Sew filled weekend

This weekend I was lucky enough to actually get to sew some more!  Yippee!  Okay, so in reality I was really sick and couldn't go anywhere, and rather than spend my days lounging on the couch watching infomercials, I opted to sit at my machine and sew.

I'm unfortunate lucky enough to get to sew in my kitchen, close to all of the household action.  Okay, okay, so it's not ideal, but it is the only available space in our tiny apartment.  I clear off our folding table/kitchen table and put my cutting mat on it.  I set the ironing board up in front of my desk, and pull my sewing machine out of the cabinet against the wall under the window (across from the table).  I have a rolling desk chair (it's a really nice one I bought at Office Depot last month) and I roll from place to place on my linoleum kitchen floor.  I know it doesn't sound great, but it actually works out perfectly.  I never have to get out of my chair! :)

So, what did I make this weekend?  I made the quilt to go with our Festival of Trees donation tree next month.  Our theme is "Lil' Boys Are Made Of" and we are using Sarah Jane's fabric Children at Play.  I finished piecing the quilt on Sunday afternoon, and it turned out so cute!

On Saturday I went to Joann's (I know, insane the week before Halloween) and bought fabric to make 2 donation quilts for the Colton's Angels charity showing of Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.  I am making 2 different black, white, and red colored quilts for the door prize drawings.  I'm really excited about them.  Also, I'm really excited that they'll actually be done before the day before the movie (unlike previous years.  Procrastinate much? haha)

I don't have them quite finished yet, so no pictures....sorry.  But, I am hoping to have them finished some time this week and will post pictures later. :)

Going Semi-Whole Foods

My gallbladder is having no more of this diet of fast food and butter-rich homemade tastiness.  I'm kind of bummed, but really my only choice is to go semi-whole foods.  I have a few gallstones, and my doctor won't do anything about it unless I'm experiencing symptoms (which I am, moderately).  And by "do anything" she really means put me on a diet and restrict my fat/grease/processed foods intake.  Yeah, might as well do that myself before she mandates it.  I figure if I do it myself, by the time I have my next appointment (in a few weeks), if I have made the change but still have symptoms, then maybe she'll try something else.

So, dear readers, I need your help!  I need ideas of things that I can make!!  I don't want to have to cook separate meals at dinnertime.  There are only 3 of us, so making 2 dinners seems kind of silly.  So, what are some things I can make that are semi-whole foods (I'm still going to eat meat: poultry, pork, etc, only in smaller portions) that my whole family will like too??

Is there a website I should be looking at?  A blog I should follow?  Recipe I should try?  Let me know in the comments section!  I'd really appreciate it! :)

Also, don't forget to leave your comments on my giveaway!  You have until the 31st to enter!

It's GIVEAWAY Time!!

The fabulous people at My Memories have asked me to do a review and giveaway of their digital scrapbooking software.  I am so excited about this!

First off, let's talk about the good and the bad.  Honestly, there is a lot more good than bad.  Being someone who has never used software like this, and the kind of person who rarely (if ever) scrapbooks, I was a little hesitant to get started.

What if I can't figure out the software?  What if I have to sit and read the "how-to" guide every time I want to use it?

Well, I didn't have any of those problems!  The software is really easy to use.  In fact, I put this page together in under 10 minutes! (I also did a whole scrapbook of Sewing Summit, but didn't post pictures of them because I just did my recap last week and it was kind of repetitive.) The My Memories Suite software comes with a bunch of papers, embellishments, etc.

I did wish that more variety came with the software, but it integrates really easily with their website.  They have a lot of free paper packs, embellishments, word art, etc on the website, and some really cute designer album packs for low-cost.

Downloading the additional content is super easy, too!  Once you've completed the checkout process, just go to the Downloads section of your account and download it right onto your computer.  It downloads pretty fast (and I'm on a slooooow internet connection at work) and automatically goes right into the software, so it's totally hassle free there.


Now, down to the nitty-gritty (and the best part, in my opinion).

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment here on the blog.  Easy peasey, right?

For an extra entry, you can do one, any, or all of the following:

1) Go to the My Memories website, look at all their paper packs, and then come back and leave a comment with which one is your favorite.

2) Follow the My Memories blog and leave a comment here to let me know.

3) Like My Memories on Facebook and leave a comment here to let me know.

4) Follow My Memories on Twitter and leave a comment here to let me know.

5) Blog about my giveaway and leave a comment here (with the link so I can come visit your blog) to let me know.

6) Tweet about my giveaway and leave a comment here to let me know.

7) Facebook about my giveaway and leave a comment here to let me know.

If you do all of the extras, that's 8 chances you have to win!!  Make sure you leave a separate comment for each one you do so they all get counted! :-)

I'll be drawing a winner on Halloween (happy Halloween!!!)  so make sure that you check back to see if you won!!

Good News . . . at last!

We have a couple of great news items to share today!

I got an awesome phone call today.  Remember how I had a second ultrasound last week at my doctor's appointment to check my liver?  Well, today I got a call from my doctor's office, and it turns out that I just have fatty pockets in my liver.  Woohoo!  That's fine with me!  Totally normal from what my doctor tells me.  She did want me to stop by and have more blood drawn (it hurt really bad!!) to test my LFTs, and I should have those results back by next week.  I'm not too concerned, though, because I just had them run in August and everything was normal.  It was a really good day!!

Not our crib, but it looked like this until I painted it.

In other news, I totally accidentally threw away all of the screws for our crib a few months ago when I cleaned out the storage closet.  I think I must have thrown away a box without checking to see if there was anything in it first.  OOPS! my bad!

Anyway, I called the company to order replacements and found out that our crib has been recalled.  At first I was really pissed.  SERIOUSLY?  Now what? Is what I thought.  When I called the recall department, they told me that once they receive the mattress support screw panels, they'll ship me out a new crib.

I couldn't be happier.  A new crib.  Brand, spanking new.  It isn't black, it's walnut, but at this point I don't care!  It's a brand new crib!!  At this point, the only thing I'm really upset about is that I didn't find out until after I spent the time sanding and painting the crib front.  haha

So, that's my good news for today.  All in all, I had a really good day.  Oh!  And, tomorrow I'm having a giveaway, so check back to see how you can enter!!  I'm really excited about it, since it's my first giveaway ever!

What Was I Thinking?!

Today I decided to go to town and clean Marshall's room.  I mean like really clean it.  Like, rip everything out of the room, clean the carpets, wash the walls, clean the blinds, hang a curtain rod, make new curtains, etc.

I don't know what I was thinking!!  I must have had a crazy, hormonal-induced, nesting lapse of judgment moment.  I'm sure it was mostly induced by what the room initially looked like.  I mean, look at it!  It's a crazy hot mess!  He must think that every time I say "clean your room," I really mean "go ahead and trash your room some more."

I threw a ton of crap away.  He got so mad at me when he saw I was throwing some old coloring books and Burger King toys away.

After a few hours of de-junking and reorganizing, I finally managed to drag everything out of the room except for the dresser.  Yes, I even pulled the bed out into the hall.  I even dropped a shelf on my foot!  It hurt like crazy, and for a second I thought I'd broken it, but realized that I could walk around after a few moments, so I kept on pushing through it and got the room cleared out.

Mike came home with the Rug Doctor (we own one, but it's been "living" at the shop for the past few weeks) and helped me clean the carpet.  Now the room smells nice, the carpet looks a million times better, and it doesn't look so much like a little boy inhabits it.

Sorry about the poor quality of the "after" picture.  Marshall fell asleep before I could take one with the lights on.  I'm still trying to figure out the placement for a few things, like the baby's crib and my glider and possibly my $7 lamp from IKEA, but other than that the room is organized!  Hoorah!!

I'm hoping to get a curtain rod hung and new curtains made before the baby comes.  Right now we're using a queen sized sheet folded in quarters stuffed in the top of the blinds to keep the light out of the room at night.  It's been working okay for a while, except that it's starting to fall down, and it doesn't look fabulous, and the anal personality in me wants the room to look fabulously perfect.

Hopefully I'll be able to get the crib set up soon, and the glider put back together (we painted it a few weeks ago) with new cushions (which I plan on making this weekend, hopefully).  Then I can focus on cleaning blinds and hanging new curtains.

Scare-o-Ween

So I don't really like October.  Other than the candy my son gets trunk-or-treating (that I sneak - SHH! don't tell!), October really only has cold weather and scary movies.

I don't like either of those things.

Tonight Mike made me watch Paranormal Activity 2.  Have you seen it?  Not cool.  Not my favorite.  Scary movie involving possessed persons and a baby = not my favorite combination.  No sir, not at all.

I do have to admit that some scary movies I do like.  Take the first 3 Scream movies (I haven't seen the newest one yet), or the 2 I Know What You Did Last Summer movies.  Those were good.  They were scary but kind of corny at the same time.  Plus, with both Scream and I Know What You Did, I had a friend tell me the entire plot before I ever saw them, so that helped a lot with the scare-factor.

So what is your favorite, or least favorite, part of October?  Are you into scary movies?  What's your favorite? Or are you like me and can do without the scary movies?

Let me know in the comments!  Meanwhile, I'm going to go watch what I call "happy TV" which essentially is anything that is not scary.  Right now, it would be Hawaii Five-Oh.  Gotta love me some of that Alex O'Loughlin.  Yep.  Gonna go devote my whole attention to him and his show now. :)

Sewing Summit, Part 4

Sunday morning after breakfast we had two more classes.  I took a class about photographing your creations, hoping it might help me take pictures of the quilts and quilting I do.  I'm still not sure how I'm going to photograph the quilts with all the detail showing up (we quilters have it HARD I tell ya!), but I did learn a lot of new tricks and tips to try out on my Nikon D60.

Then I had a class on blogging.  Oh my gosh it was so helpful!  I learned a lot about blogging, giveaways, and stuff I didn't know was even important or available for bloggers.  I'm still trying to figure out some of the things I want to add to my blog, like "share" buttons at the bottom of my posts, and "follow" buttons on my sidebar for twitter, facebook, RSS feeds, etc., but I'm getting there.  The class even motivated me to blog more (can you tell? hehe)

After my second class it was time to say goodbye to all of my fun new friends.  I was so sad that Sewing Summit was over!!  Mike and Marshall had already loaded the car up with all of our stuff, so we checked out and booked it home (where my boys promptly fell asleep for several hours).  I honestly had the best time ever, and I cannot wait for next year!  I've already started saving my dimes and nickels so I can be among the first to register to ensure I can attend!!

If you'd like to follow Sewing Summit, they have a Twitter (@SewingSummit), a Facebook page, and you can follow their blog to stay in the loop and in the know.  :)

Sorry this post lacks pictures.  I was too scattered the last day to take any!

To read Part 1 of my re-cap, go here.
To read Part 2 of my re-cap, go here.
To read Part 3 of my re-cap, go here.