Books

Dan came up with a fun idea for us to try this year. We both love books and reading and both have a lot of books the other person has never read. So we are going to start picking out books for each other to read from our books and keep track of what books we read this year. I have never really thought about figuring out how many books I read in a year and am excited to see how the year ends :)

No need to say it... we know, coolest people ever!

Dinner with Friends

There is a lovely group of women who I have been friends with since college and we have been consistently hanging out at least twice a year since we all graduated. Last year Dan and I even flew out to Arizona to see one of these women and her family. Well my Arizona friend (Jessica) is in town for a couple weeks to visit family and we were able to all get together! Sadly her husband and kids couldn't come to dinner but Jen drove up from Indy, Stacey and her husband Tyler came from Fort Wayne, and Dan and I drove in as well. We met up in Warsaw and ate at our usual Mexican restaurant. We had fun catching up and finding out what was going on. The only people missing were Becky who now lives out in the New England area and Jenner who is up in Chicago.

It is amazing to me that we have done such a good job of staying in touch and we really enjoy the time we get to hang out. Lots of laughter and fun always happen no matter what we end up doing.

Komet's Game

Dan and I got invited to go see a Komet's Game on Friday .... for free ... in one of the boxes :) I had never been to a hockey game before and it is a lot more fun to watch live then on TV. It was also exciting at the end of the game as 3 points were scored in only a couple mins. And I was surprised to learn there were over 8,000 people at the game..growing up in Michigan we never watched hockey (which I guess is kind of strange to some people) but I here there is a huge following.

And I did have an overwhelming urge to watch D2 when we got home, as this is the extent of my knowledge when it comes to hockey :)

Bread

I decided to make my Aunts' lemon bread on Monday night. Once it was done I was working to get it out of the pans by going around the edges to help it slide out of the pan once I flipped it over. Dan took the first pan while I worked on the second pan, I hadn't quite gotten the edges loose and he started shaking the pan :)

Dan's loaf is on the left and the one I flipped over (and didn't shake) is on the right :)

Lesson learned...don't shake the pan. We had a good laugh before diving into the nice warm bread!

2 week project

After I was done teaching I decided to make another quilt as a Thank you/Christmas gift for my Supervisor. He has been working with me for quite a few years now and I wanted to find a way to say Thank you. So I pulled out my quilting and got to work.

Material

Squares

Laying it out



boarders ready



All together!



After getting it all together I took it to a lady in Michigan to do the final quilting and my mom added the binding. Here is the final project...

Dan helping to show it off :)

Binding

Label

All done!

Grandma

Christmas 2012

 On January 4th my Grandma died at 94 years old...it is strange to think that in less than a year I have lost my last Grandparents. It has been a hard couple of years as my family has watched my Grandmother get worse and worse with her Alzheimer's and trying to help my Grandpa as he insisted on taking care of her, even at 95 years old...he wanted to do for her what she always did for him. It is a strange thing to see someone you have known your whole life and realize they no longer recognize who you are.

My Grandma was a very caring and sweet woman, she prayed for people, sent cards to me while I was in college, loved playing games and reading. I remember always enjoying yummy treats at their house and playing games with her at home and camping. She was a woman of faith and I will miss her greatly. But I do take comfort in knowing she is no longer constrained by her deteriorating body...she no longer has to struggle to speak or hear. I was really touched by what my brother-in-law shared at her funeral about how we no longer are waiting for her, now she is waiting for us.

I love you Grandma and am glad you are finally free and with Grandpa again.

December 2011

December 2011

Quilt - Part 3

The final part of the quilt is making the side boarders and putting it all together:

Made 128 of these

Laid out to be sewn on top, already together on the bottom

All 30 stars laid out

Half way through putting them together

Sewing

Ironing on the square boarder

Finished!!

The entire quilt :)

In all it took me over 8 hours to finish the squares and connect everything together. The last part of the process is to add the batting for the middle and connect it with a backing and then quilt over the entire piece. I wanted it to be done really well so I gave it to a friend of my mom's who does the quilting on a professional quilting machine. My mom then volunteered to put the edging on, something I am still learning to do. We added the final touch of putting our names and dates on the back.

Tag with our names and date

Corner view of the top

Finished quilt!

It took 9 months for everything to get finished up but it turned out really well and it was a lot of fun to work on.

Quilt- Part 2

Once I had everything cut out I dusted off my sewing machine and set to work piecing everything together. This is the fun and tedious part of the quilt for me. I love putting the colors in different combinations but it takes quite a while to sew everything together. First I lay out what piece will get sewn together.

All layed out and ready

Next comes the sewing and as long as I don't run out of bobbin thread or have issues with my machine I can be fairly quick, but after each seam is sewn I have to iron it.

 From the pictures you can see how it looks with one done (a before and after) as well as both. Slowly the pieces come together as there is a specific way they have to be joined.


Half way done

Then the moment of triumph when everything is together and the back needs to be ironed.

Iron all the seams

And after almost 2 hours I got my first star done! Granted April was the first time I had used my sewing machine this year and I knew I would a few kinks to get worked out.

All done!

It wasn't until August that I was able to get all 30 stars finished. The last thing I had to do was measure and clean up the edges to make sure they are all about the same size. The tricky thing with quilting is that unlike cooking it has to be fairly exact.

Measuring

The  piles of stars

The perfect star

Making stars and points is really tricky and I was really excited to see this star turn out perfectly. You can see all the points and the seams all line up.

Quilt- Part 1

This year I have been working on a quilt. There is always something exciting about starting this type of project. I love picking out the colors and envisioning how everything will come together with the pattern. After Christmas I had the idea that we should give a quilt to Dan's parents for Christmas this year. Dan and I sat and looked through the patterns and talked about colors. When I got to the fabric story I had to make some slight adjustments but here is the fabric I selected.

Colors for the design on top (star pattern)

The backing, main color for front, and green for the binding

Once I hand washed everything (which is tricky to do when your bathtub isn't clean enough) I put it in the dryer so if any of the material shrinks it does it before I get everything put together. My next step was ironing everything before cutting things out. Then came the slump in my creativity. I got some things cut out but realized between working and trying to sell our house I had let the quilt fall off my wagon! I have a woman in Michigan who does a beautiful job finishing up the quilt and need to give her enough time to get it finished before Christmas.

Time to iron!

So in April I dubbed Thursday's as quilt days...I jumped back in and in one day (a good 3 hours) I had finished cutting out over half the pieces. By the end of April I was done cutting the fabric out and began piecing everything together.

First set cut out!

Second set ready to be cut