Quilt done

I got Abbie's quilt done this afternoon despite Abbie's "help" and telling me that it was done because she wanted to play with the quilt. As soon as I actually got it done and was taking a picture Abbie had to bring her pillow out and do a test drive.

I just stuck the quilt into the wash while Abbie was not looking hope she doesn't notice :)

Of the original pile of fabrics I have just a small amount left. I really had to get creative in order to make this quilt completely from stash. When I ran out of the solid cream background fabric I switched to the second choice fabric. When I didn't have enough of the multi colored polka dot fabric to make another row I made the piano key border with the leftovers. When I realized that I had cut a zillion 4" squares and had no yardage of background fabric left I pieced the inner borders. Lastly when I used the red fabric for the binding rather than the blue I would have preferred. I am very pleased with how this quilt turned out and hope that it gets much use over the next several years.

We love spinach

The kids love spinach fresh from the garden.

More picture from camp

Here are some more pictures from camp.

Quilt Camp

I went to quilt camp this weekend and had a blast! The weather in Prescott was great and the company was even better. I got to meet a bloggy friend Angela of The Modern Diary. I broght up several quilts in progress and was happy at the progress I made. I finished the black white and red top from a block of the month that I did when I was pregnant with Abbie. The pink and brown top is Bonnie Huner's Carolina Crossroads that I started when it was a mystery on her site. The last top is for Abbie out of 30's repros from my stash.

I'm off to camp

My car is packed, I am ready to go. As soon as my ex picks up the kids in the morning I am off to quilt camp in beautiful Prescott. I will do my best to make sure I post pictures in a timely manner. I am so excited I haven't been to quilt camp in over a year!

Some recent kid pictures

Here are some pictures I haven't shared yet. Most are from a recent trip to the zoo and the other one is from a trip to get frozen yogurt. The kids liked the yogurt so much that they kept on eating it despite the fact that they were shivering from the cold.

My time is just too valuable for that

This is the response that I get from many people when I tell them about the bargains that I get from using coupons and shopping the sales. My thought is that by spending a little time shopping sales and using coupons I am able to spend less money and therefore have to spend less time earning money. The way I look at it the time that I spend working on this is very well spent. Take today's shopping trip for example. I stopped at Walgreen's and bought 13 cans of tomato sauce, it cost me $5.07 but I will submit for a $5 rebate and since I will take the rebate as a gift card that I can turn around and use on other good deals like this I will actually get $5.50 back. So in essence I have a net PROFIT of 43 cents. My next stop was Fry's and I did two transactions there. First transaction 2 4 packs of TP, 3 boxes of Oatmeal Squares, 1 box of granola bars, 4 cadbury cream eggs, 4 pb eggs, and 1 Vitamin water (not pictured). The balance actually came up negative 29 cents so they PAID me (they will usually not let this happen). Next transaction 4 boxes of granola bars 12 cents. So again I had a net PROFIT of 17 cents. I have more coupons and will stop by tomorrow and pick up more granolla bars. Total time at the store was under an hour (I left work at 3:30 and was at the daycare to pick up the kids by 4:45). I do spend time online looking at the sale blogs and such, but I have also gotten pretty efficient at skimming and just reading what is relevant to me.

If you added up the dollar amount of what I bought it would easily equal my hourly wage. So there you have it, my time is worth too much to not save money where I can.