Adorable "Medical" Christmas Wreaths

I wish I could take credit for the wreaths that I saw today at the lab while I was waiting for some blood work to be done but alas I can't.  I also wish I didn't look like the CRAZY lady taking pictures of Christmas decorations in a waiting room but I just couldn't help it - they were so cute!!

When I commented on the decorations to the lab tech, she said that they were given the go-ahead to decorate the lab BUT they couldn't spend any money, and all supplies they used either had to be previously used or expired.  I think they made some amazing things with some discarded laboratory supplies!

I noticed this one right away - they are the used 'orange drink' containers from the Glucose fasting test you have to take at 35 weeks of pregnancy - I remember that horrible tasting drink well! 

This one was paper cups and blood vials.

This last one was my favourite - those are pee jars!!  How genius!  

There were a bunch more decorations on the walls but I had already gotten some seriously strange looks taking the first three pictures and didn't want to encourage any more weird stares especially since I wasn't sure how long I was going to be waiting in the waiting room for.

Its nice to see that even in a really busy lab, they were able to take the time to decorate for the holidays and it looked fantastic.  

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow!

Another Top Almost Quilted!

After last nights Drunk Monkey sewing fiasco I figured I needed to continue the finishing (because even though I hate the stitching - the Eye Spy quilt top is DONE!) and so I ran upstairs and grabbed the Party Monster Quilt that I need to finish the quilting on and got to work on that.  Thankfully this quilt is super easy 'stitch in the ditch' machine quilting and will be done in the next few nights!

Its a small crib sized quilt and fits through my machine SO MUCH EASIER than the Eye Spy quilt did - plus I used the dream cotton batting and what a difference in manoeuvrability!  

Hopefully I can get this quilt top done in the next few days and then I can do both bindings for both Eye Spy and the Party Monster Quilt done by the new year!  Whoot whoot!  Hooray for finishes.

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow!

Drunk Monkey Sewing - Take 2!

After a few weeks of sickness, more sickness and a few kids Christmas Concerts I finally got up the energy to work on the Eye Spy Quilt or as I like to call it 'the Drunk Monkey quilt'.  I refer to it as the Drunk Monkey quilt because my machine quilting is SO horrible on this quilt it looks as though a monkey could have sewn it after a few alcoholic beverages.

From far away it doesn't look to bad:

The backing isn't too bad either:

But when you get real close - you can see the 'magic' of the Drunk Monkey in action:

There is nary a straight line to be seen......

That being said, I have learned MANY a lesson working on this quilt:

• My accuracy has improved over the course of the past year and a half that I have been working on this quilt.  Some seams are fantastic (my later work) and some aren't (the blocks that I did at the beginning of the quilt.  I need to take my time and continue to improve on my accuracy with piecing.  
• I will NEVER.EVER.NEVER.EVER purchase and use poly batting.  E-V-E-R.  I made the mistake of getting talked into it since the the quilt store did not have the cotton batting I wanted and I wanted to work on the quilt so bad that I just grabbed what was available.  
• I need to pull my quilt tighter when I am making the quilt sandwich - I think my top was a little too loose so I got some puckering when I quilted the top. 
• I need to lighten up on myself - every quilt is able to teach me a lesson or two (this one more than a few lessons were taught!) and I am a very occasional quilter.  Practice makes perfect and if I want to get better I need to put in some extra time and I will get better.  

Drunk Monkey sewing aside, I know the girls are going to LOVE the quilt when I get the binding on in the next few days (going to try to machine the binding on which should be interesting!).  

Thanks for stopping by!  See you tomorrow.

Finished Wings

Miss S's Winter Concert is tomorrow and I finished her costume tonight.  Its really nothing too special, since I didn't want to wreck a perfectly good (brand new) red long sleeved shirt - especially right before Christmas by sewing big circles on it!  So I did the oh so classy route of safety pinning the felt circles to her shirt.  She decided on circle placement - not me!!

The wings in the above picture were the 'spares' just in case the spray painted ones were too stinky.  

Below is the finished wings!  

Miss S didn't get to see the finished product before she went to bed so she is going to be very excited in the morning.  The concert should be cute tomorrow - she has one 'performance' at 9:10 that the family is going to and then another one at 6:30 that the grandparents and I are going to.  I figured the evening show would be way too busy for Mr C. to be running around and Miss L has been downright inconsolable past 6:00 most nights lately because shes so tired.  I believe in situational behaviours and if I put two very overtired kids in a room full of 300 parents they are going to freak out and I'd rather that not happen!  

I'll post pictures of the concert tomorrow!  

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow.  

Sickness, Christmas Tree and Ladybug Wings

Its that time of year again - Christmas you say?!  NO - that other time of the year; when everyone gets sick!  NOT my most favourite time of the year at all to say the very least.  Thankfully after most of us getting sick over the past week I'm hopeful to think the worst is behind us.

We did manage to put up our tree this week - sorry for the horrible picture but all I could find was my iPhone.  The girls did most of the decorating and they did a fantastic job.  I made sure that all of the breakable/good ornaments were out of Mr. C's reach since he thinks the tree is awesome and wants to redecorate all the time!!!

I have a few favourite ornaments but I'll post more about those another day when I have the good camera out and I can get way better detail.

Miss S has her Winter Concert this week at school - she is so excited.  Its about Bugs and I've been privy to a few of the songs she gets to sing.  Its going to be adorable!  They are allowed to chose the type of bug they want to be so Miss S decided she wanted to be a lady bug and I needed to figure out some kind of costume.

She didn't have a plain red shirt so off to Walmart we went today and scored one for $6!  Next up was dots and wings.  We had black felt that I figured I could cut dots out of and we had pink wings leftover from Halloween.  I've seen tonnes of people spray paint stuff on blogs so I figured I could just spray paint the wings and be done - which worked GREAT except for the smell!!  How do I get the spray-paint smell off the wings by Wednesday?!?!  If the paint smell doesn't come off by tomorrow I'll see if I can pick up another pair of wings and we can just put the black dots on the new wings and they'll be just as cute.

Sorry for the sideways picture - I tried to take this picture three times and each time blogger made it go sideways and I have no idea how to flip it so sideways it will be!!

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow!

Christmas Table Runner - A Finish!!

I'm finally making some sweet progress on my Out Of Control UFO's that I posted about a while back. This table runner was fully quilted on top (I just stitched in the ditch of all the seams), had the binding sewn on I just hadn't hand sewn the binding down - and it had been that way for the past year!  I'm so bad for getting a quilt to a certain stage and abandoning it for a fun new project!

I don't have the energy to get all creative with my photo of my table runner tonight - so I give you an iPhone picture complete with my foot so you can admire my handiwork!  ;)

I really need to bust out my camera and my finished quilts outside on a nice day and get some really nice pictures of them rather than my late and night, dark and dingy pictures.  Oh well, a finish is a finish and I'll take it!!

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow.

A VERY loved Quilt!!

A little over six years ago I made my very first quilt for my Niece's baby shower gift

I had no idea what I was doing but 6 years later and a LOT of LOVE it looks so well loved and totally soft and cuddly!  

I even attempted Free Motion Quilting on a sewing machine that you shouldn't FMQ on!!!  I had no idea that feed dogs could drop or what a FMQ foot was - all I did was latch onto the quilt and pull and push it with all my might and make some weird squiggles but it looked super cute.  

We have our three kids and our two nieces and one nephew over for a sleep over tonight - my niece brought her blankie over with her - it was so awesome to see how much she has loved it over the past 6 years.  On top of that it was almost as awesome that all 6 kids went to bed with almost no squabbling and fell asleep in record time. 

All and all it was an awesome day!  

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow.  

Tis the Season - Christmas Card Season!!

After last nights epic machine quilting failure fiasco I decided to take tonight off quilting and do something that I have been wanting to do forever but have NEVER done - Christmas Cards!  Every single year I say the same thing and say that I am totally going to do the Christmas Card thing, and every year I manage to forget.  Not this year!  I managed to address 11 cards to family that still need a family picture and pictures of the kids and I have 15 cards to friends that don't need any pictures.  Hopefully I can send out the 15 cards tomorrow once I get stamps and I can get the other 11 sent off to family next week after I print off some pictures and figure out a way to get a Family Picture done this weekend.

I wish I was a poet and could write something witty in my cards but they are all pretty simple.  The main thing for me is that I have them all addressed and I NEED to get them out by the middle of next week.  Mostly because if I don't by then, I will totally forget and just not send them and that would be a shame.

I'm hoping to get a bunch of cards this year, my girls LOVE getting mail so any time we get a Christmas card I tell them its for them and they are quite excited.  If any of my Blogging friends would like to send me a card, message me your address and I will do the same.  Its always nice to get mail that is not a bill!! ;)

Tomorrow I am hoping to tackle the Eye Spy quilt again, I just needed tonight off.  Tomorrow is a new day!

Thanks for stopping by, see you tomorrow!  

Machine Quilting Epic FAIL

I started this evening out all excited since I was going to begin the machine quilting on my Eye Spy quilt.  I got a few bobbins on the go and went to town on doing the column quilting and now I am sitting here on the verge of tears HATING what I have done so far.....My lines are worse than a drunk monkey attempting sewing for the first time.

From far away its not so bad....

But get close up - DAMN - what the heck happened?!?!?!  

Seriously it looks much worse in person.....

I have decided to push through and see how it looks with the other echoing done and if it STILL looks drunken monkey'esque I am going to attempt to cover it up or at least detract from it with attempting some FMQ in all the cream rectangles.  I figure by then nothing I do to it could make it worse so I might as well make it something interesting to look at!  I have done TOO much machine quilting to the quilt top to sit with a seam ripper for hours and hours and hours on end to rip it all out.  

I'm sorry, I usually try to be positive and happy on my blog but after laying my quilt out and seeing the mess I created I feel so deflated and bummed.  Thankfully my kids will love it no matter how weird the quilting is but I know its all that I am going to see....grrrrrrr!  

Ok - lets turn this into a learning experience for me........I know what happened - I'm not used to working with a quilt so big and it kept pulling, I am using a different batting (a poly batting that I have never used before and HATE and will never use again, its cotton batting only for this girl from now on), and I was in too much of a hurry to see the results.  There.  I have my reasons for my drunk monkey sewing BUT it still doesn't make me feel any better BUT I know that I can learn from this and hopefully I can keep the drunk monkey at bay so it doesn't make another appearance on my quilt tops anymore.  

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow (and I promise I won't be such a Debbie Downer...).

Teaching the Young'uns

My oldest daughter, Miss S, asked me last night if she could 'hand sew' like I do. A huge part of me was SO THRILLED and honoured that she would want to be like me and part of me was trying to figure out how I could let her 'hand sew' something without drawing blood.  ;)   Then it hit me - Plastic Canvas!!! I don't remember playing on it when I was a kid but I must have since pretty much everyone does some sort of plastic canvas sewing when they are little.

I was going to get the girls just some big squares of plastic canvas to practice on then we found a little package of 10 stars and another package of 10 hearts and I thought those would be perfect for Christmas Ornaments for the tree this year.  Plus they are small enough for a good 20 minute craft and a few might make their way to some Grandparents houses for their trees if the girls continue to really enjoy making them.

Thankfully Mr. C took a long nap this afternoon and we were able to sit down in the living room and have a pretty good 'intro to Plastic Canvas 101' session.  Such concentration!!

I apologize for the picture quality - its from Instagram  

All and all they both did a fantastic job!  Miss S (my 5 year old) is really into patterns so I helped her keep her stitches all going mostly the same way.  We had a few mistakes but nothing a little reverse stitching didn't fix.  Miss L (my 3 year old) went with the 'wing it' method (I wonder where she got that from?!?!!?) and pretty much just went to town with putting the (very) bunt needle in anywhere and maybe pulling the thread all the way out, but most of the time it was a hot mess of jumbled thread but she was loving it.

Miss L's is on top and Miss S's is on the bottom - not bad for a first attempt!  So proud of my girls!!!

I have already had them get out of bed once to ask if they can do more hand sewing tomorrow - I guess it was a hit!  

Now that all three of them are in bed its time to clear the nook out and get going on sandwiching and pinning the Eye Spy quilt.  Hopefully I can complete and share that one soon.  

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow!