keeping my hands busy

I have Layla's quilt almost finished. I originally thought I would hand quilt the whole thing, but I started out with way too thick of pearl cotton thread and took it out before I really got going. So, I decided to go ahead and machine quilt all the straight lines and go ahead and bind it. Then I'd go back and hand quilt around all the applique.

Armed with some hand quilting thread from my friend Katie, I got going and I am so glad I did it! The hand quilting really makes the flowers pop out. Can you see the difference between the flower on the left and and the flatness of the flower on the right?? I'm about half-way done and hopefully I'll be able to show you the whole thing before too much longer.

I couldn't give my sewing machine too long of a break, so I got started on a bed quilt for Natalie. I ordered a few fabrics from Fresh Squeezed Fabrics to get me started, then filled in with fabrics from my stash. Here's a peek at the scraps...gotta love a cute pile of scraps :)


Not only have my hands been busy, my feet have been busy too. We have spent this week house hunting and let me tell ya, it's not nearly as fun as I thought it would be! It's been exhausting to say the least. We fell in love with a house, but were outbid. I was pretty disappointed because it was really the only one I could see us in and even when we looked at several more yesterday, nothing else compared to that place. So, we're going to forget about the tax credit, slow it down and wait for the right place to come around. Now that I've seen it, I know the perfect place is possible. Right?? Or should I compromise?? Should I really be looking for perfection? Thoughts, please. (Keep in mind, my idea of "perfection" is not new and beautifully finished and updated. The place we loved was built in the 60's, was obviously loved by the family, had hard wood under the pink carpet, a super-out-dated kitchen, but with great potential, and the best deck and backyard in the world. And it was beyond clean and well-cared-for.) *sigh*

Family

We attended the funeral of Casey's Aunt Sherri on Monday. She battled brain cancer for almost two years and passed away last week at age 41. I have not been to very many funerals, but I found this one so beautiful and inspiring. It was truly more of a celebration of life than a mourning of death. Everyone wore bright colors, the balloon release was amazing. There was a long slide show of Sherri's life and it was so wonderful to watch, and made me determine to take more picture of family (and to get in some pictures myself!) They don't need to be professional quality to be so valuable to our family in later years. It's easy to take pictures of the kids, but I rarely think to take pics of the adults together too. So, at the reception, I got out my camera and snapped away. Casey's brother Jeremy said, after I took the first picture, "This is goin' on the blog, isn't it." Haha, right you are!

This is Casey in the middle with his sister, Jennifer and brother, Jeremy.




Jeremy and his wife Cindy. Their daughter Jilli is my Natalie's best buddy :)


And I even managed to get one taken of Casey and I.


And this is me and Cindy with the best Mother-in-law in the WORLD. That's no exaggeration, really she's wonderful :) I wanted Jennifer in this one too, but she was somewhere in that looooong food line in the background.


This is Casey's grandpa, Kelby's great-grandpa! I love this one of them nose-to-nose. Precious.


Here's to family! I'm so thankful to be a part of this one.

I dare ya to disagree..

Legos are probably the most awesome toy ever made. They can cause a grown man to lose track of time (ahem) and the new girlie ones are super awesome too.

Yes, this dude and his horse are watching a flat-screen TV. I made that myself, thank you very much :)


Kelby's newest favorite word is Lego, it's usually the first thing he says when he wakes up. This was Casey's set when he was a kid. Also under that couch is a huge tub of mine AND my Mom's Legos! That's three generations of Legos and the fun never ends :)

Unrelated, but I love this photo of Kelby in his new Dude hat.

So, I know I'm behind on blogging. There's been a lot going on. But I do have a lot to share and I promise to get on that blog header too. I do realize it's past Easter :)

doing other things

I realize that at times it may seem that I don't do much more than sew :) but it's not so! In fact, I've decided to slow down on the sewing to allow for other things and to take the pressure off myself a little bit. I love making gifts, but I can no longer keep up with making every gift that comes down the pike, so from now on I will be gifting books most of the time, something else I absolutely love to give. Ya know, there really are books out there for everyone.

Speaking of books :) I have had a lot of them on my current reading list, so I want to share some with you.

I don't usually have this many books going at the same time, but I'm finishing up one of them and I've barely started to others.

1. What is a Family by Edith Schaeffer--I've only read one chapter of this book, but I know it will be a winner. It was written a few decades ago now, but the things she has to say about why the concept of family is going the wrong direction in America today and what we can do to change that with our own family legacy.

2. The Mentoring Mom by Jackie Kendall; 11 way to model Christ to your child. I bought this just the other day and the first page said something that stuck with me.

"God put Noah in an ark that had no rudder, no sail, and no motor and sent him into a horrible storm. yet he was in the safest place possible, because it was God's will." (pg. 9)

Encouraging words in my current circumstances!

3. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell--This is one I've been itching to read since my friend Katie let me borrow the movie North and South from the same author. I've been really loving the classics this past year. I recently finished the Count of Monte Cristo and absolutely loved it (very different from the movie!) and before that I read every Jane Austen novel there is :) Love her.

4. Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster--I have talked about this author before. I really loved his book, Celebration of Discipline, but didn't like this one quite as much. I was looking for ways to introduce simplicity in my daily life and how to foster of spirit of simplicity, but most of this book felt like a solution for the whole world, instead of for individuals and families. Maybe I'm not explaining this very well. However, I did enjoy the first part of the book more. I was convicted in areas of generosity and honesty and began praying for ways to offer generosity with our somewhat limited resources. God truly answered that prayer, as my eyes were opened to many ministries and opportunities to share what we have.


In other reading, I'm going to be getting the children's church ministry up and going again at our church. I've been thinking about this for awhile and last week it sort of fell right into place, so I'm thrilled. I'm on my own for materials and lesson plans and it just so happens, my Mom brought back all these object lesson, craft and puppet books, yay! Then, I had no trouble finding full lesson plans online. Here's my favorite site: http://ministry-to-children.com/
Also, Casey was cleaning out the garage and found a big "pin-the-smile-on-Larry" game from our days working for Family Christian Stores. That will be tons of fun :)

P.S. See that pretty mug up there, holding my latte?? Casey bought me that from Anthropologie as a sweet little surprise for me. What a guy :)

Oh, and one more thing! I have started a GoodReads account and it's over there on my sidebar so you can see what I"m reading. Feel free to befriend me too so I can see what you're reading. Thanks to my sister and to Katie for opening my eyes to GoodReads, what fun!

bubbles

I took some pretty pics of my kiddos the other day. Have you seen these awesome bubble things? They say no-spill and they mean it, these things don't spill! (As a side-note, no-spill does not mean no-mess, especially when they get the giggles and start flinging the bubble wands everywhere, mostly at each other. But, they're bubbles, they're self-cleaning, right?)

I can't believe I got this far

I finished Layla's quilt top! Applique in huge quantities has never been my favorite, but it turns out, I really didn't mind it so much on this. Maybe I liked how it was turning out so much that I was motivated to finish. Here's the entire top (well, as much as would fit in the picture.)




I'm so excited to get some batting and start quilting this one. I've never hand quilted before, but I think it's the only way to go on this quilt because of those flowers. I'm a fast hand sewer when it comes to bindings and things, so maybe it will go faster than I think?? I'm open to any machine quilting suggestions you may have before I get started, though!

On another note, we planted a little window sill herb garden yesterday. My pots look so much prettier here than they did in the pantry :)

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday. It was filled with worship, food and family and we are so thankful for all of those things. I hope your day was wonderful too :)