In the Olden Days...

This has become one of my four year old son's favourite expressions of late. Although he does have a real fascination for all old transportation equipment (I know way more about old street car systems and antique farm machines than I ever thought possible!), what he really means is anything that existed before him.

This gift for a new baby does not quite meet his definition, but it was completed early in 2011. I have just been too disorganized to actually cram him in a box and send him to his new baby owner. I have dreams of creating the perfect care package for my friend (who is now a mother of 3!). I'm all thoughts and no action these days. Good intentions at their worst.

I did however, get organized enough to make a donation to the Canadian Red Cross to assist in Japan!

This sweet elephant fellow is from Last Minute Patchwork Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. Making him really took only the 4 hours designated in the book and he was not tough to make...even for a 3D impaired lady, such as myself! Now my cute boy would like one for his very own. The highest praise indeed!

Why we are having pizza tonight...

268 - 4" hourglass squares


Half of which are currently carefully laid out on the dining room floor....


Tonight I must keep the 3-year old boy out of the dining room and off of the quilty mess. I must "randomly" lay out the rest of the squares and then create orderly little stacks to be pieced for a quilt top.

My lovely husband is celebrating his 40th birthday this year. I was so flattered when he told me that he wanted a quilt. He loves these Kaffe fabrics...and so do I!

Can I deliver this quilt by a Friday deadline? It seems doubtful. I would at least like to have the top pieced for that lovely man. It would be nice if he had an actual gift to open. I would really do almost anything to make certain that he enjoys his BIG day. He's a bit nervous about 40, and I want to make sure that the day is filled with happy, loving memories.

I love you sweetie! I'm racing to finish on time....but I know that you really know me. I'm always running late. You love that about me, right? RIGHT???

Everybody out of the dining room! No time for dinner preparation! Quilting-palooza all week at my house!

Birthdays and breaks

Hope that everybody had a great long weekend! Not only was it the Easter long weekend, but at our house....it was also my birthday long weekend. Yippee! I love to drag out a birthday celebration for as long as humanly possible. Much longer than is appropriate really.

It was eerily calm at our house this weekend. This was not by accident. It was one of my birthday "gifts" from my husband. You see, I have a habit of scheduling every free moment, but he organized a "non-planned, do what you want on a whim" kind of a weekend . Let me be clear - I am scheduling my life with things that I love and with people that I love, but sometimes a calm, quiet, non-scheduled weekend is just what one requires. It was strangely liberating. We spent a lot of time outside doing nothing of any importance, but full of sunshine and enjoyment!

I must confess, however, it turns out that I don't just sit still well...so I spent much of the weekend with some hexagons in my hands. This was a completely directionless and relaxing task. I'm not really sure what I will do with these hexagons. I had imagined making a wall hanging and taking it into my office at work to fight off the BEIGE. Not sure if that's what I'm going to do now. Work has been busy and sort of yucky lately (temporarily, I'm sure!). Not too sure if I want to subject my lovely hexagons to work and the beige. Is it crazy to be protective of scraps of fabric made into hexagons? Probably! Perhaps they will become a lovely cushion for home???

As you can see, my son is very keen on all of the colours. Here he is helping to model my hexagons:

Here I go...back into real life. Luckily, the weekend is not far away...

EeEEEE - look what was waiting for me at home today!

I quickly tore into the package to reveal:


Check out the sweet little gnome faces!:


I will probably drop these little gnome friends into the wash fairly quickly to make sure that they don't fade on me. There has been some talk on Flickr that the fabrics aren't as colourfast as they ought to be....although it sounds like this isn't true for all colours (luckily!).

The Spoonflower colours are lovely and bright (YUM!), but the fabric is not nearly as soft as Heather Ross's fabric from Free Spirit.

They do however, have lovely gnomes and mushrooms which I was not lucky enough to purchase on their first run. Don't you just love the selvage edges of the fabric?

I had to laugh...while I was snapping pictures (under my bad dining room light because I just can't wait until daylight tomorrow morning!), my son shoved his truck onto the table. "Here Mommy" he said "Take a picture of my backhoe so that you will have a really pretty picture!".

OK Evan. Here is a "really pretty picture". Lovely Heather Ross fabrics and my son's favourite "Mighty Machine". True loveliness!

Smarch.

I have never been a big fan of March. Generally it is the loooooongest month. It is the month when you think winter should end, but it doesn't - generally. This month it has been bEEEeautiful! Sunny and warm and lovely.

Unfortunately, it has been a rough month in our house where the weather has not been adequately enjoyed. We spent the first week sick (again! How can that even be possible???) and just when we were on the mend our daycare provider had a serious fall. This means that we have been trying to cover full time work and full time daycare duties. MAN - it makes you really appreciate just how great our daycare provider really is (she is going to be fine BTW!).

At any rate...we are nearly out of March (SSSssmarch), our least favourite month of the year and into lovely April! C'mon April! 3 cheers for Spring! Hooray, Hoora, Yippee!

The new "schedule" has severely limited my actual crafting time, but I do have a completed project to share. It is a lovely zig-zag quilt that was started many moons ago. I had completed the top quite some time ago and it sat unfinished while I hemmed and hawed over the back. Just my usual dither until simple inspiration hits (or at least until my indecisiveness is set aside and I proceed with the project exactly how I had first planned to before indecision took hold).

This quilt is lovely and cheerful and bright - exactly everything that Spring should be!

Without further ado, I am excited to show you the finished quilt:

Back:

Close up of the back:

I don't always name my quilts, but I have decided to call this one Spring Zig, March Zag.

Red, white and GOLD!

Have you been watching the Olympics? We have!

We hadn't intended to spend the entire weekend watching the Olympics, but we did. Certain small boys have brought home (yet another!) cold. This one is miserable, and as a result, so is the boy. We curled up on the couch together and my son dozed on and off, while I stitched and his father tried not to cheer too loudly and wake him. Between rests we ate throat soothing freezies (for cold infested boys and grown up cheerers).


You know a three year old is feeling retched when he asks if he can be taken to bed now please. Poor soul!


I couldn't quite figure what had inspired me to start stitching these matryoshka dolls in red and white...but the answer is plain as day:

• Red and white for Canada
• Russian dolls for the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics

The Olympics must be entering my subconsciousness!

I am so proud of Vancouver. What a fantastic job they have done in hosting the games!

I hope that you had an opportunity to enjoy some red, white and gold moments over the last few weeks.

Where art thou spring??

OK, so it looks like this outside this afternoon:

Sadly, this is an improvement from this morning when there were big, wet snowflakes falling from the sky. Snow is lovely in December....and generally I love winter - truly I do, but I think that I am over winter now. So very over. Over the grey, over the snowsuits, over the mushy and mucky snow, and sooo over the flu and colds that seem to proliferate during the winter! (can you tell that I am down with another flu????).

To combat the winter that it raging outside our window, we have moved spring indoors! My lovely mother came for a visit and we spent some time at our favourite flower shop. We just couldn't resist bringing a few bits of spring loveliness home with us...

These beauties were purchased for my mother's arrival. I don't think that there is anybody who appreciates tulips more than my mother (and truly...what's not to love?!):



Isn't this little arrangement scrumptious???!:



And finally, we couldn't resist this:


Ahhhh....Spring is coming my friends! May it come very soon.

We have been with flu

Hello all! January has been the month of illness in our house. Both my husband and son have been sick twice. One cold, one TERRrrrRRIBLE flu. No sickness for me, though. I must admit that I feel like a germ fighting power house!

We are back to full health and getting back into the swing of things.

I have been a focused little craft-producing machine, so I have much to share with you! (I'll try to resist the urge to show everything in a single post).

There is a baby shower for a co-worker tomorrow, so much of last weekend included this view:

Here is the finished view of the quilt for the new baby boy:

(Momo Odyssea charm pack, blue gingham (!LOVE!) flannel backing and Amy Butler Full Moon binding - yummy!). The quilting was inspired by this one from Film in the Fridge.

Another baby quilt, more cross-stitching and a project for the boy's room to follow...

Greedy girl treat herself

I travelled to the Boxing Day (week!) sales with restraint in mind. Truly not my forte if I'm honest. I had a 50% off coupon. It would have been wrong and wasteful not to use it, non?

Behold! The thing that I didn't know that I needed/wanted until I saw it:

Please don't misunderstand. I don't regret my purchase...just my lack of discipline! Please be reminded...it was HALF price!

I immediately set to work cutting all of my Christmas cards into tags so that they will be ready for next year.

Here is what I started with:

My clever new cutter even lets you "preview" where the cuts will happen.

Don't forget that there is prime tag making material on the back of the cards too!

Here is the cute little stack that resulted:

What a marvellous, non-wasteful self-serving purchase!

I was quite please with my work until my son (who is 3 years old) came into the craft room and asked why I had cut up all of his "happy cards". "I am very angry with you Mommy!" he scolded. Whoops.

Should I be ashamed to confess that I'd do it all again???

Boxing Day surprise

We woke this morning to an incredible ice storm!

This was the view from the window (NO, the windows are not frosted...that is a lovely layer of ice):

We were meant to have an outdoor block party with street hockey and warm chili today. When we looked out the front door we were confronted with an empty street and ice laden trees and wires. Probably not the best day for venturing outdoors!

So instead, we stayed in and indulged in some of our favourite Christmas treats:

We spent a lot of time on the phone catching up with family. We enjoyed a glass of wine. We enjoyed racing games on the new Wii.

Most enjoyably, we spent a quiet day together in our pyjamas. Ahhh.

We will also enjoy leftover roast beef for dinner (perhaps with another glass of wine?).

Round 2 of MarioKart championships after the little one goes to bed. Bring it!

The roast...

At first I worried that there wouldn't be enough roast for everybody. We were planning for 8 people at our Christmas table. One dropped off because of family responsibilities a week ago and the rest fell off the list on Christmas Day because of illness.

We tried to make the best of it and nestled in with just the three of us for a cozy dinner.

It was a great meal (if I do say so myself!)....but I must confess that I found it a bit strange with such a quiet table.

I confess to finding it a bit lonely, since we had originally thought that family would be here for Christmas (and travel plans fell through) and then we thought that we would have a large crowd of friends (and that fell through).

I realize that in the greater scheme of things this is not a big deal...it really isn't. Perhaps just not what I was expecting?

All in all there are so many greater unhappinesses and disappointments, and I know that Christmas is a difficult time of year for many people. I am lucky that my Christmases have been quite happy, and I know that my disappointment this year is a small one (I really DO know that)...

Once again, I am using my blog to work out that my life is really pretty good...and as a reminder of all that I have to be grateful for! Thank you for indulging me...

Now. Off to enjoy some of the leftover roast for dinner (and there are LOTS!).

Hope that all had an enjoyable Christmas Day. AAAAaaand, for those of you who didn't - I hope that you will remember that it is only one day, and that you will enjoy the rest of the holiday season.

Much Christmas-y love,

Holly

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...which is good, because Christmas is only 1 week away!

It has most definitely snowed in Canada's Capital city (lots and lots)!:

We have trimmed our tree - and it has fallen over 3 times! Special thanks to Donna's lovely husband who came armed with equipment (a reciprocating saw and rope man!) to bail my lovely, but un-handy husband and myself out on a Saturday morning when the final collapse happened (oh the carnage!):

I have since added millions of crocheted snowflakes (ok a dozen or so - I tend to be prone to small exagerations). I am ever so obsessed with these lovelies!

I am meant to be finishing the quilt for my sister's Christmas gift, but since I am a professional time waster these days, I have taken to completing one snowflake (which I really don't need) every evening. Lovely.

I also decided that it was NECESSARY to paint most of the main floor of my house. Yes - NECESSARY! There were a few nights of painting until 2 am, but I am pleased with the results.

Before:

After:

Now just imagine the room with lovely bursts of colour inserted from (yet-to-be-completed!) crochet and quilting projects. Ahhh...all of the exciting projects for the New Year! But first...off to complete the projects that must be shipped (cross country!) this year!