jon's birthday canoe trip

We celebrated Jon's birthday with a successful* canoe trip down the Huron River. The weather was sunny and crisp and we got to see lots of trees starting to change color. It was a fabulous afternoon.

We shared the river with a few different sets of swans that came surprisingly close to our canoe. Jon is quite the animal lover and was practicing his bird calls (the birds were not impressed!).

The sky was so beautiful that day!

*I made the same canoe trip about 15 years ago with my friend, Laura. Let's just say that we had an awful time. I would say that it was all her fault for not paddling the right way, and I'm pretty sure that she would say the same about me! Ever since that trip, we have decided that canoeing was not a good partner activity for us.

not so secret love

pens, markers and mechanical pencils

in all colors of the rainbow

(Jon has stopped questioning me when I bring a new set of writing utensils into the house)

New favorite website to accompany my love of pens: penaddict.com

confessions and an evening concert

I have a confession to make...I'm kind of a nosy mail opener.


Yes, sometimes I open mail that doesn't belong to me. It works to
my advantage at my job, because I am the chief mail opener and I
usually get a lot of fun packages at work. I open all of our mail at
home (except when it looks special and is addressed to Jon). Plus, Jon
knows me well enough to send mail that I shouldn't see to his work
office.



 The most awful thing that I've ever done was when I was in high
school. There was a thick envelope from the Detroit Symphony addressed
to my mom. Thinking that they must have addressed it to the wrong
person (I was the musician in our family, of course), I opened it
thinking that it was just a sales brochure. But, it wasn't a sales
brochure. It was a large stack of tickets. My mom walked in the room
just in time to scold me, yell "Rebekah" in a deeply disappointed
manner and grab the envelope away from me.



Why was it such a big deal?

I had just opened up my Christmas present of season tickets to the symphony two months early. Yikes!

She
threatened to return the tickets, but she didn't and I was able to
enjoy lots of great concerts with the Detroit Symphony that year.


 

Ever since then, I've tried to go to a handful of concerts each
year. We've been really fortunate to get great deals on tickets through
friends and discount organizations. These past two years, we have
participated in the 37/11 series. If you're under 37 years old, you can
get tickets to selected shows for $11 each. Jon bought tickets to the
first concert of the series this year and, for some reason, the tickets
were only $3.50 each. That's $7.00 total! That's less than a yard of
fabric!

The best part about it was our seat location...first row of the
dress circle and our favorite seats in the house. Tickets in the seats
where we sat normally go for $75 each. Ever since he scored the
tickets, anything that we buy is automatically referred to in DSO
amounts. "that's five times as much as tickets to the DSO" or "man,
this lunch is good, but we could have gone to see the DSO twice for
what we paid for this."

So, we got to hear our favorite symphony and watch our favorite musician friends for only $7.00.  The featured artist of the evening was, Sharon Isbin.  She is incredibly talented. I loved hearing her playing her guitar. She sounded like buttah! And, she played one of my favorite pieces, Fantasia por un gentilhombre by Rodrigo. As much as I love playing it on the flute, I have to admit that it was made for the guitar and sounds so much better on a stringed instrument.

 

One day...one day, I will pull out my guitar and work up those calluses again! Hearing her play was such an inspiration!

Day of the Dead Embroidery

My embroidery has fallen to the wayside as I've gotten into knitting more. I've got lots of patterns from sublime stitching waiting to be stitched up and I recently found this fun embroidery site, Badbird (via QuiltDad). I heart the buffalo pattern and would love to stitch that up someday.

I have a hard time doing embroidery because I'm just not sure what to do with the finished piece. Do you have any suggestions for me for cute, finished embroidery projects? So far, I've incorporated them into a quilt, made a pillow and made some fabric backed tea towels.

Day of the Dead is almost here and I've been seeing lots of fun DOTD embroidery popping up on blogs. Here's a collection of some of my favorite pieces:

 

1. Memento Mori necklace, 2. Marigold Sugar Skull, 3. Front - Day of the Dead mirror case, 4. details, 5. Day of the Dead Portrait, 6. Sugar Skull Brooch, 7. Day of the Dead Magnets, 8. Sugar Skull Softie Stack, 9. WIP

And here is my favorite Day of the Dead themed embroidery project of all time:

Happy Birthday, Rachel!

 
(my early photography days: Rachel on my mom's lap, sitting next to our middle sister, Ruth)

Hard to believe that it's been 20 years since we met you at the hospital for the first time!

 
And, now, we both share a similar love of ice cream birthday cake and strawberry shortcake ice cream bars from the ice cream truck.

kaleidoscope quilt

 

I saw this quilt in a Crate & Barrel catalog last year. At the time it was out of my price range (and easily re-createable). I just went to check to see if it was still available and now it's half off and out of stock. Bummer.

I think this is going to turn into my winter quilt project when I'm on break from school (yay December 16th!).

It's fitting that it's a quilt made out of solid colors...my favorite quilts always seem to be with plain, solid fabric (you've caught onto my secret, Michelle!). I think I'll be purchasing the fabric from this site (thanks, Melissa, for the link).

Right now Jon is moaning in the background..."do we really need another quilt for our bed?" (I kid!)

Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival

Thank you, Amy, for hosting this quilt festival! It's so much fun to click through all of the links for great quilting inspiration!

Here's my favorite quilt (of the moment):

I based this quilt on a pattern from Amy Butler's quilt patterns cd and selected colors to match my living room. This is my favorite color scheme of all time, so I love seeing whenever I walk through our living room throughout the day. Originally, I was going to save time by stippling it instead of doing straight line quilting, but I opted for cross-hatch quilting at the last minute and I love how it turned out.

This quilt is the perfect weight and size for afternoon naps and reading on the couch...which basically has been my life for the last few months while I'm working away on schoolwork.

Here are the details:

Original pre-cut block size:

8" x 8"

Four yards of fabric in four different colors are needed (1 yard each color). You will be able to cut 20 blocks from each color.

Then, the 8" blocks are cut in half on the diagonal (40 triangles of each color).

Sew
the triangles together to opposing colors. You will have 80 blocks
total. Arrange the blocks in 8 columns and ten rows and sew together.

Binding (for 2.5" strips): 1/2 yard

Backing: 4 yards

The quilt is 54" x 68"

(Psst: Here's my other favorite quilt from the spring blogger's quilt festival)