Goal for the Day: Take Pictures of Housewarming Quilt and new project!

So I did the binding yesterday of the housewarming quilt so it is done! This may be one of my favorites I have made. I absolutely love the colors and wish I had got enough of the materials to make 2 more ((one for me...though it doesn't go with anything in my house) and one for my best friend. These were her wedding colors and she would totally adore it. Perhaps I will wait for another fabric sale and then I will whip it up for a really nice gift later, just because).

Once again, my model demonstrates how great quilts are.

This quilt is going to a dear friend of mine who I was cube neighbors with at a former job and she recently got a new apartment and decorated her living room in pinks and blacks. It looks stellar and I wanted to add to it. I had made her some cloth napkins and napkin rings (though I didn't take pictures...my bad) for her housewarming party, but when we were there I was overcome by the desire to provide Rocky (her incredibly sweet cat) a warm place to snuggle with his owner while he wowed her with his impressive movie knowledge.

So, now that that is all wrapped up and ready to go to the new owner...on to the next project.

I have a former co-worker and friend from college who just had a little boy. I think I will try my hand at a stuffed animal for him. I don't know what I will be making yet, I have done crocheted animals that are pretty cute, but I'm not sure if I will do one of those or something sewn...we'll see what I turn out :)

I did it!

So, I am super proud of myself. I managed to finish the quilting on the housewarming quilt I was doing (though I haven't done the binding yet (that wasn't part of the goal after all). I would have liked to do that tonight, but I'm feeling a bit run down tonight (have had a migraine all day, so it has been LONG...and with nursing I can't take anything that would really help much, and what I took didn't help) so I am going to have the goal of going to bed early. I guarantee it will happen!

Goals for the day: Run errands AND finish housewarming quilt!

You may think by now that all I do is quilts! It definitely seems like that has been a large portion of the recent projects. That is partly because quilts are great to allow my hubby to participate in (he often comes and helps pick out the fabric (such as the last one I did)) and also I can get the majority of the items on sale.

A chair I found for Jules' room.

You should check out the sales flyers at JoAnn Fabrics and Hancock Fabrics- you can get some great deals. Also, I love Fabric.com to get large amounts of fabric. I have a huge bin of cottons and upholstery fabrics, and curtain material and such because I have an obsession with decorating/recovering furniture. (I'm sure that will be a goal for the day coming up at some point). I like to get great deals so when we come across a good piece of furniture I only look at the skeleton. I then go and find a coordinating fabric and cover it!

After recovering it.

I have done this with a few pieces- for example the glider we found for Jule's room (see pictures to the side here). This chair was really nice, except for the ugly duck covers. Now it is a lovely brown to go with her room (which is mostly white, brown and sage green for decor). See how crafty I can be :) I wish I had pictures of my furniture downstairs pre-recovering because it is definitely the most drastic change (one chair was aqua, the love seat was brown with tan specks and the coach was black with geometric pillows in black and tan (see picture of couch)). So I recovered them all in the same fabric I had originally obtained to cover just the loveseat (thank goodness I bought WAY too much). I recovered the cushions in another fabric because I was running low on the black...it wasn't until later I found out light blue and maroon was a trend (I'm so trendy, not really).

Not bad, but doesn't match the others.

The couch moments after finishing recovering.

My little model likes to be involved with
all my projects.

Here it is hanging in Jules' room
she got a bunch from friends so
mom's is hanging :)

I'm sure this is all really interesting, but I think I was talking about quilts. My bad! I am really a tangent kind of talker. Anyway, back to quilts. I have made a few now. I did my first quilt in 2002, the summer before I met and fell for Elliot. That quilt was a queen size and was on our bed up until June of last year when I got very determined to finish the quilt I was making to match our room (I started the quilt in 2008) which was quite complex (I painted fabric squares to put in it to match a silk I had painted and framed that hung in our room). So here is that quilt. It was a king and I can guess you can see why it took two years! After that success I determined (that being 7 months pregnant) I would probably be fairly busy after the baby came (I was right) and if I wanted Blueberry (we never found out the gender, but called our little one Blueberry as a placeholder) to have a quilt I made I was going to have to make it before the arrival. So I immediately set out to do the one for the little one. Elliot picked out the pattern (called blueberry basket) and I set to work.

So since then I have done other craft projects, but I find I love the quilt as a gift. It is so useful and not something everyone gets all the time. It takes a bit of time to do, but the results are well worth it. So, my goal is to finish a friend's housewarming throw quilt (at least the quilting portion) and run all my errands (between work and naps of course). One of those errands: mail that last quilt :)

Goal for the day: Finish getting baby quilt ready to send

So I have been away for a little while, but I did manage to keep on one of my goals (I promise to be better about posting before I complete, or better yet start a goal). I had started a baby quilt for a friend's to-be-born baby. They don't know the gender, so they have gone with fairly neutral colors of orange, lime green, yellow, plum, raspberry red and bright blue.

finished quilt. so colorful!

Background on this project. Elliot (my hubby, in case I haven't mentioned his name before) and I went to the same college together for 2 semesters (he was a freshman for the end of my Sophomore and beginning of my Junior years), which is where we met and fell for each other. He then left that college, moved and proposed to me (I'm sure I will cover the whole love story of us at some point piece by piece- oh the suspense :) ). Before his exit from that college, he had made some really close friends and brought me into their circle. The parent's of the baby recipient of this quilt were both from that group, so I consider that they were both our friends. They were the first (after us) of our friends to get married and the first (after us) to have a baby, so I am really excited they are joining us as parents because it really shakes up your social life. So it was nice having someone else in the same boat...however, they live in the state we went to college in, and we have moved to another, so we don't get to see them often, but their baby will have a quilt :)

Here I am: Ready to try this again

I have been having issues with old posts showing up on reader, but I guess I just have to let it go as I can't change it (after searching through tons of literature to see if I can remove them (nothing terribly embarrassing or inappropriate or anything) but still I was hoping to totally revamp this blog. But, because I can't I shall get back to just blogging.


I have been lacking in my goals (I made dinner that once).

Goal for the Day: Cook Dinner before Elliot got home

Well. It was a partial win for the goal.

I managed to feed my daughter, and start dinner. Oh, what a dinner. I had grandiose plans. Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken, broccoli, tomato, garlic and mushrooms. I had everything simmering and the noodles ready to go in the water, when I got the call.... It was Elliot and he was calling to remind me that he had a writer's meeting that night and would be swinging by to pick up the story he was reviewing and leaving.

So. Dinner was made and ready for me to have a fancy (rather romantic, if I do say so) dinner all to myself. Does that count as a win? I mean it would have been done and on the table for both of us if he hadn't had someplace to go. Do I dare try it again tomorrow...two days in a row after over 7 months of not having dinner ready when he arrived... he may think I did something wrong (like I accused him of that time he brought me home flowers).

PS- If you want to get flowers, DON'T be accusative and ask, "What'd you do wrong?" When presented with them. It eliminated all chances of said event happening again.

Life. It is a changin' and coincidently so is this blog

I have never been much for writing. I use the online dictionary daily to determine spelling and the exact right word for what I want to say.
       (Did you know there is no true antonym for procrastinator? I assume this is
       because the procrastinator thought up the term while avoiding other things
       and therefore the antonym was never created because the proactive
       individual was too busy doing everything they were supposed to ahead of
       schedule to come up with a word) I digress.
I also do not consider myself an expert about anything in general, with the exception of my own existence. So, I have been avoiding the whole blog creation, because everyone has one for their major milestones (baby, wedding, random talent, etc.) and I did not feel I was qualified to add to the knowledge of the masses as everything I will say, has more than likely been said before.
       (You've all heard about the infinite number of typewriters and infinite number
       of monkeys argument for Hamlet, so it would stand to reason the said
       monkeys typed exactly what I have said here or will ever say, well before
       anything of Shakespeare's (rightfully so)).

So why, you ask, would I willingly (and without so much as a request from others) decide to reformat my blog (which I had created purely as an online portfolio ages ago)? Well, it is simply this. I need to motivate myself to continue doing my hobbies and such and if I can go to a place and look at all the "cool" items I, myself have made I am more likely to find time to create more. I have found my memory to be a bit more slippery than it once was (I attribute this partially to the information overload that is the internet and being a fairly new mom (my daughter is 7 months old)) so I do like the journal aspect that a blog provides and I am hoping I can do a goal for the day or week or month or whatever seems most reasonable. I have in the past, been overambitious with projects and especially syllabi's requirements (I always got slightly stressed when I saw a syllabus because it made me want to get it done NOW), so I will also try to pace myself. 

So here I am, at the beginning of a project, that potentially will assist me to continue other projects (that sounds fairly complicated, does that make it deep?...). Here's hoping for the time to complete it all!

I can't begin a project like this without mentioning where I was and where I am/intend to go:
I am a late twenty-something SAHWM (Stay-at-home-working mom). Yes, that is a new spin on an old term. I work from home as a graphic designer (print is 97% of my work, so I am hoping you will be gentle on your criticism of my lack of amazing web design) while watching my daughter full time. This has created some REALLY unique working hours as I try my best (which is all one can ever do) to be fully invested in each role I am in at the time, so that means all other items take a back seat. My house is not spotless, my yard is in desperate need of a manicure (or heck even a good trim job before spring springs), I haven't watched TV in years (I do however enjoy a few choice shows via streaming occasionally), and dinner often is a last minute thing and often cooked by my amazing husband. I admit it, I am not the master of my domain, but here's hoping I will improve and become more efficient in all tasks and not just my fun ones.

GOAL for Today: Cook Dinner before Elliot (said husband) arrives home from work.