2009

it's been a good year. looking forward to 2010!

don't put ketchup on your dog

mustard seems to be a very 'in' color for bags and purses right now. i have resisted the urges and callings to purchase myself a purse in this color because i have a rule to not buy myself anything between thanksgiving and christmas. well, i'm glad i held out because i was gifted a mustard purse for my birthday from my parents (yay). have i mentioned that i'm a bit of a bag addict?

so, i did see a mustard bag in the store while christmas shopping for others that was covered in fabric flowers and thought that i could spice up my brand-spankin' new mustard bag with some homemade fabric flower accessories. and this is how it turned out. pretty cute. i used hair clips to attach the flowers so they can be removed without damaging the purse.

i found the simple flower instructions here http://maizehutton.blogspot.com/2007/08/frayed-flower.html

p.s. i prefer bbq sauce and cheddar cheese on my hotdogs. i only like mustard as accessories.

merry christmas from the puppies!

winter wonderland

even though i should be working on presents i thought i would drop by to share a little of our winter wonderland. merry christmas!

december has been pretty crazy

wow, i can't believe it's almost christmas. typically i have all my gifts purchased/made, wrapped and under the tree by december 10th. not this year. with so much going on i'm using every last minute to finish up the gifts.

so far this december i've completed:

-scanning and editing over 2000 photos and slides for my in-laws

-finished and wrapped 3 out of the 5 gifts i've decided to make this year (plus i'm thinking that 5th gift will end up as a birthday present later in the year so i've got to run to the store and fight all the traffic to buy something)

-a week long vacation to breckenridge, colorado

-having puppies, taking care of puppies, cleaning up after puppies

-celebrating my 27th birthday

-preparing the house for showings (and trying to keep it clean)

-attending a pee-wee hockey tournament

sheesh! hopefully the new year will bring a little more relaxation and routine to my life. now i'm off to work on homemade present #4 and shop for the others!

penny tails : day 12

the cutest little puppies ever.

penny tails : update day 3

penny is such a good mother. she is still learning that she can pick the pups up in her mouth and not just scoot them around with her paws. she is very gentle with them and is so cautious when going to sit or lie down in the cage. she makes sure they are at the right temperature by wrapping her head and legs around them or by dragging them out from under the heat lamp. today is tail docking day, we will also remove their dew claws. curious how penny will react. we haven't decided if we should take her outside for the durration or let her watch.

they are growing already and she should start producing milk today. they sure are cute.

i'm needing to do some errands today but my car doors are frozen shut. may need to put them off until this evening after the wind and sun have a chance to evaporate some of the ice. stay warm, it's cold out there!

penny's pups!

it was a cold and snowy morning....

penny was awake most of the night from discomfort. about 5:30am she drove me out of bed to take her out for a potty break. by the time we were back in bed she was completely restless and about half an hour later i knew something was happening.

her first pup arrived around 6:20am and she was a very attentive mother doing all the right things in the right order. by the time he began to nurse she was nearly ready to deliver the next pup. the second and third pups were delivered almost back-to back with only a few minutes rest between them. the delivery was complete by 7:35am. she had a bit of agitation before 8am when she finally lay down and let the pups nurse. we think the pen may have been too warm for her.

there are 3 healthy boys happily nursing.

rooti-toot-toots and rummy-tum-tums

santa claus is coming to town.

just thought i'd share some of my favorite santa onrnaments from our tree.

and our newest ornament from vacation this past summer.

happy thanksgiving!

hope you have a lot to be thankful for this thanksgiving!

penny tails : we're expecting...

...puppies! i was thinking that i didn't have anything worth blogging lately. then i realized i haven't shared our big news. after 2 weeks of disapointment thinking that penny's breeding did not work again we were suprised to see her growing. she's about 1.5 weeks behind the schedule we would have expected. all seems to be growing just fine now. with a confirmation from the vet we are now preparing for puppies to arrive sometime at the begining of december. she's growing fast, as to be expected with an 8 week gestation. here are some pictures from either side of the weekend. (not the best quality but enjoy!)

above=penny on friday & below=penny on monday

in other news, i haven't been able to blog any of my projects lately because christmas is on it's way. don't want to spoil any surprises. i'll have a lot to blog about after the holidays!

gone fishin'

just a little appology for the lack of blogging and creativity lately. i'm smack-dab in the middle of tackling and digitally archiving the photographic history of my in-laws dating back to 1971. here's a few of my favorites.

STUD october

october's STUD theme was woodland world. i made a pinwheel mini featuring some cute little owls.

cyndi sent me this adorable little guy. so cute!

happy halloween!

hope you had a spook-tacular halloween. happy november. looking forward to getting back to some sewing. i'm in need of a stress buster!

chaos and stress...

this is chaos...

yes, that is my living room with 2 sofas and 4 chairs, one of which is on it's side. and what you don't see is that to the left there is a ladder and a sheet spread out with 3 different types of paint out. you also can't see the ceiling fan that is half assembled on the ceiling and the disassembled ceiling fan pieces spread amoungst the mess. wait, there's more hidden from view, there is a pile of boxes behind that chair, yeah, the sideways one.

and this is stress....

trying to mud and tape on a rainy day hoping that it dries quick enough to sand and mud again.

this is that state of my house right now. won't be blogging about sewing for a little while longer because to tell you the truth, there's about 5' of stuff piled in front of my machine right now :(

p.s. sorry for the bad photos the computer with photoshop is somewhere amoungst the chaos.

amazing grace - 6 months

i went to visit my niece, grace, yesterday (and my sister) and we had a 6 month photo shoot. she is getting really fun because 1) she is the most content, happiest baby ever 2) she giggles at everything and 3) she has been sitting up on her own for about a month now so we got to do the photos outside. yay! the lighting was perfect after her afternoon nap and the park we visited offered up an awesome setting. i would say these are my favorite photos that i have taken with my camera. i would like to show you all of them but i'm afraid they won't fit on this post so here's just a little taste.

today i played around with some of the best-of-the-best in photoshop (even though sooc were pretty good).

how can you not love this face?

now that i've blown through the entire morning i'm going to go clean my entire house in only 4 hours. wish me luck!

my first tutorial

i wrote a tutorial on quilt binding. i really just did it for myself, or for fun. go visit even if you already know how to sew on a quilt binding. TUTORIAL i have seen several tutorials for quilt binding but they all stop after the machine sewing and nothing continues to illustrate how to fold the corners and complete the hand sewing. i hope it's informative. let me know if you have any questions.

stumbled on a wonderful give-away

have you heard about this give-away? what a fabulous costume. i just can not believe the detail in the dresses! and such beautiful photography.

http://grosgrainfabulous.blogspot.com/2009/10/queen-of-hearts-and-alice-in-wonderland.html

halloween party!

can you believe it's finally here? yay! thank you vanessa for hosting this party. visit her at a fanciful twist to see a complete list of partiers. for this post i'll let the photos speak for themselves. enjoy, happy halloween!