garden harvest

  such yummy things i picked from the garden this morning! so for lunch, i just sauteed it all up with some sausage, garlic & olive oil, (lots of basil!) served over penne & added kalamata olives & feta ...oh yummy!! garrett husband said it was the perfect dish :) & the kids ate it up pretty good too.           

dressup drawings!!

  i love little projects like this --so quick & fun (& enjoyable for me too ...for some reason i have such a hard time "playing" when c asks me to. i'd so much rather color or read or make something~ but just "playing" pets or dolls, i have major a.d.d.) so when i saw this from made by joel via the crafty crow, i knew that's what we'd be doing during  mr. man's nap today.            

                C wanted to make her princesses into puppets                   

 

  ..........& i had fun too!         ~next will be the aquariam.

hey mom, take a picture!

   "mom, can you take a picture of me with my parrot?"                                   "can you put it on your blog? .....right now?"   

sew excited!

i haven't bought myself anything in a long time ...but i've been swooning over this dress pattern for a while (it's even on my to-do list!) i'd also really like to take dottie angel's 'challenge of the utmost kind', wherein you commit to a whole year of only buying second-hand or hand-making items for yourself & your home. this should be easy for me because we haven't had money to buy things for so long anyway that handmaking things is becoming more of a delightful necessity. but, in order to take this challenge of not buying anything new, i first had to buy something new: this anna maria horner pattern. i think it's quite versatile; i can make long or short dresses with it & i'm also going to modify it into a top. anyway (yay!) it arrived yesterday,   along with some joel dewberry fabric that was very on sale -all from pink chalk. it is already washed & dried, so hopefully i can hack into it at naptime today!!      

garden shananagins & a sad cheesecake

i left the hose on to soak some plants, ran in the house to check on the laundry & look what i came back to...  

   who needs a swimming pool?                       ....other garden news (doesn't take much to get me excited): i was beginning to wonder if my little eggplant would ever amount to anything as its been under constant insect attack & it's been budding but then the flowers usually fall off. well look what a surprise i got today ...

        it's called 'fairy tale' eggplant- how sweet is that?             .....& yet still on another note: learned this morning my cousins from wyoming are visiting & we all decided to have dessert at my house this evening. i've been wanting to try making this ricotta cheesecake that sounded divine. i went thru the pain of whipping & folding eggwhites (enough said) & was told to bake for an hour till set & golden brown. two minutes before my timer goes off, with kids screaming in the tub, i casually check to see if my cake is starting to gently brown, thinking i'd be early & this is what i see ...                               so sad. i hope i can salvage it.....

sweety girl's quilt

I can restrain myself no longer!! I bought all this gorgeous fabric almost two years ago to make C a quilt for her big girl bed ...but, even though I wanted to dive right in, I put it aside, telling myself I better finish some old projects first. Well I have finished up a few, but not as much as I'd like; I just can't stand letting this adorable stash of yummies sit there anymore.

So I refined my vision in my head & started chopping away :) I love how it's coming along so far. This is not going to be a hurry-up marathon project, though. I really want this to be special, something my daughter will hopefully treasure for a long time (at this point in her little life, she'd be thrilled if I went to walmart & bought her a cheesy, bright pink "princess" bedspread! (shudder)) But I know she's going to love this & later on she'll be so thankful she got this instead. I'm adding lots of special touches like hand embroidery, applique & ric-rac; so like I said, it'll be a slow process. 

     ....and here's the little dolly quilt I already made for her to match her future quilt ...         

critters in the garden

Look who I saw munching on my fennel today? Isn't he gorgeous? I forgot that I have read before that fennel is part of a butterfly garden to give the caterpillars something to eat. That's ok handsome, we only need the bulbs; just make sure you come back and show off your wings!       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Also saw this shy little guy poking around. Isn't he adorable? I think he'll just have to have a whole family one of these days...  

finished quilt & BQF entry

 Blogger's Quilt Festival

 Well I finished the quilt I've been working on this week for my friends' wedding/first anniversary gift. Although I've been making quilt tops for a few years, this is the first good size quilt I've done from start to finish. I quilted it in a plain straight stitch on my trusty little machine, not free motion, so I could only do so much. But I'm really happy with it in the end; I love any of Amy Butler's fabric & this is her Charm line. I love making handmade gifts for friends & believe everyone should have a quilt that becomes an old friend the more you snuggle with it, wash it & love it. Next year I hope to enter something more planned out, but since I had just finished this I didn't want to pass up the chance to be included!       

         

more of the garden

           this zucchini plant is a monster! he needs a name. 

my little soil tester...

   

             that's potatoes & watermelon behind him               

quilting continued

I'm determined to get this quilt done by this weekend so I've been staying up late working on it, which is not so smart. I can fall into this habit, since I crave my alone time so much, of staying up once the kids are finally in bed. I really pay for it ..& yet I keep doing it. And of course, if I focus on one thing, everything else goes to shambles; if I have a day in the garden, the dishes & laundry pile up; if I get into a project & try to keep up on the house, by the time I get back into the garden the weeds have taken over! Right now I have all of the above: dishes, laundry & weeds. And I'm not even doing a great job putting this quilt together. Like I said, it's my first quilt to complete start to finish -I usually just do the top. I might have started on a smaller quilt of course, but that would have been too sensible. But to cut myself some slack, this is what I have to work with:

a very plain, very old machine with no fancy quilting foot or platform or whatever else I would need. So I guess considering, I'm not doing too bad. It'll be fine. And I will try to make myself get some sleep tonight so I don't sound so whiney next time.  Oh! But we did get our first zucchini out of the garden today & now we are going to go eat him! 

     

...a superb lesson in procrastination

here's lovely quilt i'm working on. it's actually quite beautiful. it's one of those projects i'm making for someone else that i really wish i could keep for myself. it's made from amy butler (my fav), i think the line was called 'charm', mixed with solid four-patch. it will be the first quilt that i'll be finishing from start to finish- yikes! when we lived in wyoming, i worked in a fabric store for a lady with a long-arm machine, so i'd just do the fun part of sewing the quilt top & then trade work for her doing the rest of putting my quilts together. now i don't have that luxery as it's quite expensive, so..... i'm looking forward to it though. the pathetic part of this story is that it's a wedding present for some friends that got married...a year ago. yep. when i didn't get it finished for their wedding, it got put aside, destined to be a one month anniversary present. then a 3 month. then a 6 month. now their anniversary is june 11 & i'm determined to present it as a true anniversary gift... i'll let you know how that goes ;)                                                                                                         

                                  

a boy... & a quilt

Just thought I'd put up a few pics of this gorgeous boy ...this first one is from a few months ago; he found a  Dove dark chocolate & sneakily popped the whole thing into his mouth, foil & all. He was not so willing to let me fish it out...                                  

      

...he loves cars (makes the bbbbbbbrrrrrrrrr horsey lips sound every time he sees or hears something with wheels or motor) & mud & water & music (i.e. drums!!)     

...here he is today playing in a box. Handsome little goober.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Been sewing. Quilt tops are coming along quite nicely.