Quick Christmas Gifts

It seems that every year I'm always scrambling to find gifts for my friends for Christmas. This year was no exception. Luckly, I was able to think of something that would be quick to make and that I think they will enjoy.

I made them each a throw pillow with each of their first intials on the front.

I picked out a fabric for the body of the pillow and then a contrasting color for the letter.

I got on the computer and printed the letters out on a heavier paper and used them as templates. I traced the letters lightly on to the fabric and cut them out.

Then, I pinned them on to the body fabric and zig-zagged stitched them on.

After that, all I had to do was sew the front and back of the pillow together and stuff them. They were all easy and quick to do.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! ☺

Christmas Tree Hunt

Every year during Thanksgiving break, my family goes and picks out a Christmas tree. It has become a tradition and we enjoy the time together. So, on this fine Sunday afternoon (sunny and 60 degrees ☺), we headed out in search of the perfect Chistmas tree.




We used my glove that I didn't need to wear to mark a tree that we liked. That way we could go look at others on the lot without forgeting were this tree was.

We finally found a nice tree that all four of us agreed on. My brother Cameron used the saw to chop it down.

Then, Cam and I picked it up and carried back to the van. The tree made it home safe and sound. Now we just have to wait for my dad to set it up in the living room so we can decorate it.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! ☺

Fall or Winter?!

Today, it has been snowing since around 12:00 noon and still has not stopped (it is now 5:00)! I love snow and am really suprised to see this much already in October! We have about two inches now.

They're kind of hard to see but in the picture above there are sparrows seeking shelter underneath our trees and having a snack while they are at it .

The only thing bad about it snowing so early is that it makes the tree limbs get heavy and bend.

So the question is, is it Fall or Winter? ☺

Busy...

Hello everyone! So sorry that I have not posted in a while. Since the start of school, I have been extremely busy. I am taking all honors classes and with that comes a lot of work! But it is worth it in the end.

I have also been busy with band. The marching season is in full swing now and we have practice every Monday and Thursday evening and competitions every Saturday.

This coming Tuesday, I will be going to Susquahanna Universty with our school chamber choir to do a workshop with the university choir and their director. I am really excited. Singing is one of the things that I really enjoy doing! It is going to be a lot of fun.

Have a wonderful week! ☺

Thank you

I want to say a thank you to Mary of Neat & Tidy for this award that she has passed on to me! If you have time, you should go and take a look at Mary's Blog.

I guess that I am suposed to list ten things about myself now. We'll see if I can think of 10! ☺

1. I am a Christian and I want to do God's will, whatever that may be.

2. My family is very important to me. They are wonderful people!

3. I love to sew and quilt! My grandma started to teach me at the young age of 4 and I have been sewing ever since. The time that my grandma and I spend together in this hobby is very special to me!

4. I play three different instruments. The alto saxophone, bassoon, and piano. I play the saxophone in our school marching band and the bassoon in the concert band. The piano I play at home when ever I get a spare minute.

5. I enjoy singing very much! I take private voice lessons. I am in the concert choir and was just recently chosen to be in our school chamber choir.

6. I am a dancer. I take ballet/pointe and jazz classes every week. I also took tap class for about 3 years.

7. I love animals. I have two cats right now. They are so adorable!

8. So far in my school career, I have been a straight A student.

9. I have a weird obsession with earrings. I really don't know how many pairs I have, but I can tell you that I have A LOT! ☺

10. I love food (but who doesn't)! One of my favorite places to eat is Olive Garden.


So there you have it! I guess I could think of ten!

Now, I really don't know that many bloggers yet so I can only pass the award on to a few. If you get a chance you should check out these great blogs!

Barb of *WE* Quilt
Laurie of Quilter Gone Wild
Rose of Pics and Pieces

Thanks again to Mary!

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend!

Birthday Gifts

Two of my friends' birthdays are in September and I normally always make my friends something special for them as a gift. This year I have been making pillow cases. They are really easy and fun to make and you can use really fun fabric that matches the personalities of the people you make them for.

This first pair I made for a friend who's a really fun and exciting girl. Her family is from South America. I thought these colors portrayed that well.

This second pair I made for my other friend who is a very sweet person and who likes the color purple.

It took me about two and a half hours to do each pair. Like I said before, they are really easy and fun to make. ☺

Finished and Delivered!

I have completed Commissioned Baby Quilt #6! And it is even done on time! ☺ I am very happy with the way it turned out. The embroidered alphabet was a new adventure for me this time, but I really like what it adds to the quilt.

Here is a close up of the border.

And here is a close up of some of the embroidered letters.

I delivered the quilt today to the lady who had asked me to do it. She absolutely loved it and was, I think, very pleased. It makes me feel great! This lady is one of two people who have kept me in business and has told me today that in a year or two she is probably going to need another one! I don't mind at all. I love making quilts! ☺

Splurge

Today, I bought this absolutely adorable dress! My mom works right next to a used clothing store and she saw this dress hanging in the window. She told me about it last night and I decided that I wanted to go check it out today. Well, I tried it on and it was a PERFECT fit! For some reason I am attracted to vintage dresses and this specific one is really cute!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! ☺

(edit: This is for Rose. I am pretty sure this dress is polyester.)

ABC's

Today I went over to my grandma's house and worked on Baby Quilt #6. The last time I went over I finished putting the borders on, so this time I started to work on embroidering the alphabet in the centers of the blocks.

I only got to letter J today, but now that I'm getting the hang of it I'm sure it will go much faster.

I chose to use a caramel colored thread for the letters because I didn't want them to be too bold and take away from the quilt. I pulled the color from one of the designs in the fabric so it blends well.

I hope to be able to work on the quilt again soon. The baby is due in August and I don't want it to be late! But, I think since I'm going to do simple quilting that I should be able to meet the deadline. ☺

Vacation on the beach

This past weekend my family and I took a trip to Long Beach Island, NJ. It was so nice to take a break and just relax. I would say that the beach is probably one of my favorite places to go. I love the sound of the waves and the smell of the fresh air and salt water.

One of the special places we visited while on the island was the Barnegat Lighthouse. We climbed all 217 steps to the top and let me tell you, it's a workout!!! But the view at the top is well worth it.

In this picture you can see almost the whole island since the lighthouse is on one of the ends.

I had a wonderful vacation and didn't want to come back. Hopefully we will be going again next year!

Just for Fun

A couple of nights ago I was laying in bed waiting to fall asleep, and all of a sudden and idea just popped into my head! I have no clue what made me think of it, I just did. I remembered that I had put together a block with some fabrics that had come together in a packet a long time ago, but I had never really finished it. So I decided that the next morning I was going to.

I'm surprised I even remembered it the next day, but I didn't forget and headed down to my basement where I have all of my sewing things set up. After searching through my stash of fabric for a while, I found some fabrics that went well with the previously made block. I brainstormed and sewed and after about an hour or two I came out with this.....

A fairly good sized pillow! It was a lot of fun just to take a break from my everyday routine and sew something up for a change. ☺

Gettysburg Battlefields

Yesterday, my grandparents took me on a bus trip to the Gettysburg Battlefields. It was such a beautiful day to do it! I was able to learn a lot of new and interesting things.

We visited some different places that are located right on the battlefield. Above is a picture of a peach orchard. It was a really cool experience to stand right in the place that soldiers would have been standing so many years ago in the Civil War.

Another spot we visited was the Pennsylvania Memorial (above). The names of all of the soldiers are listed around the base of the monument.

I really enjoyed my time there and I would like to go back there in the future to look at more! Thank you, Grandpa and Grandma, for taking me along on this trip. I had a wonderful time! ☺

Strawberries....and more strawberries!

Every year my mom, brother, and I go strawberry picking at a local strawberry patch. Freshly picked strawberries taste soooooo much better than the store bought ones. Yesterday was a great day to go picking. Unfortunately, we went a little overboard! ☺ We picked a total of 11 buckets of strawberries! After we got all of them home, it sunk in. What in the world were we going to do with all of them!!!

So we got to work cutting them so they wouldn't get smushy in the heat. My mom made some strawberry pies.

And I worked on making strawberry freezer jam.

I still have a few more batches to make. We have a huge bowl filled to the brim with sliced strawberries just to eat by themselves or with shortcake. We gave some to my grandma and my brother went around the neighborhood giving them away. But still, we had some left! We concluded that next year we are not going to pick this many! ☺

Finished and Moving On

Hello everyone! So sorry that I have not updated my blog for what seems like a century! I was very busy with the end of the school year activities, so I did not have much time to be on the computer.

My 5th commissioned baby quilt has been completed and given to the lady that asked me to make it. Here is what the finished product looked like.

I have to say that out of all of the baby quilts I've made so far, this is one of my favorites.

I now have started on my 6th commissioned baby quilt. It needs to be completed by August. The baby is going to be a boy so I chose the colors green, blue, and cream. I'm going to use the same pattern that I used for my 2nd commissioned quilt (square inside of a square). I thought it would be cute if I quilted one letter of the alphabet in the center of each square.

Today my grandma took my shopping for the fabric. Here is what they look like.

I washed them when we got back from shopping. I decided to hand wash them in my bathroom sink because when I wash smaller pieces of fabric in the washing machine, the edges tend to fray a lot. Hand washing is much gentler and it does just as good of a job.

It was such a nice day that I decided to hang the fabrics outside on the line to dry.

I'm hoping this quilt will turn out as good as the rest of them did.

Have a great day!!! ☺

Check Mate

Last Sunday was an absoultely beautiful day! My brother and I both were bored, so we decided to take advantage of the wonderful weather and play a game of chess outside. We spread out a blanket in the middle of our lawn and sat down to play. In the end, my brother ended up winning because a wasn't paying enough attention! But that was ok because we had fun anyway.

I hope everyone can enjoy the spring weather wherever you are! ☺

1960's wardrobe

If any of you read my grandma's blog, she had talked about how she was fixing some cloths for me for the musical (Bells are Ringing) that I am in. She had promised a fashion show, so here it is. ☺
This is my cha-cha outfit. In one of the songs, we all dance the cha-cha and all the girls were suppose to find a very full skirt. This skirt was once a dress, but my wonderful grandma cut the top of and transformed it into a skirt for me! I love this outfit because when I spin, the skirt poofs out and twirls around.

This dress will make an appearance in a fancy party scene. All we did was add the purple ribbon to it. We did not have to alter it at all. It fits perfectly! One of my friend's sister is letting me borrow the dress gloves.

This outfit is for an "ally" scene. We are supposed to be "bookies". They wanted the outfit to be plain and rough. I think this will do the trick.

This outfit is for a party scene in an apartment. I found these great tapered leg pants. All they needed was a crease so my grandma sewed them in for me. (If you were wondering, I will have shoes on for the musical! ☺)

This outfit is just a fun skirt-shirt outfit. I love the polka dot skirt!

This is another skirt-shirt outfit.

So there you have it! A 1960's wardrobe for the musical Bells are Ringing. I want to thank my grandma for all the work she did to make these outfits just right. Love ya Grandma! ☺