Surprise!

FedEx has assured me that the package arrived. I can only assume it was opened and I am dying to hear some kind of reaction. I keep having to remind myself that she just had a baby and I'm irrational to think she's going to get right back to me.

So without further ado, I bring you the small surprise I threw in with the diaper bag.



A matching changing pad! It was so simple to do and turned out really cute, I think.



I made it so it folds up into this adorable envelope shape and I even backed it...



With vinyl! I had heard that vinyl can be really tough to work with and very sticky. Honestly, it did stick a few times but it was so much easier than I was anticipating. I even made sure to correct a problem that my own store bought changing pad had. On the plastic side (the easy to clean side that most people change the baby on) my changing pad has the scratchy hard part of the Velcro. Not cool when your baby gets his little legs and arms all marked up, or gets his clothes caught on it. So I made sure that the softer piece of Velcro was on that side. If I still changed tiny baby diapers I would SO be making one of these for myself.

Never again...maybe

Here is the diaper bag, finally, finally completed. The last time I used this pattern I decided that I would never make it again. But then someone saw the bag I had made and loved it and asked for one nearly a whole year after the first one and I thought about it. "It couldn't possibly be as bad as I remembered. I'll have more time. I'm more experienced now." Obviously, you can tell I said yes.

Honestly, I love Lila Tueller's designs. They're pretty, they're unique, her fabric lines never fail to impress me, but some of the instructions in this pattern make my head hurt. I took some different steps this time (sewing the lining and binding dead last instead of trying to sew the tabs and straps through yet another layer of fabric) and used some different equipment (denim needles are definitely not enough to do the job despite what the pattern may indicate, canvas needles made this a much, much more pleasant experience), and it really wasn't as bad as I remembered. I still think I might never make it again, but then I look at it...



I mean, really, how cute are the ties? And the fraying edges? And the perfectly coordinated little button?



I hope the mom (no longer a mom-to-be, she had her baby boy the day I finished the bag) likes it, and the extra little something I threw in with it. I'll post pictures of that tomorrow after my FedEx tracking ID assures me she's opened the package and I am not ruining the surprise.

Monday Moments

Happy New Year! Okay, so I'm four days late and have already posted this year, but let's just ignore those couple things.

Everyone seems to be using their blogs to post resolutions this year, so I'm going to be a trend chaser and put a few down for myself.

1. Get Gabe off of the damn binky. See the face he's giving me as he's wearing that hat? You think he hated the hat, right? Nope. He was mad at me for not letting him have a pacifier hanging out of his mouth for the shot. I swear to you all that sometimes he puts that in and makes the exact same face I make when I get a good piece of chocolate.

2. Have more blog posts than I had last year. That one should be simple.

3. Finish three quilts. I think I'll probably do more than that, because I currently have one top done, 20 some blocks for another and am really, really inspired to do a couple girly baby quilts. Do I have any use for girly baby quilts? No. But I do have the fabric. My husband loves it when I come home with fabric and a plan and nothing to do with it when I'm done. HA!

I'm setting the bar low this year. Believe me, resolution number one will be the hardest to keep. This kid is attached.

Inspiration

I don't know about you, but inspiration always seems to come for me when I cannot do a single thing about it.



In this particular instance, I broke one of my rules about the scrappy quilt I was working on and actually bought fabric for it. The charm pack (pre-cut 5" squares of fabric) I came into innocently enough. I was Christmas shopping for my mother-in-law at fabric.com when I decided to look around for a coupon code. It turned out that by adding the cost of another charm pack to my order and bumping it up past $50 to activate the coupon, I would actually come out paying $3 less for my mother-in-law's gift and get a little gift for me. Really, it would have been stupid not to.

Then I went to JoAnn Fabrics where I had gotten a gift card for my birthday and fully planned on using everything that was left on it to buy supplies for something I was making for someone else. At the last minute I decided that it was my birthday money and I deserved something fun, just for me. I bought the fat quarter bundle in the little basket there. I am not sure what I am going to do with the patterned purple pieces that have no teal or green (or the six or seven charm squares that don't either for that matter), but I cannot wait to get back to this quilt...right now. Somehow I think I won't be so inspired once I'm finished with the diaper bag I have to make and have free time again.

Sweet Snowmen

I finished the potholders Christmas Eve. All but two, and those were for people I wasn't seeing until after the holiday, so I decided to call that a success. Who knew I could make potholders so complex?

I decided to bind them as if they were mini quilts because in my mind, that idea was much easier than making my own bias tape (let me know if I'm wrong on that and bias tape is actually incredibly easy). Making that one little change required me to sew the binding on one side by machine, and the other side by hand. I have thought many times of investing in a bias tape maker, but I tend to think that even cutting the strips of fabric on the bias would be a huge pain.



They turned out cute! I paired them with jars of Cowboy Cookie mix (with Christmas colored M&M's) and printed the baking directions on a card that I cut slits in and threaded through the handle of a wooden spoon.

I love the little snowmen, and overall they weren't hard to do, but when you make a quilt, people appreciate the effort. When you bake something yourself, people appreciate the effort. Apparently jamming the ingredients into a jar for them to bake themselves (and boy did I have to jam them in there!) and making what is essentially an 8 inch square quilt, does not pack the same punch. I don't think that anyone didn't appreciate it, but I guess I felt like the level of enthusiasm definitely did not match the amount of time put into it.

Monday Moments, Tuesday Edition

I slept in my own bed last night for the first time in four days. It was nice. We drove roughly 140 miles to my parents' house Christmas day after opening gifts here. We spent the night and left late morning the following day on a 70 mile trip to my in-laws' where we stayed for two nights. Yesterday we did the last and longest leg of the whole trip. It was 180 miles to get home, and boy, did we all miss this place!



This Tow Mater truck came in my son's stocking and he loved it so much he told me it wanted to say "cheese".



Then he promptly drove it through the huge breakfast I made before our trip. I knew there wouldn't be a single place open to stop on Christmas Day so I tried to force some scrambled eggs and hash browns on everyone. Unfortunately, I think Mater ate more than Gabe did. He never woke up hungry in the car though, which I guess means I accomplished my goal.

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of my other accomplished goals.

Shameful

I had no Monday Moments yesterday because I didn't think I had a single photo to post. Turns out there were some on the camera that hadn't been uploaded. Whoops! I found that out today when I uploaded these babies.



Yeah, that is the puppy from way, way back in September. It's really terrible that I just sat down this morning and put in the hour's worth of work it took to finish her.



Once I asked for your advice and figured out how I was going to finish her, I decided to move on to my next problem project and leave the simple things until later. That later ended up being three days before Christmas, when I will be giving this "puppy-pup" to my niece is shameful. At least she is done though. I cannot say the same for my snowman potholders.