Saturday Sampler Quilt

In May I showed off all my completed Alphabet blocks from the Saturday Sampler class at American Quilting, in Orem.  I put the quilt together before our trip to visit Jay's family, so I could use my mother-in-law's awesome machine quilting setup.  It was amazing! I quilted the whole thing in only a few hours!!  I'm really pleased by how it turned out.

There was a finishing kit you could buy at the quilt shop, but I wanted to use different colors so it would blend a bit better in the "theater room" (as we call our TV room, since we don't actually have TV hookups.)

Here's a link to what their completed quilt looks like.  And here is mine!!

I machine embroidered the name of all the blocks on the back, so I would remember.  I didn't do any letters on the front, out of laziness, but I think it's kind of fun to figure it out based on the names (and they are in alphabetical order, so it's pretty easy to figure it out.)

up close to admire the swirly quilting

Here's the room I wanted the quilt to kind of blend in.  As you can see, my gray, yellow and purple does much better than their turquoise, red, and gray.  I was really nervous, because I'm not that great at picking out colors, but I think it turned out really well!!

Yay for completing quilt number 9!

Birthday Chains?

Out of the blue, The Frog started asking me about when his birthday was and asked me if he could make a paper chain for it.  Never mind that it's not until September...  So we made one for him and one for Peach.

It's sooo long, I'm terrified that it's not actually accurate (and we're going to forget to rip chains off sometimes).  I think as it gets closer, I may have to sneakily adjust it to get it to come out right.

Canned Sunshine

I saw this "tin can treats" post last Christmas season, and have been dying for a reason to do this ever since.

One of my friends/neighbors has been through a rough patch lately and I thought it would be fun to surprise her with one.

Times like these, I wish I were a graphic designer... but you get the point :)

I miraculously managed to perfectly cram in nail polish and lipgloss, rolled inside of a scarf. It was meant to be!

I have another one waiting to be used for some unsuspecting victim.  That other blog seems to always put treats inside, but I think it's funny to pull out non-food items.

What else could fit in there?

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Frog comes up behind me while I'm perusing Valentine lunch ideas (mostly sandwiches cut out to look like hearts.)
The Frog:  "Mom, when it's a special day, we should have heart pancakes."
me: "okay!"
The Frog: "the kind of heart that's in your body.  A big splot."
me: "okay?"
The Frog:  "But only for a special day."

I at the last second, thought of a way to make our french toast look like hearts by cutting the French Bread on a diagonal and then flipping the other half upside-down.

Valentine French Toast

 This is the first year of the Valentine-for-classmates obligation and this is what I convinced The Frog to do.

 I got the free printable here.

 We had our Family Home Evening Lesson on Love at Home.  We wrote things we love about each family member and these our the extent of our Valentine's decor.

I actually made these red velvet cupcakes for a Chinese New Year celebration we went to (because they're the lucky color- red!) but they feel valentine'sy and they've lasted all the way until today...

 I love it when the kids have loving moments like this :D

 Nothing like bonding over a bag of Doritos on my white, kitchen rug (that I had to wash after this adventure.  Orange hand prints?  Adorable, but not cute on my rug.)

 I spent the afternoon on these for my visiting teaching families.

 And our traditional Valentine's dessert is Jay's favorite- Créme Brûlée.  However, I made myself a special non-dairy one using coconut creme (the solid part from a can of coconut milk) instead of heavy whipping cream.

It was actually pretty good!  It looked exactly like the richer version and MUCH fewer calories.  Though, still didn't have the je ne sais quoi.  (créme brûlée makes me Frenchy, apparently)

I'll for sure be making the regular kind for myself next year.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Christmas 'n Crafty

I had high hopes of pulling off an advent calendar with an activity every day, but just couldn't get it together.  I need to plan earlier next year.  We did do a few of the things on my list though.

I went SUPER SUPER easy for neighbor gifts this year- something the kids could help with, quick and non-messy.  We made these little nutter butter reindeer cookies.

We made snow globes of the kids one day, but it didn't end up being that cool- it was more like a mom project and also they just weren't that fun with glitter that FLOATS.  boo.  They didn't get a lot of use and now they are still sitting on the kitchen counter, cluttering up my life and I can't decide what to do with them.  For some reason, I can't throw them away...

At my ward's play group, the kids made these little "snowman Nativities".  Isn't marshmallow baby Jesus adorable?

Our kids always fight over who gets to say the prayer at meal time (and usually we end up saying it twice...) so I made a little prayer chart so we can take turns.

I wanted to make sure we did this hand-print ornament of each child, so I could remember they use to be small once. Hazel's was tricky-  she kept digging her fingers into the dough, so I had to trace her hand on paper first, then cut it out and use that as a template.  Sadly, some of the lines from the paper got in the dough and hers has little blue lines in it.  Live and learn.

McCarthy's in Town!

Jay's family came to visit us this year for Thanksgiving, (which was a great excuse to see the new babe :D)  We blessed Hazel while they were here.

Hazel and Auntie K

Hazel and Nanie

 It was so nice to have a big Thanksgiving meal at my house (didn't have to go anywhere) but only make half of it.  Peach wanted to help me make the rolls, and thought it would be a good idea to taste the flour, directly off the counter:

 Gampie got to hold Hazel a lot while Nanie and I worked in the kitchen.

 Jay even helped in the kitchen!! (we had a hard time moving the 20 lb turkey around...)

We decided to start eating while the kids were napping, expecting them to wake up during the meal.  It was really nice to get to sit and eat quietly for the first half of the meal- best idea ever, Jay :)

 We went to the Natural History Museum up by Red Butte Gardens.  It was really cool, but I was in charge of following The Frog around, which means we were basically running through the museum from one thing to the next and I barely had time to take any photos.  But I did manage to get TWO.

 It was really cool.  I'd like to go again, and I was impressed with how kid-friendly and adult catered it was.

 Nanie bought gigantic gingerbread men for everyone to decorate.

The kids were all really into it!  I thought for sure Peach would just eat the candy right away, but to my surprise, she waited until her cookie was "done".

 Here's her finished product:

 And Auntie K's:

 The Frog was very thorough.  He wanted to use up ALL the candy.

 We blessed Hazel the Sunday they were here and though I got no pictures of Hazel in her dress alone, I did manage to sneak in a family photo.  She's wearing the dress Peach was blessed in, the booties I was blessed in, and I made her a new headband, just for her :)

 We had so much fun.  Gampie spent a lot of time reading the SAME Christmas book over and over and over (by the kids' request.)  He's an excellent story teller :)

Thanks for coming out, McCarthy's!  I wish we could get together more frequently, but we'll see you next Summer :)

Quilts!

If you remember my crazy nesting post, two of the things I had listed to do before Hazel arrived were to finish her baby quilt and to finish binding The Frog's twin bed quilt.  Well, I did manage to finish both of those- the latter got finished the night before!  Here are the finished pics I never posted!

I made this using this tutorial for the pinwheel sampler quilt, although I changed the sizes of everything so it would be a crib quilt and had to add an additional pinwheel, to make it work for this non-square shape.  I used 1930's reproduction fabrics from a remnants bin at my favorite quilt shop.  I have soo much extra that I think I'll make another baby quilt, for Peach (yeah yeah, it's a bit late...) but a totally different design.

My mother-in-law traded me her old embroidery machine for my Elna, and this is the first quilt I have quilted using that.  It is SO AWESOME!

Look how perfect the quilting is!!!  I am sooo bad at machine quilting and am sooo excited to be able to use this to help me out.

And here is The Frog's twin quilt.  Sorry about the bad lighting, I was just trying to check this off the list before Hazel...  (I was actually unknowingly in labor when I took these photos :D)

My sister-in-law's mother did the quilting on this for me.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but the quilting says "ABC123".

Lately, one of the kids' favorite things to do is watch a slide-show of pictures of themselves on my computer.  Now, Peach loves being in pictures and she's always trying to get in front of the camera (and then wants to see what she looks like right away), sometimes she won't pose long enough for me to get a good shot before she's coming toward me saying, "I want to see Peach!"

Conference Activities

What a great weekend!  I always love General Conference- well, I have since I went to college and actually stayed awake during all 4 sessions :)  However, since having children, I haven't been able to pay attention as much as I wanted and it's always been quite stressful and contentious somehow.  I was determined to make this year better!

I got the idea (thank you Pinterest!) to make little activity bags- one for each of the apostles and members of the first presidency and prophet- and then I printed out and laminated these cards, putting one of each in each bag.  Then with every new speaker, we would go through all the bags and, together, try to determine if the picture in the bag was the same as the speaker.  I think The Frog had as much fun doing this as doing the activities.  I also had 3 other activities planned for when there was a long streak of other general authorities.

General commentary?  It worked great!  Yes, I still had to help entertain the kids, but I feel like I got sooo much more out of conference this year.  I can say that I at least got the overall topic from almost every speaker, which is leaps and bounds above the previous 4 years.

Here are the activities I chose:

• Stickers- one of the best activities, believe it or not.  Peach (2) and The Frog (4) both liked this and spent quite a bit of time on it because I gave them a bag of those foamy stickers that you have to peel the backs off of, which means it took more time to use each sticker :) We just put them on construction paper- their choice of color.
• Color with crayons, then water color on top- my kids just really seem to like watercolor, and doing crayons first just extended the time spent on it a bit.
• Glitter glue symmetry prints- scribble with glitter glue and then fold in half to reveal.  It was a bit quick, but when The Frog opened his up, he thought it was really cool.
• Draw with elmer's glue + glitter- too quick and too messy.  Won't do this again with young kids.
• Finger paints- I thought it would be fun to try having them paint on tin foil, but The Frog wasn't interested in that.  Peach did, but I'm realizing that for some reason, painting activities hold my kids' interest longer if they are allowed to use a paint brush.
• Painting toenails- this was an extra activity actually suggested by The Frog.  This one is especially good because they have to sit still while waiting for the polish to dry.  And they spend a good deal of time looking through all the colors and deciding what they want.
• Bead necklaces- this was an unassigned activity too and it was really really great for The Frog- Peach wasn't so interested and mostly threw beads everywhere.  I got out a muffin tin and The Frog and I spent a good amount of time just organizing them by color first, then he made his own necklace.  We did this Saturday morning session and the kids wore their necklaces (and tried on each other's) all weekend.  (I ended up just making one for Peach since she wasn't that interested, but she loves wearing it.)
• Toothpick and marshmallow sculptures- I was a bit worried about this because I hate handing out treats before lunch, but The Frog was very disciplined about not eating any of his sculptures until after lunch, and it was a fun, quiet, activity to do in the afternoon too!  The Frog got really into this and built some pretty cool things!  Peach mostly just kept sneaking a marshmallow and running away.  haha.

• Origami- I found a Halloween origami set at JoAnn's for $1.  It's a good idea, especially for the future, but a bit too old for my kids.  The Frog just watched me do it for him.  Peach was wholly uninterested.
• Halloween lanterns- I really like having these cute lanterns around, but I didn't plan it out very well.  I just kind of made this activity up.  I cut Halloween shapes out with my Silhouette, which, by the way, doesn't do great on construction paper.  Good to know.  I wish I had colored vellum lying around...  Anyway, we glued Halloween shapes to a white piece of paper and then wrapped them around a spaghetti sauce jar.  I quickly discovered that the shapes were not staying curved to the paper and I pretty much had to go over everything with packing tape.  Even so, I think they turned out super cute, and it was fun to light them during dinner and even breakfast this morning (it's darker out when we eat breakfast than dinner :D).
• Tissue paper and tape snakes- we just took tissue paper and crinkled it into a long "snake", then wrapped it with tape to get it to stay.  Didn't take as long as I hoped and I had to help The Frog more than I thought I would.  He did play with it briefly, but it didn't take as long to decorate as I had hoped.  Peach was uninterested, and instead hid balls of tissue paper in everyone's shoes.  So I guess she was quietly occupied...
• Cookies- since the beginning of the second Saturday session always begins with a lot of "business" items, I thought that might be a good time to bake and eat some cookies.  (I made the dough the night before).  It went over well, as you might imagine, and I felt good that we all had lunch already.
• Painting on wooden magnets- I got 2 of these little kits at JoAnn's for $1.  I didn't realize that the paint wasn't washable until I got them out to work on, but it worked out okay and both kids spent enough time on them to make it worth it.  I did have to be very controlling about having only 1 paint cup open at a time so we could wash our brushes and so I would only have to keep track of one color to not spill and stain everything.
• Play dough- this is normally great, but The Frog napped for the first half of the very last session of conference, so he kind of had a queue of crafts to work on and I think he wanted to do some of the other things that he doesn't play with regularly.  In the future, I might actually make play dough and part of the fun could be measuring the ingredients and kneading in the coloring.
• Legos- short lived for the same reason as above.
• Blocks- The Frog and I built a pretty cool castle, until Peach woke up from her nap and kept knocking everything over.

The Frog was so pleased with their projects, he wanted them hung up.  This is now our "Conference Craft door"

The Frog building with marshmallows and toothpicks

Halloween lanterns glowing at breakfast

Tissue paper and tape "snake"

Didn't do-

• Leaves- The Frog had collected some pretty leaves earlier in the week, so I pressed them and thought we could do something with them, but we kind of ran out of time, and it was one of the things that we would have done while The Frog was napping.
• Scissors and punches- we never did this one because it was associated with D. Todd Christofferson and he only spoke in the Priesthood session.  Typically, though, my kids love to go to town on blank piece of paper with a pair of scissors, especially when I get out my funny scissors with different cutting edges.

Some other things I want to remember:

Peach really loved listening to all the musical numbers and would sometimes request that Jay and I sing along with the Mo-tab or she would come in and sing her version of "I Am A Child of God" while the choir sang whatever they were singing.  So cute.

It was funny to hear The Frog compare the pictures to the speakers- "no, he doesn't have glasses", "this guy has white hair", "he's kinda fat- yeah, that's him!"

I'm very pleased with how the weekend went.  I made a special breakfast both days- waffles yesterday and pumpkin cinnamon rolls today- and we did a picnic lunch on the lawn yesterday.  I'm hoping that the kids will grow to love conference and look forward to it when it comes.