Cute Cord Keepers

Every once in a while you come across something and have a lightbulb moment and think - WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!?!?!  A while ago I came across this post at A Girl And a Glue Gun and have been wanting to make some Cord Keepers of my own.

Tonight since Mr. Quiltapotamus is working I was debating between some much needed sleep, or some much needed time with my sewing machine.  The sewing machine won out and I made these little cuties to keep my camera cord, memory card reader cord and the baby monitor cord all nice and wrapped up:

Just some simple strips of scrap fabric, sewn together, turned out, a little velcro and VOILA!

The smaller two worked better than the big one but I think the longer one would be GREAT with an extension cord.

All rolled up and ready to go!!!  

Now that I got my sewing fix in for the evening, its time to get my sleeping fix in!! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Strippy Zipper Pouch!!!

I have a love affair with zippered pouches - I really do!  I think they are adorable and have been dying to make another one since I made this Zippered Pouch in the fall last year.  

I took the pattern from the first zippered pouch that I did - sewed on a bunch of strips of folded fabric (although I desperately want to call them ruffles they really aren't since they lay flat, the NEXT pouch will have full on ruffles) and this is the result!!!

The side view:

The top view:

SUPER CUTE!!  If I may say so myself!  

I'm looking forward to making the next one and am already thinking of a few tweaks that I can do to it to make it even more awesome.  

It was a Fabric BONANZA!

On Saturday my SIL and I went to a fabric sale put on by a local churches women's group.  They collect yarn, fabric, batting, notions, books....EVERYTHING that you could want for absolutely dirt cheap!!!

After getting to the sale a few minutes late and missing out on the 100 person lineup in the snow I found my SIL and we got to work!  (I'm still bummed I forgot my camera, it was insanely busy but everyone was well behaved) When you came downstairs they had some white garbage bags filled with mystery fabric for $0.50 - seriously FIFTY CENTS!!  How can you pass that up?!  So I grabbed two bags but I totally would have grabbed more if I had another reusable shopping bag with me.

Then we found the quilting room and I went to town - twice...  ;)  I got a bunch of 1930's and late 1800's reproduction fabric for $2-4 a bag which was still an amazing price!

My SIL scored with the yarn room and got something like 40 balls of yarn - all different kinds - for $18!

After I got home I had to take pictures of my haul.  All the fabric in the reusable bag is the quilting cottons and the two plastic bags to the right are my $0.50 grab bags.

This is all the grab bag stuff.  Some narsty (yes I mean narsty - its even nastier than nasty; hence narsty!!) stuff for sure but some of it will be awesome for small projects.

Next came some of the quilting fabric....so much cheap fabric goodness!

This little stack was only $3.00 and it was at least 6 or 7 fat quarters!

This is all the quilting cotton.  I still need to go through it better but it looks like a lot of awesome stuff!!

All together for the grab bags and all that reproduction fabric it cost me a grand total of $31!!  And the even better thing is all the money raised is going to charity which made me want to go back and buy even more fabric!!!  ;)

I'll go through the 'stash' in the next few days and highlight my favourites. 

On another note we managed to hit one more park to add to our 150 park challenge bringing us up to 7 now.  I forgot to bring my camera but it was a brand new park and will be visited again very soon!  The girls loved it and I'm loving getting back outside with the kids now that its nice'ish again!  Come on Spring!!  

Eye Spy Progress - almost done!!!

Its been a while but I actually made some progress on the kids Eye Spy quilt!

I don't have it sewn together yet (the picture below is just me laying it out) but once I get the next 16 or so blocks cut up and sewn and put on the bottom I'll start playing with the fabric placement.  Unfortunatley for me that means attempting to do some 'random' pattern placement which I am HORRIBLE with!  Time to let go of my 'random' OCD and let the fabric falls where it will and get this awesome blanket pieced!

Don't you just love 'playroom' pictures with all the kids stuff in the corners of the pictures?!?!  ;) 

Oh well, no matter what happens with the fabric placement I know the kids are going to LOVE this quilt.  We have already spent a few hours looking at all the fabric together as I have been piecing the quilt top and they are really looking forward to being able to 'finding' all the different patterns, colors and animals when its all put together.

On a side note we've been able to hit 4 more parks bringing our total up to 5 parks for our 150 Park Challenge (and I'm quickly realizing that there is NO WAY we are going to be able to hit that many parks this summer - but I'll try to hit as many as we possibly can).  If it didn't snow all weekend we would have been able to hit a few more but thats ok its supposed to be +10C tomorrow!!  Hooray for Spring!  

My Family Challenge - 150 Parks by September 1!!!

Last summer a blog I followed did a challenge for her and her family to hit 100 parks over the summer while her kids were off school.  I thought this was a FABULOUS idea but since I was on bedrest the entire summer it was pretty much an impossible thing for me to do.  This year I'm off with the kids all summer but since Summer is still a few months away I thought I could up the challenge to 150 parks and start early (April 9th we officially started).  Mostly its a FREE activity to do with the kids and anything that I can do to help make them sleep better at night is good for me!!

Yesterday we hit our first park and of course I forgot my camera and I was all ready to hit a park today (camera in hand!) but we got sidetracked on the way to my sisters place.  So no park today!

Hopefully we can hit a park tomorrow and up our total park count to 2!!  ;)

Anyone up for a Challenge to hit 100 or 150 parks with their kids this summer?!?!

Keeping Lunches Fun!

I've been at home with the kids now for almost a year (with 4 months of bed-rest while I was pregnant thrown in there as well) and I can honestly say that I've gotten into a bit of a rut when it was coming to lunch.  Soup, grilled cheese, Daddy noodles (what we call ichiban in this house) and unfortunately more fast food than I care to admit.

After seeing a blog a few days ago where a mom posted all the different types of sandwiches and lunches that she made for her kids I was totally inspired (and I cannot for the life of me remember what the blog was called - talk about maddening!!!!).  I will search when I don't have a crying baby at my feet as I try to finish up my blog post...!

I busted out the Lunch Punches and came up with this as the Lunch Du Jour:

They are Mama and Baby elephant peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, shredded cheese strings and cut up cucumbers.  

The girls LOVED lunch - and that added a little more awesome to my day!

Thanks for stopping by!  

Epic Bread Fail

Some days it all comes together - and some days it all goes to junk - and somedays you have a little bit of both!

Yesterday I made some sweet sweet stew.  It was super good and even the kids liked it (which is a rarity around here these days - oh how I miss the days when my kids would eat anything I put in front of them!!!).

So after the success of my stew yesterday I decided to tackle bread.  I figured it couldn't be too hard, after all I had Julia Child's 'Easy Bread' Recipe that I was using!!!

I started throwing ingredients into my mixer and was so excited to get some lovely dough that looked like this:

Source

Instead I got this:

 When I tried to knead it for a bit to see if it would help - it looked like this:

EPIC FAILURE!!!

I think my first inclining that my bread wouldn't work out was when my mixer was having issues kneading the dough - then I started to smell burnt motor (coming from my good KitchenAid stand mixer) ....then it all went to junk.  

Oh well, good thing I had some store bought buns on standby to go with the lovely stew that I made.  

And on a super positive note - I got some sewing done yesterday!!  

I'll post my latest creation tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.

Yummy Dinner Tuesday!

I'm trying to get back into Blogging since I've been horrible at it the last few months.  Between getting NO sleep (I love my kids but they had me out of bed SIX times last night between the hours of 12:30 and 6:00am - mommy is gonna live on some caffeine today!!) and having a baby that sometimes boarders on being colicky my blogging/sewing/(non existent)free time has taken a back seat to pretty much everything.

Today I am celebrating the small victories: I have a delicious and nutritious dinner cooking in the crock pot right now and we aren't going to eat a pre-packaged frozen dinner or grabbing fast food tonight!

Its not much, just some stewing beef, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms and a few stalks of celery; but its been cooking now for a half an hour and it already smells pretty heavenly in here!

I might even tackle some bread this afternoon if the kids are being somewhat well behaved - or I'll just boot them into the backyard to play when I attempt the bread thing; if not I can save that for another day!

Maybe, just maybe I'll even be able to attack one or two things at my sewing machine this afternoon.  I have the Tumbling Rubies quilt and the Eye Spy quilt that I'm really looking forward to finishing and being able to use!


****I don't want people to think that I don't actually cook - I really do! Its just that I'm trying to make myself see the small victories and be happy/proud of what I actually do get accomplished during the day (which sometimes feels like NOTHING!) rather than feeling like I'm just spinning my wheels getting nothing done.****