Spring crafting

Wandering around the garden at Quail gardens.
Playing with friends from Petaluma at Cottonwood Creek park

Easter crafts have officially started here. I picked up this bolt of corduroy at a garage sale last Saturday. I am thinking of using some of it for a Easter back pack for Brayden instead of a basket this year. His current back pack is getting pretty tattered on the bottom from all of the heavy traveling it has been doing for the past few months. We really don't leave home without it. I should post a photo of the contents of the back pack. It is pretty funny.

Here is a start of a lap quilt with some of the Batik I wanted to use. I am not crazy about the green but I wanted to use whatever I had in my stash. Since I have not been sewing lately, I wanted a smaller project to quilt before I try and make a big giant queen size quilt. 3 blocks down 15 to go.

Our new addition to our cozy dining room. We have vacated Leaping Lotus and this was one of our leftover pieces. I am not ready to part with it yet ( I have visions of it turning into a cute craft cabinet). Space is a big issue in our house but Tony was nice enough to do some major rearranging of our furniture and made it work. Brayden is having a blast hiding out in the cabinet and stuffing his little treasures in the drawers. Our dining table is now pushed back to the pony wall that adjoins our living room. I like the change but getting out to our back yard is tricky.

It is probably apparent that I am in serious need of a diversion from the mortgage chaos with all of my time consuming craft projects I have started at the same time...I have had a couple of deals go so wrong that should have been easy that it really did a number on me. I have been doing this nine years and thought I had seen it all. They are now funded and in their homes but the road to get there was nothing short a over documentation nightmare.
Enough about that....Enjoy your week.

x's and o's

Making Valentines and a big mess.

Reading a Valentine card from Nana Wendy

Heart shaped pizza. Yum.
Happy early Valentines.

Crazy idea #1-3

Crazy idea 1: Started April 9Th 2009 & finished February 1st 2010. This was a serious undertaking for a beginner. Most people would start off with an actual pattern and start off with something tiny like a 5x7 sized project. I jumped off a cliff with this one. The finished size for this embroidery is 14x19. As the months passed on my enthusiasm for completing the project completely faded. I would work on it a little every night while watching a little TV. Then the next week toss it in my ever growing "half done project" basket by the side of my bed and pick it up weeks later. Now that it is finished, I want to start another. What is with that anyway? Embroidery post-partum? Tony started sketching me another scene to start soon. This time I will use 3 strands of floss instead of 6. This hopefully will make the stitches look much tighter and cleaner. I wanted this to hang in Brayden's room to match the quilt I made him. I have not decided on a final hangling place yet. Tony is making me a lovely frame out of Koa that is gluing up( along with belated Christmas projects to his parents). I might need to hang it in a grown up space for a little while first.

Crazy idea 2: A few weeks ago I picked up several yards of fabric at a yard sale that someone was selling at a yard sale. I have been wanting a new quilt for our room for years. I refuse to put back on the pottery barn luau quilt on our bed for another spring and summer. Tony hated the quilt from day 1. So, I ordered this pattern last week and hope to incorporate some of this fun fabric into some of the circles within the pattern. I like the fabric but a little of this color palette and style goes a long way for me. Looking forward to brushing up on my roto cutting skills on this one.




I am off to run to my parents house ( 3.7 miles door to door) to meet up with Tony and Brayden. Hopefully the run will help off-set the upcoming super bowl mega calorie food fest. Plus I seriously need to begin training at some point for the rock n roll 1/2 in June....crazy idea #3.......

catching up....

Winter in San Diego ( obviously taken last week)

Introducing the bike.....It rests at the foot of the bed at bedtime and nap time. Most meals and snacks are consumed on the bike. Lots of favorite shows are also watched on the bike. He can't quite figure out to peddles but he scoots around, runs over feet and marks up with wall with the tire tread with perfection. Originally intended as a Christmas present but not quite done in time. Lot of things trickled over into the new year this year. The new wooden step and chrome fenders still need to be put on but someone won't get off the bike long enough to finish tricking it out.
Very important imaginary phone conversation.

So happy with his three favorites- bike, backpack, and milk.

resolutions...

We started the new year right. I ran from our house to Beacons and Tony and Brayden met me up on the beach. I only like to run 1 way still. The round trip idea is still not for me. Tony is nice enough to cooperate and pick me up. What an amazing day to be at the beach running around low tide.

My new years resolution will be more like a "2010 to do list". I like lists so the likelihood I will try and adhere to the 2010 list seems high. It is only the 2nd so we will see.

1. Run a 1/2 marathon.

2. Buy a house- ( even if it is in a zip code other than 92024 or 92007)
3. Cook 1 new meal a week. I watch enough Martha and own enough cookbooks that this should be a no-brainer.

4. Finish the embroidery for Brayden's room started last April. I am almost there.....90% done.

5. Read more books than I listen to on CD.

6. Use up all 100 of our free stock trades from our brokerage account... Time to be a bull and not a bear and get in the mentality of brown bagging it and buy a share of eBay instead.

Happy New Year

Sneaking in a solo on Aunt Donna's piano.
We celebrate Christmas Eve with my dad's side of the family. This year my aunt Donna and Uncle Lloyd hosted. She opted for keeping things simple and doing only appetizers and desserts. I was the first skeptic of the idea ( since I am sucker for tradition) but it turned out to be very nice. Everyone put a lot of effort into bringing something yummy and fancy. The adults do a pirate type of gift exchange and if you are under 18, the kids get something from every family. Brayden, who still does not grasp the concept of unwrapping gifts, has no idea how lucky he is.

Look! Santa brought me a You Gabba Gabba boom box.

Merry Christmas! We got our tree on December 1st and I was shocked at how well it held up. Brayden was quite enamoured with the tree. The poor tree was pulled, tugged, poked, and shook multiple times a day. See how naked the bottom of the tree looks???

Christmas morning at our house. My mom had to work that day. But she just had to send Grandpa over with some M & M's in her absence. Later on that day we drove up to Foothill Ranch to have dinner at my cousin's.

Chopping logs with his saw from Santa.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and happy New Year. We are very lucky and blessed to have our health and have such wonderful family and friends.

I am very much looking forward to 2010. I think it will be full of opportunity and good times.

Off to go enjoy this amazing day with a run on the beach.....Happy 2010

A christmas campfire

Last night we enjoyed a fun evening with friends watching Christmas movies and making smores at San Elijo campground. Our friends the Hayden's had the clever idea of projecting movies on to their trailer from their movie projector. When they quickly got tired of sitting, letting the kiddos fill up on hot chocolate and smores and let them run loose around the campgrounds. It is no longer a question of if but when we will purchase our own trailer. All the way home I was calculating in my head how much extra side work Tony will need to do and extra loans I will need to fund to work that into our 2010 budget. Practical Sandy eventually came around and realized we need to buy a house first so we can have a place to store it.

Merry Christmas Eve!