November

Well hello there!  I totally missed all of November here on the blog!

I better get caught up! Let’s start with the end of October.  Here are our jack-o-lanterns that we carved.  We had a my little pony pumpkin, a Cinderella pumpkin, and just a cute face. Halloween was a scattered evening for our family, everyone having different things to do that night.  But we had fun carving pumpkins together a few days before.

The marching band once again took top honors at the final band review.  Go AJ!  We love spending the day once a year at this exciting competition. It looks pretty dry here, but we were definitely soggy by the end of the day from all the rain.

Miss K is turning into such a lovely lady…here she is at the Evening of Excellence at church.  She has worked so hard to improve her life and she is incorporating wonderful values in her life, and she sees the benefit they are making!

Card exchange group for November produced these fun Holiday cards:

And I participated in the Bitty Block Committee’s Winter/Christmas and Fall 3.5 inch block swaps.  Here are my contributions:  Ribbon Blocks and Fall Leaves.

I’ve got more to show and tell, but that’s it for now!  Hope you are having a wonderful December!

Well Hello There!

I really have been gone for far too long!

We are fully into the Christmas spirit around here.  We’ve done some things a bit different this year, and I like the changes.

I hosted our quilt group meeting for December on the 1st at my house, so I decorated earlier than I usually do.  I think I might do this every year!  It’s been so fun to enjoy my Christmas decorations for the whole month. (well at least up until this point!)

I just love to see the tree all lit up with so many fun ornaments from the years of handmade ornament exchanges.  Besides the tree, my favorite decorations are the Nativities. So sweet.

Another thing that’s a bit different this year… we’ve just been wrapping and putting the presents under the tree as we purchase.  Something I haven’t done in the past.  With the kids getting older I am not so worried about the impact of Christmas morning. What am I going to do on Christmas Eve?  I’m so used to wrapping presents all night after the kids go to bed!

I’ve done more online shopping this year.  It sure has been nice to shop in my jammies!  But it hasn’t prevented me from braving the stores a bit.  My tip is…hit the mall right away in the morning before it gets too crowded!

I’ve spent the last couple days helping a friend with some Christmas sewing…a couple bags that will be the gift as well as the wrapping.  They turned out so pretty. 

I’ve got a bit more shopping to do, but I think I’m almost done!  And one more trip to the post office.  (I hope!)

Merry Christmas!

Mumbo Gumbo inspired

Remember that pile of strips from yesterday?  This is what became of them last night at quilt group.  Thanks to Jen for the fun project idea! (from the pattern here http://www.pieintheskyquilts.com/mumbogumbo.html)

Next meeting we’ll be adding a piano key border and getting it layered, quilted, and bound.  (well probably not all in one night…but we’ll be on our way to finishing this up for a fun Halloween table topper) 

Now it’s time to get back to my other project!

Fun, fun!

Getting ready for a Halloween project…stay tuned….

Meanwhile I’m working on this:

Fun, fun!

Happy New Year

I’m ready to say good bye to 2010 and say hello to 2011!  I’m sure Miss K is too!  We found out today that she has shingles!  Poor girl.  Hopefully she will be able to get over it pretty quickly and move on to better times!

Things have been slow around here in the crafting/ sewing area and blogging lately.  I decided to look back at my 2010 pictures and make a mosaic of projects I’ve completed this year.  I was hoping it would motivate me, and I feel like it has!  I am happy to see that I did accomplish more than I realized this year.  I hope to get back in the swing of things in 2011.

Lots of fun memories here to look back on! 

Happy New Year to you.  Hope it’s a great one for all of us.

Happy December

I missed almost the whole month of November and it’s already the middle of December, wow!  I’ve been gone a long time.  Things have been crazy and a bit stressful around here.  And now I’m sick.  But hopefully all that is in the past and we can move on.  I’m counting on 2011 being a better year than 2010.

I’ll try to catch you up by going through some pictures (in no particular order):

Miss K was an Oompa Loompa in Willy Wonka.  That same week my grandmother passed away and I left right away to spend the week with my parents to help with the plans and attend the funeral.  It was a special week to remember my grandma, to support my parents and spend time together as a family.

I sent off these house blocks to a couple special ladies who were putting together a couple house quilts for some other special ladies who were fighting cancer.  What a wonderful project to be involved in!

I made these little sewing kits for some friends. (Diane, see that pink one..it’s yours. Still need to get it to you along with that video I borrowed from you so long ago!)

I took the nine patches I had from the three by three swap on Flickr and made up this quilt for my grandma’s roommate from the nursing home.  This is the top, I never got a picture of the final quilt, darn.  It was her birthday over Thanksgiving so we hand delivered it to her and my son was able to play happy birthday on his sax for her.  I was so glad to find a great use for those nine patches and thank her for keeping a look out for my grandma!

My boys competed in the southern California band review and their band won sweepstakes for the 11th year in a row! So exciting and special because it is the only year both boys (senior and freshman) will be in it together.

I made 12 of these house blocks for the 3.5 inch bitty block swap for November.  (more about that later!)

And I made this shabby chic cottage for Dawn for the Oct/Nov Mini QT (6-12 inches) Swap.

And this is the fun quilt that arrived in my mailbox from my swap partner. Thanks Dawn!

Now hopefully I’m caught up and I’ll be able to be back here blogging and sewing !  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

November Card Exchange

Here’s my card this month.  It’s a gift card holder for Christmas.  I used my Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot software to design the folder and tag.  The snowflake is from the Accent Essentials Cartridge. 

And here are the rest of the cards:

details:

Happy Halloween!

Hope yours was frightfully fun!

Trick or Treat…

Are you getting ready for Halloween at your house?  Miss K still loves to dress up, so she loves Halloween (not to mention loving the candy!)  This year she is dressing up as Wednesday Addams from the Addams family.  We won’t be trick or treating on Sunday, but we will celebrate Saturday night and hand out candy on Sunday.  She also gets to dress up at school, so that will be fun for her (the benefits of middle school)!

We decided to do a make-over on her bedroom door.  She (and the boys) have left her valentine hearts on their doors since February!

She’s got a cute little witch:

and a spooky old house and a spider web:

We just googled “halloween svg” on google images and found all these cute things for free that we could cut out on the Cricut. 

Happy Halloween!

Spring Break

We've been having too much fun this week for Spring Break.  Not a lot of sewing around here with the kids home.

But for Easter last weekend my parents were visiting and I had them each pick out fabric for an "Easter basket".  Here are the results:

And here are a couple pictures from our week off school:

We went to the beach, to the pool, shopping, attended a birthday party, played video games and hung out with friends.  And we worked at the Bishop's Storehouse (food bank) and got some homework done.

Miss K ran in the Junior Carlsbad.

And she went rock climbing with a friend.

 

AJ was gone all week.  He went on a trip with school to Washington DC, Pittsburgh and New York.  His favorite part was shopping in China Town...so he came back looking like this!  Nice!

In between all the fun activities we did some chilling out too.  Now it's back to work.  Only 8 weeks left of school before summer break.  We can't wait!