YIPEE!!!

My husband is the best husband ever! Instead of spending $90 on roses for Valentine's Day, he bought me a Roomba!! AND it is the one that you can schedule a time for it to start and it will do it when you want it to! I am so excited. I don't know when it will get here, but I am really excited.

Earlier this week he ordered some over-sized remote controls as a joke. He bought them, as well as the Roomba, off of WOOT. It's a great site, with awesome deals. Especially on days when there are Woot-offs.

Thank Goodness It's Over!!!

Valentine's Day is finally over! Hallelujah!! Of course, no flowers were found in our house.... it's okay, I'd rather have the extra money Mike would have spent on flowers for other things, like: fabric, dinner out, maybe a movie. We'll see. Mike is leaving on Monday for Idaho. At least I had him home this week. We've both been sick, and it's totally sucked. I've been working at least nine hour days these last 2 days, and with the demands of Marshy-Marsh, it's been really nice having someone home to help out. Well I'm off to bed, finally, and I plan on sleeping all day tomorrow....or at least as long as Marshy will let me!

What a Day!

Today was crazy! I finished laying out and piecing Taylor's baby quilt. It turned out so cute, even though I messed up majorly. You're supposed to use 4 blocks as the corner blocks in the border, but they are cut down to 6 1/2 inches square. Well either I can't measure, or I just was totally out of it for a brief moment because I screwed up bad! One block ended up 5 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches, and the other three blocks just looked awful. So, I had to quickly make a change. I substituted some 6 1/2 inch square blocks of the same fabric the binding will be out of. It looks good. I was going to take it up to the shop and put it in my quilting queue, but I don't have enought backing fabric. I'll have to go buy some when I get more money! :)

Shortly after I finished the quilt, my dearest Marshy-Marsh slipped and fell right into the fireplace hearth! It is a brick hearth, and it gashed his little noggin right open! :( Fortunately, it wasn't a very big ouch-y and it coagulated quickly. Marshy cried for a few minutes, mostly out of startlement, and then settled down with his dad in the recliner.

This picture took a lot of patience to get, as Marshy-Marsh loves to look at the camera when it makes the shutter noise. Plus, he loves to smile for the camera, even if he did just hurt his precious little head.

I've been wearing my apron at the floral the last two days, and I have to say it is AWESOME!! I love having a place to keep my order pad, pen, and cell phone. I can't wait to try it out with my quilting too! I'm always losing my measuring tape or my scissors, so it will be nice to have big pockets to hold everything! :)

Holy Crap It's Baby Season!!

Just when I think I'm done with quilts for a while, I get a surprise! Well, not really a surprise, I knew 2 of the babies were coming....I just forgot about them. My friend Taylor's baby isn't due until June. But my cousin Jean is having a baby in like 2 days.

I had started on Taylor's quilt first. Probably not the smartest thing, but that's who I started with. She is having a boy, and as soon as she told me I knew exactly which fabrics I wanted to use! My goal is to make these next few quilts using fabrics from my stash. Hopefully it works out, and all I'll need to buy is a few yards for the backing.

These are the colors I picked for Taylor's little boy. The green and white circle print looks like it's that yucky "puke" green, but it's really a cute bright green, a little lighter than the green with stars. I'm using the Yellow Brick Road pattern for this quilt. The borders are a really cute bright blue, the binding is a bright green, and the backing is going to be a light tan print. So much fun!

This is the tentative layout for Taylor's quilt. I have to rotate a few blocks and switch a couple out for the corner setting blocks in the border. Hopefully I can get this sewn together quickly and get cracking on my cousin's baby quilt!

Jean is having a girl, and I have the cutest prints ever!

A couple summers ago Jo-Anns was having a sale on their Quarter Flats, so I bought a lot. They were way on sale, and I think I spent almost $100 on fat quarters. Needless to say, I have a lot to choose from. I've been slowly using them up this year, but keep finding cuter fabric to buy. I have so much fabric now (probably not as much as others, but to me it is a lot!) that I need to use it before my DH Mike will let me buy more! haha

The funny thing about Jean's quilt is that during December I did a quilt for her sister Beverly, and used the same backing! Wow! Well, I don't know if this green print will be big enough for the quilt, but we'll see. I'm using a pattern out of Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting. Their January/February 2005 issue had the cutest pattern called Li'l Dude. They used cowboy fabrics, but I'm going to use cute girly prints!

The third baby I need to make a quilt for is my aunt's Guatemalan baby. She has been trying to adopt him for about a year and a half now, I believe. She went down over the last few weeks to get him, but they were told they have to wait at least 6 more weeks!! Sound familiar, Lola? Apparently it is really hard to get the babies out of the country, and they expect their little one to be almost 2 by the time they get him home.

NOTE: My aunt has 5 grown girls. Her youngest is about a year younger than my brother, so that makes her 19, I believe. She has recently adopted a little girl. Now, my aunt, in addition to having 5 grown girls, is older than my dad, who is in his mid-fifties. Some people call my aunt crazy. I think she is brilliant! She is such a wonderful, intelligent, strong woman, and she has a lot of energy. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and we hope that she can get this little boy as soon as possible!

Anyway, I've decided to do a quilt for her, too, and am probably going to use these cute little boy fabrics:

The quarter flat that looks like it is pink is really red and yellow. My dining room is not the best place to take pictures, but that is where my sewing corner is currently located. Also, the cream is actually a print, with white stars on it:

I have another quilt in the works that has bright green, orange, yellow, blue, and a dark purple in it. The pattern is a basket-weave style and would be really cute. I have to decide whether or not I want to actually do it right now, so we'll see what kind of mood I'm in. Maybe I'll do the hard quilt, maybe I'll do the easy quilt with the cute fat quarters. Who knows?! haha

So much fun fabric! I am so excited to do these quilts! Fortunately, there really is no time constraint on them, so I can take as much or as little time as I please.

Finished Product

So I sewed my little fingers to the bone today. Not really, but I did sew a lot! I finally finished my apron. It didn't take very long, only about a week. Considering all the setbacks I had, that was pretty fast.

When I started working on the apron today, I wasn't very far. I had sewn the front panels to the back panels and that was it. I started pinning on the rick rack around the hemline. Once that was sewn on I pinned on the bias tape binding. The pattern called for 1/4 inch, but after all of the problems I had with the 1/4 inch binding on the pockets and center seams, I decided to use 1/2 inch bias tape instead. It was so much easier!!

Here are the results:

The above 3 pictures are of the finished skirt of the apron. I hadn't added on the waistband or the ties yet.

This is the finished product. I made Mike stop playing his game long enough to take pictures of me modeling my completed project.

I am really proud of myself because I finished it just in time for Valentine's week at the floral! YAY!

Complete Jane Austen Update!

Okay, so I know that I haven't really mentioned a whole lot about The Complete Jane Austen on PBS since Persuasion aired. This is due mostly to the fact that the two following Persuasion were not that great. Northanger Abbey was alright, but my reception of PBS, despite having satellite and a huge Hi-Def tv to watch it on, is downright miserable.

Northanger Abbey was so dark and dismal at times that I couldn't even tell what was going on. Nonetheless, I absolutely loved the heroine and the man she falls in love with.

As for Mansfield Park, it too was just alright. I couldn't get past the whole "I'm in love with my cousin" theme that was going on. That was just weird, even if it was the cool thing back in Jane Austen's time. The other problem I found with Mansfield is that from certain camera angles, the girl who played Fanny looked like she had horse teeth. I hate to be rude, but it was too much. I couldn't take it. I watched Mansfield without actually watching it.

As for Miss Austen Regrets, I haven't watched it yet. I started to, and got about 5 minutes into it when I decided that I wasn't in the mood. I'll try to watch it before this week's installment, but I can't promise anything.

The reason I can't promise anything is because Pride and Prejudice will be playing the next 3 weeks!!! Why am I so excited? Because there never has and never will be a Pride and Prejudice as good as this one!! It is the Colin Firth version (or the 5 hour virign as my friends lovingly call it....they meant version but said virgin instead and it has just stuck as our found nickname for our favorite show). Those of you who say that the new P&P is the bomb, I haven't seen it. I refuse to see it. I don't want anything to ruin my precious Colin Firth version!! Oh how I love Mr. Darcy. Fess up girls! You all love him too!!

ANYWAY - Happy viewing this Sunday! and next Sunday! and the next Sunday after that! I can hardly wait!!! {insert giggling schoolgirl soundclip here}

Please Please Pretty Please With Sugar on Top?!?!

We went and looked at a condo today. The ad made it sound perfect. $795 a month and all we'd have to pay extra was gas and electric. It came with hookups, cable and internet. Plus, it was in a fairly nice area of Provo.

We were extatic.

We emailed the lady.

Got a response back: "I just did this for my daughter. Call her. Here's her number."

Great.

We called.

No answer.

We left a message.

No call back.

We talked it over and decided that we needed to pull out the "We're needy and desperate and we want you to pick us" card.

We called again.

No answer.

We left a message: "Hi, I called yesterday and left a message but I want you to know that we are REALLY interested in your place and would REALLY like to see it. REALLY. PLEASE call me back!"

Not needy at all, right?

She called us back! :)

We went and saw the condo.

We fell in love.

Now all we have to say is: "PLEASE PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON TOP PICK US AND LET US MOVE IN!!! WE LOVE YOUR CONDO!!!"

She wants to sell it, but said she would consider renting it. We want to rent it. We are building a house, why should we buy a condo? We don't need to own a condo?

Do we?

Again: Please please pretty please with sugar on top pick us and let us move in!!! We love your condo!!!