Great Days...

Well, the kids and I had a wonderful Halloween and my birthday yesterday was great. As you can tell, my kiddos were the Bat Kids!

I did have to do one final tweak to my daughter's costume. I picked up some cheap black masks at Michael's but when she tried it on, it just did not work. So I found one I liked online and used a silver Sharpie to draw off the parts I wanted to remove. Here's the before and after of what I did.

I thought it turned out pretty good!

My neighbor and I took our kids to Publix where they had a few games set up. Then we traveled over to Wendy's where it just so happened to be $.99 meals for the kids that night. They also had a clown doing face painting. One of my neighbor's kids had dressed as the Cheshire Cat so she asked if he could enhance it with some face painting. He did an amazing job!

How cute is that? After Wendy's we visited the home of a theater friend who was having a little get together. She and her hubby had made up lots of little "Harry Potter-like" party foods and even had a drink my son loved. They took rubber gloves and froze cranberry juice in them. Then they pored cranberry Sprite in the bowl over dry ice. It looked like hands were floating in the punch which my boy thought was so cool! Plus the 'smoke' from the dry ice added to the affect.

After all this they finally got to do some trick or treating and still came away with quite a haul.
Then yesterday was my birthday. It's also my neighbor's birthday so we usually end up giving each other gifts, but this time we decided to go on a birthday tour. We took my daughter and two of hers, then drove to Warm Springs. First stop?

We had a little home cooked southern food at The Bulloch House. Yum! Then we walked around the square and did some shopping. I came home with several scarves, some soaps, and a few Christmas gifts. When we got home, hubby had cooked a pot of minestrone soup and had flowers on the table. I got a gift card to a local spa so I'll have to figure out what kind of treatment I want to try. Plus I need to figure out what to get him cause his birthday is next Saturday and I have no ideas! Plus my daughter's birthday is Wednesday and I have no ideas for her either. Yuck!!!

Are You Ready for Le Challenge?

Lucy over at Charm About You and Nat at Made in Home have come up with  a great little monthly challenge idea. On the 15th of each month they will announce a theme for that month's challenge. Your project is "due" by the 15th of the next month. You can use any crafting supplies you would like (crochet, knitting, quilting, decoupage, etc.) to meet the requirements of the theme; this is not relegated just to quilters. The idea is to get out there and try something new, plus we all get a load of inspiration from others! Oh yeah, and there will be giveaways! That's always a plus for these little adventures!

The first challenge will be announced this Friday, March 15th (the Ides of March, ooh!!!) on both of their blogs as well as the site they have set up especially for the challenge, Le Challenge. Come one, come all and check it out this Friday!

Weekend Update... ... ...

More goodies have been finished! I took strips I won at strip poker at one of our quilt guild meetings and made a donation quilt.

I didn't have enough of the leftovers to do a border. I may run by the LQS and see what they have. It's only 36x36 so it would need to be a bit bigger for a lap quilt.

I also took some of my twin quilt leftovers and made myself a calendar cover from this tutorial. I didn't follow her directions for doing strips on the front, but I did what she said about how to put it together. I bought this calender and then wondered why I never wanted to put it in my purse. Well, it was ugly!

Here's how it looks on the calendar.

and opened.

Oh, and I came across a wonderful event going on right now. My friend Michelle over at Quilt Matters posted today about an online Quilting Conference going on at WillowBendCreations.  It's called Inspired to Quilt, and there are little classes, vendors, quilts to look at and it's all online! I've already got a minky scarf I've watched them make that is on my list. Check it out! And if you've got a minute, check out Michelle's gorgeous Don't Worry, Be Scrappy quilt. It's in this week's Quilting Gallery contest (Scrappy Triangle Quilts).  I know she'd appreciate the votes and it truly is gorgeous. Check out all that FMQ; I'm so jealous!

Hope you're having a fun weekend!

HoneyDo Brag Book!

What are you guys doing for the Labor Day Weekend?  Hubby has been handy doing things this weekend. We went to an arts and crafts festival Saturday where there was a guy making puzzles and woodworking pieces on a scroll saw (hubby has one). While we were there, we also picked up a cute dragon necklace for Thing 1. She's all about dragons right now. When we got home, he saw her in her room attempting to detangle a bunch of her other necklaces so his mind went back to that woodworker. He then did a little internet looky-loo and came up with this.

A necklace tree! How cute is that? He made two and routed out a strip in each so he could fit them together and make it more 3-D. Here is a close-up of the top.

Then he started having fun with that scroll saw and came up with some more goodies. He finished them and told the kids he had cut something out but needed some help putting it back together.

Thing 1 ended up with a dragon, which she loves.

Thing 2 was extremely excited to see that his was R2-D2. He was loving it!

I came up with quilting associated Honey Do list. Well, it's only a list of one thing but, that's okay. I have been harboring much jealousy every time I see quilt design walls on people's blogs. Mine usually end up on the floor which makes it difficult to see mistakes. Plus, we have this cat. A 19 year old cat. A kind of incontinent 19 year old cat. Her box is in the basement where my sewing room is, and I really think she does it when she's mad because she makes it most of the time, but, she's basically made the floor NOT a viable option anymore. The thought of it just grosses me out so I asked hubby to make me a design wall. We went the PVC pipe + flannel backed vinyl tablecloth route. The tablecloth was only $3 so I figured it was a deal.

Well, it worked out okay, but you get what you pay for in the tablecloth. My pieces don't stick to it very well so we will probably have to redo the fabric part of it with batting or real flannel, but the frame is perfect.

Right now I'm having to put pins through each square to make sure it doesn't slide off. I will fix it but I'm just glad to have something that holds more than 1 block.
Here's the frame.

Didn't hubby do good this weekend?! I may have to brag on him on some linkies since he doesn't blog!
Linking up hubby's good works to the following since he doesn't blog!

Linking up!

Starting a blog

Hmmm... I've thought about doing this for a long time but wasn't sure I'd ever go through with it. I give it up to Mitzi at livelovequilt.blogspot.com for encouraging me to start! I love your blog, Mitzi! Hopefully this will give me a way to post things I do but also give me an option for staying in touch with far away family so they can keep up with what we do.

I'm currently working on several quilts and am working on two different quilt alongs. First I'm working on Randi's "On the Road to Spring" quilt in various shades of pink, black and a hint of green. This one actually has a very personal story behind it. http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/quilt-a-long/

I'm also doing a more muted and organic looking version of Karrie Lyne's charm pack quilt.

http://www.freckledwhimsy.com/search/label/Charm%20Pack%20Quilt%20Along

I actually expect this one to take quite a while because it is much more involved. I am still working on the basic squares and have quite a long way to go.
And (because we crafters just can't work on one thing at a time!) I'm also working on something to use up all those scraps. I chose to do a paper pieced string quilt by Film in the Fridge. I love ALL of her quilts!
http://www.filminthefridge.com/2009/04/27/a-string-quilt-block-tutorial-paper-pieced-method/

Hopefully some of these will get finished soon. I am attempting to do most of my own machine quilting unless it is too large so these will reach completion in time!