Feeling Accomplished

I feel rather accomplished tonight. I finished a quilt of my own (still needs binding, but I'm out of matching thread). I also FINALLY put the binding on the New Year's Day Mystery Quilt. Yeah, I know I only quilted it in JANUARY and it's now OCTOBER....but as long as I finish it by the end of the year, it should be okay, right? haha

Also, I am so close to finishing Marshy's Cars quilt, the quilt I finished piecing LAST JUNE. It's finally quilted (pictures to come soon both here and on the quilting blog), and the binding is almost done. YAY! Just in time for Christmas....a year late. At least it's getting done, right? I was going to make him a fitted sheet and a flat sheet (pillowcase is finished) and a bedskirt, but I'm thinking I might wait until we move him from the daybed/crib size mattress to an actual toddler bed. We'll see. He's for sure getting the quilt and the pillowcase for Christmas though.

I also finished the Turtle costume the other night. So yeah, I'm getting a lot done. Or maybe it just seems that way because I now have less bags lying around on my couches, kitchen table, ironing board, piano, piano bench, and jukebox/sewing table waiting to be finished. Of course, I still have the huge missionary quilt to finish (the one out of ties), but I think I'll work on that after the chaos of Halloween is over.

I PROMISE! I will update the quilting blog soon. I will also post pictures here or Marshy trunk-or-treating for technically the first time ever (we went last year, but he was in the stroller and didn't really understand what was happening). Tomorrow we are going to my parents' ward and Saturday we will go to trunk-or-treat with Mike's parents' ward. Fun fun!!! :)

FINISHED!!

Happy to report that Marshy's Halloween costume is OFFICIALLY FINISHED!!

YAY!!!

Yes, the hood is too small for his massive cranium (Sorry Marshy), but the rest of it is so cute on him! Haven't tried the booties on him yet as he is asleep and I just finished them, but the rest of the costume fits perfectly and looks ADORABLE.


Here's to hoping he doesn't grow too much in the next year so I don't have to make another costume until he's 5. Of course, he is 41.5 inches tall, so the likelihood of his growing more is quite high. Maybe next year he'll pick something easier than a turtle?

We're going trunk-or-treating Friday with my parents and Saturday with Mike's parents, so there will be pictures coming soon! :)

SO SAD!!!

Just found out that the 9:30 PM showing of Twilight Saga: New Moon has been cancelled.

Why? you ask.

No one wanted to come! :( It makes me sad, because it was for charity, but what I've heard mostly was "We don't want to go if it isn't the midnight showing." But, people! It is for charity! We have had several people purchase tickets for the 7 PM show who are also going to the midnight show.

So, tickets are still available for the 7 PM showing at the University Mall Cinemark Theaters in Orem, UT.

To reserve your tickets, call 801-423-1876 and ask for Angie, Vicki, or Joanna.

Or you can email the Colton's Angels directly at coltonsangels@gmail.com. Please include your name, contact information, and how many tickets you want to reserve.

Thanks to everyone who is helping support these wonderful charities. :D

Some Cute Marshy Moments

At the shop.
At home, being silly with dinner.

Sparky, begging for some food.

Marshy laughing at us laughing at him.

Cheesing it up.

Playing the DS.

The DS is his new favorite toy. We have one of the old-school original DS-es that we let him play. He is really good at playing most of the games we have.

It might actually happen!

I might actually have Marshy's costume finished by Halloween!!


WAHOO!!


Today I finished the jumpsuit and got half of the back of the turtle shell done (the front of the turtle shell is already finished). Marshy even put up with a couple of fittings when I made the jumpsuit, which really surprised me. He stood still and held his arms out and everything. I think it's cuz he is so excited to be a turtle.

All I have to do now is finish the turtle shell and make the hood and the booties.

This is looking like it will be VERY do-able over the next few days. :D

Wish me luck! Photos to come later.

I am SOOO tired!

Today Marshy and I woke up at 6:30 AM.

We left the house at 8 AM to go to "pop-pop's."

We got there shortly after 9 AM.

I dropped Marshy off and went to an appointment in Riverton at 9:30 AM.

I got out of the appointment at 10:10 AM, drove to RMEQ and bought some batting.

I got back to "pop-pop's" at 10:40 AM with just enough time to help Marshy go potty and load him up in the car.

Then we went to American Fork to the dentist for Marshy, found out he needs 4 caps on his front teeth, and that IV-sedation isn't covered by insurance. Boo! :(

Scheduled Marshy's dental work for January at the West Valley office.

Drove to the doctor in Provo for Marshy's flu shot, also got him tested for UTI (stinky pee usually = infection. Better safe than sorry, right?) Test came up negative. :D

Drove to Salem to see Grandma V. He was so tired he was half awake on the drive down. He wanted chocolate milk in a sippy, so we came home and got him some. I passed out on the couch while he watched Nickelodeon in his room (Dora, Spongebob, Kai-Lan).

Because I didn't get any work done today, I have to go in tonight. Oh joy! :) I'm hoping I can stay awake long enough, since my nap was a whole 30 minutes long (I fell asleep somewhere between the first Spongebob and the second one. haha)

Here's to hoping for plenty of sleeping-in-time tomorrow to catch up! :D

A Moment

Tonight has been a rough night.

I just found out that the mother of one of my friends is in the ICU with pneumonia and ARDS. This is not a diagnosis that you often hear, and it brings back a lot of hard memories.

Then I read MIM's and Sussy's blogs. They are Mike's cousins. Mike's uncle has non-hodgekins lymphoma, and things are not going as well as our family would like. We are all praying for a miracle.

To top it all off, I have a jam-packed, appointment filled day tomorrow with appointments in SLC, AF, and Provo....and it's 1:30 and I have to LEAVE in less than 7 hours, and I'm a total mess!!

So, tonight has been a rough night. I think I need a moment. Or several.

It's that time of year again

Our neighbor across the street put up his Halloween decorations today.

I recently learned that our area doesn't do Trunk or Treat because they think it's "stupid," but instead opt to traverse the neighborhood (hopefully avoiding the houses on the Sex Offender Registry) with their children.

Two years ago I had already finished Marshy's costume. This year, I have the front of the turtle shell done. Oh, yeah, and it's the 18th. I have what? 12 days to finish it? We'll see if that happens.

Tickets are still available for New Moon. Please help support two wonderful charities by coming to our special showings of the movie. You know you're going to see it anyway, so why not see it for charity, right? Thanks!

Quilts are starting to pour in. This is nice. I like being busy. Although, it's hard to get work done with a potty training 3 year old who doesn't want to quit playing to go to the bathroom. Ugh. He's relapsed a little bit and has started going in his pull ups again. I think he's rebelling because we are now only rewarding poops on the potty in an effort to get him to actually do that.

This year will probably be yet another year without a family picture. {sigh}

I have decided to give up sugar....somewhat. I am still debating if I want to include Coke. I also need to start working out. I am trying to decide between Turbo Jam and Power 90. Any suggestions? I like them both. Turbo Jam is a little more upbeat and dance-y, which is more my style, but when I did Power 90 in January I lost 14 lbs in a month. Of course, I gained it all back (and then some) quite rapidly. {sigh} My SIL Angel is doing the HCG diet. She looks great! I'm still debating. Maybe I'll just wait until January and start fresh after the holidays? I can't decide!!

Late Nights

I've been going back in to work around 7 PM and staying until 10 or 11 PM lately.

I get a lot done, surprisingly.

Tonight I finished a hard quilt, and started to load another one on. It was at that point that I realized I didn't have the right color of purple thread! UGH!

I seriously thought I was going to be able to finish the whole quilt tonight. Instead, I have to haul my butt up to the SLC tomorrow morning to buy thread. AND I have to take the top with me because it is a weird color of purple and I don't want to buy 5 cones to have none of them work out. That would suck.

So, here's to another late night with not very much accomplished. Wish me luck for tomorrow!

37 or 41 days, depending on how you look at it

There are 37 Days left until New Moon opens.

There are 41 Days until our New Moon benefit PAR-TAY!

Tickets are still available to the PARTY. So! If you can't find tickets to opening night (which you probably can't because most places have been sold out for a month now) then call us at Sweetbriar Cove 801-423-1876 or email coltonsangels@gmail.com and get your tickets to the benefit PARTY!

Even if you have tickets for opening night you should still come to our party because it is going to be AWESOME! We have a TON of door prizes. And everyone gets a gift, too, for donating to the two wonderful causes.

Which causes, you ask? Well I will tell you!!

BORTO DESERET ORPHANAGE is an orphanage in Liberia (Africa) that is home to 40+ children who cannot be adopted because of Liberia's government rules. Their needs are incredibly basic: FOOD, CLOTHING, and MEDICINE.

COLTON'S ANGELS is a group of women who provide an annual scholarship to a graduating high school senior attending the auto mechanics program at a local college. This year they are entering a tree in the Festival of Trees (proceeds from the sale of the tree go to Primary Children's Hospital). They also have been gathering and/or making blankets, stuffed animals, coloring books and crayons, and other comfort items for a local hospital to distribute to children and families receiving treatment.

SO! Come party with us on the 24th of November!!! We're going to be wearing our red, white and black attire, deciding whether we are TEAM EDWARD or TEAM JACOB (or BOTH! in my case haha), enjoying a great movie based on a FABULOUS book (if you haven't read it yet, you should), and helping out TWO wonderful causes.

If you haven't seen all three trailers, then check them out below! (#2 is AWESOME, so is #3!!!)

This post is going to the crapper. . .

. . . Quite literally!

We have been potty training. So far, we haven't had too many accidents.

After the first 2 days, I switched Marshy from underpants to pull ups, so that I don't have to clean messes off the floor (so not my favorite job).

We have the peeing on the potty down pat now. Marshy does it all by himself. He pulls his pants and pull ups off and climbs on the toilet and goes and then runs around the house naked all excited because he did it by himself. It's kind of cute, except for the naked part.

Today he pooped on the potty all by himself. We are so proud of him! We have been trying to get him to do this for the last 2 weeks (as long as we have been training. Yes, I said 2 weeks. He is doing REALLY well). Finally something has clicked and he realizes that he gets a lot of attention when he poops on the potty. We are so proud of him for figuring this out on his own.

The cutest part was that he was so excited he had pooped on the potty. Don't tell Marshy, but Mike said that if he goes 3 consecutive times with NO accidents then he will buy him Elefun (the elephant and butterfly game, 2 of Marshy's favorite things).

We're hoping to get the poop training done quickly, so then we can start on overnights. And THEN, he will be COMPLETELY potty trained. My goal is by the end of the year at the latest. That gives me a couple months. I'm feeling pretty confident that I won't need much longer, though, because he is doing so well!

We are so proud of our little Marshy-Marsh. :)

One Project a Month Challenge

I am so proud of myself! I FINALLY finished binding my Feathered Wreath Mystery Quilt. YAY! I never bind my own quilts. In fact, Marshy's "froggin saur bankdie" is still only half bound. Yeah, I know, I'm a slacker. :(

Anyway, I finished the quilt. WOO HOO! It's in the wash right now, because I used washable marker to mark the registration lines. Pictures will be coming soon. Trust me.

This quilt turned out so beautifully, and I can't wait to display it! :)

I'm also hoping to get a lot more done this month, but we'll see. Stay tuned!!

Peterson River

Today we decided that our yard lacked a river.....



.....so we added one.


Okay, not really.


We are babysitting Sparky while Mike's parents are in Texas at the International Quilt Market (where Lola...again and her posse just won BEST IN SHOW out of 1200 booths. So go over to her blog NOW and congratulate her because this was their FIRST BOOTH EVER and they totally killed it :) Way to go Lola!!!)

Anyway, so we're babysitting Sparky, and he had to go outside. Mike put on his shoes and took him out on the leash. A few seconds later he called through the front door to me to get my shoes on and come look at something.

SURPRISE!!!

We had a river in our yard. It was flowing up from the ground around the spicket on the side of the house, inbetween us and our neighbors, on the north side of the building.

The neighbors got more water than we did, and I really hope they didn't flood their kitchen/living room. They weren't home.

The best part is, our landlord doesn't answer his phone on Sundays (which is stupid, cuz that's when the emergencies always happen). Our neighbor called someone at the city and they came by just minutes after another neighbor, who wasn't afraid of the bazillions of hornets who were pissed off because their home in the shut-off box was flooded, had shut off the irrigation main.

Fortunately, the city shuts off the irrigation on the 15th.

Fortunately, our landlord has like 6 months to find the broken pipe.

Unfortunately, this is gonna cost him a lot of money.....not just in repair costs, but in water fees, because we don't know how long it was running.

Actually, we wouldn't have found out if Sparky hadn't had to go to the bathroom. Cute dog solving our problems. That really would've sucked if we had flooded today.

So today's post is dedicated to Sparky and his knowlege that something was wrong outside. I should've taken a picture, we were out there for 2 1/2 hours with the flooding and the talking to neighbors and the swimming pool of a lawn.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the entire 15 foot side yard, sidewalk, parking strip, and street were flooded? Yeah, it was quite the river. :D It's finally sunk into the ground now, but it was fun while it lasted. Marshy especially loved jumping in the puddles and getting wet clear up to his waist!

Genes

We are doggy-sitting for my in-laws while they are in Houston at Quilt Market.

I decided to take Sparky and Marshy for a walk tonight before dinner. We started out heading North on Main Street and walked all the way down to the Shopko. Then I headed back home on 100 West. At about 400 North I was running across the street, stepped on the stroller wheel and totally twisted my ankle!

It was so bad that I had to call Mike to come pick us up!!!

So, Mike has been making fun of me all night. Well, as we were getting Marshy ready for bed he fell UP the stairs. Oh, did I mention I fell DOWN the stairs this morning? Yeah, I did. Well Mike is now making fun of Marshy for getting my clumsy genes.

Poor, poor Marshy. I'm so sorry you got my clumsy genes. Let's just hope you don't end up with any broken bones because of it. Try to avoid that, okay, Marshy?

It feels like FOREVER!

I AM SOOOOOO SORRY I haven't blogged in FOREVER! Life has been incredibly hectic lately.

I finally updated my quilting blog. YAY! GO check out some of the really cute quilts people have brought me!

This is my sweetheart puppy. He belongs to Mike's parents, but they are at Quilt Market in Houston and will be gone for a week and a half. They didn't want to leave him home all by himself for that long, so we are puppy sitting. Well...he's like 4 1/2 years old, so I guess it's really doggy sitting.
He's a little depressed I think. He curled up next to Mike on the couch and passed out. Poor little guy. I think he was a little freaked by the change. He's staying at our house, and he's never been here before.

Also, this is my carrots page for the BOM that Gracie Lou's is doing. It's really a page every two weeks, and it's for a really cute quiet book. LOVE IT! The carrots page was HARD. It took me an extra week to finish it.....all those stupid green things at the top. haha.

This is my sweet little cheeser, standing in front of Cameron and Lauren's quilt. He is so funny. He loves to have his picture taken. Every time I get the camera out he says: "Momma, Marshall?" he wants his picture taken all the time. I'll have to take him to get his picture taken in his Halloween costume....if I ever get it done.

Another one of these cute cheeser moments. I love this boy!

Also, in Marshy-land we have some happy news. He has been potty training for a little over a week, and now is going number 1 almost all by himself! We are still working on the pooping part of the training. Today at the shop, while I was gone BTW, he pooped and then tried to dump it into the toilet all by himself! Apparently he came running out of the bathroom butt naked yelling "GREEN POOP! GREEN POOP!" Poor Angel had to help him clean it up. I AM SO SORRY ANGEL! Hopefully we'll get to the point where the pooping will occur on the potty and not in the pull ups (which we call training pants, because they look an awful lot like diapers, but I'm tired of throwing away poopy underwear.....they are EXPENSIVE to replace!)

Lila Tueller Giveaway

Lila Tueller is having a giveaway on her blog.

She is giving away a jelly roll, a layer cake, and a couple of patterns.

She has really cute fabric. I love her designs.

Head over to her blog and enter to win!