Christmas Quilts

I made Kennedy and Isabella quilts for Christmas this year.  Debbie and I ventured to the quilt store in Hermiston to check it out a few weekends ago and she helped me pick out the cutest fabrics for the girls.  I used a super easy pattern and stitched them right up.  I thought I was going to have to wait a few months to get them quilted but one of the quilt stores in Richland finished them in about 3 days!  Ah-maze-ing!  So Friday and Saturday I plopped myself on the couch and finished the binding.

Tara would be so proud - two quilts start-to-finished in about one month!  Quite a change from the first one she helped me do that seriously took me over 2 years to complete.  :) 

They turned out cute I think and hopefully the girls will like snuggling up with them this winter.

Here's the top of Kennedy's:

  The back of Kennedy's is a two tone flannel:

 Here's Isabella's:

 She'll like this fabric I think - it has little princess crowns in it!  Debbie and I couldn't resist when we saw it.

 Here's the back of hers - a pink flowery flannel.

Next project - a Thanksgiving tablecloth. 

Work Weekend

We went back to Mom and Dad's this weekend for a work weekend.  Ok, it wasn't all work, but the boys did get the garage re-roofed.  Mom and Dad did a ton of prep-work so when we all got there it was ready to go.  Dad, Shane, Reid, Ryan, and Tyler finished it Saturday morning.

I took my sewing machine and finished the valance for the playhouse and made a tablecloth for the new table Shane built.  It is such a beautiful table where kids will be making mud pies and bug soup. Even though Shane wasn't worried about it, I felt like the top needed just a little coverage.  It turned out cute :)

Next spring we'll put in new windows and the place will be like new!

Quilt Show Weekend

Shane worked on the boathouse again the weekend.  He's been working on it every weekend we don't have the girls trying to get it done before he leaves for Vietnam - which is this Wednesday night. Friday I didn't spend solo because Debbie and Don took me to dinner at Rancho Bonita.  Then Saturday morning, I asked Debbie to go to the quilt show with me.

It was so much fun!  We saw tons of cute fabrics and amazing quilts!  Now that I know a little more about how they make more of the blocks, I was inspired to do more difficult quilts than I have previously tried.  Mostly though I was in awe at the amount of work some people put into their quilts.

Here were a couple cool ones I liked:

This quilt was made by a guild of quilters and each person made their own birdhouse block.  As a lover of birds and birdhouses - this one captured my heart!

This one gave Debbie and I goosebumps.  A military mom had given all of her son's uniforms to a local quilt store for them to design a quilt and her only request was "that they leave as many pockets on the quilt as possible for me to tuck memories of my son in for his son."

Here's a closeup of some of the pockets.

A little blurry yes - but I thought this one was cool anyway.

This was a fun one!

And this one I had to take to tell Shane it was going to be our new bedspread.  I couldn't keep a straightface long enough for him to believe me!

This one reminded me of Mom.  I'm sorry it's so blurry - I must've had my camera on a bad setting (so unlike me!).  But it's a Dick and Jane quilt which is right up Mom's lane.

Here's a closeup of some of the pieces of that quilt.

After the quilt show, Debbie and I checked a TJ Maxx like store of home decor items.  It was a cute store - some of the prices were good and some were no cheaper than you find at a regular department store.  We ate lunch at a hole-in-the-wall diner that had yummy asparagus soup.  It was apparently award winning - and a fun find to just happen across.  

As far as the quilting class goes, we learned the friendship star and flying geese pattern this week. I had to finish those blocks this weekend. Here they are:

And we had to sew our quilt tops together for class on Tuesday.  I am not still really not fond of the brown - I wish I would've known how the quilt was going to lay out a little better.  But I guess that was another thing the class was good for - learning the blocks and what kind of contrasts work the best in the different types of blocks.  Good thing it's just a small lap quilt.  But here it is:

This week we are going to learn to square the quilt, do the borders, binding and machine-quilt the backing together.  I'm excited to start on a new project.  I think it's going to be placemats with Kennedy.  I picked up a couple yards of cute spring fabric for us to have something to do on a rainy day.

Nine Patch Variation and Log Cabin

Here are the patches I made this week in quilting class.  Not really loving the brown colors - the ladies in the quilt store helped me pick the browns cuz after last week I was told by Debbie (the instructor) I didn't have enough dark neutrals.  I wish I wouldn't have gone so dark brown but oh well.  It's a lap quilt and hopefully Kennedy will like it anyway.

This upcoming week Debbie informed us it's a "doozy" with lots of homework. She also informed us she quilts about 10 hours a day and can make a lap quilt in about 1.5 hours - a king size quilt in about 3 hours.  Holy moley!

Alligator Steaks and Rail Fences

Remember rubber potatoes?  Somehow Kelsey and I forgot to include those in the Wagner Family Cookbook!  At cooking class this week, I learned to make gluten steaks - made just like rubber potatoes - but sliced thin and soaked in broth.  They are called Alligator Steaks - and of course are NOT really made of alligator.  The lady was a funny instructor - very energetic and had a cute apron with grapes.  I am on the lookout for a cute apron too - it completes the outfit!

I got to talk to her before class and she told me that she is an artist - no really - she is.  And "just like I paint with colors, I love painting with flavors." It's hard to beat that.  Being inspired, I made alligator steak on Saturday; they have to sit overnight, and I'll serve them to Shane tonight for dinner.  We'll see if he likes 'em!  He is such a good sport and has been humoring all my new recipes lately - what a great guy!

I had my first quilting class on Tuesday night.  The teacher, Debbie, is really nice, and very encouraging.  I learned so much just about cutting and ironing - I have so many bad habits!  It was worth the night just for those helpful tips.  We made 3 blocks in class - the rail fence, 9 square and the square dance.   She sent us home with homework to finish before our next class.  I got most of mine done on Sunday afternoon while there was a marathon run of Real Housewives of Orange County - boo yah!

Quilting homework was finishing 10 squares for class on Tuesday.

Here are the flowers Shane and Kennedy picked out last week.  The purple ones have wilted away so I took 'em out and was left with just a white bouquet which was so pretty.  Just the simple white flowers look so cheery on the table.

Shane worked all weekend with Ryan.  They have a new project at the yacht club finishing the inside of a boathouse.  They are putting up wallboard - not sheetrock - it's a honeycombed, really light type of sheetrock that doesn't weigh very much in the boathouse.  They are also putting in a spiral staircase.

This is the upstairs. It will have a fireplace right below their lofted bedroom.

This is part of the kitchen.

This is the view from the upstairs boathouse balcony.  Oh la la! 

Isabella has been striking alot of poses lately.  All her poses have one hand above her head...she cracks us up!

We are very proud of Kennedy.  Here is her certificate for finishing Fast Math.  It's a before-school program that kids can do to help them work on their math skills.  She was the first one in her school this year to finish the program! Yay, Kennedy!

Hope ya'll had a great weekend and I'll keep ya posted on the alligator steak outcome!

Quilting Cross-Eyed

Kennedy has amazing eye control - much like Nicole :) She practices crossing them and rolling one eye around while keeping the other in a fixed position - it is really amazing to me.  Isabella has been working on her Jedi eye tricks as well and here are some results:

This post is a little helter-skelter since we didn't have lot going on this weekend.  We did our Friday night movie night.  Shane thought it would be fun to mix it up and do movie snacks like old-fashioned gummi bears and licorice.  Wow - big mistake.  It wound Belle up so tight; she was nuts-o.  We decided that we need to just stick with the classic popcorn which we ended up making anyway because the girls were disappointed we weren't having popcorn on movie night. It's just not movie night without the popcorn. 

We went to breakfast at the HUT on Saturday morning with Shane's Uncle Marvin and his Nanna. Debbie was in Houston. We ran a few errands but then we ALL took naps on Saturday afternoon - even Kennedy slept on the couch - unheard of!

The only person missing in this bathroom is Shane.  :)

Shane and Kennedy picked me out flowers on Friday before I got home from work. How sweet of them!!

Isabella has learned the bininis, bononos, bananas, bununus, benenees song.  Do you remember singing that at Vacation Bible School?  That has been on my mind alot this week.  What a fun week that was every year. And she has started doing the eeny-meeny-miney-moe except that her version is eeny-miney-mooney-moo.

What else?  Oh ya, I'm starting a quilt class on Tuesday nights.  I got all my fabrics washed, starched and ironed.  I'm ready to go I think!  I'm excited to learn some tricks.  The pattern has lots of triangles, borders, and the flying-v.  I'm hoping I will meet a few nice girls too.

I sure miss my sewing days with Tara.  She helped me finish my first quilt a long time ago and I never would've finished without her.  It took me seriously about 3 years start-to-finish!  It seemed like we would do it on a marathon day of Millionaire Matchmaker which made the day even better since I didn't have cable and secretly heart that show.

 Here's some of my fabrics - this quilt has about 20 different fabrics.

I LOVE this fabric - it makes my heart happy!

This is my "focus" fabric - don't I already sound like I know what I'm doing?!

Also, Mom and Dad surprised us and stopped by today on their way through town coming back from Canby.  We went to Rancho Bonita - our standby Mexican place - and had a great lunch.  Our waiter wondered where we've been since it's been awhile since we ate there.  It was a great weekend and I'm actually excited for the week to begin with all of the fun classes I have lined up.