So I was thinking...

So I was going through some really old blog entries last night, thinking about those early days of my blogging. What it was like when I dicovered this great world. All of the great people and inspiration. I loved doing things like back tack and whip lash and all sorts of swaps. Those type of things always facillitated fun projects and new perspectives. I liked the theme or assignment aspect of them. Now a days I feel like those times are farther and fewer between. And as much as I enjoy a good swap, sometimes I want to be challenged to make something and give it to someone locally or just hang it up in my house. And I like the thought of getting ideas from other people centered around a central theme. So I thought, why not try to get a group together to have a theme every month and see what comes of it? I don't know if I am explaining this very well, but this is what I am proposing: Every month we can have a theme. Because January is almost over (thankfully! It is so cold!!) we can spend the next ten days signing up and get the theme going on Feb 1. I think for February, I propose the theme to be Gifts for Children. I, for one, know there are many spring and summer birthdays coming (and new babies!)and I would love to get started on gifts for my friends and get ideas from others as to other gifts. Once you complete your project, post it on your blog, send me a link and I will make sure everyone gets access to all the goodies. Maybe, if it is a small group, I will post the list here, or if it gets to be a larger group, I will set up a blog for it. For this month the theme will remain broad but some months it would be fun to have an assingment like, "use wood and fabric, three buttons, and a glue stick and see what happens" Not that literally, but a set of constraints to work within. If you would like to sign up, please send theme ideas for future months. Any one game? If so, here are the guidlines one more time:

Monthly creative challenge!

1. email me at mobed@comcast.net to let me know you are in. I will need your email address and any ideas you have for future themes. Once I have a list we can vote on them. Plus, if you have cute name ideas that sound better than "monthly creative challenge" feel free to email those as well.

February's challenge:

Handmade gifts for children

Once you have your project completed, email me the link and I will make sure to get them together for eveyone's perusal.

I want this to be fun and no pressure. No deadlines to get packages mailed, no, "I hate that theme I don't want to do it" Just drop in when you want and skip the ones that come at busy times or that really don't inspire. So let the playing begin!

P.S. if anyone is curious, that adorable heart up there is from the Martha Stewart Valentine stuff at Michaels. The yarn is going to be a scarf sometime this week!

Quilt hug part two

Here is the quilt I made for my son for his Christmas gift. He is a shark officiando so it was never a question what I would make this out of. This is also a Valori Wells quilt pattern. I love the back because I was able to
find some yummy thick flannel that looked sort of watery and tie dyed which was perfect with the ocean creatures.

I have one more quilt cut out and ready to sew for my father in law and then I am moving on to a Project Linus quilt. I did make a visit to Bolt today and that place never fails to knock my socks off. I spent way too much but can't wait to cover my dining room chairs in what I found.

We had a great day today. It is frigid cold here (30's and low 40's) but the sun has been shining and the sky is so clear and blue and that always puts me in a better mood. We went to OMSI and had a ball. Hope everyone else had a great saturday!

Like a big fabric hug...

As I have mentioned, it felt important to me this year to make gifts for Christmas. The ones I wanted to make the most were quilts for each of my kids. I told them to think of them as big fabric hugs because I thought lovey thought sof them the whole time I sewed. I had to buy new fabric for my son's quilt but I have an extensive stash that I wanted to dig into for my daughters. I will tell you that it took me a few days of fiddling around to get the fabrics the way I wanted. Sewing was easy- all that fabric fiddling was quite a puzzle. I have a lot of fabrics in my stash but some of them are just little bits and pieces so finding the right combination of fabric and sizes was key. In the end I bought two new ones and the rest came from my stash. I had just that little piece of the old Amy Butler with the bird for the center and I love that part of it. She loves it and I have to say that I was pretty happy with it too. The back is thick pink flannel to up the cozy factor. I put a pieced strip through the back panel too for fun. Here is the whole thing. I used the Valori Wells Carry All throw pattern.

It was pretty dark and grey for the photos but that is how it will be for the next couple of months so I might as well get used to it. Blech! Does anyone else feel like January is the most stagnant month around? Even though I adore Valentines Day, January and February just suck it out of me. They zap my energy and make me feel like I am just waiting. Waiting for what? Not sure. But whatever it is, it takes a long time to get here. I am sure some of it (most of it?) must have to do with the combination of dark wet grey cold days and no fun of the holidays looming. I need to start looking to the positive and making myself get outside more. Maybe that will help. Or, we can all wrap ourselves up in snuggly quilts and wait it out!

More gifts

Here are a couple more gifts I made for the holidays. The above is from the same Martha Stewart issue with the vintage state bird embroidery patterns that I used for this. I think the patterns are so great. My sister is redoing her bedroom magenta and navy so I thought this would be good.

What do you make a 70 something man who doesn't really want anything and is someone who might not particularly appreciate craftiness? A big old heating pad cover. He was a scuba diver back in the day so I felt the fish would be good. Practical and snazzy.

These fabrics would make a cute quilt for a wee one. Great colors.

We went out to a party last night with the whole family and it was so great to see friends we hadn't seen in over a year. Sort of sad since we all live relatively close to each other. But one of my resolutions it to reconnect with certain folks so that ball is rolling.

Love these

We made these over the break and I just love how they turned out. I found the little silver snack trays at an estate sale along with the plastic angels. I gave the kids cotton balls, glitter and sequins and they made these ornaments for my mom and sister. I just think they are so sweet.

We made some for us too and I hung them around the house. The trays cost .25 for about 10 and the angels were around .50 so it was a bargain too.

Back Tack recap

Lots of photos in this one. I wanted to post the goodies that came out of back tack 4, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was my third back tack and I always enjoy myself and have met nice people along the way. I only have this one photo above of what I sent my partner- the rest of it went into the box without a photo. She has this fantastic kitchen so I thought this set would go well. The towels were purchased plain and I added the fabric and the mitt is from a Denyse Shmidt book that I love. My partner, by the way, was Julie from Denmark. You should go check out her blog as she is a fantastic writer and has lovely photos to boot. Look what she made me...

This gorgeous tea cozy. It was funny because we both ended up sending kitchen items and tea. I love this cozy- the colors are so great and the butterfly in the corner is my favorite. The tea she sent was from Norway and it is amazing! I love really nice fragrant tea.

She also sent those darling coasters in the top right, a little book and the french press cozy at the bottom. I need to get a french press to fill it but my hubby will be thrilled with one so there you go. She is living in Denmark and sent this darling Danish Christmas candle. Funny thing was that the day I got the package I was out shopping and some woman asked the store clerk if they had these candles. They didn't of course.

And these little beauties... I love jewelry and the green beads are such a great color.

So there you go! Back tack is always a good time.

Meanwhile, my plan was to make christmas gifts this year and I enjoyed making the towel and oven mitt set so much that my mom got one too. I found some great insulated batting made just for oven mitts so they should do a good job of blocking the heat. I love that umbrella fabric- a friend brought it from Hong Kong for me and this was a good way to use just a little bit of it. Love those colors.

Meanwhile, no sewing today. We continue to battle the flooding furnace pit. Argh! We finally called someone to come by on saturday night. All day I had been telling my husband that we needed to just build a little dam to divert the water coming into the crawl space into the sump pump and he did not agree and all day he kept telling me that we just need to block off the drain spout on the gutter so that water can't get down it and I kept disagreeing with him. So the guy comes out to help us and tells us that the drain spout is broken somewhere under the surface and what we need to do is build a little dam to divert the water into the sump pump and then go block off that drain spout so water can't get in. We just looked at each other and laughed. Together we are useless! It cost us $114 to have him tell us that but at least then we had a plan. Poor 6'4" hubby had to be in the crawl space for several hours to build the dam. Watching him crawl out of the tiny hole in the wall is like watching clowns all pour out of that tiny car. So both things were done yesterday and then heavy rains came... we have water in the furnace pit but only about half an inch so I consider it successful. Let's hope we have more fun next weekend!

Isn't it beautiful?

No more water! This is a photo of our furnace pit. (that big black tube is from the wet dry vac). We live in a 60's tri level and the furnace is in a little pit in a closet on the first floor. It has been a tiring week and after we got the kids in bed on Thursday night, we finally sat down to watch a movie. About a half hour into it, the furnace popped on and sounded especially loud and a little weird. I reluctantly got up off my cozy spot on the couch and opened the door to the furnace closet. Nothing looked amiss but then I turned on the light and doscovered it was sitting in about 9 inches of water-almost to the top of the sticker. Not a good idea for a furnace. The filter was partially submerged and that was probably what made all the racket. I yelled at my husband what was happening, and after a brief scene that looked a litle three stooges with us running around trying to figure out what to do, we got the furnace turned off and started bailing. We have only had that furnace for three years and it was not cheap so I had bad thoughts of money flying out the window. We finally hit the hay at 3:00 a.m. because as we bailed, it kept refilling. It finally stopped raining so the water slowed down and we could go to sleep. The next morning we had our neighbor Bob over to help us figure out a plan. Everyone should have a neighbor Bob. Not only does he look like Santa, he is sweet and generous with his time and a hoot to boot. He told us that we were the third house he had been to. The jist of it is that we had 18 inches of snow that melted over the period of about 36 hours follwed by a day where it rained 3 inches total in 24 hours. We have had a break now in the rain and things are drying up nicely. I hope the break will be long enough to give the ground some room for the next rain. Plus the heat is back on and that is nice. Bob got some bread pudding for his help and I only hope he likes it as much as my fudge which he- don't tell his wife and daughter- hid in the garage so he didn't have to share!
Later that day we found out bad health news for another wonderful neighbor and a friend called and told me her husband had been laid off. Four kids and no severance. 2009 will need to start trying a little harder! It is a good reminder though to be happy and thankful for what you have.

Happy New Year!!

Hard to believe that the holidays are over and we are heading into a new year! That is a photo of our street in the last snow storm. Snow usually happens later around here so I feel like it should be later in the season than it is. I will say that getting snowed in for two weeks was sort of grounding for me because it afforded so much undistracted family time and just time puttering around the house. It was a funny time to slow down when that last push before the holidays is usually so harried. Fortunately I had things done surprisingly early this year so that was a help. I wonder if I had a sixth sense to the coming storm, like Pa did in the Long Winter. (I love those books!) So after much thought, I have comprised a partial list of goals for the coming year. Our friends have adopted the mantra "refine in 2009" and that seems a good goal. Refining and fine tuning- not overhauling. I think I will look at my goals at the beginning of each month and fine tune as I go along. So in no particular order, here goes:

1. Get the whole family eating healthier. Stir Fry once a week and salmon once a week for starters. We like both things, we just don't eat them enough.
2. Teach myself to type without looking at the keys. Funny thing is that I can type as well without looking at the keys but I am so used to staring at them while I type, it has been a hard habit to break.
3. More time being physical for me. More walks, more yoga, more just moving myself for the sake of moving myself.
4. Keep a slower pace. Less t.v , more sleep, more tuning into my thoughts. I had to laugh- I read all four of the Twilight books over a period of two weeks and in order to do that I didn't even turn the tv on over those two weeks. Though I don't watch a ton of tv anyhow, it got me into a good habit of not even turning it on. Though I will say I enjoyed several very cheesy holiday tv movies but those are done now.
5. Have people for dinner once a month. We used to entertain all the time and then it all became a tad overwhelming with kids so it slowly petered out. We do casual evenings in with friends but I would like to reconnect with some folks we have fallen out of touch with and this seems a good way to start doing that.

And for the month of January, my goal is to post here every other day.

Overall I like to think this year will be about momentum and inertia. I think once I get myself going on certain things, the inertia will help me keep those things going.
Cheers to a wonderful 2009!