I have to thank my friend Niki for the push that I needed (thanks Niki!).  I’ve been sitting on Brody’s quilt (sandwiching half done) for months.  It’s just been sitting in my sewing machine.  I just needed to turn the sewing machine on and hop to it.  *sigh*

Well, Niki asked if I could make her a couple of hooded towels (which I love making because they’re so easy to make and look so cute when you’re done…wish I would have taken pictures of these last ones…they looked very Pottery Barn-ish).  My sewing machine was on the “free motion quilting” setting.  It’s not a pain to go back and forth, but I do have to change my sewing foot.  I also have a couple of other sewing projects I want to work on, so I had extra motivation to move forward with Brody’s quilt.

Last night I finished sandwiching Brody’s quilt together.  Phew!  That’s behind me now.   I still have the finishing touches (binding) to put on it.  I need to cut the fabric, sew it together, attach it and then hand sew it (which will take some time, but something I can do while watching TV).

Here are the latest photos of Brody’s onesie quilt.  I can’t believe I took so long getting to this point (am I lazy or what?).

Tomorrow, I am throwing a small Valentine’s Day Party at my house for seven of Brody’s friends.  We’re involved in an every other Friday playgroup and this just happens to be the Friday that I host, so I decided to make it a Valentine’s party.  Brody has a shirt to wear on Valentine’s Day, so I figured this would give him a chance to get more use out of it.

I found this super easy tutorial for decorating a mailbox.  This mailbox can be found in the dollar bins at Target.  I will say that they’re pretty small.  I thought they would be much bigger than they are.  They are still cute and would still fit most Valentine’s that kids hand out.  Target had a few colors on hand too (white, red, and pink).  The tutorial is called, Target Mailbox Tutorial.  Check it out if you’re interested in making one for yourself.

I also made Brody’s Valentine’s cards to hand out to his friends.  Boogie Wipes are a big thing here, so I found the “knock, knock” joke about the sneeze (see photo above to see the knock knock joke) and thought a Boogie Wipe would be perfect to go with it.  Cheesy, but somewhat creative, right?  LOL!

I also made some labels for the water bottles (just to dress them up a bit).  I found the “saying” online and just resized it to fit the water bottle label.  Some of it is printed in light pink and the flash on my phone made it “white out” so it looks like there are some blank lines.  The lines that are missing say “February 14th” and “Be Mine, Be Mine”.

I have so much fun being creative and just wish I would take more time to do so.  I still have Brody’s onesie quilt that hasn’t moved an inch since I last took a photo of it and blogged about it.  *sigh*

I need your advice.

I finally took a look at the new fabric that I ordered (the fabric for the binding, the one that I didn’t calculate correctly and am short on).  I was checking it out late last night (hoping I was too tired and my mind was just playing tricks on me) and noticed that they aren’t even the same color.  WHAT!

I went back to Etsy (where I purchased both fabrics from different sellers…they are both the exact same name of fabric and supposedly suppose to be the same fabric).  Does anyone else see the difference?

The background browns are different shades of brown and the circles are completely a different color (one is more gray and the other is more tan).  AND (as weird as this sounds), I think the circles on one of them is a bit thicker than the other.  How can this be?  *sigh*

I know…they were on different bolts, printed at a different time, blah, blah, blah.   So, my question is this…

Do I use the new fabric for the binding (the fabric that doesn’t even match what is used quite a bit in the quilt already)?  It doesn’t clash or anything, but it’s noticeably different.  OR…do I go back to the first Etsy seller and buy more fabric from her to hopefully get the same lot and they match and sell or use this new (unmatched) fabric for something else.  Would it bother you or make a difference?  It IS just the binding, right?

Oh…and in case you’re wondering…the fabric that I’ve used in the quilt already is the one on the top or left-hand side.

I started off great with Brody’s onesie quilt and have just stalled.  I haven’t touched it in at least a week.  *sigh*  I guess I was thinking I would finish it too quickly and still have to wait on the fabric for the binding, but that came within a couple of days, so I’m not sure what my excuse is now.  LOL!

So, here’s a picture of my very slow progress and how it looks sitting on my project table (nice care for an heirloom….wadded up on my table).

Tonight I finished the back of Brody’s quilt while Jason and Brody hung out together.  Here’s a quick pic of the back of his quilt.

I’m getting ready to “sandwich” them together and then the binding.  This will take me a while to do.  I miscalculated the fabric I needed for the binding, so am placing an order and will have to wait for it to arrive first.  *sigh*  I don’t do well at the patience game.

Here’s a quick picture of the front of Brody’s onesie quilt. I think it turned out nice and I love the two brown borders. It pulls everything together and definitely looks “boy-ish”.

I’ve started working on the back of the quilt, but haven’t gotten very far. It shouldn’t take long to finish and I’ll get some pictures of it up soon. Then the real work begins (sandwiching the quilt and adding the binding….yuck…both time consuming for me). This is where I’d love to just hand it off to someone else and see the finished product. LOL!

This afternoon I got started on cutting the squares out to the onesie quilt.  I took a picture of the first one I did (the owl outfit that Brody wore home from the hospital…we thought it was fitting since he was born on Halloween and it was sort of like a “costume”).  It was such a strange feeling going through all of his onesies and cutting each of them up.  Somewhat sad (my baby is growing), yet very excited about what they’re about to become (a forever kept quilt).  I can’t wait to present this to Brody one day (maybe when he has a child of his own as I know he could care less about it (being a boy), but his wife would think it was pretty cool).

As I made my way through the pile of onesies, I came across his onesie that he wore for Christmas and Valentine’s Day last year.  I already have on hand shirts that Brody will wear this Christmas and Valentine’s Day, so I thought it would be neat to take a picture of his shirt this year and his outfit last year.  Can you believe that the full size of the onesie is the length of the t-shirt he now wears.  Boy has he grown this past year.

Tonight I was able to first lay out the onesies in the order I wanted and then had time to sew them all together (I had to get them off of my office floor so Brody had a place to play tomorrow morning before his morning nap).   It’s a great feeling to get that much done already.  I still have quite a bit to do with this quilt, but so far, it’s a start.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress (with pictures).  Can’t wait to see the finished look.  As a reminder, here is the example of what I plan for it to look like when I’m finished.

Are you a grocery list maker?  I am, always have been.

In the past few years, I’ve started putting the paper pads on the side of the refrigerator and when we run out of something or there’s something that just sounds good, we write it down.  When it’s time to go to the store, I have all of my items wrote on the list already (minus the last minute staples that we’re not quite out of, but I know we’ll need within the week).

I even go one step further (I learned this from my Mom and love this idea!).  I re-write my grocery list in the order that the store is organized so I can walk right in, look at my list and not skip a beat.  I go in the order of my list and within minutes (ok, so quite a few minutes), my shopping is done and I’m at the check-out.  I rarely have to double back unless it’s an item that I hadn’t purchased before and I was guessing where it was located in the store.

And now, to make things even easier (at least for my husband), I have made a check-off grocery list.  I came across the tutorial last week and knew that I wanted to make this.  It’s SO easy!  It’s organized by areas in the store (dairy, frozen, cleaning supplies, produce, etc…).  The list is even customizable, so you can make it really fit your needs.  It was so easy to change.  I added things we often use and added a couple of extra blanks for each category.  I even added a “baby” category (again, making it meet my needs).

I haven’t started using it yet (just made it last night).  Let me know if you make one and how you like it.

Brody is invited to yet another birthday party.  I swear all of his friends are girls.  *sigh*

Most of the same people are invited to these birthday parties, so I’m trying to be unique with my wrapping for them all.  I purchased brown wrapping paper from The Container Store (my new favorite store that just opened in Raleigh a couple of months ago).  This wrapping paper is so versatile!  Last week we went to another girl’s birthday party and I used the brown wrapping paper and some wide pink and brown ribbon.  I didn’t think to get any pictures of that wrapped gift, but I think it turned out nice.

This time, I decided to go with a design that I saw on a recent blog post using a snowflake.   I don’t think mine turned out near as nice and the snowflake would probably look nicer on my white wrapping paper instead of the brown, but oh well.

I also used something that Jason just sent me the link too (he knew I’d like the idea and I love that he thinks of me).  I thought it was cute to personalize the gift and put the little girl’s name on it.  Had the snowflake been smaller, I would have preferred to put the name on the front of the package, versus the top, but I wasn’t redoing my snowflake (lazy, I know).

I saw a blog post last week on handmade Christmas gifts. I ran across a photo ornament that I liked.  My family just had their photos taken professionally when we were in IL visiting and each of the grand kids had a photo taken by themselves.  Bingo!  I’ll use those photos to make four ornaments for my parents to hang on their Christmas tree.  Perfect!

It was so simple to make, although I’m not completely happy with the end result.  The opening into the ornament is very narrow so I had to roll up the photo to stick it inside and now they won’t fully flatten.  It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not near as nice as the one shown in the tutorial.  I should have looked harder for the clear plastic ornaments.  I bought the medium sized glass ornaments (that’ll teach me).

So, here are pictures of my finished product.  Enjoy!

I’m working on a few more smaller projects before diving into the onesie quilt.  I’ll keep you posted.