Total Enjoyment

We have been totally blessed and thankful to have my wonderful BFF(for lack of a better term :o) !!) and her children visiting with us through Thanksgiving. We have been having such a great time just being together and soaking up every moment(thanks for that reminder other Dee).

Today she began work on her very first quilt. i am so so proud. She loved my wee play quilt so much that she wanted to make one just like it. So we could have twin quilts. See it there behind her. She was using it as a guide for her own. This was her first row completed!!! Hooray! I have begun rubbing off on my friends.

The kids are having so much fun together. E even sat with us during afternoon school lessons. He did magic rock painting. See the concentration all over that face...that cute cute kissable face.
Avery is honing her tiny mommy skills with baby J... giving her bottles, holding her, playing and even feeding her lunch, you will see in a further down picture.

See how fast that girl can jump!!! She was thrilled with whatever we were doing to get her to smile for the camera.

How cute are these two....just sitting together on the kitchen floor soaking up the afternoon sun. We are loving every moment. I forgot how fun it is to have a baby around to play with. It is nice to see how my big kids interact with smaller children. They are doing so well, i am so proud.

Sew and Tell Friday!!!!

Hooray, this week i have something to share. Finally. I did this so early in the week that i actually almost forgot i had a finish to share. Poor Avery i had to put her in the stairwell to take this picture because it was the only place i could get her high enough to see the length of my shower curtain.

From a vintage sheet and some other vintage fabrics i had in the house, from my mom, i made this shower curtain. I had some help from this blog tutorial. I would never have known what measurements to use if it had not been for the tutorial.

I am especially proud to have done these ruffles! i don't think i will ever do ruffles again. it was hard and frustrating but the end result is so fun and i guess, worth all the headache

All i need to do is get it hung in time for my company that will be here in the morning. Grommets is my plan but i may have to settle for the quick fix of curtain clips.

Head on over to Amylouwho's and see all the wonderful things everyone has accomplished this week.

yup, I'm here!

Here i am ... still out here in blogland....i confess I have been having a little dry spell. Things are busy around here and i am getting very caught up in projects around the house. i have been taking pictures and i hope to share with you all again at some point, but for now i am just trying to keep my house afloat and not looking as though it has been hit by a tornado, trying to keep up with school, prepare for house guests(that i am very excited about by the way)!!! So for now i will say i miss you all but life is real people and sometimes a girl just can not keep up.

thanks everyone for the nice words and concern about the iron attack! My arm is much better. We are keeping our contact to a minimum right now. And a little heads up...i am so flattered by all the new followers i have gained recently and blog friends i have made. I am thrilled that you like what you are reading. In honor of this and of my 500th post, that is coming up really, really soon...i am going to have a giveaway!!!! How fun is that? So keep an eye out...hope you will like it!

Meet my Nemesis

My Black and Decker and i have had a terrible day....ladies, a warning! Hang onto that iron tight....because just when you least expect it, it is going to try to make a break for it. I was getting ready to iron a backing for a very old project today when it got away form me and burned me good!!!I had no idea how big it was until later in the day when only the burn was red, not my entire inner forearm. See that perfect rectangular mark...that is the edge of the iron. My track record with burns is not that great...i think this is the third one in about 2 months. That seems a little much, right? Perhaps i should consider no longer handling hot objects. As if this was not enough, it fell off the ironing board and left a huge dent in my wood floor.

Look What He Did!

Mitchell was so proud of himself this morning. When he first got legos from aunt colleen he was frustrated because he did not think he could make anything. But as a little time has gone by he has really gotten the hang of it. He made this bat car this morning, he called it, and wanted me to take a picture and put it on the blog to show all of you out there what he had done.

These are just a few extra pictures we got over the weekend. These two are too cute. I am so lucky to have them....Avery is turning into such a beautiful little girl. And Mitchell keeps us laughing every single day. Love them.

Halloween Fun

Here are my kiddo's in all their halloween glory. Bad picture since we had to do them inside. It was pretty rainy. Mitchell was Ham from the recent movie, Space Chimps and Avery was a 50's girl...is their a name for this? She saw this outfit at the store and loved it. She looked so adorable.

Since it was a rainy and cold morning saturday I thought, why not start the fun with a batch of my mom's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Warm things up a little. I had never made them before...but i will again. They were so yummy.

Chris helped the kids make a plan and then walked them through the steps to carve their own pumpkins this year. Cause i don't know about anyone else but we always ended up doing it. This time the kids did a great job...daddy did help but not too much. Look how hard Mitch is concentrating. He has the thinking tongue out. :o)

Avery was working really hard scraping out the junk on the inside. SHe thought it was "totally" gross and wanted to have no part of it. Mitch on the other hand thought that was the coolest and grossest part of the whole thing. He revelled in every second of squishing it through his fingers. You can see by Avery's face what she tought of it all.

Sew and Tell Friday

I DID IT!!! not only do i have a finish for sew and tell today but this is also the quilt that is going to be auctioned at Chris work. This quilt was pieced and made long before i started blogging...so it has to have been sitting in my WIP pile for 2 plus years. It was my first try at a stack and wack quilt. When it was done i knew i loved it.

But it has been around for sometime so i am not as attached to it as i used to be. So i conceded and finished it for this auction. I sure hope that it goes for a decent amount otherwise i might be really disappointed. I know that i usually give them away and don't put a price on them, so this is strange to me. i think a little part of me hopes nobody wants it so that i can still keep it. It was hard to get good pictures of it because it was a very cloudy day. The border is brown with turquoise dots....there are greens, blues, purple,brown, oranges...nothing that i would ordinarily put together...but i was immediately drawn to it when i saw the fat quarter pack all together.

It is a large crib size or a small lap size..which ever way you want to look at it. I quilted it with straight lines and concentric rectangles. This is going to be hard to give up. If you were putting something like this in an auction what kind of starting bid do you think you would put on it? Now...that all that is said....go over to Amy's and check out what everyone else finished this week. I know there are lots of great things.

Recently Acquired

oh yes, i know...you are so shocked to see that i got some new fabric!!! Sometimes my power of resistance is very low. I found this fat quarter bundle of Ginger Blossom at the fat quarter shop...it is so pretty, fun and bright. Love it. glad i got it when i did because i don't see it there anymore.

I have been thinking about new kitchen towels...and right now i am loving old antique and vintage...so when i got a e-mail about vintage look toweling, on sale, i went for it. All i have to do is cut each yard in half, hem the ends and i have 6 brand new kitchen towels....hooray!! Plus as a bonus i got myself a little extra wee play yardage, because i love it!!! all from the same shop, the Calico Cottage Quilter.

This week i also got a surprise in the mail...i won a giveaway during Park City Girl's quilt festival. Ruth Anne dyes her own fabric and was giving away these two pieces. They are both very pretty and done with different techniques.

And then there is this....an acquired family heirloom of sorts. Every family has them but sometimes they are different than what you might think. Meet the much sought after chipmunk S&P shakers. My mom has had them forever and we love them...i tried stealing them recently but my very honest 5 year old ratted me out. But my mom let me borrow/have?? them this year because thanksgiving was going to be here. What if they are happier here mom? :o(

Flavors of the Season

Pumpkin seems to be the flavor du jour, if you will, in our house right now. This time of year when the weather cools down and changes...gets a little dark and damp... i want to bake. Something. Anything. This day it was Amish Pumpkin Bread. This was a recipe given to me as part of a wedding gift. Yet, it was not until about a year or two ago that i re-discovered it and how amazing it really is.

I love the part where i add the spices...all the different colors together looks so pretty to me.

This is a very moist and tasty...spicy bread. I think everyone should give this a try!!!

Amish Pumpkin Bread

3 C. Sugar
1 c. Veg Oil
4 Eggs, beaten
1 can Pumpkin, 15 oz.
3 1/2 c. Flour
2 t. Baking Soda
2 t. Salt(scant)
1/2 t. ground Cloves
1 t. each, Cinnamon, Allspice and Nutmeg
2/3 c. Water

Mix sugar, oil and eggs together. Add pumpkin. Then add dry ingredients, then water. Stirring just until mixed. Pour batter into 2 greased and sugared(that is the secret) loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 1 hour...be sure to test in the end it might need a little more time.

adapted from recipe by Cathy Meyer

Craigslist Rocks!!

Recently i was looking at craigslist with my mom and found this beautiful old sideboard!!! It was only 45. i almost fell off the couch and was instantly in love. Not only do i love old junk....but i love a deal and this goes in our house perfectly.

It has all sorts of beautiful old details that are just perfect. It is dinged, chipped and worn but those are the things i love about it!

I plan on using it in the dining room to hold my sewing stuff. Then i will be rid of the big ironing board and replace it with a table top board that i can put on it and use it when i need it or store it away. Next step is to hunt down a old table to replace the plastic folding table that i now sew on.

While we were there i asked her if she had any other old pieces that she was selling that she might want to show me. That is when i was shown this old dresser. I was excited. It is about time that Avery got a new piece of furniture to hold her clothes instead of her old baby dresser. I plan on refinishing this to make it look like this sideboard at A familiar path blog. I have been dying to do a piece of furniture in turquoise!

Sew and Tell Friday

Phew...i made it in under the wire!!! When i was flea marketing a few weeks ago with my mom i found this sweet little tea cup without a saucer....perfect for a pincushion!!! It has been patiently waiting on its transformation and today i wanted to be sure to get it done so that i could share it. Not hard...not complicated....but still a finish. I went hunting for fabric to use with it and found this Flea Market Fancy fabric by Denyse Schmidt and knew they were going to be a perfect pair!

Head on over to Amy's blog and see what everyone else has finished this week. There is lots of wonderful stuff....oddly Amy and i both did pincushions this week. What a funny coincidence.

A Smile for Today