy orange smiles. No teeth yet, yay! No crawling either, and not too much rolling across the room or anything. I'm in no hurry for him to grow up, it's going to fast as it is. He was six months last week!
I'm loving autumn so much this year. I've been snuggling up with candles and.... I'd like to say a book, but just the computer these days. I made stew. I'm planning quilts. I bought snow pants. Those are my winter preparations.


This is our view of the pond now. We moved around the corner from our old house, but we can still see it out our side windows. We don't back on to houses here either and that's really nice. Matthew and my Dad are framing a house next door which we will most likely move into once it's done. So if anyone wants to be our neighbours in a few months just buy our house:-) I'm so freaking excited about this new house (the one being framed). More on this later. My hubbie is messing with my candles, I must intervene.