Kate’s New Accessory, a photo by auburn2001grad on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Kate and Dash were playing on the slide at McDonald’s a week ago and somehow got tangled up on the way down… John and I thought maybe she just twisted her knee but she woke up later from a nap crying and not wanting to walk on it. John took her to the pediatrician who x-rayed it an told him he had about 45 minutes to get to Huntsville to get a cast for her. Turns out the twisted knee was really a hairline fracture in her tibia. She’s such a champ though, she hasn’t complained once and she gets around almost as fast as she does without it. Lucky for us because it weighs a ton. She goes back February 22nd to have it checked but he said expect for her to wear it another week after that. Boo. Four years and 2 kids though and this is our first broken bone… I have to say I thought it would be Dash.

Since I added this blog to my own domain and didn’t go straight through word press I didn’t think I could use the wordpress app but I just needed to do an upgrade.  Hooray!!  Apologies in advance for the upcoming phone pictures.    at least my phone has a pretty decent camera.

Comic strip nails, a photo by auburn2001grad on Flickr.

I know this is random, I normally wouldn’t post a picture of my feet. Lord only knows what kind of spam this will generate. =) I saw this on here: http://pretty-ditty.blogspot.com/ and thought it might work with comic strips. It does! =) You paint your nail and let it dry, then put rubbing alcohol on it, I just used a cotton ball. Then you press the newspaper on to your nail, you REALLY have to press it, then pull it off like a tattoo. Super easy and cute.

There is a type of quilt called a cathedral window, and I’ve always wanted to try it. It looks so hard! I couldn’t figure out how in the world they do it. I found a tutorial on Moda, they have a great website with free “recipes” for quilts. And it was a pillow so I thought well I can do that.

Here’s the link to the tutorial.

And here’s what I came up with:

First, I love this pillow, from a distance I think it looks pretty great. Up close… meh, it was my first one.

The fabric is from a line called Monaluna (who has an awesome blog, by the way…) and the pink and white are kona cotton. I got John to buy me a whole pile of this fabric for my birthday, the rest of it will be a new wave quilt by Oh Fransson, that one is in the works. Kate has alerady claimed this pillow, it looks sweet sitting on her bed. That girl is a sucker for pillows and blankets. =)

We have a teeny tiny garden, we set aside a little hunk of yard and dug up the grass, dumped some miracle grow moisture control and some muck from our pond in there and planted four heads of lettuce and four tomatoes. We finally were able to pick the first tomato this weekend.

Dash did the honors:

While this looks like they were sweetly sharing, they were not. =) Dash was sharing, Kate was grabbing.

They might be related. If you look close enough you can see where Kate got some teeth marks on the tomato. =)

We sat right down in the yard and devoured that sucker. There’s nothing more summer than a ripe tomato fresh from the garden and still warm from the sun. Yum!

When I made that giant quilt for Kate, I had a ton of scraps left over. Recently I found this tutorial and decided it was perfect for all those scraps! I quickly cut them all down to blocks and ironed them onto my base fabric, and then it sat there forever waiting for me to quilt it. =) I finally finished it this weekend and love it! Aneela Hoey rocks for sharing that tutorial, especially for free!

I should have done something like this first. The size of it was so easy to manage while I was quilting. This one is going to go over Kate’s bed as soon as I can part with it over my sewing machine. =)

I bought some Christmas fabric I had my eye on right after Christmas when it was on sale and decided I’d use it for some christmas quilts for us and Dash and Kate. I finished the one for Dash a while ago, but the one for me (and John, we’ll say. =) ) took me a while. Yesterday John had to go to Birmingham so I took the day off so I could pick up the kids from school and stay with them, and that also bought me 3.5 hours of alone time which is a rarity for me. And I quilted all.day.long. Blissful.

Here’s Dash’s… Just simple charm squares.

And here’s mine. =)

I’m a bit smitten with it. I made up Dash’s pattern, the one for mine is here

The fabric is Kate Spain’s 12 days of Christmas for Moda. She’s coming out with a new one for this year called Flurry, I imagine I’ll end up with some of that too. =)

I’ve been losing weight since February of last year, February 20th, actually. =) I’ve been loosely following the South Beach diet and walking at the mall occasionally on my lunch break. We have a gym in town, Bender’s, that is opening a HUGE new facility and lately they’ve been running a special where you can join their current location for el cheapo (48 per couple on sale, 55 per couple regularly) and that rate transfers over to the new facility. Pool, childcare, the works. So John and I thought about it and decided to join up. I’ve lost 50 pounds on my own but I’ve kind of stalled out where I am now. I thought a gym might do me some good and they have Zumba classes which I really wanted to try.

They’re also doing a 12 week challenge, it’s based on body fat percentage loss, before and after pictures and an essay. I think I’m in a good spot where I could make a difference in 12 weeks, I really have about 30 pounds to go and I could make a big dent in that in 12 weeks if I tried hard. And the prize is a 5 day cruise for 2 or $2000. So John and I both signed up. =)

I took the Zumba class the first day, how freaking fun. =) I’m hooked. The Zumba DVD set might be on its way to my house.

Speaking of that, is everyone signed up for Amazon Mom? What a great program. You just sign up and you get 3 months free Amazon Prime membership, and then everything you buy from their baby/child store (which includes a ton of stuff) extends your membership. So I’ve been getting free 2 day shipping for several months now. I might be addicted to THAT too. =)

You can sign up here and you don’t have to be a mom. Just sign up. =)

Kate’s language has exploded lately, she went from maybe 10 words to about 25 in a week or two. Now she’ll say just about anything you ask her to say =)

Make that 7. =)

1. Good God I’m sick of dieting.

2. I’ve been quilting a lot lately, I made this for a friend of mine,

Which is this pattern over here. I love her patterns, they’re so straight forward and easy to follow.

3. I’ve also been on an embroidery kick, I’m following Little Miss Shabby’s Birdie block of the month…

I have a thing for birds, and hot pink. =)

4. I’m a** deep in fabric right now. =) I was going to do this zig zag quilt with some adorable 12 days of Christmas fabric (I guess I should link that too, hang on.) Well, i have no idea where to point you to since most places are selling out of it =). How about the flickr group? Anyway, I bought 3 charm packs, which is 120ish 5×5 squares, and somehow ended up buying another one too. So I broke that into three quilts when the zig zags just didn’t look so hot to me anymore. I’ll post those when I finish them, hopefully by next Christmas. =) and then I have all the fabric for the block of the month and enough to make another quilt out of that Alexander Henry fabric… lots of fabric.

5. It has been insanely gloomy here lately. Today it’s sunny and 50. WONDERFUL for lifting my spirits.

6. Kate’s language has exploded lately. She went from hardly saying anything, to suddenly saying everything. I have some video of her, I need to upload it. She says goofball and thank you, very cute. =)

7. I still have zero desire to have another baby. Even with several of my friends having babies. =) I daresay we’re done. =)