Learning my ABCs

Hello!  I know it.  It's been a while.  My summer "theme".  Our summer has been moving steadily ahead.  In fact, it's almost over!

In 3 days, we're headed here:

Going to party it up.  Celebrating Punk's 9th birthday and our 10th wedding anniversary.  This year she will be turning 9 AT Disney World.  She is soooo excited for that.  The day after we get back, my 4th grader heads back to school.  She's excited to start 4th grade and I'm happy she is excited.

I have been doing some sewing.  I started and finishd my ABCs in 2 weeks.

Moda did a blog hop back in February and all their fabric designers (and others) created the letters and Moda offered the letter patterns for free.  I followed along and downloaded all of them.  I have since found out that Moda took down their links to the free letters because they put all the letters into one PDF file and some online shops are selling the PDF for $8.00.  I'm not sure how I feel about that practice.  A bit shady to me.  But I have them all printed out and saved so I'm good.

I do love this quilt.  I was hoping to hang it on my bedroom wall but it's too wide for the rod hanging there already.  I hate to use it because while I love the black background and how it makes all the colors pop but the lint and cat hair it collects.... UGH.  I have lint brushed this thing numerous times while sewing it.

I got another quilt done and off my bannister.  Morning Joe is on my bedroom wall and I just love it!

Not sure what I"m going to work on now.  I have been creating some appliqued owls for a quilt but they take forever.  I work on them when the need strikes.  I think what I'm going to do it work on getting fabrics cut for the free pattern that the Fat Quarter Shop launched a few days ago, Fat Quarter Fizz.  Quick and easy and again, using up that stash!

Enjoy your day!!
Jen  :)

Summer Excitement

Last week, prowling the virtual world, I planned my family's fictitious, grandiose trip to Disney.  I had a good time with it.  Money wise?  Wasn't happening.  But I had fun.

This year, my husband and I are celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary.  Last year, I stated that I wanted a real vacation.  No long weekend away.  No "quick trip" to PA to pick up farming supplies.  A REAL vacation. One week.  An airplane ride away.  Preferably on a white, sandy beach.  My husband was on board.  Kind of.  Beaches are not his thing.

Time goes by and house expenses come along.  I took the tropical vacation off the table.  No need to stress things out more.  But I wasn't willing to cave on the real, one week vacation away.  Figured we would draw a circle on a map and drive somewhere.

Here comes the exciting part.  My husband walked in on me planning our fictitious trip to Disney and after talking about what we would do different, what we would skip and scaled it waaaayyy back.... he agreed to go back this summer!

Punk's first trip - 2012

Comparing prices for lodging/food/airfare to Disney and driving to say, Virginia Beach for a week... Disney won!  He very much surprised me with his quick agreement because that is NOT my husband.  He will take time, LOTS of time, to mull things over and just think about it.  For him to agree after an hour's conversation, that's a big deal.

No secret this time.  We told Amelia over the weekend.  And you know what?  I got the same exact reaction out of her when I kept it a secret for 8 months.  She just doesn't get excited the way I think she should.  She is helping us plan our trip.  Figuring out what she would like to do again versus what we can skip.  We are skipping Animal Kingdom this time around and I booked an additional "chill out" day.  No park that day.  Just pool time and hanging around.  I like that.  Just a day to relax.  We didn't have that our first trip.  She helped pick out the resort too.  We're staying at Disney's Port Orleans - Riverside resort in a "Royal Guest" room.  Can't wait!

218 more days!!  LOL!!!

Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

Disney Trip 2012

I realize that a month has passed since our first big family vacation to Disney.  To sum up our week in a nutshell it was:

• VERY hot and humid
• rainy
• Awesome!
• Terrific
• exhausting

We had a super terrific time and so much so that my husband agreed to a second trip!  In 2015.  Gives Amelia some time to get older and appreciate more of Disney.  We didn't even get to walk all of Epcot because she was just so exhausted from the constant on the go we were doing.  So I didn't force it.  Just another reason to go back so that I can see the countries in Epcot.

We stayed on-property at Pop Century.  One of the value resorts and we liked it.  Only thing that we will change for our next trip is having a family suite.  We stayed in one room and it was small but that wasn't a big deal.  The biggest problem we had was Amelia and sleep.  Now initially, I wanted to book a resort with family suites so that we had the room.  My husband vetoed the idea due to the fact that we weren't going to spend much time in the room except for showering and sleep and didn't want to spend the extra money.  He was banking on the fact of Amelia just being sooo exhausted from her day's adventures, would pass out in bed as soon as we walked in the door at night.  It would have worked but the walk from the shuttles to our room gave her a second wind and she was ready to go swimming at 11pm, not sleep.  Lesson learned.

Had a few days of rain but that didn't dampen our adventures.  Just put on some ponchos and away we went!  I have a ton of pictures but I'm not going to unload them all here. Just some highlights.

Chef Donald at Chef Mickey's dinner

Cinderella's Evil Stepmother and step sisters

Beautiful birthday cake enjoyed at Cinderella's Castle

Amelia with Ariel - her favorite Princess

My Princess

Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party

I could go on and on.  I'm having a hard time picking and choosing the pictures to upload.  We had an awesome time and can't wait to go back!

Enjoy your day!
Jen

Knock Knock. Anyone home?

I'm not going to whine or complain.  It's been a while.  No sewing here.  Zip.  Nada.  I think it's been 4 months??  So sad.  I've been enjoying everybody else's sewing fun.  I've spotted some projects I would love to work on.  I hope my mojo finds its way back home soon.  This is depressing.

HOWEVER.... I'm not depressed.  You wanna know why??

We are headed here TOMORROW!

Can you believe it??  Tomorrow.  Amelia is ready to burst.  I had to give her instructions that even though she is ready for Disney, today was a school day and she needed to chill out and pay attention to her teacher.  Myself on the other hand, has some packing to do.  I've started but have stalled.  I don't want to over-pack but it looks like that's going to happen.  Oh well.  Variety is the spice of life, right?  So that's on my agenda today.  Finish packing and run a few errands.  Tonight we're headed to a hotel by the airport.  I debated the idea for a week and figured this would be better.  We can all sleep an extra hour or so and I won't have to fight Amelia too much to eat breakfast before leaving for the airport.  If we were to stay home, she would have to be up for 4am to wake up enough to eat before getting in the car.  I can just see that meltdown.  I'm glad I booked us a room!

 Adios Amigos!  I'll see you when we're back from visiting Mickey!
Jen  :)

Punk and the Big Reveal

We celebrated Amelia's 7th birthday on Saturday with a party and happy stuff.  Lots of kids running around, swimming, face painting and balloon twisting.

 

It was a great time. 
We had cake.

And presents.  Now here comes the big reveal.  I ended up putting two balloons with a special note in a box and wrapped it up.  I was so excited to give her this gift. 

I couldn't contain my excitement but I had to.  I've kept the secret too long to blow it now.  So I was patient.  It was the first gift Amelia wanted to open.

And she opened it.  See her expression up there?  Yah. That's all I got.  No cheers.  No tears.  No "hip-hip-hoorays".  No hugs.  No nothin'.  She pretty much said, after reading the note, "I'm going to Disney.  Next present please."  What a letdown!  I'm telling you.  My heart SANK.  I'm still a little disappointed but I'm slowly getting over it. 

We chatted the next day about it and she said "Mama, all I opened was an empty box.  A box with 2 balloons inside."  The concept was lost on her, I think.  If I had gone with my original idea and given  her a stuffed Mickey and Minnie in a box with a special note, she may have reacted a bit differently.  Oh well.  It's done.  She knows and slowly she's getting excited for it.  Once she's in school (TOMORROW!), time will go by faster and she'll be ready for a vacation.

So, there you have it.  My big reveal was a big BUST.  However, 3 weeks - 21 days from today, I will be hanging out in the pool at our resort on our first family Disney trip.  I think I can handle it.  :)

Enjoy your day!
Jen

Pink or Green?

Help me make a decision.  I have my choice in my head but I want to see if others think the same as I do.  I'm making the Mallory Bag for our Disney trip (173 more days!).  I'm using "Twirl" from Me and My Sister Designs.

Which zipper do you like best?  The raspberry red or the lime/kiwi green?

together

raspberry

or lime/kiwi green?

So?  Which one?

Enjoy  your day!
Jen

Swoonin' again

I got back into the Swoon groove this last week and I actually surprised myself when I finished my next 2 blocks.  I thought I had 3 more to go.  Turns out, I only have 2 more to go.  Woohoo!  Then sashing and borders (I want mine a bit bigger for my bed).

I'm running out of room on the floor

Taking another Swoon break.  2 blocks in one weekend is enough for me.  By the end of finishing the second one, my head was swimming.   I may start cutting #8 this afternoon.  We'll see.  I need to work on those mini messenger bags.

Oh and I just wanted to say that we are out of the 200s.  198 more days until our Disney vacation!  LOL!

That's all I got.  It's been pretty slow around here in the sewing department.  My motivation is slowing down.  I think I just need to veg out.  I think that's what I'm going to do.

Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

211 more sleeps

Until we fly the friendly skies to Disney!!!  Yes, I'm insane and doing the countdown so early but I can't help it.  I am sooooo excited!

Haven't said a word yet.  Keeping my secret close.  Airfare was purchased this afternoon.  Jet Blue opened up some more scheduling so I was there, online at 12:01 pm, booking our flight.  Just another thing off my list.  Next is booking our dinner reservations but that window doesn't open up for us until mid-March.

Since I am so excited for our travels, I made myself a new bag.  I made the Mini Messenger bag by Quilts Illustrated.  But do you want to know what made me mad??  I ordered the pattern and then in my searching online, found out that the SAME pattern is in an older issue of one of my quilting mags!  GRRRRR!  Oh well.  I actually used both resources to make the bag.  The magazine gave some good step by step pictures of a few things so it came in handy.  The magazine however didn't mention the interior pockets but the paper pattern did.

fabric - Hometown by Sweetwater

I would show you the inside pockets but it's full of stuff right now

I took it out yesterday for a little test run and I need to make my handle shorter.  It's a tad too long and I'm thinking that will drive me crazy walking around Disney all day like that.  No worries.  I have plenty of time to get that done.   Another good thing?  I went to get my hair cut yesterday and the ladies there loved my bag, I need to make 3 more!  One just like mine except the red polkies need to be blue dots on gray.  I ordered the reverse though (gray dots on blue) because I didn't write it down.  DOH!  Oh well.  The other two requests all black.  I found a black tone on tone swirl online but I think my LQS has that fabric so before I order and pay shipping, I will go there first.  I did have to order more Hometown.  Placed that fabric order this morning. 

I have been working on my Christmas Through the Year gifts for February.  I'm almost ready to show those too.

Tomorrow Amelia and I both have the day off due to President's Day so we'll be spending the day with my cousin and her little boy.  Should be fun.

Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

Swoonin'

Snowy day out there today.  I had commented last week (I think) on Anna's blog that I didn't want any snow.  She told me that I needed to "embrace my inner snow" and my husband pretty much told me the same thing.  He got a commercial plowing job for the season and told me that he needs only 4 good snow storms and that will pay for our trip to Disney.  So... C'MON SNOW!

Speaking of Disney, we met with a travel agent yesterday to learn the ins and outs of our potential trip and we're getting close to booking!  WOOHOO!  I thought for sure the prices would bug my husband's eyes out but he was really mellow about it.  After some discussion on the way home and a bit more looking online at the different resorts the travel agent priced out for us, I think we've made a decision as to where we're going to stay when we're there.  More on that later.  I will just say that I am SUPER EXCITED and having a hard time holding my secret in around Amelia.

On to Swoon.  Block 3 is complete.  Block 4 fabrics have been pulled out of the pile and ready for cutting but I'm not feeling it.  They will have to wait.

Some other finishes.  I finished the first round of gifts for Christmas Through the Year that Darlene and Cheryl are co-hosting.  I'm not ready to show you yet though.  See, MY part is done but I need the husband's muscles for the last bit.  If I get on him before he leaves for work tonight, I should be able to show you tomorrow.  I also finished my accessory bag for the swap that Kris is hosting.  Again, I need the husband's muscles for one last part.  I'll explain when I show you what I made.

I know a few weeks ago I promised  a 500 post celebration giveaway and I haven't forgotten.  I just need to snap a picture and post.  Stay tuned!

Enjoy your day!
Jen