Post 49-Building, Learning, Quilting, Family Fun, and Sleep

Building:

The foundation was poured this past week. It's a muddy mess though! There's a home being built across the street from our home that is very similar to ours. It has the drywall up already, so we walked through it yesterday. So exciting to watch the progress of both houses! And it made me want to start sewing couch pillows and coordinating drapes. JoAnn's is having a 50% off home decor fabric sale-what great timing!!

Learning:

Lately I've been finding Miss Mia in either a pile of scattered laundry or books. She loves helping me pull the clothes out of the laundry basket. Then she puts the clothes on her head. She does this over and over. With the books, she opens them, turns one page, and moves onto the next book. Once again, she does this over and over. It's so fun to watch her begin to learn the process of doing laundry, getting dressed, and reading books. 

Quilting:

I finished this sweet quilt a few months back. My client made this for her granddaughter. I am a huge fan of pinwheels, so of course I fell in love with this adorable quilt!

Family Fun:

Every so often I get a text from Pizza Pie Cafe offering $6.00 all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. Can you guess how many pieces of pizza my teenage son downed? I'll make a batch of yummy chocolate chip cookies for the person who guesses right! It's mind boggling the amount of food teenage boys eat!!!

Sleep:

I just had to include this picture! How can she sleep folded over in this position? She has some crazy flexibility!

Post 50- They dug our hole! And an adorable baby boy quilt!

Digging a hole doesn't usually make people excited...unless its for the foundation of your soon-to-be new home! I haven't mentioned on my blog that we sold our home of 9 years and moved into a duplex while we wait for our new home to be built. We moved back in October and have patiently been waiting for the plans to be approved by the city. We finally had our preconstruction meeting last Wednesday and the very next day they dug our hole.

Here's a pic of our lot before the dig.

And here are the mounds of dirt after the dig. We were told the house should be finished in 90 days. Kind of amazing they can build it that fast!

Look at this adorable baby boy quilt my friend Tracy made for her daughter's first baby. I love the fabrics they chose-so colorful and fun! Perfect for a boy! I just have to say that I was a youth leader for Aubrey, Tracy's daughter, when she was in high school and she was one of the sweetest girls ever! I love that girl and am so glad her mom let me quilt this for her!

I decided to use the look of the cute chevron fabric as the quilting pattern.

My New Year's Challenge!

I've been thinking a lot about things I'd like to do differently in 2014. Historically, I'm awful at keeping new year's resolutions, but I have found I'm somewhat more successful when I challenge myself to do something. In the past, I've challenged myself to run marathons, enter quilting contests, and take classes and job positions that were way out of my comfort zone. Earlier this year, I signed up to help out with our elementary school PTA Reflections contest. Somehow I ended up having to do the whole thing by myself. Without any previous experience with the Reflections contest, I felt extremely overwhelmed. In the end, things came together. I had wanted to quit so many times, but I was glad I stuck with it. After I finished I actually said out loud to myself, "I can do hard things!"

One of the things that I'd like to do more of in 2014 is recording life. When I was a teenager, I faithfully wrote in my journal every day. Then I had kids, life got busier, and sleep was more important than writing. Almost 18 years later, life is still busy. My baby will be 1-year-old next month and she is getting very mobile. Sometimes I find myself wishing she was past this stage where every waking minute is spent in exploration. It's exhausting for me! But one thing my older kids have taught me is how quickly they grow up. I only have one year left with my oldest, then she's off to college! In some ways it seems like it was just yesterday that she was getting mobile and exhausting me with her exploration. But honestly, I can't remember a lot from my older kids' baby days. That is why I want to do more life recording this year. The older I get, I'm sure the less I'll be able to remember, so I need to record life now!

Blogging is a hard thing for me. I started this blog to allow my quilting clients a place to go see examples of my work. I'm not sure how useful its been in that respect. So I've decided to make this blog as much for me as for my work.

So here's my challenge to myself:

There are 50 weeks left in 2014, so I challenge myself to 50 posts this year. That's one post per week. I feel that is doable for me. And at the end of 2014, I'm really hoping I can look back and say, "I can do hard things!"

Now for quilting...

I have a lot of quilting pics to catch up on posting.

The first is this beautiful sunflower table mat made by my mother-in-law. We had fun picking out the fabric for this during shop hop last summer.

And check out this adorable fall quilt made by my friend Sylvia!

I still need to upload pics from five other quilts, so check back in a week or less! 

And Happy 2014 to YOU!