Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek of what I am working on for Trae. I am so excited about it all. I am loving how all of the fabrics are coming together. Some of these I happened upon very randomly and unexpectedly and they are some of my favorites.

Here are other pictures from our drive to California this past time. All of these pictures are in Truckee. We love it there.

Bella loves the snow just as much as we do.

New Projects

I have two new projects I will start on soon. The first is a baby blanket for dear friends of our in California. I will be doing a simple design so I have time to wait to find out the sex of the baby.
The second is one for Trae. I am really excited about it. I am not doing a single collection or even really trying to match colors. I am choosing fabrics that remind me of him and all of his passions. Since he might read this, I am not going to mention what the fabrics are or show pictures. I have ordered a few prints online and am just waiting for them to come in now. I am very excited about all of them and I am loving how they are turning out so far. I will show you this is pattern I will be using for Trae's quilt.
This is what I want the baby quilt to look like, although I can not find a tutorial anywhere, I will just go for it on my own.
Classes start back tomorrow. I am ready to get it going. The sooner it starts, the sooner it will get done.

Over the past few months, I have been cooking some great things also. Chocolate souffle with peanut butter pastry cream in the center, puff pastry ham and cheese, coconut cake, cream puffs, garlic cheese biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, and lots of good stuff.

It's a Handmade Holiday at my house!

I made most of the gifts we are giving this year. I'm pretty happy with most of them. I just hope the recipients are just as excited to get something I made rather than something I bought.
For Trae's niece and nephew we may have gone overboard. We bought them both something and I made them both something special. For Trae's nephew, I made a pillowcase from a panel of Cars fabric.
I attached it to an extra pillowcase I had from a previous project. I found a checkered flag patterned fabric and made a border for the top of the pillowcase and then I quilted a few sections of the picture to make sure the 2 cases stayed together. I hope my favorite 2 year old boy loves it!

Side 1:

Side 2: 

This is the only decent picture I got of the quilting: 

For Trae's niece, I made her a tutu! I have been planning on doing this since her and her mom came to visit us this past summer. She is such a little girly drama queen and loves to play. I chose bright pink and purple tulle for the tutu and gathered it at the elastic waistband. It definitely does not look professional, but it is only for playing!! I also sewed a really pretty soft ribbon at the top to cover the sewing. I really like this and I hope she does too! I also hope her mom doesn't mind if I encourage the girlyness!

Yes, it stands up on its own!! I hope that is the sign of a good tutu!

Sorry for the fuzzy picture. 

Porch dog?

Who knew?!

We have recently discovered, Bella wants the front door open, all the time. She likes to be able to go outside and come in whenever she pleases. She also likes to be inside with which ever human is here with her and look outside to enjoy this beautiful warm fall weather we are having. Normally, she just sleeps on the couch or bed all day. But she has decided she likes to be outside whenever she can. Its cute.

If I close the door, she wants to go in and out every 5 mintues. But, if I leave the door open, she is perfectly happy. I like a perfectly happy dog.

Back to Food

Since my quilt is done and I am getting more inspired to cook really good food, I will discuss my latest indulgent find at our local grocery store. Sometimes you buy the store brand item trying to save money and it just is not the same as the name brand item that you are craving. Then there are other times the store brand knocks it out of the park! This is one of those times.
Our local grocery store chain is Kroger. Out west, Smith's is the same company. I love Kroger. Good prices, good produce and meats.
We love ice cream. We love good ice cream with great mix ins too.
Kroger has recently started selling upscale ice cream from their own brand. Because Trae loves peanut butter almost as much as he loves me, I picked up the triple peanut butter flavor to try.

It is amazing. Peanut butter flavored ice cream would be really good. But they put large ribbons of peanut butter and huge chunks of peanut butter cups in it. Delicious! If you like peanut butter, get this.

Look at all of that delicious peanut butter goodness! I know I didn't make this concoction, but I'll take grocery store help any day to have deliciousness!

My mom got the New York Style Pumpkin Cheesecake flavor. It is equally legit and delicious in its own right! Get that one too.

 

Is that what I think it is?

Yes, that is my finished quilt. After only 19 months of working on this thing it is now complete! I am so excited to be done working on it. It is not hanging over my head just waiting to be finished. The fabric is Heather Bailey's Pop Garden. The backing and binding is all Paisley blue from the Pop Garden line. Since I am without a big fancy quilting sewing machine and sending it to a long arm was entirely too expensive for my budget, I hand quilted in simple straight lines. I like the simplicity of the quilting and how it does not compete with the variety and business of the fabric.
I am really happy with the way it came out. I may not do another hand quilted one for a long time.

Please enjoy the pictures!! I worked so hard! Yay!

Masters Research Project

Yes. I will be beginning my master's research project this semester and will be working on it until I graduate. Lots of work, but I have the opportunity to have our research published at the end of it all! That is actually pretty enticing to me. I am not sure what our specific topic and direction our project will go.

In other news, Trae and I will be starting P90X in the next few weeks. We are both extremely excited about that. Of course, that might dwindle after day 1. Trae wants to bulk up and I would love to loose a little softness. We have family that has had success with this particular program. I an interested to see if Trae and I can really do this program together. For this program, we have purchased 3 sets of dumbbells, and pull up bar, and push up handles. More to come on how this goes.