Casino Night!! Day #13 of Blogtoberfest.

It was my Sister-In-Laws birthday today and after my kids went to bed I met her, my BIL and a few friends at the Casino for a little fun gambling action.  We hit the penny, 2c and 5c slots (I am SO not a big spender) and had a fantastic time.

I wish I could say that the above picture was in dollars - but its so not!  It was when we were playing the penny slots, but I'll take the $15 over losing all my money.  Nothing beats spending almost two hours in a casino and walking out with more money than you walked in with.

I need to buckle down and get the top of my Domestic handbag pieced together for my Guild meeting on Thursday (too bad I can't post any pictures of that one) and I still have to finish my Triadic Colors assignment by Thursday too.  I smell some quilting 'overtime' coming up over the next few days.

Sleep or Sew....? Day #11 of Blogtoberfest.

There are few things on earth that I love almost as much as my family - one of those things would be my sleep!!   ;)  Unfortunately being a Mom of a 5, 3 and 1 year old means that one of my favourite pastimes is often neglected - yep, that would be my sleep!

Most nights my girls are angels and sleep right through the night - last night was an exception.  Not only did they get me up 5 times, I had to wrestle Miss L away from the TV at 2:30 in the morning!  Little turkey thought it was 'wake up' time and took it upon herself to come downstairs and watch a little Disney Jr. Thankfully Miss S woke me up (again) and told me that Miss L was out of bed.    Its amazing to me how these crazy nights always happen when Mr. Quiltapotamus is working the night shift and isn't at home!

Its days like this when its almost 9:00 and I start the sleep ~vs~ sew dilemma in my head.  Some days sewing wins - I think tonight sleep will!  I can dream about the new duvet cover that I have been eyeballing from West Elm for the last 10 months.......

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Until tomorrow my friends - thank you for stopping by and I hope you had a fabulous day!  Day 11 of Blogtoberfest is in the books and I'm out for the night!  ;)

Guild Meeting Homework Prep! Blogtoberfest Day #10!!

A few months ago I joined the Calgary Modern Quilt Guild.  Its a fabulous group of ladies that meet up once a month and although I've only been to the first of the last three meetings I've learned so much and have been so inspired by the work I have seen everyone do either at the meetings or online.

I wouldn't consider myself a "modern" quilter but then I'm not a traditional quilter either, I am more a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of quilter (or at least thats what I tell myself!!!). I love and am inspired by all kinds of quilts and quilters. I would love to be able to create 99% of the stuff that I see online or at my Guild meetings but I keep telling myself that everyone has to start somewhere and that I know 1000x's more and am 100000x better than when I first started quilting 6 years ago. 

Most of the time I'm drawn to bright, crazy, kid friendly fabric OR I go the complete opposite way and take the seriously traditional approach.  That being said I do enjoy most fabric but am a creature of habit and it shows in my fabric purchasting. 

Getting back to the Guild meeting thing, every month we are assigned a homework block to have done before the next meeting.  Being a HORRIBLE student and missing the last two meetings I haven't done those blocks yet {but please don't tell anyone!!! ;)}, BUT since I am totally planning on going this month I know that I need to get going on my block for this month.  Last month apparently we discussed Triadic Colors and since I missed the talk I had NO idea what the heck that meant - thankfully Mr. Google was there to help me!!  What on earth would I ever do without my good friend Mr. Google!?!?   I found a few sites that helped me out like this one.

I did a little research, got out my trusty color wheel (who would have known that one of those would be SERIOUSLY helpful when quilting!?!?!) and then raided my fabric stash.  First off I came up with this:

 

 

But then all I could see was TRADITIONAL fabric and nothing that was very modern at all.  I still love the color choices but I decided to see what other fabrics I had hiding in my stash that might be a little bit more modern and a little bigger since these were just small scraps and I wouldn't have had enough fabric for our block. 

 

I went raiding my fabric stash yet again and found me some Amy Butler....I've had a fat eighth bundle tucked away for at least a year and I haven't know what to do with it until today!  I picked my Triad Color Scheme (look at me dropping the lingo like I actually know what it means!!!) and then I was trying to figure out what my accent color should be. 

 

I LOVE using cream/white but then I remembered that I got some awesome grey and charcoal fabric a few weeks ago that might actually work.  I decided to lay all three colors down with my three possible accent colors and fell in love with the dark charcoal.  

 

 

I have been inspired by the Bee In My Bonnet Row-Along and was completely taken with "row 3" which was basically large chunky chevrons.  So awesome!  Plus I absoutely love love love the fabric that Lori Holt designs and uses in her quilts.  

 

So after all that rambling  - this is the fabric that I am going to attempt to use to make my first attempt at one of our Guild home work assignments.

 



 

Hopefully Mr. C goes to bed at a decent time tonight (anyone have any idea how to make an almost 14 month old sleep?!?!) and then I can attempt to sew the gazillion little squares all into other little squares.  I'll post the finished block when I am able to get it done, hopefully in the next few days.  I've made great progress with the Domestic Handbag quilt and the Eye Spy quilt lately.  I just need to get around to actually finishing stuff one of these days!

 

Is anyone else impressed that I managed to take something as simple as picking out fabric for a quilt block and turned it into a semi-essay on my lack of Modern Quilting knowledge?!? Heck, I am!!  ;)  Then again picking out fabric is always a challenge for me, perhaps thats another Blog post for another day! 

 

 

Hoover Dam - and Day #5 of Blogtoberfest!!

After 12 weeks I finally was able to back up and upload all my pictures off my iPhone and 894 pictures later I thought I could share some of our trip to the Hoover Dam with you!  

It was our 10th Anniversary in September and we took a weekend trip down to Vegas (kid free!  Wahooo!).  After being to Vegas 5 times we decided that this was the trip that we were going to finally check out the Hoover Dam. and WOW - what an experience that was!! 

Once we got there the hubby and I had a differing of opinions - he just wanted to check out the dam from the top - I wanted to go on a tour - we went on a tour!  HAHA!

This is after we have taken the short but very LONG way down elevator ride - I think we are 500+ feet down at the base of the dam.

It was SO HUGE!!    I knew that the turbines and stuff would be big but I had no idea that they were going to be that big!  

They did some amazing tile work when they were building it and all the flooring is original - Beautiful!!!

Back up at the top of the Dam looking down - its SOOOO high!!   We were wayyyyyyy down there (its too bad that you can't get an appreciation of how far down it is from a picture)!! 

Again, pictures just don't do it justice but it was SO big!! 

I'm still so amazed that they were able to build something like this in FIVE YEARS!

They build the dam in 5 years but it took them 7 years to build this bridge that crosses the Colorado River! 

This bridge was beyond impressive, we didn't drive over it but it would have been quite the thrill to look over the side!

I'm so glad that after 5 trips down to Vegas we were able to make the trip to the Hover Dam.  It was an amazing engineering feat and I actually learned quite a bit.  

Day #5 of Blogtoberfest is done and its our Canadian Thanksgiving tomorrow - bring on the turkey and a fantastic family gathering!!  ;)

Eye Spy - Rows Complete!

Wow, its amazing what can get done in a night when Mr. Quiltapotamus is working the night shift, Mr. C actually goes to bed at a really decent time and my girls don't continuously get out of bed for a drink, snuggle, extra toy....that sort of thing!  ;)

Yesterday I posted a picture of some of my Eye Spy blocks that I had up on my design wall and I was hoping to get a little bit done last night.  I actually managed to get all the rows assembled and I am SO pleased with myself (even if that did mean that I skipped out on working out to sew....bad me!!) and how it turned out. 

The quilt has10 rows with 8 blocks per row. I still have to cut the extra boarder squares and rectangles so the black and white boarder goes around the entire quilt (rather than just the top and left hand side!).

I'm trying to decide if I want to do a plain cream 4-6" boarder around the quilt or just square it up, make a quilt sandwich and then put the binding right onto the black and white boarder.  Part of me just wants this quilt done so I might not do the boarder at all and that should help me get this thing finished a little faster!  ;)

Thoughts anyone?! 

Blogtoberfest Day ONE!

Yeay, its day #1 of Blogtoberfest and I did manage to find the sign up sheet a few days ago!

 

Kat @ I saw you dancing is hosting Blogtoberfest this year and as of this morning it looks like there are  192 bloggers signed up for it (I'm number 45!!) so far.  I did it last year and it was fun to try to figure out what to blog about for a month straight.  I'm hoping to have at least half my posts be sewing related but the other half are going to be whatever I can think of at 11:50 at night I'm sure!

I've brought out my Eye Spy quilt from the depths of my WIP pile and I'm hoping that I can get a little bit of work done on this to help break up the frustration that I am getting from my Domestic Handbag quilt!  I find few things as frustrating as a quilt that wont cooperate so I find the best thing for me to do is put it away for a few days (weeks/months/years - whatever it takes) so I don't feel like trashing the thing and can come back and objectively work through whats wrong with the quilt! 

 

 

 

 

I've had this quilt on the go for a while and started other projects and this one got forgotten about - when I brought out all the blocks my kids went CRAZY for it.  I've decided to make it a little smaller than I had orginally planned but at least I have all the blocks done and I can just sit and chain sew, and sew, and sew, and sew.....for a few nights and get the top assembled. 

 

 

Hopefully I can get some sewing in after the kidlets go to bed tonight!  My 1 year old likes to get into EVERYTHING so I find not much can get done when hes awake!  Little monster...! 

 

 

Until tomorrow.

Bring on Blogtoberfest 2012!!

I must say that I love, love, LOVED Blogtoberfest last year.  I think I did 29 days of it or something which for me is amaze-balls and I was pretty happy with myself for blogging almost every day! 

I haven't been able to find the 2012 sign up "sheet" but I keep looking for it - and worse comes to worse I will make my own button and sign MYSELF up!  ;)  I'm hoping to blog every day and have at least half of the days related to something sewingísh.  Might have a few days of fun pictures that I want to share thanks to my awesome new camera that my husband got me for my birthday last week. 

I did however dig out a few WIPs that have been haunting me lately - the Eye Spy quilt is still quite a work in progress but I can't wait until its done, my kids are going to love it.  The Domestic Handbag quilt has me in a bit of a quandry trying to figure out how to square up all the blocks since I didn't piece them all the same size.  The last quilt that I REALLY need to finish is the Crazy Cat quilt, I started it over two years ago but I keep falling out of love with it which is sad since its super cute and I need to finish it to give it to my Mom!  Hopefully Blogtoberfest will give me the kick that I need to get these projects finished or at least make some serious headway with and get back into the wonderful world of blogging more.

Until next time my friends - sorry no pictures today.  Hopefully tomorrow I will have some to share!