Happy Monday!

Happy Monday survival wishes to all!

Here's what I've got to show for my absent-ness lately.  Our little ones have been trading colds and coughs but I think we're over it.  We did a lot of this recently...

 This is their new favorite book and favorite story - The Gingerbread Man.  And yes, that is me.

I finished my bee blocks for this month of the bliss circle of do. Good Stitches.  I winged it and I think they turned out ok.  Next time though, I've got to make sure the edges aren't going to be lost when all the blocks are sewn together.

I am currently hand quilting my husband's quilt!  Yahoo, this beast has been weighing heavily on my shoulders.  Here's a very badly lit photo of the top, which measured 81x91.  And it's pretty great.  I tested it by falling asleep while working on it yesterday and it was very nice. It has flannel on the back :)

Here's a sneak peek for my partner in the covert robin swap!  I'm hoping to get this baby on it's way this week.

I started a new project from Camille Roskelly's book, Simplify, last weekend and got all the strips sewn up last night.  This is the Dream Big pattern in the book and it's been a super quick and painless project so far.  I picked out a bunch of spring prints from my stash to use here as it was grey skies and almost rain/snow/sky-spit yucks last week...blah...this quilt will be a reminder of happiness even when the weather sucks.

I still have to pick border fabric.  This pattern has a couple borders and I might do white as one of them...or a solid...any ideas?

Hope you all had a happy St. Patrick's Day this weekend!  We had corned beef and cabbage for dinner, per tradition, and saw the first green in the grass in months!

And to leave you with something that makes me smile

It's so nice when we all get along! 

Linking up at Canoe Ridge Creations for Sew Modern Monday  

and with Sew Happy Geek's Manic Monday

Monday once more!

Good morning friends!  I didn't get much sleep last night so I apologize for any incoherance.  Our little Lady Face doesn't seem to be feeling that terrific, and woke up a whole lotta times last night.  So we're going to snuggle on the couch and have a Buzz Lightyear movie marathon, poor girl. 

I did have a pretty productive weekend though!  Here's what went down.

Books and Blocks Bee Too: I was a little stumped at what to do for this.  The queen of February chose the book block on p. 126 and I wasn't sure what I had in my stash that would fit what she was looking for.  She wanted the block altered a bit so she could do her own sashing thing, so we left the strips off of the top and bottom making it 12.5x8.5, and wanted the spine to be white so we could all sign our names.  After a trip to Joann's for the fabric pen, I found the green Nicey Jane print that I used as background and then received the Japanese fabric in the mail with a bundle of Pezzy Prints (yay!) and thought that would be cute. 

I'm quite pleased with how it came out, even if the spine is a touch long...

Thanks to an almost blizzard (windstorm with some morning snow) we stayed home all day Saturday and that gave me time to put this together!

 I got the fabric from Hawthorne Threads, isn't it cute!  I'd been looking for something like this and couldn't find what I wanted.  This was it!! I tied it so it would go even faster, and because I wasn't sure what I would do to quilt it.  I didn't want to obstruct any of the gorgeous images on the fabric.

 The nice people at Hawthorne Threads cut it so nicely that I could immediately sandwich it together without having to cut it and none was cut off in binding either!  Truly an easy project.

The kids like it, and it is filled with all sorts of fun and educational things.  A win win for me!

I have also pulled out one WIP that I've been meaning to finish for some time now.  It should be done this week (fingers crossed). Remember that Drunkard's Path quilt-along?  I finally finished the top and then it sat and sat for a couple months on top of the washer...I had the backing fabric picked, and it was all ready.  I was a little bummed with it initially because it wasn't as big as I'd hoped it would be and so the border I had added to it wasn't what I thought it'd be.  It just didn't add up to what I'd hoped.

But then I pulled it off the washer yesterday and gave it an ironing, and what do you know, I love it again!  I think it's a great size and will look wonderful over the couch.  I'm doing a simple hand quilting to it, and used an old sheet I picked up at my parents house over thanksgiving that is the perfect rosy, dusty pinkish color that I wanted, and so soft!  It will be wonderful to have it finished.

I will take a better picture when it's done.  The quilting is looking really awesome so far, and should look even better after it's washed and crumply!

I'm linking up to Sew Happy Geek for the Manic Monday Linky Party and at Canoe Ridge Creations Head over and see what everyone else is up to this Monday morning!

I think I'm going to make some hot chocolate!

Sometimes I just can't quite seem to get it right.

My attitude was off today, and that's totally my fault. I let my patience run out, and my temper is short, and the kids seem to listen even less than usual, and I feel even worse of a mother than usual.

I have a good life, and good kids, a good marriage, and nothing disastrous is looming.  I even did some things today that I needed to get checked off the list: 

-I made it one week without a single drip of chocolate (and then celebrated with chocolate cream pie today...?)
-Got our car's title registered and now have official Idaho plates (brought both kids and decided never to do that again)
-There was snow on the ground this morning (melted by noon...but it was still pretty)
-Mailed out my charms for a charm square swap I'm participating in (many thanks to the lady at the post office)
-Took the kids to the indoor play place at the mall to work off their energy (didn't really work)
-Had a healthy lunch
-Did some exercises while the kids napped (very first baby step, so here's to that)
-Bundled up and kicked the football "to the moon" with Monkey Pants outside for a while (also good exercise)

It was a pretty productive Monday, I did things I wanted and needed to do. But still, I could've done much better.  I yell too much, I am too lazy, I get frustrated too easily, and I spend too much time sitting and wishing for what I want and not being courageous enough to get up and start making it happen.  I am too hard on myself, but I do think it's good to know I can do better...as long as I actually DO better, right?

Monday's can be tough...even for no good reason...

*One morning we found this plastic alligator stuck in the shades of our front window, so we took a picture of it.  It makes me smile.  The other picture is just our lovely patient "Hobbers" as the kids call him.  He is the best dog, and I frequently wish I had his patience for my children. 

Afraid of...

Machine quilting! It terrifies me. Sooooooo much room for mistakes. It's like the icing on the cake. So what if you made the yummiest cake in the world. If it looks like crap nobody's going to eat it.

That's the pressure I feel when I go to quilt a quilt on my own machine on my own...scary. And seeing how I am quilting a quilt right now that falls into the "look how much I learned making this!" category...the quilting isn't going that well.

So it is NOT getting gifted. It will live on the couch hopefully crumpled up around somebody that is too cozy to care what it looks like.

Included is a nasty picture of my make it work workspace that is next to the laundry. What you can't see, and what I forgot were even in there, are the two goldfish encrusted car seats right behind the table that need a cleaning...makes me want to scream "why does everything have to be so clean?!" (is that from something? Movie maybe?)

Oh the woes of a Monday...