Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

My new assignment in church is Activity Days for the 8-11 year old girls.  We have activities twice a month and let me tell you, these girls fall under the personality plus category!  I love how excited about life they are.  So cute!

This past week we had a Top Chef night.  There were 2 teams - one made corn bread & the other made homemade chicken nuggets.  They had 10 minutes to get them in the oven.  Both teams were successful - they put together the salad and set the table while waiting for their food.  Dinner was a hit!  They finished it off with ice cream sundaes.  What's there not to love?  These girls can pack away food as well as any boy I've seen, but they are definitely more chatty (which makes it all the more fun).  

Nathan was in heaven.  He thought they were there to have dinner with him.  He sat right up to the table and enjoyed the meal with all of his new friends. 

I absolutely love how energetic and fun loving these girls are.  I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of fun this year.

Yay for WIP

I finished the baby boy quilt this week.  We took a little trip to IKEA and I finished binding it in the car.

I confess I've never done anything interesting with the back of my quilts, so for the first time ever, I'm piecing part of the back of my ladybug quilt.  This row is going to go through the center of it.  I'm excited to see how it turns out. 

This Week's Stats: New projects - 0
Completed projects -1
Currently in progress - 4
Quilts to start - 2 (Baby Niece Quilt, Baby Girl Quilt)

Check out the other WIP.

Garden Goodness

This week we got our first produce from the garden - zucchini!  I didn't look at the plant for 2 days and they ballooned on me.  I've now gotten 5 zucchinis from my plant this week.  Not bad if I do say so myself.  We made our first batch of zucchini bread today.  Yum.  It's yet another thing that I love about summer.

It's WIP Time

Well, here are the first 3 SBS blocks so far.....

I ended up having enough time to start a little, baby boy quilt that is for a friend.  Time flies and she'll be having this baby before you know it.  I cut everything out and now I'm in the beginning phases of piecing.  I went with the animals motif (I know my son still can't get enough of animals).  I thought the little turtles were particularly cute.  I've never stuck to only using 2 fabrics for the entire front, so we'll see if I end up thinking it's too boring or if simplicity was a smart idea.  Anyway, this is a quarter of a bigger block.....

This Week's Stats: New projects - 1 

Completed projects - 0

Currently in progress - 5

Quilts to start - 2 (Baby Niece Quilt, Baby Girl Quilt)
Goal - We're doing some painting and rearranging of rooms this week, so we'll see how much sewing I actually get to do, but I would like to at least get the baby boy quilt top completed. 
Go see what else people are doing over at Freshly Pieced

A Review of Vampires

I'm always up for a good book series so when Twilight came out I started reading this series.  With each book though I became more and more frustrated, because I didn't like the main character.  Bella was my definition of what a girl should NOT be.  She's whiny, needy, moody, clingy, destructive - and all because of a boy - not even a boy - a vampire.  By the end of the third book I couldn't stand her.  I couldn't bring myself to read the 4th book.  I had to take a break from the series. 

When the movies started coming out I was surprised to find that Joel actually liked the movies - the concept of a vampire, werewolf (shape shifter to be more precise) and human triangle was interesting to him.  With the last movie coming out soon I decided I better bite the bullet and read the last of the books, because I can't read the book once I've seen the movie - it ruins it for me.

I have to say that surprisingly I liked this book better than all of the first three combined.  One of the reasons why I loved this book was because a third of the book was through the eyes of Jacob (one of my favorite characters) and also, as a vampire Bella was no longer so dang annoying.  I found myself able to focus on the plot instead of her and I was actually able to get into the book.  It definitely didn't end the way I thought it would, so I liked that I couldn't determine the plot before I read it.  It kept me interested the whole time.

I feel like the first half of the book was a little too focused on sex for my tastes.  It was tastefully done and yet always part of the subject matter.  You would probably had to of read it to understand what I'm saying.  The second half is where the plot really got interesting.  I liked the ending, but it was a little too open-ended for me.  It feels like there could easily be another book if the author wanted it.   Over all, I'm just glad to be done with the series and happy that Bella redeemed herself in the final book.

SBS #3

I'm happy so far with my choice to go in the opposite direction and use black as the background color.  This is the Churn Dash Block.  I learned a new way to sew triangles - a week after I put together an entire twin bed quilt top full of triangles!  Argh.  That's ok though, because the new method is quicker and more exact, so I'm encouraged for future triangles.  

WIP Success

First, I got my Skill Builders Block #2 done.  It's the Nine Patch. 

Second, I finally got the quilt top for my lady bug quilt completely pieced together last night.  I'd been doing so many baby quilts lately that I had forgotten how much more time and effort a larger quilt takes.  This is for a twin bed.

 

The inspiration for the twin bed quilt came from a tummy time quilt I made for my daughter.  Isn't she precious? She was taking a little snooze in daddy's arms while he read last night.

This Week's Stats: New projects - 0 

Completed projects - 1 (although I'll keep it on the list since it's a quilt along)

Currently in progress - 4

Quilts to start - 3 (Baby Niece Quilt, Baby Boy Quilt, Baby Girl Quilt)
Goal - I'm not going to be able to quilt much this week, so I just want to get my patch for the Quilt Along done and that's about it.

Head on over to Freshly Pieced to see the other projects!  Happy Wednesday!

Summer Yumminess

Another reason I love the summer is because of all of the wonderful produce.  June means strawberries and in this family that means freezer jam!  Joel could live off of this stuff if you let him.  Strawberries were finally really cheap at the store (they're really expensive to pick around here for some reason). I made 5 batches of freezer jam, and I'm tempted to do more. 

I'm also pretty excited, because I have tomatoes, potatoes, green beans and zucchini growing right now.  They're looking great!