Denim Star Trail Quilt, Part Two

I can't tell you how happy I am to finally have this quilt front finished.  It turned out great!  I was really worried that the technique I wanted to do wasn't going to work but it did.  It wasn't as exact as I wanted it to be but overall it is fine.  At least this way now I'll know what to do to make it work better if I ever do it again.

 Here is a picture of how the entire front looks.  I really enjoy looking at the trail of stars that go from corner to corner.  It kind of makes me think of the milky way when I look at it which is good because I was going for that.

 I got a closer up view so you could see all of the little stars that we put in between.  The way we put the stars on was we got a stencil and then dabbed a cloth that was soaked with bleach.  I really wasn't sure if this was going to work or not.  I tried it out on a sample piece I quickly made and it took a little practice but we got it down and then started to work on the quilt.

Here is a last view of the stars.  Some of them are still coming out which is fine.  We are trying to leave the quilt outside to soak up some sun to see if that will help with the bleaching process.  Now I just can't wait to get a back for this quilt and sew it all together and then enjoy using it.

Five Months Old

 I have very little knowledge of where the month has gone.  It went by very quickly but then again that always seems to be the case around here with everything that we do.  Seth is still a happy boy most of the time.  He has started to drool a ton which means he is in the teething process.  Still doesn't have anything poking out yet but I'm sure it will come before I know it.  He does get grumpy at night when his mouth hurts a lot and a little grumpy when tired but overall he is one happy guy.

He is getting so much better in his attempts to crawl.  He gets his legs and bottom up well but still has a hard time figuring out to move his arms.  He has now reached the point that I think he doesn't care and will just slide his face forward along the floor while he kicks hard with his legs.  I always worry he is going to be a floor burn or something when he does that.  Seth is great at going around in a circle to see whatever he wants to look at (mostly the dogs are what he wants to watch).

Something new he has been working on is standing.  He doesn't have the best of balance yet but he loves to stand on your lap or the floor and look around.  I'm sure he likes it because it is another new prospective of the area.  He still has not yet mastered sitting up by himself but I'm sure he will get it down within this upcoming month.

Now I just had to include this funny picture of him with his stuff animal.   It looks like to me that they are having a staring contest.  I'm pretty sure Seth is winning.

Encouraging The Baby

One day this past week I let the dogs outside to play in the ward.  They had a great time playing and when they were finished I did like I always do and invited them to come back inside.  Faith came right away but Hope decided to stay outside and enjoy the nice fresh air.  I closed the door and left her to be because she is very well behaved when in the backyard.

 

Well all of a sudden Faith starts crying and going nuts by the back door and I couldn't see Hope anymore.  I quickly ran to the door and saw that Hope was following a baby bird that was trying to fly away.  Hope just wanted to smell the bird but the poor little thing didn't know that.  We have two pet birds and she is wonderful with them so I knew she wasn't going to hurt the poor little thing.  I was a little surprised that Hope didn't mind the mother bird swooping down on her though.  She is my very determine little girl.

 

After a short surprise moment I quickly got Hope to come inside and leave the bird alone.  For the rest of the day I watch that little thing just to make sure it wasn't going to have a heart attack and die.  Hope can be scary to others.  I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of the baby bird though.

 

 It took this little guy several minutes to calm down before he was ready to start flying and trying to get up on the top of the fence.

 Of course his mommy was there to encourage him and watch out for him.  I really don't blame her after seeing Hope chase her little baby.  Now I wish I was able to take a video to show you how that baby bird got up on the top of the fence.  He managed to get on that first beam and then flew to my apple trees and then flew again to the middle beam.  He walked back and forth on that one for quite awhile.  He only left that beam when his mother came and "encouraged" him to get a moving again.

Victory is sweet and so is a nice long nap!  He stayed up on that fence for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening too.  Finally he did move on and I hope he keeps going strong.  It sure was fun to watch how protective his mom was cause I know I'm the same way with my little guy too.

Alice's Wonderland Flowers

I'll be honest but I HATE the story Alice in Wonderland and the Disney movie.  It scared me as a kid and still bugs me as an adult.  Just so many things that I really don't like about that movie.  Well there was one part that I did like and that was the singing flowers.  Well at least when they were nice to her anyways.  I also thought it was a creative idea and wonder where they came up with that idea but after watching my daisy's in the front grow I can now totally see where that idea came from.

Some day's I wonder if a flower will just start talking or singing out of the blue with those funny faces/lips they now have.

First Mother's Day

Now that we have this little bundle of joy we get to celebrate Mother and Father's Day!  YEAH!!!  Well to be honest we really have celebrated it since we got Hope as a puppy but believe me it is a lot more fun when you have a little person to join in on the fun.  It was a great day.  I got to sleep in for an hour extra.  That was a great gift!

 

My handsome men got me two wonderful gifts.  I got books to help me with my crafting ability.  One was for free motion quilting on a normally sewing machine.  Something this quilter has been wanting to try since I have all the parts to do that but also scared to death that I'll mess up my quilts since I have no idea what I am doing so the book is a big help.  The other book I got was to help me with my decorative stitching skill.  Another thing that I have been trying to work on as well.

 

 I just can't say how grateful I am to have these two great men in my life.  They are both super wonderful to me and I feel very lucky to have them be a major part of my life.

Now I just had to point out this cute shirt I made Seth wear for Mother's day.  I hope you can read it alright and I'm sure you have noticed that it is all about daddy but to me that is the best gift I have ever been given.

 I did do something strange this year and got myself some flowers.  They came from the front yard.  I just love daisy's!  They are my favorite flower although these ones didn't smell too good and I don't know why that was but they are still very pretty to look at so I'm okay.

Another wonderful surprise that I had on Mother's day was to have my grandmothers flower plant bloom! (i'd write the name of the plant but I'm a really bad speller so sorry not this time.)  This is a very big deal because we have tried to transplant this thing home a couple of time with no success.  I also couldn't remember what the bloom looked like either since it had been so long too.  I'm just thrilled that it bloomed on Mother's day because it made me feel like my grandmother was with us for this special first time celebration.  Yeah for being a mother!!!

Parking It

Like I have mentioned before we have a park at the end of our street that has a very nice pathway to walk on and I enjoy taking Seth and the girls there when it is nice and sunny outside.  It give us all a great chance to enjoy some fresh air, to get some exercise and it also helps Seth to take a nap when he doesn't want too.  Yes, I'm a sneaky mom and do what I can to get that boy to sleep.  Now when my little angle finally falls asleep I always let the girls play for a few minutes before we go home. 

 

Faith just loves to play on the side.  She will run up the steps as fast as she can and then go down the slide.  She will do this several times before she gets tired and we go home.  I have a lot of fun watching her get that extra amount of energy out because it means she sleeps and acts very well behaved for the rest of the day.  I also think when Seth is old enough he is going to enjoy going down the slide with one of his puppies.

 

Hope on the other hand loves to just lay down and roll around in the nice cool grass.  Once she is done doing that she picks to sit under her favorite tree and watch everything around her.  She is a very good observer of her surroundings.

Denim Star Trail Quilt

Now this is still a work in progress just to let you know from the start.  But while the A/C was out I had to work on a project to keep my mind off of the heat.  I also didn't want to do anything that would make anymore heat so that meant no sewing or using the iron and no cooking hot meals so what better thing to do with your time then just lay out a quilt that has been waiting for you to do so for a little over a year.  I had all of my pieces cut and I just started to lay them out.  I had a different design in my head but soon saw that I had so many of these denim strips that I could (yet again) make TWO quilts from what I had already cut. 

 

This quilt is NOT my original idea but I think it will still turn out fine.  I have been wanting to try a new technique that I saw done on something else and I thought why not on a quilt.  I hope it turns out as good as I want it too.  I'm going to make a test sample just to be sure it will work and if it doesn't then I'll leave the quilt like this.  Now I have recently finished sewing the entire thing together and adding a few more rows to get it to be the right size.  All I have left to do is trim up the side and test out my idea on a sample piece.  I'm super excited for this to be done because I really want to use it for the 4th of July celebration that we will be attending.  It is so nice and heavy that it is sure to keep us all warm while we watch the fireworks.  OH!  I also have a fun idea for the back too which I can't wait to see how it will all look when finished.

Just Too Hot

One week out of the blue our A/C unit just killed over.  Of course it happened during the hottest week we have had all year long.  The house got up to 86-89 degrees.  Sadly we only had one fan for the entire house to use.  I was so thankful when one of my friends from our ward brought over two of her fans for us to use while we waited for the A/C to get fixed.  I had another friend offer to let Seth and I stay at her house but I just couldn't leave my girls behind to suffer in a hot house so I stayed.  Oh was it felt like forever to get that unit fixed.

 

 I made sure that my poor little hot boy had a fan in his room all day during the day.  It was so hot he had trouble sleeping but I think the noise of the fan helped him just a little bit.

Now I am a very big person on modesty and I want that to be something important to Seth one day too so this was as down of an outfit I would let him be in.  I did find it funny and cute how he would sleep all spread out like that though.

  The only time that it was nice was at night and I would stay up all night rotating fans from windows to windows and doors in every part of the house.  It would annoy me to no end all of the bugs I would have to find and kill the next day but at least it help keep the house cooler for the majority of the day.  It was hard to stay up so late at night by myself and then have to take care of Seth the next day but I just kept reminding myself that I had to protect my family from any wild animal that could come through a window or a robber (which was easy for me to imagine since I had a friend recently get robbed).

Thankfully the repair guy was able to find the problem quickly but he could do the repair for another day so we had to suffer through the heat again.  I think the ones that suffered the most were the dogs because they would fight over who got to lay closest to the fan.  I would find them also under furniture in a attempt to find a nice cool spot.  I sure hope we don't have to go through that again for a very long time or else I just might go and stay in a hotel for awhile.

Sew Difficult!

Well since making this blessing outfit was such a big deal to me I thought I would share some lovely photo's from the process.  First my fabric.

 

 Well since I really couldn't spend any money on this project I went through my left over fabric box that I have.  I love that box because every time I go through it I feel like I'm finding treasures all over again.  I can across this beautiful fabric and knew that I wanted to use it with his outfit.  This is the same fabric that I used on that special "Supporting the Star" quilt (which I'm still working on finishing).  I didn't have a lot of it so I used some white men's Sunday shirts for the rest of the fabric.  I got those free from a friend.

 I was able to make the top vest jacket just fine with no adjustment problems.  I really like how it looks nice clean and simple.  I was actually happy that I have also been saving buttons off of anything that does fit us anymore and is so worn out that it can't be donated.  I had just the right size in my supplies.

 Here is where the fun now starts.  The start of my problems were the sleeves.  I know that this pictures doesn't show it but the pattern had the sleeves supper puffy at the top where it connects to the bodice and they were also short sleeves and I wanted long.  So I did some altering and thankfully figured it out all by myself.  I was pretty proud of my work on that portion because I hate doing sleeves.

Once I had the pants made and connected to the bodice I was not surprised that the bottom pants were super large on him.  One he is a skinny little guy, and two the pattern was so off in many other places that I knew this was going to happen too.  As you can see from the photo I knew I was going to have to take it in about four inches from the sides.  I was really worried about doing this because it fit into the top bodice perfectly and I wasn't sure how to adjust that when it seemed to fit him so nicely.

 I was also really proud how the back pieces were matching up too.  Normally I'm not the best at that so this was a great victory for me after so many hardships with this project.  I did have one mistake that I can see in the photo that bugs me but no one else will know.  Well not unless you are a sewing too then you might see it.

 Anyways, I took in the sides as much as I could on the legs and this is what the outfit looked like when Seth wasn't in it.  Yeah, really bad!  It makes me think of the little Oompa Loompa's cloths in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

 Here is just how bad it looks on him.  He has little wings coming out of his sides.  Again I had to go back to the machine and figure out how I was going to take it in while still making it looks good.

Another problem that I wasn't ready for was the outfit showing off his lovely diaper so he had to wear a simple white undershirt underneath it which wasn't that big of a deal to me.

 

Eventually I was finally able to get it to look good enough for him to wear.  The one part I had fun figuring out was how to make his little bow tie.  I'm sorry you can't really see it in any of the photo's but trust me you aren't missing much.  Now I have to say that I am so thankful for today's technology because I called and e-mailed my mother a lot with asking how to do things in the pattern that didn't make sense.  I'm glad that she even had a hard time figuring some of the stuff out because it made me feel not so alone and stupid about the entire thing.  But it is over and now I can just enjoy the fact that he had something made extra special for him.

Blessed Attire

Sometimes I can't believe that I still have this sweet spirit little boy as my son.  I feel so blessed and I want him to know I really love him dearly.  I have been hoping to have a child for many MANY years and am so glad that he has joined our family.  During those years I made a blanket for him that he could be wrapped up in while he was being blessed.  I can't remember how long it took me to make that blanket but I know it wasn't to bad to do, even with my very simple skill level I have when it comes to crocheting.

 

  I had hoped to find a nice outfit for him to be blessed in but they were all too expensive for me to get so I decided that since I had the sewing skills, plus taken a class in children's clothing, and a pattern already that I would make his blessing outfit to save us money.  I now know that next time I'll BUY!  Oh it was very hard to make but at least the outfit photographs well.  I didn't get to many good pictures of this little guy but I can't blame him.  After the big day he had he was more then done wearing this outfit.  He had also spit up on it so many times that I had to wash it before we could take the photos.  Either he loved the outfit and felt comfortable enough in it to do what he does everyday or he didn't like it.  I'd like to believe the first one was the case here.

 

 Such a cute little tired face he has here.  I also love how he likes to move and play with his hands.

 This is one of my favorites because of how alert he is.  He is such a good observer of his surroundings and always taking things in.  He sure is going to be a very smart guy one day.

 This photo shows his vest jacket really well.  It was the only part of the pattern that I didn't have to make too many adjustments too.

Finally my sweet little man who is the shinning star of the family.  I just love him so much!

Naming and Blessing Day

It was a very exciting and a little bit stressful day for me on the day we were going to bless Seth.  Because with so many family members coming and some seeing our house for the very first time I wanted so badly for things to be perfect.  Of course I knew that wasn't going to happen but we had worked so hard on trying to improve our home and fix the things the last home owner had screwed up that I just wanted to go nicely.  I was also expecting, beside family members, some of Michael's co-workers and a few of our friends so be coming (none of which showed up that morning and yes I did cry about that later).

 I was so thankful that my family helped put together this lovely spread for everyone that was able to come that morning.  I think it turned out really pretty and I was really glad to finally be able to use some of our wedding gifts for this event.

 Of course before we left to go to the church house I had to get a picture of all of our family that was able to make it to the special day.

 Here we are with both of our parents enjoying the beautiful day together and more then overjoyed that we have this adorable little baby boy as part of our family too.

 I was so glad that my aunt Lorie was able to come to the blessing.  She has been such a big influence on my life and I know she will be for my son too.

Again I had to get a picture of Seth with his aunt Dawn.  I know he is going to love spending time with her when we are able to visit.  Hopefully it won't be to long before we do.

 

 Seth with his aunt Maren who I know is going to spoil this little guy with lots of love and attention. 

 I had to again get pictures of Seth with his grandpa and grandma before they left.  This is actually one of my favorite pictures of the day because they all look so great.

 I also love this picture too.  For some reason Seth was totally fixated on grandpa's tie. 

 Here is three generations of the mainly men of the family.  Wish it could have been four but I know that Seth's great grandpa was there in spirit.

 One last time with grandma before everyone had to start heading back home to their own normal every day lives.  We sure are going to miss everyone terribly.  It sure is hard to be so far away from family when you want to share so many special moments with everyone.

Finally this last photo makes me smile.  I have always loved watching my dad take a nice nap on the lawn.  I guess that could count as his way of approving all that we have done with the house and yard.  Go us!



The First Time I Saw You

My family got here the day before the blessing and spent the rest of that day with us.  I was so excited to finally have them meet Seth in person for the first time.  We have done Skype one time before but that really isn't the same thing.  It was so much fun for we to see how Seth reacted to everyone.

 

 Here is Seth with his grandpa.  If you ask me I think Seth is going to be just as stylish as his grandpa with all of the cool cloths he has in his closet.

 Seth really liked my "little" brother.  These two are going to have a lot of fun playing games together one day when Seth is older I'm sure.

 Here is my oldest sister with Seth.  She got him this awesome outfit, which I'm sorry you can't see very well.  It says, "My Auntie Is AWESOME!"  I totally would have to agree with that.  My sister is an amazing gal and has done so many incredible things.  I'm really glad he has someone as great as her to look up too.  I can also see these two getting into a lot of trouble together as well.

Of course I know Seth will always tell me what is going on and give me that innocent face as to say, "What?  She said I could." 

Serving Up Family Fun

At the beginning of the month we final did Seth's blessing.  We waited awhile because we were trying to have it be at a time when most of our families would be able to come.  It was nice to see so many of our family and we really enjoyed getting to spend as much time with them as we could.  Michael's family was the first to get here and we all went out to dinner that night.  It was fun because that was Seth's very first time in a restaurant so we had to mark the occasion with a photo.

 We had no idea how he was going to react to the new environment but we both thought he would do well after he did great at a hockey game we took him too.  Boy were we wrong!  He was fine while we were outside but once we went in he started crying so we decided to walk him around outside and as soon as we stepped out the door he stopped crying.  We did this back and forth thing three times before decided to just let him cry in the restaurant.  We got seated at our table and the people behind us (that you see in the photo) left shortly after.  I joked with Michael it was because the baby was crying but he assured me that it was because they were finished eating.  Who knows, it could be both reasons.  Anyways, he stayed asleep after we were seated and did fine for the rest of the time there.

 Here is the rest of the family waiting for our food to come.  We had fun talking and playing a few games while we waited.

The next day we took our family to the park at the end of our street and had fun flying the kite with our little nephew.  Grandpa also joined in on helping get the kite off of the ground.  I enjoyed visiting the park and walking around it.  It has a very nice pathway.  I do wish everyone could have stayed longer but it was fun while it lasted.