New Year, New Project

It's been a while since I've worked on an actual quilt, so I needed to rectify this situation.  My best friend from high school is having her first child - a baby girl.  The baby shower is this month, so I need to get moving.  I didn't just want a regular quilt.  Is that strange?  I wanted something different than I usually do.  I decided to make cake only this time on fabric.  I love Jennifer's cake pattern.  I'm going to make 2 cakes with opposite layers with a lot of negative space on the quilt front.  I didn't want the entire thing to be filled.  A little cake goes a long way.  Here's the first of two cake blocks:

The nursery is painted lime green, and the purple is the color of my bride's maid dress at her wedding.

Merry Christmas!

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2014 Ornaments

Every year we get an ornament for each of the kids that is representative of the past year, and we always try to get an ornament when we go on vacation.

Little Man:  He chose this ornament over the summer during his intense aquatic phase, and he still absolutely loves it.  Orcas are still his favorite animal in the ocean.  I tried to remind him that Killer Whales are mammals (since he's always complaining mammals are so boring), but he was unimpressed by my technicalities. 

Little Lady: She was most adamant that she have a Princess Sofia ornament.  This fits her and her princess obsession perfectly.  Her ornament came in a set, so she decided she wanted to give some of her cousins ornaments as well.  (She said baby's don't need ornaments and that boys don't get to have Princess Sofia, so sorry, Ethan and Kiersten - I promise she still loves you). 

BB: I really wanted a Hungry Caterpillar ornament in keeping with his 1st birthday theme, but I could only find outlandishly priced commemorative ones.  I love my son and all, but I was not going to pay that much for an ornament he will probably break anyway, so I settled on a Hungry Hippo instead.  He is in the 90th percentile for height and 97th percentile for head circumference and weight, so he is most definitely a rather large, but well proportioned child.  He would eat all day long if you let him, so the Hungry aspect applies very well to him.

My brother's wedding in Texas: We chose an ornament from the Alamo.  San Antonio was our favorite city we visited and it also has special meaning since it is Grandma Thompson's childhood home.









Stuetz Family Reunion in Outer Banks, North Carolina:  This ornament was absolutely perfect, because the kiddo's favorite part of the entire trip was fishing for blue shelled crab. 

Looking at the ornaments each year always makes me so nostalgic of all the wonderful memories we've had as a family.  This year in particular was a lot of fun as we put up the Christmas tree ornaments.  The kid's were so excited to see which ornaments belonged to them and what the story was behind each one.  I love that all of the ornaments have some meaning and/or are connected to a memory.  It is a tradition that I cherish.

Pillows Galore

Ok, maybe "Galore" is a slight exaggeration since I only made 2 more, but it feels like I have a lot more to go.  At least the ones I need done for this week are completed.

Mel:  Requested hot pink and flowers

 Bri: "Requested" (by mom) purple and flowers

Something interesting I learned when searching for fabric is that it's actually pretty hard to find a decent floral fabric particularly when dealing with purple.  They either look like they're straight out of my Grandma's old decor or it has characters and other weird things on it.  It was actually a lot easier to find the boy fabrics.

Covering Pillows

Some Christmases I really like to make things for everyone and then others I can barely handle purchasing things.  For some reason I thought it would be a great idea to make something for all my nieces and nephews this year, but as usual time has flown by and Thanksgiving is already next week.  Since I will be seeing my family next week I wanted to bring their Christmas presents to them then, but I forgot that means I now have less than a week to get everything ready to go.  

Luckily, my projects this year aren't time intensive.  I decided to make a personalized pillowcase for the ones who actually use a pillow.  (Sorry Baby Kiersten, you've got another year before this would be remotely useful to you). 

The first pillowcase is for my nephew.  He loves dark blue and outerspace:

I have his 2 sister's pillowcases to do this weekend, and then some shopping to do for my mom, and then I actually think we're almost ready to wrap presents before we see family. 

FieldCrossing Blocks

This month for do.Good Stitches we were asked to make two FieldCrossing blocks.  This is the first time I had seen this quilt pattern and I like it a lot.  We were asked to use a white background with pink (fuchsia and pastel), mustard, peach, and/or rust.  This is what I came up with from my scrap stash:

Rainbow Belle Wave

I finally finished the June do.Good Stitches quilt yesterday.  I thought I had to have it done by the 15th, and it turns out I had until the 1st of December, but that's alright, because I needed a little extra push and I'm so glad I finished it.

It felt a bit surreal to be taking pictures of my June quilt while snow flakes were beginning to fall.  I didn't mentally prepare myself for winter very well this year.  It kind of snuck up on me while life was busily passing by.

I went for a fun rainbow batik backing, because I wanted something just as bright and happy on the back as on the front, but with a slight twist.

I typically like to stick with free motion quilting, but this time I decided to get out my walking foot and echo along each of the waves.  You can see it on the back if you look closely. 

Our Wish Circle typically donates every quilt to Project Linus which gives them to very ill children.  My husband works with these kids on a daily basis as a Pediatric Oncologist, so I thought it would make a little more sense for him to just directly give it to one of his patients this time around.  I'm excited to bring a little sunshine to one of his kiddos at the hospital.

Linkin' up to TGIFF and BOMs Away.

Lion King

I've wanted to see Lion King the Musical for a long time.  I realize I technically already know the story, but I had heard so many great things about the production itself, particularly the costumes that I really wanted to experience it on stage.

It came to Columbus and Joel and I finally got to go.  We were celebrating Joel's birthday a month late.  (Technically I got the tickets for him on his birthday, but it took this long to find an evening both of us were available).  We had nose bleed seats, but I didn't even care, because I was just excited to be there. 

The smiles are genuine even if we look a bit tired.  :)

 Waiting for it to start...

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The costumes did not disappoint!  The opening scene of Circle of Life is breathtaking.  The costumes are incredible and so innovative.  It's pretty clear that no other musical had any chance of winning a Tony for Best Costume the year Lion King debuted on Broadway - Holy Cow, they're amazing!

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The actors of Mufasa, Rafiki, and Scar all performed these roles on Broadway and were definitely the strongest of the cast.  Rafiki blew me away.  She was hands down the best part of the musical.  Even her comedic timing was fabulous.  Nala and Simba were probably the weakest links.  Nala didn't have much stage presence and had a hard time in her lower register.  Joel looked at me after the show and said, "We paid a lot of money for those seats, can I be nit picky?  Simba swallowed all the ends of his words when he was singing."  I just laughed because I had been thinking the same exact thing.  We're a bit on the nerdy side of music and theater and like to critique everything.  I have to say the ensemble was incredible though.  All of my favorite songs in the musical were the African tribal music that's added.  None of it is from Elton John and the movie.  The harmonies brought tears to my eyes a couple of times because they were so gorgeous.  I love exceptional music that is performed well!

On the whole it was an enjoyable night with my husband and I got to cross Lion King the Musical off my bucket list, so it was a win-win!