Saturday, July 18, 2009

Wow, a week already

Well, I hadn't meant for almost a week to go by before posting again. Actually I have a couple of things to blog about, but I haven't downloaded the pics of my camera yet. I love my camera, but it uses one of those extra large memory cards, meaning I have to use a USB to get pics off it. For some reason this is just too much work for me. But I much prefer posts with pictures in it, so I will wait to post those until later.


Meanwhile, this week I helped the older Nephew make "squiggly wigglies". This was something I have seen on the internet, but of course can't remember where. (EDIT - Found the post I saw it on - here). The nephew had great fun making and eating them, I am even told he had to have them again for dinner the next night. I love being the cool aunt. **If your interested the above food is cut up hotdogs with raw spaghetti in it. Then boil until the spag is done. The nice thing about this is Nephew was able to make it himself. He was pleased to eat a dinner he made!


Then we took the boys to the beach later inthe week. The older nephew loved it, but the younger one was not too sure. He had been once last year, but at just over a year old now, I doubt he remembered it. He hated the feel of the sand and it took him a while to decide he liked it. Once he did, he went full hog into the sand and was soon covered from head to toe. Isn't he styling in his suit and hat?


Lastly, wanted to remind everyone about the contest over at SewMeow's. Today is the last day to eneter, I am giving it one more shot....you knows, maybe a birthday gift for me!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

This Weekend


So, as I stated on Friday, no sewing or crafting this past weekend. But lots of fun with family and friends. We had a great time on Saturday, celebrating my brother-in-laws birthday. He actually came down and spent with my family, I do have the cutest nephew ever! They spent some time fishing. My nephew couldn't understand why he didn't catch anything...could it be that he was putting down into 4 inches of water, where he could still see the hook? No matter, they had fun!

Friday, July 10, 2009

...As You Would Do Unto Others


And the day I gave my aunt the gift, she brought this down for me. Isn't it great!?!?! They were cleaning out their garage and came across this. My Aunt had gotten it from a widower whose wife sewed. She was very good and even wrote articles in the local paper. My Aunt had gotten it to give to her mother-in-law, but she passed away and so it sat in their garage. She called me earlier in the week to ask me if I might be interested...heck yeah! She knew I was enjoying sewing, but had no idea I was working on something for her. My current sewing machine - a bottom of the line White. I love her, but she was as nice as I could afford. I am/was still learning things on this one, so the Singer will be a whole new world for me.

Look at all of these great things!



The desk is full of all kinds of goodies, from more feet, to piping to needles!


Look at all the options for stitches. How will I choose? ...And all those feet.


The manuals A fancy button holer...



I am super excited about the monogrammer...we are going to have EVERYTHING monogrammed, down to our undies! Plus there was this extra sewing bin. Look inside...


Threads galore! Many of them are brand new. And lots more feet and needles and bias tape. Soo much stuff! I will have a lot of fun.

Now the sad news....We are having huge amounts of company this weekend (I am supposed to be cooking now), and the machine is relegated to the garage until after everyone leaves. I hear it calling me, cruel fate. Watch out Monday!

Do Unto Others...


So this is what I have been busy working on. My Aunt and Uncle just bought a house down here by us at the Shore. My Aunt loves "cute" and is determined to turn the little cottage into a cute-sy beach home. She is painting the walls a light turquoise color, so I thought I would make a house-warming gift to match. This is the table runner I made. The cool thing is that I found a GREAT new quilting shop for the fabric. Quilting Possibilities is about an hour north of me, but it was so worth the trip. As we live near the ocean, it was great to find a shop that had worked so hard to find so many great marine-themed fabrics. It was tough to choose. I will certainly be going back. Anyway, after much looking I picked these fabrics and made this great table runner for my aunt. She aboslutely loved it. As always I can see my flaws, but fortunately she doesn't. The good news is that I am seeing less and less of thema s time goes on.

This is a close up of the panels, aren't they cute?


To prep for making the table runner, I made one myself. Since it was right before the 4th, I thought I would go patriotic. I haven't had a chance to baste and finish it yet...knowing me, that will get done in time for the next 4th of July!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

SewMeow's Birthday Giveaway


SewMeow is still having her giveaway in honor of her birthday, and I thought I would enter one more time to try to win, that means another blog post here. I believe in following the rules, and get really discouraged when others don't. Do you? I, for instance, usually count how many items people have in the "10 items or less" lane. Sometimes its a way to kill time, sometimes it really aggravates me when they have 20 items...of course are two cans of peas - 1 item or 2?!?!
Anyway, to enter her contest I need to blog about so here it is. The picture above are the items in the giveaway.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

More Giveaways in Blogger Town

There are a couple of great giveaways going on right now. And many of them center on July Birthdays....Yeah July Birthdays!!!! Mine is the 23rd and winning any of these great contests would be a great b-day gift.

This one looks great - SewMeow is adding a new item everyday until her birthday.
Go on over and see if you can win (then send me some of the really cute fabric as a thank you!).

And this is a cool blog, that is giving away several prizes - I'm Just a Guy That Quilts - things like this:






The last one for the day is over at ctpubblog. They are giving a way a bunch of goodies in grab bags. They have 16 goodie bags chocked full of great things. Head on over for your chance to win.

My 4th of July


BEFORE



AFTER

So we did have a picnic and do all the regular 4th of July stuff....fireworks and all.
But, we did use the three day weekend to get our garage cleaned also. Sadly, now that I look at the pictures, they don't do it justice. It really is much cleaner...promise.
We moved everything out and put our stuff away where it goes. Then in the middle of the floor is some of my parents stuff and a big pile for the yard sale. We will do a yard sale this year, we will do a yard sale this year - if I say it enough it will happen right? Our prime yard sale weekend isn't until the end of September, so it will be difficult to keep everything organized until then, but I am determined.
I bought shelving yesterday to help, so I am headed out there now, while it is still cool out.
Wish me luck!
Ohh, and as for the fun stuff we did - here is an example! Lilly has learned that it is fun to jump into the water.

Winning is fun

As I mentioned in a previous post, I won several giveaways recently. One of them was a design your own fat quarter bundle from the Fabric Shopper. I was super excited to win this one, since it was 12 fat quarters that I picked. These are them:

I have been checking the mail everyday for the goodies to arrive, and imagine my joy when they arrived yesterday. I was actually a little bummed, the note attached said they had to make some substitutions based on availability.

Turns out I only got one of the ones that I had picked out. Bummer, but....looks at the adorable ones that were substituted. Aren't they cute? Sadly, though, I don't think that they will all go into one project. The fabrics are just to different. This means lots of new projects! Yeah!