The Family that Sews Together...

My Internet has been out for days at home.  I can still check things here and there from work, but I am suffering the withdrawals of blog surfing!  I thought I'd pop in here for a moment to share some pictures that my sister sent me.

My sister, Cindy, recently moved her sewing area to a more accessible spot in her home, and she is probably getting more sewing done than I am!  Above are my nephews Jackson and Max.  Jackson decided to make Tasha a little pillow with some of my sister's scraps while Max looks on.

And here's Tasha where all cats love to be - on top of a quilt in progress!  Cindy has since finished this top and it looks great!  I'll try to get a picture of that from her soon.

Max turns 6!

My younger nephew, Max, turned 6 yesterday!  The family got together over the weekend and celebrated at Chuck E. Cheese's where the boys had a ball!

My mom made him a Disappearing Nine Patch (D9P) quilt with a fussy cut dog print that came out really great!  I love the way she planned the print and colors.  I wouldn't have immediately known this was a D9P pattern if she hadn't told me!

Here's my two nephews together - Jackson and Max.  Love those boys!!

Stash Busting 2009 - Week 13

Things have been rather hectic in my life lately. I found out a few weeks ago that I would be losing my job, which was quite a shock to me. The company that I work for is completely restructuring, and all of the operational and most administrative jobs are going away next month. I did have some time to look for a new job while still working, so I put out some feelers. Also, my boss told me about an opening at his friend's company. After a couple of interviews, I did get the job at this company. However, my other job hasn't ended yet. So we worked it out that I would work both jobs until the original one ended. On top of two jobs, I've had extensive dental work and an ear infection! Needless to say, no sewing has gone on for a while. But then, no buying either!

Here's a picture of my nephew Max with my dad from this weekend. They were busy reading (and apparently writing in) a magazine and it was very cute!

Fabric in this week: 0 yards
Fabric out this week: 0 yards

Fabric in this year: 11.75 yards
Fabric out this year: 9.75 yards

Stash Busting 2009 - Week 3

For Christmas I got my nephew, Jackson, a little loom like one that my sister and I had when we were kids. You can pretty much just make potholders with it, but I remember Cindy and I making tons of them, and my mom is still probably using them today. There are nylon loops that you stretch across pegs, and then weave other loops across in the opposite direction using a hook. Anyway, it looks like Jackson likes it, and I promptly received one in the mail. Yay! My own potholder! Thanks, Jackson!

And now for my stashbusting report. Nothing exciting this week. Nothing in, and nothing out. I think I was a little generous with how much I busted last week, so I'm reducing that amount in the year-to-date figures.

Fabric in this week: 0 yards
Fabric out this week: 0 yards

Fabric in this year: 6 yards
Fabric out this year: 1 yard

Cookie Winner!!

Last weekend was my nephew Max's 4th Birthday, which we celebrated at Ardenwood Historic Farm. They were having their annual Christmas Days with special festivities all weekend. One of the things they were doing was a Cookie contest. Anyone interested was to bring a dozen cookies with recipe by 11:00 for judging and winner announcement at noon. Well lo and behold, yours truly won first place with my Ranch Cookies, and my mom won third place!! I have to admit that my recipe was originally my mom's which I tweaked just a little. Above you can see us with our prizes. I got a family pass back into the farm (two adults and two children) which I gave to my sister for their family. My mom won an Ardenwood mug which was made by a potter on their grounds. It was brutally cold until a little before we left, when the sun finally came back out and the wind died down, but we all had a great time and Max was excited about his birthday. I'll put a slideshow in my next post with pictures from the day. Unfortantely I need to do this on my laptop which is not available right now. I hope to have those pictures up soon.

I've been trying to get some sewing done, but for some reason I'm just not very motivated. I did, however, get most of the small class project completed and I'm really happy with it. No pictures lest I spoil the surprise!

Roaring Camp Railroad

This past weekend we celebrated my dad's 75th birthday with a family outing to Roaring Camp Railroad in Felton, CA. My parents had taken us there when we were kids, and we thought it would be fun to go back out there again. I knew my nephews would have a great time. We rode a steam engine train through the redwoods on a trip that lasted about an hour. The weather was beautiful and a good time was had by all.

Weekend Fun

I had quite an eventful and fun weekend! On Saturday I met up with my sister and nephews at a park in Dublin. It was a great (and popular) park for kids. There were multiple playground areas and a rock like structure with two slides that they could climb on. I meant to take a larger picture, but we were off and I forgot. By that time it was getting pretty crowded. The boys seemed to really like it.


Next we did some Geocaching. Lance and I haven't had much luck with the last few that we've tried, and the weather hasn't been conducive to caching, so it's been a while since we tried. I decided to see if there was one near the park where we were meeting, and it turned out there were several in that area. I chose one that listed the cache as a large container with small toys as trade items. We told the boys we were going on a treasure hunt. We had a great time hunting around for it and finally found it. Here's a picture of me and Jackson near our find before we opened it.

Next, Lance and I did some shopping, and found the item below. Now I ask you, who could possibly pass this up??? By the way, yes, the pancakes were great. Thanks for asking.

I did some sewing on Sunday and made some good progress on the next class project (even if it isn't exactly how I envisioned it).

And lastly, I made eclairs for Lance that I had promised him a while back. I haven't made them in almost 20 years, so I was very pleased that they came out so great. The only thing I would need to change is to make them bigger. They were a little on the small side. I guess I'll have to make another batch to correct that error!!

Latest Update

Well, as usual, I've been busy. I am the Accounting Manager where I work, so this is my very busy time of year. Aside from that, class started a couple of weeks ago, so I've been busy with that as well. On Friday, I took an all day class from Jill Schumacher "Quiltmaker to the Queen" in machine quilting. I have always been very apprehensive about machine quilting, and my few attempts at free-motion have not gone well. I heard very good things about Jill and decided it was time to bite the bullet and take a class. I must say she is a very positive person and gives a lot of encouragement, which was much apprectiated. She does excellent work, and has won many national awards. In the end, my practice pieces are still pretty bad, but now I have the knowledge and all I need now is practice. She says three days a week for a half hour a day and we'll have it down. Below are a couple of my practice pieces, which are not very good, but better than I thought I could do for my first pieces. They are the backs of the practice blocks, because I used the blue water-soluable marking pen on the front and I haven't wet them down yet, so you can't see the stitches on the fronts in the pictures.


I also finally found some pirate fabric on-line so that I could make a special crayon roll for my nephew, Jackson. I made one for his brother, Maxwell for his birthday in December, but couldn't find just the right fabric for Jackson. The fabric for the front worked out really well because it was a stripe of pirates in a row that worked perfectly for this project. Below are the front and inside.


On to more projects next week. I've got a few things planned for the next class session that I've been working on, so that is exciting, but I don't want to spoil any surprises here! However, I just started work on a quilt that I drafted out last year and have been really excited about, and I just saw one with the same layout in a magazine that I got this week. Oh well. I hear that happens a lot. It is an old setting, but I hadn't seen it around in a long time and then, there it is. A little disappointing, but the colors and other things will make it very different.

Hometown Holidays 2007

Redwood City's Hometown Holidays was this weekend. The Hudaks came out because they had such a great time last year. The big attraction was, of course, the snow play area which they were able to walk right into last year. Unfortunately this year it was so popular that there was a line to get in the snow that had to be about a block long. We found out later that the wait was about 30 minutes, and you had to sign a release before getting in the snow. That was a little bit too long of a wait for the boys, so we did some other activities instead.

Here's Max enjoying some hot chocolate:

And Jackson going down the slide:

Lance and I didn't make it back to the tree lighting and fireworks this year. It was so nice and warm when we got home, we decided to skip it. It was nice to see several people we know from the community at the event! Next year's will be here before we know it!

Aprons!

Here is Jackson wearing one of the adorable dish-towel aprons that Cindy and I had made a couple of weeks ago. The tutorial for this is from the Sew, Mama, Sew! blog for Handmade Holidays (see previous post). It was a bit long for him, so she folded up the bottom and created pockets. I love these aprons so much that I'll be doing a small demonstration at class tonight. It's the last class of the session, and I thought a demo would be nice.

Hometown Holidays

Over the weekend Lance and I took my sister and nephews to our Hometown Holidays event in downtown Redwood City. We had a great time. There were all kinds of activities going on. There were craft booths, ice sculpting, music, food, Santa, and best of all -- real snow! It was trucked in and dropped into neatly cordoned off squares on Middlefield Road. The boys had a great time:

Jackson

Max

Lance and I went back later in the afternoon to watch the parade (nice and warm with a glass of wine at Savvy Cellar), the tree lighting and the fireworks.

I just love Redwood City!!

Love them boys!

I went to see my sister and nephews this weekend. They are getting so big! (the boys, not my sister) Jackson will be 5 in January and Maxwell will be 2 in December. Time really flies.


There was lots of playing in mud and picking up worms. A great time was had by all!