hopefully something rhetorical

I didn’t have the opportunity to make much for Christmas this year.  The combination of the great move along with the great gestation didn’t leave much time for crafting.  But, I was able to do a few things that I wanted to share.

First, my wife, Alie, really liked the canvases that I made of my favorite scrapbooking paper.  These are the ones that I made for me a long time ago.   They worked really well in the old house, shorter ceilings.  In the new house, they need to be added to.  But, that is something easy to fix.

So, for Christmas, I made Alie a set of her own!  They came out really cute. I was very happy with them, and most importantly, so was she!

I also made a set of the rough edge letters I found on Sew Mama Sew and Happy Together for my friend’s little girl.  I thought they would be a cute way to play with spelling, etc.  If I make another set, I will make duplicates of the most popular letters, so they are easier to use.

To keep them all together, I picked up a little suitcase at Paper Source with the hope they wouldn’t just become more clutter.  I love the way they turned out and can’t wait to make more for other little boys and girls in my life!

I am looking forward to the crafting potential for next Christmas.  I have some big ideas!  And, I have some fun crafty stuff to share that we have been able to accomplish at our house too!  I have to get home to take pictures though.

Right now, we are in the midst of the great blizzard of 2010!  So funny that in eight short weeks, my son has seen two/three blizzards in an area that doesn’t normally get this much snow.  Crazy!

So, that means that I will have some crafting to share here in the next few days.  I have some things from around the house to share as well.

But, for now, I thought that I would share this….my virtual to-do list if you will.  I am an idea collector, and my friends send me ideas as well.  So, I finally set-up somewhere to collect them!  Check it out!

I remember the year I turned ten vividly.  For some reason, it was a significant moment for me.  It was the year I got my ears pierced, but that was only part of it.  I remember feeling like I was so much more grown-up after that day passed.

Back in January, I chose the word “embrace” to guide me over 2009, and I wrote all about it.  And, over the last twelve months, I have definitely embraced all aspects of life and the many changes that have occurred with our little family.  And, as this year comes to an end today, I feel very fortunate for all these changes and the fact that I was open enough to embrace them.

For me, embrace has meant to sit back a little and let things happen, a position that I am not always comfortable taking.  It meant embracing the plans that others had for me, particularly with regards to the methods and means for us to start our family.  It also meant that I needed to embrace the system and trust that it would allow us to end up where we were supposed to.  And, they both worked out exactly like I had hoped.

And, I think the best lesson I learned over the last year is that sometimes I don’t always have to take an active approach to life.  Sometimes, I have to sit back long enough to figure out what is already in motion, and sometimes embracing that action is all that needs to be done.

As I transition into 2010, I feel again like I am turning ten again.  I feel like I am growing up and have so much still to learn much like I did 22 years ago. So, this year, my word is going to be “proceed.”

proceed

1. to move or go forward or onward, esp. after stopping.
2. to card on or continue any action or process.
3. to go on to do something.
4. to continue one’s discourse.
5. to be carried on, as an action or process.
6. to go or come forth; issue (often fol. by from).
7. to arise, originate, or result (usually fol. by from).

I think this word will give me a way to keep moving forward with my goals and all that I have learned since I started this process two years ago.  And, I think this will be particularly important over the next year as I learn to be a mom and how being a mom fits in with the rest of my life, particularly since right now, as I am so new in the moment, it feels a little more like a replacement than a merger.

This next year will be quite an adventure.  And, I hope my word will be a solid reminder for me to keep moving forward.  And, because it is always more fun to do this kinda thing with friends, if you are interested in creating your own word for the year, then you should check out the Word-of-the-Year Discovery Tool that Christine Kane is offering!  It is a great way to help you get started.

I am!  No blog posts here for far too long, but with good reason.  So, I will be back here soon to share some Christmas presents I was able to make this year, to talk a little about my word for this year, and to share my playlist for the year.  Until then though, this is making me laugh right now!

Unfortunately, with the craziness that has been the last six months for me, I haven’t been working on many quilts, so I didn’t think that I was going to enter the quilt show this fall.  I did last spring, and it was a lot of fun.  New visitors, new ideas, etc.  However, when I started reading through some of the quilts that had been posted, I thought what the heck! So here is my entry

This is a quilt that I have already talked about a great deal in this space, so I won’t go through all the details again.  But, like my entry from last Spring, it was a quilt that had been saved.  This is how it started.

And, the reason I love it so much is that it is one of the most loved quilts I have ever made.  So, again, thanks Amy for giving us a chance to share all our pretties!  You rock!  And, everybody, please go check out everyone’s great work!

A few months ago, when we had just gotten back to Virginia and found our new house, I set out on the quest to find a dining room table.  And, I was successful!  I found a great table for a great price.  I just needed to find the right chairs.  And, I did.

This is the Isabella Chair from Pottery Barn.  We love the one in red.  But, we didn’t love the price tag.  No way that we could justify spending almost $600 for four chairs for a table that was less than $75.  So, we headed down to the Virginia Bazaar to see what we could find. And, again, we hit pay dirt!

We found four chairs that look almost exactly like these that I found on this site (I was too lazy to go out to the garage and take pictures of ours).  And, now that I have seen these chairs, although they are in better shape, I am realizing that the $5 a piece we paid for the four we got made them an amazing deal.  They seem to be circa early 1900’s.  Like I said, ours aren’t in amazing shape.  They need some wood glue and new seats.  We are also going to paint them this color.

It is a great Behr color. And, it will really make the chairs pop.  What is the dilemma you might ask?  Well, the pretty blue gingham fabric on the existing seat covers isn’t going to cut it.  And, I have been looking for some fun fabric that will look great in our kitchen and allow us to pull in a lot of other colors in the same hue as the red above.  And, I have narrowed my choices down to these two.

The first you might recognize as Alexander Henry’s Mocca.  And, I have some of this downstairs.  It is a print I love, but I am concerned about how well it will hold up because it isn’t really decorator or upholstery weight.  The second is a specialty organic fabric from an awesome designer, Daisy Jane, that I have been eying for a while.  It is definitely pricey, but it is perfect, and I love it!

My dilemma is which one?  Now, I know what most of you will say.  With a baby on the way, expensive fabric that we going to be sitting on is probably not a good idea.  But, that is why it is a dilemma.  I am wondering if this should be our one spot to splurge on this project, particularly since we wouldn’t need a ton for the four chairs.

This summer has been insane.  We moved, bought a new house, lived with my mom, and helped take care of my grandmother.  Somehow in the midst of all the excitement, I didn’t get much crafting done.  Now, I am feel those creative juices slowly flood back in.  I have lots of Christmas ideas, and I think some that I didn’t share from last year (is that really possible?).

Well, the very first order of business was to get caught up on the virtual quilting bee I am signed up for.  These ladies are awesome!  They have the coolest fabrics to work with and the neatest ideas.

As I said, I was really far behind, but I am all caught up now (well, I have one for September to get out, which will happen early next week). But, here are the five blocks I created for my swap partners.

I am really happy with the way they all came out.  But, I am a little in love with all the circles.  I made that one for Edie.  She sent some amazing fabrics and asked for circles.

And, even more exciting, September was my month.  So, I picked some of my favorite Heather Bailey fabrics and the string quilt pattern that Film in the Fridge had posted, and I got to see a sneak peak of one of the first blocks to come back.  I didn’t send enough fabric apparently, but can you see how cool this is going to be?

I am so excited to see this all put together and in our new family room.  It is going to look amazing with pillows in this pattern, don’t you think?

When the boy and I got married (almost 9 years ago!), we didn’t talk a bunch about our wedding song. He took the very hands-off approach with most of the wedding plans, which was probably for the best.  If he had a strong opinion about something, he would share it.  But, most of the decisions were just made.

I thought a lot about our wedding song, though.  Music is kind of our thing, and I wanted something that really spoke to both of us.  We ended up dancing to “Feels Like Home” by Bonnie Raitt, which worked.  It is a great song, and I thought that it worked well because it was a little bit country and a little bit not, just like us. And, I love the lyrics of that song.

However, what I really wanted was a Dave Matthews song.  The boy and I are big fans (although, I know that he isn’t for everyone, so if you don’t like him, then you don’t need to tell me), and we have seen him a ton in concert throughout our relationship, before wedding and after.  And, I was pretty bummed that in 2000 I couldn’t really find a song that worked for the first dance.   We listened to everything we owned, which was everything that they had out.  And, we didn’t really find something that fit all the way.

Since then, we have had quite a few dave songs that have echoed what was going on in our lives.  “Stay or Leave” was our song when the boy was supposed to be sent to Korea.  It fit perfectly.  And, “Steady As We Go” was our Iraq deployment song.

But, the band’s new album just came out.  And, it has some amazing songs on it!  Including this one, “You and Me.”  And, this would have been our wedding song.  It is just cheesy enough to be awesome!

YOU & ME by Dave Matthews

Wanna pack your bags, Something small
Take what you need and we disappear
Without a trace we’ll be gone, gone
The moon and the stars can follow the car
and then when we get to the ocean
We gonna take a boat to the end of the world
All the way to the end of the world

Oh, and when the kids are old enough
We gonna teach them to fly

You and me together, we could do anything, Baby
You and me together yes, yes

You and I, we’re not tied to the ground
Not falling but rising like rolling around
Eyes closed above the rooftops
Eyes closed, we’re gonna spin through the stars
Our arms wide as the sky
We gonna ride the blue all the way to the end of the world
To the end of the world

Oh, and when the kids are old enough
We gonna teach them to fly

You and me together, we could do anything, Baby
You and me together yes, yes

We can always look back at what we did
All these memories of you and me baby
But right now it’s you and me forever girl
And you know we could do better than anything that we did
You know that you and me, we could do anything

You and me together, we could do anything, Baby
You and me together yeah, yeah
Two of us together, we could do anything, baby
You and me together yeah, yeah
The two of us together yeah, yeah
Two of us together, we could do anything, baby

As promised, we have a new family blog, where (in theory) the boy and I will both post about all the fun family stuff we have going on.  So, that is where all the baby news, etc will be posted.  Please check it out if you are interested!

1. I have a finite number of underwear.  If I don’t do laundry, I won’t have any to wear.
2. Unfortunately, I sleep better with the boy gone in my new growing state.  I need room to sprawl out.
3. The tendency of typepad blogs to only have one post in their RSS feed drives me a little crazy.  How am I supposed to know what people are writing?
4. I am only teaching one class in the fall, and I am kinda excited about the free time I might have.
5. My little brother reminded me that “Things work out for you when you don’t suck!”