new quilt

I bought the fabric for this quilt a few months ago and I've only now gotten around to starting a new quilt. I've had the templates enlarged and printed for quite a while, but they've just been sitting around waiting to be used. The pattern I'm following is the Any Way you Slice It quilt (you can see a beautiful quilt made from the pattern here)from Denyse Schmidt Quilts. I love the pattern because I've always wanted to make a crazy patchwork quilt and this gives me the crazy with a nice neat pattern (the perfectionist in me comes out!) I'm really hoping it rains all weekend so I don't have to feel guilty for staying inside and sewing. We'll see how that goes!

I was going for the brown/turquoise/green/pink/orange color scheme. I think it looks really summery, so I've got to finish it soon to be able to enjoy it this season. Tonight I got the first 14 blocks cut, laid out and sewn together.

And, I made a delicious greek pasta salad for dinner tonight. This one is definitely going to become a staple in our house. The dressing evenly coated everything and the recipe used a lot of ingredients that I don't normally think of putting in a pasta salad...mushrooms, green onions, and green peppers. Delish!

the virgen de guadalupe

I bought a few kits from Sublime Stitching earlier this year and I just got around to starting to stitch up the Day of the Dead kit.

My first project is this lovely Virgen de Guadalupe. Jon and I watched a few episodes of Freaks and Geeks this weekend, so it was the perfect time to multi-task! That show is hilarious and totally shouldn't have been taken off the air so soon.

I absolutely love this kit! Jon laughed when I asked him if it was weird that I was stitching up the Virgen de Guadalupe...apparently it's not a normal everyday occurrence. It was basically just my excuse to play with some loud and bright colors. I'm planning on stitching up a few more items from the kit on this linen and then turning it into a patchwork pillow that can be used seasonally each November. Hopefully I can finish it up before then!

the garden: part deux

We finally got our garden dug up and replanted on Monday. This time we added two yards of composted fall leaves from our city's department of public works and created 15" mounds of dirt. Hopefully this will eliminate our previous flooding problem.

If all goes well, we'll be eating fresh tomatoes, peppers, corn, sugar snap peas, bush beans, cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, lettuce, butternut squash, celery and onions in a couple of months!

I am so excited to finally have everything planted...the trees, flowers, herbs, and vegetables are all in the ground! I love crossing things off of my many, many to-do lists.

the big transplant!

Well, we finished up replanting our front yard this afternoon...digging up sod, digging out ugly plants and chopping down overgrown plants. After quite a few hours of digging yesterday and a long haul from my parents' house to ours, we got ourselves a really big japanese maple tree for free! Jon has been dying for one of these trees ever since our trip to Japan and we were so lucky that this tree outgrew my parents' yard and had to be moved to ours.

the old resting place

loading the truck

wrapping the tree for transport. Unfortunately, most of this fell off during our one hour ride. Luckily the tree still looks in good shape today!

the new resting spot (with the soon to be removed yew)

And remember the before (with morning sun)?

Here's the after (with afternoon sun)...



It should be bright and colorful once everything blooms and fills in!

It feels great to cross some more tasks off our list...we're almost done with our May push.

jon's last day

Jon spent his last day at his now "old work" today. He is excited to start his new job in a smaller, non-corporate office on Monday. He's itching to get back into using all of those crazy after effects shortcuts he's got memorized. He's got keystrokes down like no one's business! Some day I'll have to tape him flexing his wrists and frantically typing away while he edits...very freaky!

Here are his last shots of his old office:

the new door to his department

goodbye avid workstation

a sad farewell from his coworkers...this totally cracks me up!

more work to do

It seems like we’ve spent every waking hour outside working on our yard these days. We’ve dedicated the month of May to outdoor home improvement and starting in June we’ll be ready to enjoy the outdoors without thoughts of digging up this or planting that. I had to take a break from the insanity and clean the inside of our dirt and dust-filled house tonight.

Last weekend we planted our vegetable garden. Unfortunately it is up for a garden redo this weekend because it all flooded after torrential rains on Monday night. Probably should have planted cranberries in there instead! We were quite bummed but are regrouping and planning to build and make a raised bed vegetable garden instead to avoid the drainage issues.

Being outside so much has given us the chance to meet and talk with a ton of our neighbors (and their dogs). We are very fortunate to have such great neighbors – always willing to lend a hand or let us borrow a tool that we need. They even clued us in to the free compost and mulch that the city offers for residents. What a great way to put last year’s lawn debris to good use!

One of our neighbors (the same one that asked us when the kids are coming just after learning our names) brought us over a dozen roses last night. Apparently his girlfriend in NY always sends him flowers and he doesn’t know what to do with them all…too funny!

yard work & more yard work

Jon and I have been busy bees lately...lots of digging, raking, mowing, edging, tilling and transplanting.

Remember this?

Here's what it looked like just before the roto-tiller hit the soil

And here's where all the sod went

This weekend we spent a back breaking 6 hours digging up sod and transplanting it to some dead spots in our yard. A few feet into the garden, we started rethinking our idea to create such a large garden, but we stuck with it. Hopefully it will pay off later this summer with some yummy vegetables!

Our garden is ready to be planted and this weekend we'll be sowing some seeds and picking up some additional vegetables, annuals and perennials for the various gardens in our yard.

We're feeling a bit overwhelmed right now, but we keep cranking through our to-do list and things keep getting accomplished. It feels so good to cross another task off our list!

some new bling

Well, I left my wedding ring set at home by accident this morning. I discovered my naked finger at work and freaked out. Shortly after I arrived, Jon called me at work to ask if I was planning on meeting my secret lover today. : )

I'm constantly playing with my ring and adjusting it all day, so I knew it wouldn't work for me to have an empty spot on my finger. So, I had to improvise.

This was all that I could find laying around the office (and yes, there are more where this came from). The funny thing is that the only time I noticed I was wearing a scary troll ring was when I caught a glimpse of the read hair sticking up on my finger. Other than that, it fit perfectly and was the right width and everything on the inside of my hand.

lunch bags & more

I found this cute little craft book in Japan and bought it with the intention of making a more permanent reusable lunch bag for work. I've been using old smaller shopping bags with handles, but they wear out too quickly and it's not very often that I shop at a store that gives away boutique bags.

The book has 6 different styles of lunch bags and gives four or five variations on each bag. I haven't made a lunch bag to use yet, but last week I did make a large tote bag for carrying around my laptop, books, and other things. It worked great for our weekend trip last week, too.

I was excited to find directions for my oft-wished for LL Bean bucket tote on a budget. I don't know why, but I've always wanted one of these tote bags. I really like the simple, classic styling. The only thing I'd change next time around would be to make the linen bottom smaller (which I would have known if I had converted the cm measurements to inches and enlarged the proportions of the bag evenly).