Christmas Photo 2008

Since the girls were little, I've taken a photo of them in front of our tree to include in our Christmas card. This is the photo that I've chosen to inlude for this year. They took many great pictures this year so it was hard to choose, but I just love their smiles in this picture.

This was my first photo attempt in 2004. E had only been home about a couple of weeks when this photo was taken. Try getting a 2 year old and a 9 month old to sit, be still, look at the camera and maybe smile all at the same time. As you can see, I wasn't too successful!

How Many Bags Can You Make in a Week?

A friend of mine talked me in to sharing a craft table with her at our daughters' Gymnastics Parent Organization craft show today. This all happend 1 week ago! Did I have anything made when she talked me in to sharing this table with her? NO!!! Guess what I've been doing all week? Yes, sewing my butt off. I made a total of 23 purses, bags and totes in just 6 days! Below is a photo of all my work. Now I just hope I sell a few items but if I don't, I have all my Christmas presents done for this year.

Santa

This past weekend we went to the mall and the girls sat on Santas lap. E asked for the diamond castle carriage, horse and dolls, pretty normal for a little 4 yr old girl. M on the other hand asked for a BB gun. She only asked for this because the day before she saw one at the sporting goods store while looking around with her Dad. Since Dad used to shoot rifle competitively when he was young, he was excited to see a pink BB gun that his daughter would be able to shoot (or more likely himself shoot). When M told me what she was going to ask Santa for Christmas, the movie "The Christmas Story" popped right into my mind. I did try to change her mind, but it didn't work. Not sure if Santa is bringing that BB gun this year or not. M isn't quite old enough or more exactly mature enough to have a BB gun. She would probably "shoot her eye out"!

I'm Still Here

People have commented that I haven't posted since July. Sorry! It's been kind of busy around here since the girls started school. I think I spend more of my time in the car driving them to all of their activities and then sitting and waiting for them to be finished. I'm not home that much! I'm still sewing a little, not as much as I would like. I haven't really completed a whole quilt yet but I'm steadily working on several different ones at the same time. I get bored with one and then I work on the other. I've also done a few more house swaps with my Yahoo group. Here a two of my latest houses.

The first one is for a Calendar House swap and my month was April. I've titled it "Raining Cats and Dogs" because I found this great fabric with dogs and cats falling out of the sky with rain. I used that for the main part of the house. The roof is rainbow type fabric. The doors and windows is money fabric in honor of Tax filing day. The chimney is fabric that looks like trees for Arbor day. The sky fabric looks like rain.

The second house is another Calendar House, this time for February. I just had to use heart fabric for the main house, roof and chimney for Valentines Day. The door and window is party fabric in honor of both of my girls's birthdays, which happen to be in February. The sky fabric looks like fireworks for Chinese New Year (even though Chinese New Year could be in Jan or Feb I wanted to portray it in my Feb Houses).

Once all the houses are swapped I will receive 12 houses portraying each month for each group that I joined (in total I will be getting 24 different houses). My goal is to make each of my girls a calendar house quilt. I say my goal because who knows how long it would take me to actually finish the quilts :)

Happy 4 Year Family Day, E!!!

I'm a few days late in posting this but I wanted to wish E a HAPPY FAMILY DAY!! 4 years ago we were in China bonding with this beautiful little girl. Today she is now 4 1/2 years old and a bundle of energy. She keeps us on our toes and we wouldn't have it any other way. We love you E!!!!

Enjoy some of her early photos and some of her today.

E just minutes after being placed in my arms

At our hotel room right after placement.

At the beach. This is the area from China where E is from.

Just smiling in the crib in China.
Meeting her big sister for the first time. Notice how she is holding M's hand and just staring at her.
4 years later!


A group photo of all the little girls from Yangxi at our 4 year Gotcha Day party on Nov 8, 2008. E is the tiniest one 3rd from the right.

Recent Quilting Stuff

Here is another House Block that I've made for my Block Exchange. This one I've titled the Dog House. Just couldn't resisit making a block from some of my dog fabric!

The next quilt is from a pattern designed by the Buggy Barn called Buggy Barn Crazies. I'm normally a very bright kind of quilt girl, and this one is definately not bright. From some of my online swaps, I had collected a little stash of pastel fat quarters and I thought this quilt would be a great way to use up some of those fat quarters (28 to be exact).

The next quilt is from the book 40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts by Evelyn Sloppy called Cheerio. One of my Yahoo groups is making this quilt as a group project. Basically many of us loved the pattern and to help motivate everyone to actually complete the quilt, we will post about our progress and will help each other out if there are any problems. This one is made entirely from Batiks. I'm still debating about adding an another border to it, but I have to find that perfect batik and I haven't had any luck yet. I just may end up leaving it like it is if I can't find something that will work.

A day at the Aviary

Today I took the girls to the Aviary for something to do. They enjoyed it but not as much as I would have liked. I could have just sat in the exhibits and watched the birds all day. They had many free flight exhibits and I'm sure I didn't get to see all the birds that were there hidden among the foilage. It is kind of relaxing just listening to all the birds sing (or make lots of noise) and watching them just fly around. Of course the girls just couldn't sit there all day so I had to move on. I did take some wonderful photos and thought I would share some with you. Birds really are very beautiful!

Last but not least, the girls. It was actually harder to get them to sit and pose nicely for a photo than it was for me to take pictures of the birds.

Quilting Stuff

Even though I haven't posted much about quilting, it doesn't mean that I've not been busy sewing away. Below are many of the projects that I've been working on over the last couple of weeks.

The below log cabin type quilt is from the June 2008 issue of McCall's Quilting. It's the quilt called Caribbean Blue. My quilt is completely made from green, blue and teal batiks.

Closeups of the quilt
The next couple of photos are house blocks from Bonnie Hunter's quiltville.com Happy Scrappy Houses. My yahoo group (Redthreadquilters) is doing a scrappy houses swap. Many of us will be making these houses in sets and then we are going to swap them so that you end up with lots of different houses from all over the country. Below are examples of two of my sets. The first one is from leftover fabric from my Orange Crush quilt and the second is an example of my fabric love, very bright and bold fabrics. I also had to add a little Scottie dog in the window in honor of my dogs.

The next quilt is a graduation gift for my niece. She just graduated from High School the end of May. If you check out this post, you will see that I made a similar quilt for my other niece who graduated last year. The only difference is the fabric. The below quilt is made from all batiks that I've collected through online swaps.
And last but not least is my Orange Crush quilt without borders. I still need to add my borders but wanted to share how it has turned out so far.

My Baby is growing up

Even though I'm very proud of my little girl, M., I'm kind of sad that my baby is growing up. It's hard to believe that yesterday was her last day of Kindergarten and she is now a 1st grader (Just in case you are wondering why in the world she was in school until the end of June, it's because of a teacher's strike last Oct/Nov. Instead of getting out the end of May we ended up going to school until June 26.) M has grown so much during these past 9 months of Kindergarten. She started school not being able to read and now she can read to us. She made lots of new friends and adored her teacher. She was sad to have School end because she loved going there everyday. Her teacher's comment on her last report card was that "She is happy all the time and always has such a positive attitude towards school." I'm so glad that her first year of school was a positive experience and that she has gained a love of learning.

Below are photos taken on her first and last day of Kindergarten. She even looks a lot older. Congratulations M on doing a great job in Kindergarten and I hope you do just as well in 1st grade and beyond.

Mean Mommy

Look at this cute and innocent little face. E is now at the age that she doesn't like it when I tell her no. Instead of throwing a major fit, she now tells me all about her frustrations. The latest is "You're a mean Mommy and I don't like you anymore" The first time you hear that it's kind of hard to handle as a Mom. I just say to her that "I'm sorry that you don't like me, but I love you"after those comments. She is now saying to her sister that "You're not my sister anymore" so I'm not the only one she gets frustrated with.

This weekend she was in rare form especially on Saturday. Her morning started off bad when I said she couldn't have a cookie for breakfast. This of course made her mad and she said she was going to "bite me" because I was being mean. I told her go ahead thinking that she was just blowing steam and didn't really mean it. I guess I should never underestimate her because she did come at me with her mouth open with the intent to bite my leg! Later that morning she was still angry at me because she had to stay in the car with her Dad while I ran quickly into Walmart with her sister (had to buy flowers for her dance recital later that day and she couldn't come with us). Her Dad was trying real hard not to laugh at some of the things she was saying. He wrote a few comments down for me and thought I would share.

"Mommy is not being nice. I don't like her anymore"

"I told you I am messing me up" (I think she was tyring to say that she's mad)

"I am gonna check mom out because she is a failure"

Nothing like a 4 yr old telling you that you're a failure!

Later that day all was forgiven because I got big hugs and lots of "I love you Mom". I guess I wasn't that bad after all.

Dance

Last night E had her Dance Recital Dress Rehearsal. Her actual recital will be this Saturday. She will be doing only one ballet dance. I tried to take a few pictures of her last night in her costume, but she wasn't too cooperative. This was the only photo I got of her prior to her dance. Hopefully on Saturday when she has all the makeup on, I can get a few better photos. Later I figured out why she wasn't looking so happy. She wasn't feeling good and Mommy didn't realize it until after I went back to the dressing room after her dance. I just thought she was still kind of waking up because she took a little nap this afternoon. She was running a fever by that time and later that evening she got sick all over the car. Poor thing. Even though she wasn't feeling good, she did a great job and went on stage (with no tears) and did her dance.

Congratulations M!

M has been in gymnastics since she was 3 years old. Now at 6 she is becoming quite the little gymnast. So far she loves it and rarely never complains about going to the gym and is always happy to go into class. This past year she has been on our gym's precompetition team or the 1st level for the precompetition teams. On May 31 all the girls on both levels put on a little show for family/friends to highlight all the skills that they have been working on throughout the year. M has been recommended to go to the next level which will mean more hours at the gym for her (and for me). Starting next week she will go about 9 hours a week and that will continue throughout the next year. If she continues to do well, she will then be able to start competing at a level 5 the following year. This summer will be a true test to see if she still really loves it. So far she is excited about moving up so I'm hoping that excitement will continue even when her practices are 3 hours long in the very hot summer. We are very proud of her accomplishments!!! Enjoy some photos of her show:

M and her blue team coach. M just loved her and she is one of the main reasons why M has enjoyed gymnastics and why M has done so well. Unfortunately, this is the last year she will be her coach until M is older and in the higher levels of competition. She is the gym's competition team manager and mainly coaches level 7 and above.