A First Birthday party

Today we had Abbie's first birthday party. Fun was had by all and we got some more great cake eating pictures. I'll post pictures in the next couple of days (I finally added those photos!). Abbie gave me a surprise for her birthday also, two new molars. She totally snuck them in on me, I only know that they are there because I saw a flash of white in her mouth and checked it out. Hope all of you out there had a great weekend.

My Baby Girl Turns One

I can't hardly believe it but Abbie girl turned one today. We are having her party for friends and family on Sunday but today we were able to celebrate with a small cake and dinner with my friend and her two kids. Monday that same friend and I took the kids in to get their birthday pictures done (her son is 26 hours older than Abbie) and then we went back in briefly to have a picture of the two of them together. Abbie is wearing the dress that I made her in the pictures of her by herself. The headband is a free pattern from Heather Bailey. Abbie got to eat her first piece of cake today and she made a lovely mess with it. I tried to post a video of Abbie eating her cake but it wouldn't work so I'll try again later.

Small Quilt Auction

Tomorrow night is the annual Small Quilt Auction at my quilt guild. I have donated a chicken pincushion in the past but have never made a quilt so tonight I decided to make one. I used the "waste triangles" that I double sewed when I was making Alex's big boy quilt and that I had previously trimmed to 1 3/4" and sewed into 4 patch pinwheels. Tonight I sewed the pinwheels together and put on a couple borders and bound it. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

I have also included a couple more pictures from our trip to Zion. The picture of Abbie is of her in our Ergo Baby Carrier, this is how she saw Zion and I was very pleased with how comfortable it was and she got alot of attention from people when she was in it (although she gets attention wherever we go.

Our Week in Zion

We had a great trip to Zion with my parents. The weather was perfect cool in the mornings in the low 90's in the afternoons and in the 70's in the evenings. We were able to get out and do things in the mornings and then come back to the campground in the afternoon to cool off and rest. One nice thing about Zion is that they have a shuttle system to reduce the traffic in the park so we were able to pick up the shuttle right at the entrance to our campground and didn't have to do much walking with kids unless we wanted to. Check out my husband's great pictures from the trip: http://www.joechott.com/photos/2007/2007-09-10

While we were gone I got a couple of packages in the mail, what fun! I got the Sew What Skirts book, the sublime stitching book and several of their embroidery patterns and some kids activity cards that z recommends reviewed.

I found a great website recommended in parents magazine for swapping books, there is a link to their home page in the sidebar. I like the concept of this because all you pay is to ship it to the other person, rather than the amazon $3.99 shipping fee along with whatever the cost of the book is. I have just mailed off a book to someone and have requested three other books, I'll let you know how it works out.

Various Bits of Randomness

I was uploading my camera for the last post and found some pictures that I had meant to post. This second picture is of some things that I found at Goodwill, a airplane lamp for my son's room, a cowboy hat for his Halloween costume and a pattern for a skirt for me. The first picture is some cute fabric that I am going to use to make some shirts for my son they are Michael Miller fabrics, very retro and very cute. I even found some embroidery patterns to match at sublime stitching. The last picture is the finished wall hanging that I talked about here.

Why I need a fabric stash

This afternoon we are leaving for 5 days at Zion Canyon in Utah. About 9pm last night I decided that my child needed a crayon roll for the trip. So I used this pattern that I had found a while back to make him this crayon roll. This went together really quickly (I got the idea to make it at 9 and it was done before 10). I think that if I make another one I'll use elastic of Velcro to close it since my son is not yet old enough to tie the ribbons himself. These were so easy I think I'll make them and the gifts for the kids at my son's birthday.

My Craftiness

As promised here are some of the projects that I have been working on lately:



Here is Abbie's dress, I am so pleased with how it turned out. I even made her a pair of bloomers to go with it. I am also planning on making her a headband in the pink fabric to go with it.


Lately I have been thinking more and more about bringing my own bags to the grocery store. It's not necessarily an environmental thing with me, although that is a side effect, it's more that I don't like to waste and it feels so wasteful to use plastic bags. I have a couple of the acme bags from www.reusablebags.com, but they are rather pricey. So, when the dogs recently ripped one of my king sized fitted sheets I decided to recycle it into some cloth shopping bags. I got the pattern from www.morsbags.com and they have been pretty quick to put together.


Lastly this is a project that has been lurking in my sewing room for nearly three years now. Shortly before my son was born a friend gave this cross stitchery to me that she had found in a antique store. It was in a frame that I didn't particularly care for so I took it into my craft room to do "something" to it and it has just sat there ever since. Tonight I was inspired to make it into a quilted wall hanging. I origninally had put another outer border on it and did not like the results so I dug though my stash of 30's fabrics and found this green polka dot that I think is perfect. I don't have anything that I think will work for the binding so I think that tomorrow I'll stop by the quilt store to see what they have, I am thinking either solid green or solid cream.