remember me?

Well, hello there! Long time, no posting. You know me. The writing vibe - it comes and it goes....

So, a little catch up...

Merry Christmas!

Decorating the tree. Notice the super cool fort in the background. :)

Happy New Year!

Our family tradition is to go to a movie on New Year's Eve.

Ryan lost his tooth. And another one since then.

Great pic, I know. This was my third try!

We've spent the first half of January trying to get back into the swing of things. It's been a little rough. But finally, if you don't count that I forgot to give Little Man breakfast this morning, everything is back on track. Ready or not!

Hopefully I'll be around more often...the key word being hopefully. I pray all is well with you and your family. Take care!

By the way, Happy Birthday to my godmother...she's been gone almost 18 years but she'll never be forgotten...

first loose tooth

snapshot of 1st grade

top of the world

Top of the ferris wheel on the Navy Pier. Ah, blue water....

jpg - sunrise

jpg - refuge

Little Man had bad dreams a couple of nights ago. Handsome was just
the refuge he needed. What a wonderful earthly reminder of what God
wants to do for us! Oh, and what a great photo opportunity of my
boys. :)

my new happy place

snowed in

Here's a picture from this morning, looking out our back door...

Yeah, that's at least six inches of snow on the picnic table. And there's a good deal of ice too. Looks like I'm not going anywhere today. That's okay, because that gives me time to do this....


What laundry? :)

ragged squares

Here is the quilt that inspired the pillow pattern. I got the pattern from crazy mom quilts. I love her quilts! This quilt is called a ragged squares quilt and it is in the process of being basted in this picture. I actually have about half of it quilted already but I had to take a break to work on the pillows. I haven't started working on it again yet because I am working on a project for a set of twins that will be born sometime next month. I'll share that with you soon too.... (Are you bored yet?)

christmas sewing

I said that I would get around to showing what I made for Christmas presents this year. And whether it takes me one day or say, 40, I'll always do what I say. :) So, now that Christmas is but a memory (and we FINALLY got rid of the tree today), here are the things I made.

They are quilted pillows. I have been getting into quilting and knew I couldn't possibly get a whole quilt finished in time for Christmas. But I took an idea from a quilt I am making (pictures of that to follow...) and adapted it to make a few pillows. The red one was for my sister-in-law, the blue for my mom, and the green for my mother-in-law. I assembled the front panel like you would a quilt square, then basted the quilt square with batting and a back. I machine quilted it and then attached it to a matching back. I inserted a pillow form and stitched the bottom closed. They aren't perfect but for my first try at sewing and for not having a pattern, I think they turned out alright. And best of all, I think the recipients liked them. That's all that mattered to me. :)

jpg - unity

little man's take on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the inauguration...

...everyone happy together.

amen.

jpg - my guitar hero

jpg - my movie date

jpg - little feet

jpg - capitol sky

jpg - friends

jpg - deer

Look carefully. A friend came to visit on a snowy day.

jpg - christmas tree

jpg - sunset

Again, hard to capture His majesty in a photograph. The colors were
brillant!

jpg - singing

It was coming from this direction...

I couldn't capture a picture of the birds singing but I could sure
hear them this morning. After a week of really cold weather and our
first snow of the season, the weather warmed up late yesterday. And
this morning, I was surprised to hear the sweet sound of singing
birds. Beautiful!