Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Ok, so today I have a project to share that I've been working on. It all started when I saw this circle quilt here. I fell in love the design and decided I HAD to make one. Then our friend Eric and his wife found out they were having a baby girl. I decided that I would make the circle quilt for his baby. So then I found this incredibly fabulous line of fabric called Sultry by Moda. You can check out its lusciousness here. Isn't it gorgeous? The quilt itself is pretty simple to make. I simply cut 6" squares of white fabric. Then using an old CD for a template, I placed the CD on the fabric and cut around the CD to make my circles. The circles are stitched onto the white squares with a zig zag stitch and then all the blocks are sewn together into the quilt top. I added the pink border and then stitched together strips to make the piano key border around the outside edge. I had this top done fairly quickly but then the quilting was what gave me problems. See, my old sewing machine was giving me fits when I tried to free motion quilt. It was bad, with the thread on the bottom coming out loopy and ugly. So frustrating! But my wonderful mother gave me an early birthday present-a new sewing machine! It is so awesome! I LOVE it! (Thank you, Mom!) I figured my quilting problems were over but no. I didn't have the proper foot for my new machine. :( But after figuring out what foot I needed and ordering it, I finally got my new machine set up and got to quilting! Hooray! :) This brings me to the nearly finished product.
I almost don't want to give it away. The last part to do to finish it all up is to trim the edges, removing the excess batting and backing fabric then sew on the binding. I'm on the home stretch. Good thing, too, because little Raquel, the recipient, was born about a month ago. She was over 9 lbs at birth so I better get it to her before she outgrows it! ;)

Saturday, May 21, 2011


This week we had a birthday at our house! Yes, Hubby celebrated his birthday on Wednesday. His choice of cake is always chocolate cake with chocolate frosting so, of course, that's what I made. I tried a new recipe that I found on Our Best Bites.com, which was actually from Cook's Illustrated. Seriously, the best chocolate cake I have ever had! Here's the recipe in case you need to try it. And trust me you do! Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake I made the chocolate frosting that goes with it but I have to say I'm not sold on it. It was ok, but not my favorite. But the cake! I could totally eat that without any frosting at all. (and actually, I did as I was trying to level the layers. All those scraps were too delicious to waste) It is more work than just mixing up a box mix but so worth it! Anyway, enough about the cake, here are a few pictures.
And, you know, we didn't really do anything else exciting like a pinata or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Though we did BBQ out in the rain/thunder/lightening/hail. Living dangerously! LOL We had such crazy weather. Went from rain/snow/hail to 80 degrees back to cold rain/hail/thunderstorms in a matter of days. Really wish it would warm up and STAY warm! It killed off my two little tomato plants. :(
Anyway, I also want to wish my BIL, KT, and my ONLY niece, AMT, happy birthday as well! They had birthdays in the last week or so, too. So, I guess that about covers it for now. Till next time...
We had a mountain of aluminum cans and plastic bottles in our backyard that we had been saving for almost a year. Hubby promised the kids that if they helped to gather and sort them he would give them the money he got when he took them to the recycling center. Saturday we all pitched in to sort them and load them up the back of his truck. This is the amount of money that each of the kids received. Not too bad, considering we don't have CRV or anything here. Aluminum is only 70 cents a pound and plastic is 40 cents a pound. We ended up recycling around 14 pounds of cans and 15 pounds of plastic.This is the pile of tabs that we took off all those cans to give to Ronald McDonald House.
Anyone care to venture a guess as to how many tabs there are?

Somebody lost another tooth last night! Our house is sure keeping the Tooth Fairy busy!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

This has been an exciting week here! My (not so) little MoMo lost her first tooth! The Tooth Fairy actually had to make two trips to our house as Big R lost a tooth this week as well. Though he's already at #6. But here's a picture of MoMo with one less tooth.
In addition, this week was the annual Spring Wings festival here. This is the first time we have actually gone to it. Big R's class went on a field trip during the week to Spring Wings and he was excited to go on Saturday to the family day. They had booths set up with information on birds and conservation as well as crafts for the kids to make. There was even a local falconer and her apprentice there with their red tailed hawk. We also saw a presentation with a rescued great horned owl which is being rehabilitated for release into the wild. In addition, they offer guided tours of different bird watching areas with BLM and Fish and Game personnel. We didn't do that this year but maybe next year we will! I have some pictures to share. These first two are the red tailed hawk.
Next, we have the kids decorating a bird inspired card.
And Big R throwing spears at a bear target. It was a little tricky but he did hit "bear" a couple of times! (ooops! I accidentally published before I was ready!) Here's the rest of the post...
And then some pictures of the owl presentation.
So, there you have it. Lost teeth and Spring Wings!