What I'll do for $100

We bought a new car tonight. Yay for new car. Boo for new car payment. I am sure none of you could care less about that though. The good part of the story is after we test drove it and looked at several other cars, we were walking with the salesman back to the dealership. There was a big puddle we were all walking around. The salesman turns to me and says, "I'll give you $100 off right now if you go jump in that puddle." and then he laughed. So I jumped with both feet into the puddle and made a big splash like a little kid would. He looked at me like I was nuts and then busted up laughing. When he brought out the paperwork, the first discount on the list was $100 for jumping in a puddle. It made me really happy. It's the little things, isn't it?

Ghastlies quilt

Remember the Alexander Henry "The Ghastlies" fabric that I wrote about in the My First Quilt post? I bought 8 pieces of 5 different patterns from the line and have started my quilt! I only bought 1 yard of each pattern so I barely have enough to make the quilt. This lead me to be very nervous about cutting it all out, especially the 4 main pieces (above fabric in white, gray, pink and green).

I wanted to be able to get the best 9 squares out of each yard possible, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing that. I found a roll of semi-transparent parchment paper and cut out 9 11" square pieces. Then I could lay them on the fabric and rearrange to my heart's content until I had it perfect. Then pin and cut. It worked fantastic.

I designed the blocks to be super simple, as this is my first attempt at quilting and I don't have a very long attention span for very detailed sewing. Each block only has 5 pieces. I am making 36 blocks, so that was 180 pieces to cut out. It went really fast and I had just enough of each fabric to get the pieces I need. Here they are all cut out:

I started sewing the individual blocks together today and have 8 done. They are going really quickly and I think I'll be done much sooner than I thought! Plenty of time before Halloween.

The final quilt will be 6 blocks by 6 blocks, so 84" square. I love huge quilts. It should look a little something like this (except each center piece will be different instead of repeating the same thing over and over):

What do you think?

I'm back!

Wow. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Three out-of-state trips in less than 20 days, many birthdays, out-of-state visitors to our house, a near car wreck resulting in a broken out back window and a multitude of other madness have kept me off the computer a lot lately.

I actually don't have time to go over all of it but I will have posts and pictures of Ghastly quilt progress, shopping sprees including new clothes and dishes and more coming soon. I did want to let you know that Staci over at Reyn on Fashion cleaned out my closet for me and wrote about it on her blog. If that doesn't sound like that exciting of a topic to you, you should check it out anyway because Staci did a great job of giving tips she used on my closet (including making a "to buy" list of key garments) that you can definitely use to bring an editorial eye to your own closet. Read the post here.

My first quilt?

Alexander Henry's The Ghastlies

I LOVE this fabric. I have been wanting to buy a few prints from this line but had no idea what to do with it. Last night I decided to just do it and bought a few yards in order to attempt my first quilt. Because of the style of fabric, I am thinking that most quilt patters aren't going to work, so I am going to make it up as I go. Do you quilt? I would love to hear any suggestions and tips you have for a first timer.

You can find this line from a number of sellers. I bought it from Contemporary Cloth.

And the winner is...

Fabulous number four!

Congratulations to Katy from The Country Blossom!

Katy will receive two totes of her choice from my shop. Thank you to everyone who entered and started following this blog and my tweets. This giveaway was really fun and I will definitely being doing another in the future.

Sunshine and flowers

Remember that beautiful linen fabric I fell in love with and bought at Mood in L.A.? I wrote about it in this post back in March. It's been sitting in my sewing room, calling my name, but it hadn't told me yet what it wanted to be. Last night (about 10 minutes before the fabric store closed) I finally understood what it was aspiring to be. Curtains for the kitchen! I ripped one of the old curtains off the wall and eye balled it for just a second to get an idea for the construction. Then quickly made a list in my head, jumped in the car and made it to the store in time to get supplies.

I didn't quite have a wide enough piece of the print for both windows, so I decided to buy black linen to make a 4" wide border on both sides. The next dilemma was lining. I was afraid that if I used black, it would make the white flowers muddy and less crisp looking. On the flip side, if I used white lining, I did not want the black borders to appear lighter or less solid black looking. So I decided on gray lining, but was still I concerned that would end up diminishing booth the white and black portions. I posed the question to a handful of friends who sew and Alisa had the answer. Yellow lining! It was absolutely the right choice.

That was a lot of talk about curtains without even showing them to you, so here's one:

You can't see the second curtain (for the window above the kitchen sink) because I can't count. I was thinking I needed to make 4 ribbons for the ties. There are four per curtain though (two on the front and two on the back) so I ran out of yellow linen. The second curtain is completely ready to go, so I should be able to finish it quickly.

I can't stop wandering into the kitchen to admire this one. The camera just doesn't do the floral fabric justice. The gray area is almost metallic without being silvery. Most of the accessories in the kitchen are red. Darn. Guess I'll have to go shopping for new stuff including fabric to cover the dining room chairs!

As I was taking pictures of the one completed curtain, I noticed that this corner of the dining area seems to have taken on a wine theme. It really isn't a deliberate collection and just sort of happened over time. I don't dislike it, but some new yellow things will need homes here now!

Mother's Day gift idea

SPOILER ALERT: If you are one of the mom's expecting a Mother's Day gift from me, STOP READING NOW!

Why am I posting this before I give these gifts? Because I think it's a really great idea and want other people to feel free to use it for their moms but it wouldn't be too helpful if I post it after Mother's Day, would it? (Mom, I know you're still reading. Stop now!)

I know both my mom and MIL have had gardens off and on over the years, but neither have had a full garden recently. When I started growing my own herbs a couple of years ago, both seemed intrigued. My MIL asked lots of questions about using fresh herbs for cooking and how to grow them, but didn't run right out to Earl May to pick up any plants. So I got them both a couple of herb plants for Mother's Day this year and planted them in cute ceramic pots. It seemed like a good idea, but then I wondered if either of them would actually cook with the basil, chives and rosemary. Solution? Make fun recipe cards with information about each herb along with a recipe we love to make with each variety.

I thought they turned out pretty cute! I printed them on cardstock and laminated each card to protect them from cooking splatters. I plan to punch a hole in the top corner of each one, thread a pretty ribbon through and tie it around the corresponding pot. Once I get them all together, I'll update this post with a finished picture.

I'd be happy to share these if you'd like to print some too. Leave a comment with your email and I will send you print resolution PDF files.