Merry Pinterest

Hopefully everyone has been enjoying the holiday season with family and friends. Lee and I finished up Christmas with our families yesterday with his parents. It was great to spend so much time with our families, as we have both been so busy lately. The Christmas holiday crept up on us very quickly. I only had time to make one gift for a friend this year, last year nearly all my gifts were crafty!

I got sucked into the pinterest cult about a month ago, which is great during class when lectures can't hold my attention. :) I love having all my inspirations for quilts and other crafts, along with ideas for finishing our basement, all in one place. If anyone needs an invite to pinterest, let me know. But be warned: it is addictive!

While browsing pinterest I added a few things onto my to-do list, and finished them. The first was a makeover of our front door to showcase our new picture frame wreath. When we bought our house it was a boring white color, with blue trim. We painted it a year later to a slate blue, with white trim but never got around to paining the front door, which I have wanted red ever since we moved in. When I found this holiday frame wreath on pinterest I had an excuse to finally paint it. Here is our holiday wreath:

I love how it turned out, and how easy it will be to change the item in the frame with changing seasons and holidays. I am going to work on painting a 'K' for non-holiday months (for our last name). Not sure if I want to do a heart for Valentines day yet (my least favorite holiday) but I will be making a four leaf clover for March!

Another item I added to my to-do list for the holidays were these melted snowman cookies:

The recipe is here. Aren't they adorable, and very easy too. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to snap a picture of my cookies before taking them to the cookie exchange for work. I had a couple though, they were delicious.

The last item on my holiday to-do list was the one and only homemade gift I did this year: a mini quilt of the Hogwarts Crest.

This was my first attempt at paper piecing, which I was surprised at how easy it was. The geek in me did a little dance when I discovered sewhooked.com has free patterns for many different Harry Potter themed blocks. The recipient loved her crest, and my husband was a little sad to learn it was a gift for someone else. I will be making another to stay in our home, not sure if it will be a wall hanging like this one, or a pillow for the couch.

Well, those have been my crafts from the past month. I was thrilled to find out I got A's last semester, hopefully I can keep my GPA up next semester too. I have two weeks before classes start, with one week before I go back to work, I love winter holiday break! A friend asked me to make her a quilt for her nephew, which I have sketched my plan for, then I have a few other quilts on my to-do list. My goal is to finish at least two quilts....I'll keep you posted. :)

 Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, blog friends!

Oh, Tannenbaum

The Christmas season has began. We finally got our tree decorated Thursday night, it only sat out without ornaments for a week until we had time to finish it. Lee and I are both at the end of fall semester and very busy finishing papers, projects and studying for finals.

Today we had our first winter snow. Penny has been enjoying it, the malamute in her really comes through when snow is on the ground!

I wanted to share with you my office/quilt room tree. We have two little table top trees that we decorate in our house, one has a popcorn string and ribbon with a few little ornaments, the other I changed up this year. I dug through my scrap bin (I save everything) and tied little pieces of fabric onto the tree. It turned out pretty cute, colorful and was very resourceful. I finished it up with a little tinsel and placed it next to my quilting table. What do you think?

 

My husband loves this time of year. For me it is the runner up to fall. But there definitely is a magically feeling in the air during a peaceful snowfall like today. Happy Holidays!

Biscotti Pips

Hello, everyone in blog-land, it sure has been awhile! Hopefully everyone has had a great Thanksgiving weekend, for those of you that celebrated. We had two dinners this year, one Thursday with my husband's family, then dinner at our house yesterday with my family (sans a sick brother and plus another brother's new girlfriend, who I love!) and with Lee's parents. I ate a bit too much pie, the gym was not fun this morning! I sure am thankful for my good health which allows me to go the gym and work off some of the added calories I ate.

As you can probably guess, I have been busy with schoolwork lately, so not much quilting has gotten done, until last week. I whipped out two baby quilts in one week, I sure did miss it! One quilt was another Husker Play Square that one of my boss's paid me (yay) to make for a friend's new baby girl. The other was for my own friends' 2nd baby, whom will be hear sometime next month. They were in Nebraska from Colorado yesterday to visit family and stopped by for a visit and to receive their baby quilt.

They don't know the sex of their baby (which they call Biscotti), so I wanted to do something gender neutral, but I also really wanted to use my charm pack of Sherbet Pips, so if Biscotti is a boy, he will have some pink in his quilt. :) I am not one to stick to gender color rules though, and neither are these friends, so they didn't mind. I call this quilt "Biscotti Pips."

I used a dark grey Kona solid to alternate between the charm squares, then I found a blue solid that closely matched the blue in the Sherbet Pips line for the backing, and a red dot fabric for the binding. I did straight line quilting a 1/4 inch on each side of the seams with blue thread that matched the back. I love the way the back of the quilt looks, unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it in time.

Once again I attached the binding completely with my sewing machine. I love the time I save by doing it this way! I referred back to this tutorial and also discovered how to get great corners by attaching binding by machine. After attaching the binding to the back of the quilt, press the binding down with your iron at the corners on the back of the quilt.

Then flip the quilt over, fold the binding over the corners on the front of the quilt:

 

and press with your iron once more. This helps to hold the binding in place when attaching the binding to the front of the quilt.

Here is how the binding turned out on the front:

and the back:

When pressing the binding in the corners, it also helps to press it all around the quilt to make sure you are folding it over in equal amounts. Hopefully these tips are helpful for someone, I wish I had learned this a few quilts back, my corners of the binding never turn out perfect, until I tried this.
Next on my to-do list are two Christmas lap quilts for our living room, and a quilt my friend Mandy has asked me to make her nephew as a Christmas/1st Birthday quilt, her request: Eric Carle or Dr. Seuss. I am very excited! Hopefully I will be back to blogging in a few weeks, the fall semester is almost over!

Sentimental Sunday

I am feeling quite sentimental today. Our house is fully decorated for Halloween (sans the Ghastlies quit). Tomorrow we will be greeted by hundreds of children dressed up in costumes knocking on dozens of doors for candy. And today I am listening to Halloween Radio on Pandora, writing papers and not wanting this holiday to end.

Seven years ago today, I met my husband. He was dressed as a male nurse, myself as a Mardi Gras girl caught on Girls Gone Wild. We met at a mutual friend's Halloween party, and we hit it off that night. Ever since I was a little girl I have loved Halloween, it is the one day out of the year you are allowed to play make believe. My mom would always help us put our costumes together, either by visiting Goodwill or making a completely homemade costume. This year, Lee and I didn't have a party to go to, instead we have spent our evenings watching Halloween movies, and tonight we will carve our pumpkins.

Here I am with friends at that party seven years ago. There are several great friends that are not pictured here, in particular the ones that came dressed as Husker fans....after a game, you know who you are.

Right now I am finishing up some homework, and maybe I'll get to quilting this guy. I've decided to leave the decorations up a few more days. We'll be the crazy people in the neighborhood with tombstones in our yard in November. I swear it isn't that I am too busy to put them away, or lazy, I just want to keep Halloween going a few more days.

Here is a look at my table runner I made last year for Halloween. I did this in one evening, using orange thread for the quilting, and the quilt as you go method. I love the contrast of the orange stitches on the white fabric, plus the black and white fabric I used for the binding is perfect.

Happy Halloween to you! I hope you have made some wonderful memories this Halloween season. I'd love to hear about them!

3 Years Ago

Three years ago, I married my best friend. I often joke with him that someday this will be my future husband. But in reality, Hugh Jackman has nothing on Lee! Lee supports everything that I do. He encourages me to be the best I can be, and pushes me when he knows I can do better. He helps me make sure my head is attached to my shoulders, as well as finding other important things....car keys, shoes, cell phone....  He makes me laugh always, even if his jokes are not funny (which sometimes they really aren't, I shouldn't fuel his ego!).

It has been a wonderful three years, filled with many memories for the two of us to reflect back on and share with our children one day. We have known each other, and been together, for almost 7 years, and I don't want to imagine what a life without him would be like.

So here is to my wonderful husband Lee, and our first three years of marriage. And here is to all of your other halves, may they compliment you and spoil you as much as my husband does me.

Tomorrow we plan to spend the day together: pumpkin patch, lunch, a walk with Penny at the spot we were married and some movies. Then in two weeks we will be seeing Beauty and the Beast at the Lied Center, which mirrors our honeymoon of Disney World three years ago.

And for an update on my Ghastlies, they are still waiting to be quilted. With mid-terms next week, and a few papers due, I will be lucky if they are finished before my Halloween decorations are put back in their totes.

The Most Wonderful Time...

...of the year! I love fall, or autumn; October to be exact. It has always been my favorite time of the year. When I was a kid I planned for months in advance what I wanted to be for Halloween. I loved helping my mom decorate at the beginning of October, helping my aunt rake leaves (we didn't have any big trees in my neighborhood when I was growing up), and crunching in leaves that had fallen onto the sidewalk. I love the cooler weather which means my new (or digging out old) clothes, and jackets and scarves. I love how it gets darker faster, and comfort foods, especially my mom's apple pie!
I met my husband in October too, at a Halloween party to be exact. And, we were married in October, on a beautiful fall day, with gorgeous autumn colors and wonderful family and friends. This is the best month!

To go along with my favorite month, my whole house gets a makeover. Every inch of our home is decorated in spooky, creepy, macabre and fun Halloween decor. Most of our decorations are homemade, or very cheap since I have decorated the whole house. To go along with my decorations, this year I added little bits of the Ghastlies. I used the scraps from making my Ghastlies quilt to make decorative balls for our candle holder on our coffee table. This coffee table item was a gift from a food friend when we moved into our home, and it gets a new look every month or so. So here is a glimpse at my Halloween balls, for lack of a better name, made with some glue, fabric scraps and Styrofoam balls.

And hopefully soon, I will finish quilting my Ghastlies and you will get to meet them, along with other shots of our decorations, which may take a long time. :)