birthday stuff

Jon and I went to the Shadow Art Fair in Ypsilanti last weekend and came home with these two darling treasures:

Gladys, the Chimean from the morninglorivine

and this adorable mole print from Tugboat Printshop (so ugly it's cute). Jon picked this one out and now we have to find a floating frame for it so that we can hang it up.

And, it was my birthday on Friday. Jon's mom is so great about sending cards for every holiday imaginable...and she always manages to find a card to "son and daughter-in-law." Before seeing all of her cards, I had no idea there were so many cards like this available! It's fun to get happy cards like this every once in a while.

Jon gave me this adorable Miso Soup tote bag that I fell in love with at the japanese bookstore last weekend. It's now home to my embroidery works in progress.

Because it's my "birthday month," I took the liberty of stocking up on a few new treasures for my craft collection...

I'm on an embroidery kick again with these new patterns from Sublime Stitching:

Here's my bird embroidery in progress (everything around here these days is in progress, hence the lack of posting)

And, I bought this stack of Kona Cotton fabric from Pink Chalk Fabrics

and I've got the fabric cut and ready to go for my Plain Spoken Quilt. This is actually the quilt pattern that first inspired my desire to start quilting, so I'm excited to put this one together. It was so easy having all of the colors chosen for me with the fat quarter kit, so I'm all set to go.

I finished my first class for library school on Friday and now I have a month off before I start the fall semester. My crafting to do list is long and I'm hoping to fit everything in before I have to return to using my free time for paper writing!