Aargh

For the record, hand sewing is NOT my talent-gift. Ugh. Aargh. Ick. Harumph. 

I am working on a quilt for my niece's birthday, which was actually a couple of weeks ago. The quilt pattern looked deceptively simple. What I thought would be the hard part was the origami style folded stars on half of the blocks. Well, that went incredibly smoothly, but now I am at the point of hand-tacking the star shapes to their blocks so that they stay folded, and I am just beginning to get the hang of it. My first block looks fine out the outside, which is good, but the back side looks like a drunk woman did the sewing. Each block is getting easier, however, and I guess by the time I finish all ten star blocks, I might actually have a feel for what I'm doing. Ha! The tricky part is two-fold. One, the stitches actually have to be positioned so that they hold the stars in place. I mean, it's no good making a cool origami quilt, only to have the stars come unfolded at the first washing. Second, the stitches all have to be hidden. It's equally crummy to make a cool origami quilt and be able to see tacky stitches running around on the outside of the blocks. So it's just slow going for me -- one who is definitely NOT a seasoned hand-stitcher. 

Never fear, I'll get there eventually. The quilt construction is not complicated at all, and I've done all the rest of the cutting, so it should come together quickly... once the star blocks are all tacked down. Ugh.

And here is a weird question. How come I loved the hand-stitched binding that I did on my first quilt, but the hand sewing for these stars is such a pain in the butt? Seriously, it makes no sense at all. 

Back to it... ugh.

What We're Doing Right Now

So Erick is in Atlanta on set, and the kids and I needed something fun to occupy ourselves. Why not bake chocolate chip cookies with a new recipe I found today? Sure!

Before...

After...Yummy goodness...

While they are baking, Evie and Gunnar are playing with some extra chocolate chips and dough. They crack me up, but this was especially funny.

Don't tell Gunnar -- there isn't actually any dough in his bowl, but he doesn't know that.

Ahh, blissful ignorance.

Other projects that I've been needing to post include the blocks for Gunnar's I-Spy Quilt...

Today I got the final orange and blue pieces added around the empty side and short end, and hopefully I'll get this one put together (border) and quilted so that I can work on the binding while we are on vacation.

Evelyn's Lunch Tote for Art Camp ... she chose the Strawberry Shortcake fabric, and I supplemented from my scrap pile for a scrappy look.

Moving on to a new purse for me. This one is made from Amy Buther's Love line, which I LOVE. You know, I'm convinced that she named this line precisely because every time you look at it, you can't help but say, "I LOVE this fabric."

Close up of the main bag portion -- really came out cute!

That's it for now. Oh wait, let me go back and add the links for these things. Plus, one more little sewing project that I made for my kitchen. I found lots of inspiration from tutorials for drying mats, and ended up doing my own thing in a Quilt-As-You-Go fashion. It's Moda's Love U line. I bought a big pack of white hand towels on sale at Bed Beth and Beyond a couple weeks ago, and used a Jelly Roll of the Love U fabrics to sew strips down to the towel. The mat self-binds itself, using the premade binding already on the towel, as you can see below. This was an incredibly quick and easy project.

Well, I hear the timer going off again. Time to pull out another batch of cookies. Erick, I sure wish you were here to have some warm yummy goodness with us. We'll try to save a few crumbs for you!

Homecoming

The kitchen floor is mopped, the den is picked up, and I am ready for bed. My Honey Man comes home tomorrow morning. He has been out of town for four days, has two more days of travel coming up, but is flying home just so that he can spend one afternoon and night with me and the kids before heading back out early the following morning. Lordy, am I crazy about my man. When it all comes down to it, the one person who makes my life as a stay at home Mom possible is my husband. He works and works and works to provide for us. He fights battles that seem impossible to win, he slays dragons, and even when he sticks his foot in his mouth, he is still the one and only guy that I ever want.

Our family vacation is coming up, and he is taking official vacation days from all his jobs so that the four of us can have an entire week together. I am so ready for this time that I can hardly stand it. Evelyn is just as excited as I am. And Gunnar won't really know what is going on until we get there, but I can't wait to see him in the swimming pool. Mostly, I am just ready to have a whole week where there are no outside responsibilities ... no meetings ... no appointments ... no calls for Erick to rush to Atlanta or downtown or anywhere else, for that matter. Just the four of us, on our own time, to do whatever we want.

The more I learn, the more I realize that my real meaning, my focus, my joy while I find it, comes from the time and the pieces of myself that I choose to share with others. Next to the gift of Erick's love, the second greatest gift he has ever given me has been the opportunity to be with my children every day. There are days when I feel like I need a break, but even on those days, I still have the sense that my frustration is constructive, in the sense that it is being spent on something that is lasting. This time I have with my children can never be repeated or replaced. It is the most precious commodity that we can ever share. Realizing that this gift comes at the expense of my husband's hard work is sobering. It helps me to be reminded that my gift in return to him is to make the most of the time he has given me to be their Mom and to be his wife. Rather than losing myself in these roles, it turns out that I actually find myself in a more authentic way when I find myself in the eyes of the people I love.

So, for tonight, goodnight. Safe travels for My Honey. Church with the kids in the morning, as we thank God for His incredible blessings on our lives, and then home for an afternoon and evening of just being together.

Finally Watched "Julie and Julia"

Erick is out of town, so I had some quiet time and decided to finally watch the movie, "Julie and Julia." It was really sweet. I sort of sympathized with Julie's character, who was sort of fumbling around trying to figure out her life. How interesting that she discovered herself in the light of her husband's encouragement and support, and also in the food that she prepared for the two of them to share.

Since being at home full-time, I've sort of gone in cycles with doing what I consider a really great job of keeping house and cooking dinners for the family, and I've also done what I would consider a less than half-assed job sometimes. Trying to figure out how my role fits in with Erick's job has been a challenge. Honestly, we never know from one day to the next whether he will be at home on any given evening until mid-afternoon of said day. So while we are obviously grateful for this job and this opportunity for him, it makes it hard for me to mentally put myself into the mode of housewife, at least in terms of whether or not I am going to cook dinner. What I've discovered is probably not a mystery to anyone but me, but I can't wait until 2:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. on one day to find out whether or not I'm going to cook dinner that night.

So here's my plan, again. Get back on the bandwagon of doing a little housework every day. I really love the Fly Lady's website. You can check her out here. And it's also time to get back to my organized meal planning and shopping routine. I realize that my role as Mom and the responsibility to provide healthy meals and the stability of a regular dinner around the table for the kids trumps whether or not my husband is also at home to join us. There may be times when we go the cereal route, because frankly, the kids and I really do like cereal, but I need to have a "real" meal for them on most nights, and we will assume that Erick will be there with us except when he isn't.

And when he is, I want to be a better wife and Mom. I realize that it is my work that sets the tone for our home. If I keep it up and give it lots of care, then we all are relaxed and there is a sense of peace and serenity and our home becomes a sanctuary for us. When I let things slide, when we have take-out or fast food more than occasionally, then we just don't enjoy each other or our time together nearly as much. Maybe I'll never be June Cleaver (or Julia Child -- since I finally saw the movie) but I can be the best Christy that I can be, and that is a worthy goal. I want my husband to be excited to leave his office, come downstairs, and join his family after a day's work. I want the kids to grow up with the security and tradition of family dinner times. I want to be proud of myself because I can look around and see the fruits of my labors. I want to be better. Not perfect. But better. My best.

Here's another thing. Life has been tough these past 10 years, but there have been the most incredible and joyous blessings as well. I am a better version of myself, even when I'm not even trying, simply because of the love of my husband and now our children. They give me courage. They love me. There is one aspect of my "old" life (before I became what I now describe as a medical science project gone awry) that I have never been able to reclaim. I have not been an athlete for 10 years. I miss it. My body misses it. Granted, I was never a great athlete in any sense of the word, but I was strong, I knew my body, and my body trusted me enough to do what I wanted it to do. I could run, swim, bike, hike, climb, swing, balance, lift... you get the drift. Those things were taken from me, and every time I tried to take them back, it felt like they were snatched away again. So I had almost given up ever being able see myself in a way that integrated physical strength and agility ever again.

But that is over. Now, with only two sessions with a personal trainer under my belt, I already feel like I am on the way to being what I already was. The trainer put it this way. "Christy, that athlete is still there. She's still in there. I can hear her when you speak. We just have to help her get back out." That's what I am doing in more than just one part of my life. I am learning to let out the strength that was already there. I am learning to tap into a vein of courage and strength that has been hidden, and maybe even lost to me. It's not only in the realm of spirituality and faith, although I do feel like my faith continues to grow as I try to submit to God and try to remember that He is the one who is ultimately driving the ship. There are some things that are totally out of my control, and as much as I sometimes think that my way would be better, or that I could do a better job, God, in His infinite wisdom, did not put me in charge. So I am learning to look to Him but also to pick myself up, dust myself off, and do what has to be done to live life to its fullest right now. There is no second chance. I have one life. And if I choose to look at each medical speed-bump as a victory that has been overcome, then I clearly have more life to live and more of myself to give, and I had better get busy and quit moping around.

My goal in working out with the trainer is to ultimately be able to complete a triathlon. We are sort of dreaming about the possibility of doing one in October, but if not that soon, then I am focused on giving it a go next spring. I think crossing that finish line will be the ultimate vindication, the ultimate come-back, and the ultimate victory for me in terms of repairing the broken relationship between my body and my spirit. Honestly, the two have sort of had to part ways just to survive some of the time. And I realize that other people have been in literal fights for their lives while I've just hopped, skipped, and jumped through one surgery after another, but for me, this has still been a hard season. It was hard to go from "Most Athletic" to unable to lift a gallon jug of milk or to have to wake my husband during the night, because his then 26 year-old Amazon woman of a wife couldn't sit up or get out of bed to go to the bathroom without his help. He has been my strength, truly, when I had none.

We don't know what our lives will look like ahead of time. We don't know the duration of our days. I took the kids antique shopping yesterday, and as we walked around through rows and rows of things that had once belonged to someone else's life, things that had once had meaning for someone, things that had been common-place or maybe special to another family, I was reminded that there is nothing to do but to jump in and be a part of the ride. Evelyn splashed all around in an outdoor fountain, and I was just so grateful to be here with her, to just be alive to witness my daughter splashing, that the thought of telling her to stop getting wet seemed silly. Get hung up on wet shoes and a subsequent wet inside of my car, or laugh and say a quick prayer of thanksgiving that I am here another day to see my children play. And while I'm here, make the most of it. Whatever that means, I want to do it. No holding back. No fear. No second-guessing. No telling myself it's impossible. No more self-doubt. Just living... really living.

I guess that's all for now. It's time for bed, so that I can rest this body and have another day tomorrow. My husband comes home tomorrow, and I want him to find a lovely home and a lively wife when he walks through that door. I want him to be glad that he works so hard to provide for us and to be very glad to be home with us too.

Love to you all. Now go live.

Projects: Hedge Demolition and Sewing!

So, it's been a while since I've updated the blog, and I thought I would share a couple of recent projects. There are plenty more to photograph, but for tonight, I'll just show you what I've been saving on the old digital camera.

Our back yard has never really been totally landscaped. By "landscaped" I mean that there are parts of the back yard that I have just not been insane enough to tackle. The last real hold-out in the back yard was a hedge of azalea bushes that grows along the back out the house. They are absolutely the ugliest azalea bushes ever known to mankind. The bottom of each bush is nothing but scraggly woody twigs, and the outer branches were overgrown and unkempt. Here is a before shot, just in case you don't believe me. They were just hideous.

That's not all... there is another hedge of ugliness that runs down the lower part of the back of the house. Notice that you can't even walk down the brick stairs without having to duck and push the overgrown branches out of your way.

Enter one determined girl, armed only with a 20" electric hedge trimmer and a manual (woman-powered) long handled clipper, and voila! Here is the after...

Now I'm not saying that the "after" is necessarily pretty. But what I am saying is that the azaleas have one chance to prove to me that they can grow into strong, healthy, and beautiful azaleas. Otherwise, I will trade in the trimming tools for a shovel. The two high-school guys who help us with the yard came over and helped me drag out all the debris and limbs, because by the time I took down these bushes and the ones in front of the big window, I was exhausted. Miraculously, there is new growth at the very bottom of these bushes. I had no idea about that until I started trimming away the outer layer of leaves and branches.

That brings me to a rather philosophical point. We never really know what lies beneath the outer facade of another person or situation or relationship until the outer layers are removed and the inside is exposed. This has been a rough week for my family. We learned that hard way that you can't always trust what you see on the outside. And now that the inside is exposed, we will have to wait from a distance and see whether or not there will be little shoots of life to spring forth and blossom or if what remains will shrivel and decay. Only the Master Gardner knows, and the rest of us will just have to wait and see. Watch and pray. Hope for the best, but remain vigilant.

There will be more pictures in the next few days. I finished my first quilt, other than to make my label and sew it on, and I've finished a couple of tote bags -- one for Evelyn and one for me. Tonight I cut out the pieces for a lunch tote for Evie to take to Art Camp in a couple of weeks, and hopefully that will turn out well. In the background, I'm working on two quilts. One is a picnic quilt for our family, and the other is an eye-spy quilt for Gunnar. I also have two owl pillows to make and an appliqued owl quilt/throw for Evelyn's room that are in the line-up. And, of course, there are ideas of a hexagon project, since I keep wishing I had something else to sew by hand. All those tutorials for hexagon quilts, bags, placemats, and who knows what else are calling to me. But the hexagons will have to wait for now.

I suppose it's bedtime. Hope everyone has a restful night.

Here's the Photographic Evidence

As promised, here are some photos of my recent craftiness.

Homemade Bread

Mother's Day Tablerunners...

Mom's is already on her table. MIL's is on its way to her.

Mom's from Moda's Hunky Dorey

It really is a beautiful addition to her table.

Kathleen's is Moda's Make Life...

The Circle Quilt is trimmed and ready to bind. Update: I have to make 260 inches of binding!!!

Herbs, berries, okra, and jalapenos. All with signs.

And check out the tea cup bird feeder in the left background.

Vintage teacup birdfeeder.

Another one for the front yard. This one is my favorite.

Set of bags.

Business Card Holder (inside view)

Here are the links for these projects.

Multi Grain Honey Bread

Moda Tablerunners

Circle Quilt (with modifications)

Plant Tags (with modifications)

Teacup Bird Feeders

Weekender Tote

Zippered Pencil Pouch

Pleated Bag

Business Card Holder to hold my Mommy cards. (I added velcro to mine.)

That's about it. Oh, my I-Spy charms came today. Hopefully, I can get over to the quilt shop tomorrow and get some feedback on the pattern for Gunnar's quilt. I think I've marked off the idea of doing anything that involves more prints other than my large I-Spy blocks, but that still leaves me with a couple of options for the layout. I'm really leaning towards a random disappearing nine-patch pattern, but thinking that the only prints I'll use will be my I-Spy charms in the corners and maybe two different colors of solids for the small square and rectangle parts that get cut from the inside squares. 

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. It has been a lot of fun working on these projects.

What On Earth Have I Been Doing?

Sewing... gardening... browsing around on Etsy... crafting... it's been a very productive time. I've been trying to keep everything organized in my mind, and finally had to force myself to put down my craft journal last night because I kept thinking of more things I needed to jot down before going to sleep.

One problem. Erick is asleep in the same room as my camera, so there won't be any pictures of my progress until tomorrow. But here is a run-down of the projects:

vintage teacup bird feeders
two quilted table runners for Mother's Day (one for my Mom and one for Erick's Mom)
completed the quilting and trimming for my circle quilt
weekender tote bag (Okay, so I still have a tiny bit of work left on this one.)
pencil pouch to match the tote bag
pleated little zipper bag to match the tote bag
business card holder to match the tote bag (holds my Mommy cards)
painted plant signs to label all the herbs, berries, and veggies that I've planted
cut out fabrics for quilted placemats and cloth napkins to match my patio dishes

Wow. Now that I see it all written out, I actually HAVE accomplished quite a bit. There is a slight hitch with the cloth napkin fabric. It appears to have the absorbency capacity of a slab of stainless steel. What I'm saying is that this fabric sucks if you're planning on using it to wipe up any sort of liquid at all. Oh well. At least now I know what sort of print will look good with my dishes and placemats. I'll save it and use it for something down the road. But this means that I've got to find new fabric for the napkins. At least I hadn't started sewing them. That would have been really crummy. My Mom showed me how different napkins that she has are better or worse for napkins, but I felt like mine was going to work. Again, I'm glad I gave it an official absorption test before getting them to the sewing machine.

My next projects (meaning things I've already purchased) will be to finish the placemats (and hopefully some decent napkins) and then I want to make an I-Spy quilt for Gunnar. Rather than dedicating my life to amassing the necessary fussy cuts on my own, I went on Etsy and bought two sets of I-Spy charms. My plan is to use a disappearing nine-patch pattern for the quilt, but I'm still sort of stuck on how I'll arrange the blocks. One quilt that I saw arranged the blocks so that the cut squares looked like sashing, which was really pretty, but I love the idea of arranging the blocks so that no two seams ever meet. It gives the quilt a much more abstract feel, which is nice for an I-Spy quilt. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

I bought a pattern to make a lunchbox for Evelyn to take to Art Camp, so I'll have to get that put together in the next few weeks. Then there is a little purse-sized organizer/binder that I want to make for myself, to match the Weekender Tote Bag.

The Circle Quilt has been quilted and trimmed, so I need to measure it, make the binding, sew on the binding, and then I'll hand-stitch the back side binding. That will finish up my very first quilt. It was good that I had the chance to make the tablerunners, because it gave me some really good practice with binding. I had planned on using pre-made binding for the quilt, but found that I actually enjoyed the process of making my own for the tablerunners, and my hand stitching isn't nearly as horrible as I expected it to be, so I think I'm gonna go for it.

Okay, that's all for tonight. Oh. Wait. I forgot one other Etsy purchase. I bought a fat quarter pack of Barbara Jones' Simply Sweet. Oh my how cute. I think I'm going to use it to make a picnic quilt. The backing will either be laminated cotton or oilcloth, so that it will be waterproof. I want to do a little more research on that before buying the fabric, but I'm thinking it should be a really cute vintage red-check pattern. That would be perfect with the Simply Sweet line.

More tomorrow, including pictures...