Happy Easter!

Our first Easter with the twins was quite nice. Lots of food, lots of family, lots of rest...divine.

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter and took a little time to remember our Lord and how much he has blessed us all today.

March 17, 2009

Today is my favorite non-major holiday.

Well...it will soon become a major holiday for our family.

...and what a perfect present for mama on St. Patrick's Day...

Two little leprechauns will meet us today!!!

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers and follow my twitter-ings if you wanna know up-to-date info from the hospital!

Last official day of the Christmas holiday

I took this photo during one of our snows before Christmas and before bed rest. I thought it would be appropriate to share today and say Merry Christmas for one last time. :)

Have a great last day of the year!

Mine will be spent here at home...likely with a cup of yummy hot chocolate like this one.

Have a safe New Year's Eve everyone.

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all have a safe and happy holiday!

If you have some crafting time this snowflake project is quick, easy and produces great results. The snowflakes made following the instructions turn out much larger than I expected (the one pictured above hanging over our dining room table), but can easily be modified to make smaller snowflakes (like those below that I made into Christmas ornaments). I'm thinking of trying to make these with felt to use as more durable, reusable Christmas ornaments!

Enjoy!

Holiday happiness

Don't you love it when you can take something like this...

and turn it into this...

Our tree has been up for a little over a week now and I am lovin' every minute of it.

I have some advent wreath pictures/advent blogging to catch up...perhaps later today or tomorrow...also still need to blog the cute little trio of trees. :)

Enjoy the season everyone!

Holiday Pillow

One button tufted holiday pillow complete. I love the neutral-ness of this pillow. The ivory background and gold snowflake design (found in my stash) will easily allow me to use it all the way through January. Now...to find time to make another...

Post-turkey frenzy

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with lots of good food and time with family and/or friends. We had a wonderful holiday. It is hard to believe but this is the first Thanksgiving I have been able to celebrate with my family in 3 years! I am usually always the one on call on Thanksgiving Day...so this year being surrounded by those I love was an extra special treat. Plus, we had a huge Wii-fest after the turkey...it was great fun.

Since then, it has been a flurry of activity here at my house. I did venture out for a while on Black Friday (though I did not go to the mall...that place was a zoo!) to visit the sales at Jo-Ann's, Michaels and A.C. Moore to pick up some supplies for the many projects that I must finish before Christmas. Then, yesterday afternoon we went to pick out our Christmas tree - our annual day-after-Thanksgiving tradition. Gosh, does it make our house smell fantastic! We are letting the branches settle out and then we will decorate the tree this afternoon/evening.

All the while, between running errands all day yesterday we managed to clean more of our upstairs office and my studio, hang all the Christmas lights outside and start winterizing the back yard (more on that later...what we found during that adventure deserves a post of it's own). DH even made delicious pasta for dinner!

Well, I'm off to start working on a new advent calendar for us. I only have 2 days to finish it!

I'm thankful...

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Before rushing off to all the dinners with family and friends today I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on this past year. I have been so blessed and I am so thankful for many, many things...health, family, a loving husband. I am especially thankful for my two little babies on the way! I decided to look back at some of my photos of this past year and put together a little post on some of the things that I am very thankful for this past year. Here goes...

2008 in review

I am thankful for the places I have been and the things I have seen...

Peruvian Countryside

Machu Picchu, Peru

Aguas Calientes, Peru

Great Smokey Mountains National Park, Tennessee

Camden, Maine

I am thankful for time spent with family...which also usually involved great food...

My grandmas "30-day" cake...mmm

Shepherd's Pie...one of my husband's favorites

Making brownies with So-so

I am thankful for my new camera and the way it (and this bloggy world) has made me look at documenting my life in an entire new way...

Egg delivery truck in Lima, Peru (non-refrigerated!)

This photo by my amazingly talented sister.

I am thankful for my kitty Chloe...she always is so loving and silly...

Bird watcher

Trying to sneak up on the camera

She is so funny when she lays on her back!

I am thankful for my sewing machine and all the crazy projects we share...

Teaching my nephew to sew

A softie...yes...it is a uterus with ovaries :)

I am thankful for the biggest blessing of the year...

We presented this picture to our in-laws as our way of announcing our surprise!

How cute are they??? This was taken last week and it is a picture of their two little heads resting side-by-side. A and B are labelled.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday...and take time to be thankful.

So, what are you thankful for???

I'm handy with a knife

This is the first time DH & I have ever followed a pattern to carve a pumpkin. It was fun and I think it looks super cool at night. :) I am also now a big fan of the little pumpkin carving sets (previously I just thought they were a waste of money...I figured everyone had a knife at home). But now, I realize this pattern would have been impossible to do with my steak knife. However, don't plan on keeping one of these sets to use year after year...one of the little carving knives snapped in half before I even finished carving. The pumpkin guts scoop that comes with the set got a thumbs up from the hubby. Overall...very much fun indeed.

Holiday! Celebrate!

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day! This is the gift I made for my sweetie. The takeout box was filled full of homemade chocolates (how fun to make!). Inside the cute little cube (wee valentine box pattern is here) I placed a handmade coupon good for dinner of his choice (he chose sushi) and a movie also of his choice (he chose Mr. Woodcock - which by the way, isn't that funny). We had a great day after Valentine's Day date (I had to work Valentine's Day). As for what my sweetie did for me...well, I have to say I have the best husband ever! DH put a card on my steering wheel so I would see it first thing when I came out from work on Valentine's Day morning and a rose in a vase in the cup holder. How cute is that?

I just realized I haven't posted in a week (gasp...gosh it really has been that long)...but in my defense I really have been working A LOT lately (70+ hrs per week). I am ALMOST finished with the laundry room makeover. I am so excited to show you! I plan to take pictures tomorrow. :)

Only one bites the dust...

Every year we loose a few. This year I thought things were going so well...I hadn't lost a single ornament until today. While taking down our tree (and all things Christmas-y) this one escaped somewhere between the tree, my hand and the ornament box. Oh well, DH says we need all new bulbs next year because ours are starting to fade/loose color in spots. Has anyone else had this problem?

So, I can't get 2008 Christmas ideas out of my head now. I know! It is WAAAY too early to think about all of this but it might take me that long to get them all done. The one at the front of my mind is this: why replace the Christmas bulbs? I could make ornaments. One inspiration I cannot stop thinking of these little hanging babushka dolls on rosehip blog. I want, I want, I want. Making ornaments could be broken down into something cute like this...make a new ornament each month so by December - a set of 12 new ornaments! Each ornament could be introduced to the tree on each of the 12 days of Christmas! ooo...it could be a blog challenge! Anyone want to participate and blog an ornament of the month? Let me know and then I could iron out the details and post them here on the blog. Leave your comments!

Re-purposed Christmas Ornament

So I loved this idea! Basically, to make the centerpiece for my table on New Year's Eve I found 2 oval mirrored Christmas ornaments that I have had stashed away for a couple of years. Using Microsoft Word I just made 2 simple sayings...one said "Happy New Year" and the other is above...printed & cut them out...put them in the frames and voila! Cute little mirrored messages. THEN, to make it super cute I placed them over some crystal candlesticks. The result was stunning I must say.

DH & I will be taking a little trip over the next couple of days to recharge our batteries before heading back to the daily grind. Hope you all have a great first week in 2008!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008!
I hope everyone had a wonderful time ringing in the new year. We had a family gathering at our house and it was wonderful. Lots of good food and the family favorite - brownies & ice cream - for dessert! We watched the ball drop in NYC complete with sparkling cider in little champagne flutes! Blessings to all in 2008!

Holiday!

Hope everyone had a great holiday! We had a very blessed Christmas.

Just prior to Christmas I picked up this yummy set of fabrics. I felt a little guilty buying Valentine-ish fabrics prior to Christmas, but they were irresistable.

I will be taking a break from blogging/sewing for the next week...my holiday! I am working on some GREAT projects though that I am very excited to post soon!

Machine "Tied" Quilt?

Has anyone ever "tied" a quilt by machine? If so, is it difficult? I'm thinking of doing that for my nephew's blanket... I need a quick way to wrap it up by Christmas. Any ideas?

Lots of projects in the mix...no new ones to post today but there will be soon so check back!

Enjoy this picture of a package under our tree. The little stocking is super cute!

Mass Production

The coaster sets are finished! I tied each set of 4 Christmas coasters with a little ribbon. They looked so cute like that I hated to hide them with wrapping so I just added cute little hang tags from Target to make them giftable. I hope all of my aunts like them! The coaster pattern is from bend-the-rules sewing, of course!

Even though I have so many projects still yet to finish before Christmas...I added another one today! My nephew LOVES Star Wars and I found some Star Wars fabric on clearance today. I could not resist - I have to make a blanket. Saturday is going to be a sewing marathon.