Let's try this again

About 4 months ago I tried posting a quilt-in-progress only to have to delete the post. Being the totally brain-dead mama that I am I didn't even think that the woman who was to be surprised with this quilt would somehow find the post (it wouldn't have been too hard seeing as she has access to my blog)!

The very short story of this quilt...it starts with another mama acquaintance of mine whom I "met" through an online fertility board while pregnant with my first child. A group of us connected and formed our own little private board. We have gone through the births and everyday lives of our September 2006 babies, many subsequent births of siblings, miscarriages, fertility issues, health issues, you name it. This mama was anxiously expecting the birth of her 3rd child, a sweet little girl. One fateful day, however, it was learned that the baby was no longer alive. This mama gave birth to a beautiful angel in January 2009 at 17 weeks. This tiny angel has touched all of our lives and we felt that it was only appropriate to give said mama a comforting reminder of her little girl. The group of us pieced together squares of a quilt, added our own personal touches and presented the finished project to the mama (via snail mail) around Mother's Day.

Here are the squares that I worked on before they were pieced:

This is the applique I added to each square. The three flowers represents each of this mama's babies.

Yoo-hoo!

I'm baaaaaack! So much has been going on since my last post and the blogging and projects took a bit of a backseat. In nutshell this has been my life for the last 3 months:

-Found out we are pregnant with baby #3. All is well, I am now 24-weeks and feel like a cow.
-Husband injured his knee which put him out of work as a firefighter and in an office job with the department (thank God he still had a job!).
-In-laws stayed with us for a very long, grueling month to "help us out"....did it help? NO! Will they be staying with us for this long again? NO!
-My little boy started crawling, turned 1 and started walking. The baby-proofing starts again!
-My little girl, who is almost 3 years old, has been busy with art and dance classes. On top of this we are beginning to get a glimpse of what life will look like with a teenager...JOY!

What about my projects? I've actually gotten some things done believe it or not!
-Made a few squares for a "memorial" quilt for a friend (that will be my next post) and quilted the pieced quilt.
-Made the brown/blue/green quilt that I had posted about.
-Made a baby quilt for friend.
-Made a diaper bag for another friend.
-Sewed a dress for my daughter...my first creation made primarily without the help of my mom!
-Just started the squares for a t-shirt quilt for my husband.
-Finished stenciling a wall in my daughter's bedroom.
-Stenciled some cute jungle animals in my son's bedroom.
-Painted my craft/sewing room.
-Scrapbooked a few pages in my daughter's album and started one in my son's album.

Bad, bad blogger

It has been about 3 weeks since my last post and quite honestly I'm not exactly sure when I'll feel motivated to post much soon. The projects (& my motivation) have taken a backseat to the other things that we have been dealt in life in the since the beginning of April. I will be back but not sure how soon.

More scrapbooking pages done!

I'm a on a roll! Honestly though, I wouldn't have even gotten this far if it wasn't for the bi-monthly scrapbooking get-togethers I've been having with a few friends. I actually might get Abigail's scrapbook done and Jacob's started before the end of the year!!

Stenciling

We moved into our new house back in October and the first thing I had to do was paint my daughter's room. We did lavender on the bottom (from chair rail height down) and pink on the top. I've been scouring stores & websites for the perfect stencil and at one point I thought I was ambitious enough to make my own. After several failed attempts I decided to improvise with an already-made stencil that was similar to the prints on the fabric I used to make her quilt. Flowers & bees...around her whole room! This is going to take awhile! So far I've done about 75% of one wall...only 3 more walls to go!

The the projects keep coming!

It's been a week since I last posted and only because I have added even more projects to add to the list!! Yay!
So, I've been visualizing the way I want to paint my sewing/craft room since we moved into our house last October. It's always been a lime green color with brown flowers stenciled on in random patterns. I went to Guiry's/Benjamin Moore the other day and picked up a couple samples and tried them on a wall. I was so excited about the stencil that I loaded the paint on...it won't be anything like that when I do it for real (plus I'll be using acrylic paint not wall paint).

Then, I found some eye-catching fabric that I'm going to use to cover a desk chair that I inherited when my Grandma passed away a little over a year ago. This should give it a whole new life!

Next, I was at the local fabric store and walked past a quilt kit with some great fabrics in green, brown & blue. The light blue will be the backing and the edges of the quilt & the brown will be the binding. I had to have it! This quilt will be used in the family room that is adjoining the craft room.






This isn't an added project but one that I've been working on for a few weeks. These are the pieces of the project that I'll hopefully be sewing together this week/weekend...and it's under wraps for now. I'll post pics of it once it's finally done!


Last, I got together with my friends for another scrapbooking day. It was rather stressful with 3 little toddler girls & 2 infant boys (actually one of the boys is so relaxed you wouldn't even know he's there) and this time my awesome husband wasn't able to help watch the kids...we MISSED him! Hence, I was only able to get one page done...barely!

A very slow moving project

Most you moms can probably relate...you have a project started that you'd really like to work on all day (or at least a good chunk of the day), one that has you excited instead of one that you are dreading (like cleaning the kitchen...for most of us). Well, I have one of those projects and I've honestly gotten about an hour to work on it in the last couple of weeks. My husband even made a comment that it must been have a long time since I've worked on it because a cute little spider is now living above it on the ceiling! It's a sewing project and it's for my mom and at this rate it'll have to be a Mother's Day present (but she knows she's getting it). So, to my kids if you're reading this---please take a couple 4-hour naps (each) for the next 5 days and play nicely with each other the rest of the time you're awake without any complaints! Thanks!

Since I can't post a picture of my project right now--it's under wraps--I included a swatch of a pretty spring-type fabric that I love! It's called Songbird Pink and I found it at Warm Biscuit Bedding Company. So pretty!