I actually painted these hearts in 2007. I know because I signed my name and date on the back.

I added “I love you.”

I picked up this pink sign for a buck from hobby lobby. It started out like this….

I added “Be My Valentine” and 2 corner scrolly things. Still being new to this whole thing, I inadvertently added 2 facing the same direction. Note to self, next time you want scrollys in opposing corners, must use the “mirror” function. So I made do and put one on the bottom and one on the top.

More fun to come!

Yes, son. Prairie doggin’ and hide and go seek. Same thing. Totally.

I contacted the mother of a friend of mine to make Dean a quilt for Christmas. The one his grandmother made 70 years ago has seen better days. It’s lost batting in some places, torn patches, and just really looks 70 years old. When I took it to a lady for a repair estimate she said it’s just been “loved to death.”

I didn’t want to replace this one, as it is very special to him, but rather give him a new one from me. I picked out the pattern, the border color, and the stiching (it’s called angels’ wings.)

This quilt…it was determined to be a misfit.

I didn’t get all of the details of how this quilt came to be until just last week. But here’s a short summarized version:

October – talk to Lori and work out the details of the quilt
mid-October – she sends a picture of most of the squares that she’s completed
November – she goes to put the border on the blocks and realizes that she doesn’t have enough of the material to make the border as big as she intended too. Deals with it anyway.
12/15 – call to check status and find out she’s been out terribly ill for 3 weeks and has been unable to work on it at all
12/17 – she goes to put the backing and batting together and the backing that she picked out and bought a month ago…there isn’t enough. The square is 3″ short all the way around. Goes to the store to get more material.
12/18 – No batting. She always keeps a stash of it since she is sewing all the time. For whatever reason, there is none. Goes to the store to get more.
12/18 – Finally gets it all together. Washes and dries it like she does all quilts to ensure none of the fabric colors bleed…
AND FINDS THE SPOT. A grease spot. Not in the middle of a dark blue square, but smack in the middle of a white one. She cries and cries and cries. She used every method she knew of (and even called some quilting friends) to try and get it out. She did her best.
12/19 – ships via UPS
12/21 – receive email that it has been delivered to my house (but it wasn’t)
12/22 – finally track it to my neighbor’s house (after crying and crying and crying and cussing out UPS),  open it and find the letter explaining about the spot and she coudldn’t charge me for a bad product, my returned deposit money, and I debate over what to do
12/25 – Dean opens the gift, finds the spot 5 seconds after I tell him the story.

She names all of her quilts when she puts them into a photo album for future clients to look through. Mine is called The Misfit Quilt. Her husband was walking around the house saying, “But I just want to BE A QUILT!” mimicking the Rudolph and the Misfit Toys “I just want to be A TOY!” because no matter what was thrown at this baby, it was going to be a quilt…

The Misfit Quit

This was THE SPOT after coming out of the dryer. She says it’s SOOOO dark.

After coming out of the dryer

This was after she treated it with many variations of stain remover. Do you even see it??

After stain treatment

And here is the special part….a quote from our wedding song and a note from Lori about the making of it and washing instructions…

The Inscription...

I LOVE MY MISFIT QUILT!

I seriously heard angels singing…

Silhouette Cameo!!!!

Anyway, here are my first 2 (not so hard) projects.

First up was using the “control panel” image that came with Cammie (I can give her a nickname, right?) to pimp her out a little. I used a sheet of scrapbook paper from the 250 sheet book I have (and I don’t even scrapbook!), attached it to the cutting mat, cut, picked, and voila! Now she’s super cutie!

Next up was something for those 3 square windows over our bed. I scraped off the Chinese symbols for Live, Laugh, Love that were there. For 5 years. That the sun had faded the red to a more pink color…I did that scraping 4 months ago and did nothing to them because I was holding my breath for Santa to come through. good thing he did!

Unfortunately the vinyl starter kit only came with 9″ wide vinyl (Cammie can cut 12″) so I didn’t realize that, this being my first project and all…so I had to cut the words seperately… And didn’t save the measurements of the “you.”

So “& Me” are a little shorter. I’ll redo it when I get more black. Since the starter kit is just a tease!! 

Anyway, that’s how I spent my Sunday afternoon while Dean and Miles watched football in the man shed.

Oh and I also printed out a little surprise for some girls at work but I can’t show you that quite yet.

Now I’m off to Pin some more projects for Cammie!

January: 2010 in Review: The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

February: Parties, Books, and Food – OH MY! – Busy this week. Meeting a friend to settle the details of our wine tasting party for lunch, Dean has band tonight, meeting Shannon for sushi on Wednesday, dinner at Nonna and Papaw’s house Thursday, Friday is my day off.

March: Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot – I have no idea why that ^^^^^^song came to mind when I thought of swingsets….

April: Cute Baby Saturday -

May: Crystal Miles -

June: Some Fools Never Learn (Password Protected Post) – Got a call from my sister. She said she’s having Father’s Day lunch at her house with Troy (her FIL AKA Ass) and Dad.

July: So Fresh and So Clean - It’s a new month, so how about a new fresh and clean start to ME?

August: A Pin Realized – Oreo Cookie Cake - From Pinterest comes inspiration…..

September: Fall Pins to Come - I am SO.OVER this Texas heat! I know everybody is tired of us complaining about it, but it’s been ROUGH this summer!

October: Wordless Wednesday

Cheese face with the pizza he made himself!

November: Time Flies… – We bought ourselves a digital camcorder at a 2008 Black Friday sale in anticipation of our Peanut being born in early 2009. We planned on taking lots of video of our new baby.

December: Busy Much?  - I know it seems like I just posted about being busy. But seriously…

What did YOU do in 2011? And I hope all you have a blessed, hopeful, beautiful, wonderful new 2012!!!

12/18 – flew to Nashville for a work thing

12/19 – flew back to Houston (I don’t recommend flying near the holidays, even if it is for work EVER.)

12/21 – to my sister’s to work on a crafty project for my parents for Christmas. Yes, the one she started on in November. Why wouldn’t she wait until 4 DAYS before Christmas to finish?

12/23 – my last 9/80 Friday off until probably the end of February. Gift exchange for the kids with Steph. We got last minute tickets to Trans.Siberian.Orchestra (because we were unable schedule-wise to go to any other holiday performances this season) so Miles had a sleep over after opening gifts and we had a date!

Dinner at Crap.pito’s. Dean’s favorite Italian place. His oldest son works there (at least until tomorrow) so he was our waiter. We had great food and great wine (which was comp’ed by the manager, dang I knew I should have ordered the CakeBread!)

Then we went to the concert. Pretty high seats and they didn’t have any screens up so we couldn’t see the performers faces or anything, but overall a nice event. Awesome music, laser lights, strobe lights, flash lights, musicicans running up ramps, being lifted into the air, fire bursts. It was crazy good. We’ve been wanting to go for about 5 years now and finally had the chance.

It’s an odd angle from high up, with the handrail in the middle, but you get the point of the crazy lights!

12/24 – we actually didn’t have any plans. Typically that’s the day we do Christmas with my mom’s side but due to shift work schedules, it got moved. We baked cookies for Santa and had some beverages with the neighbors before Santa came to visit both of our houses… Santa only had to put together a tool bench this year. Everything else was pre-built or no building required.

We left cookies and milk – Miles made it a point of “letting” Santa borrow his Buzz cup – and carrots for the reindeer…

12/25 – Christmas morning we did Santa, stockings and gifts for just us. Had some time to play with new toys and make some AWESOME crock pot taco dip (thank you Pinterest for the recipe), jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, along with some yummy fudge. Headed out to my aunt’s for Christmas with my Dad’s side. Got home around 7:30. Miles was EXHAUSTED and actually fell asleep in the truck on the way home (which NEVER happens) so he was put straight to bed without a bath.

12/26 – Mom’s side at my house. 15 kids, 11 adults. Tons of snacky foods, dips, treats. Thanks Pinterest for the yummy caramel apple (with chocolate chips and toffee) dip recipe. MMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMM GOOOOOOOOOD!

Pin It

12/27 – Gifts at my parents house. Of course they went overboard for the boys! Mom made king.ranch.chicken. which usually I don’t like because it has 15 bajillion onions…but she used dehydrated ones and they practically vanished. Home for Miles’ nap – he had been missing one for the past 3 days. And Mommy got to do a little bit of after Christmas shopping…

12/28 – back to work.

12/29 – back to work, first day in Command Center, working 6-3.

12/30 – same story as above, Leah and her family are stopping by for a visit before driving home to Colorado.

12/31 – New Year’s Eve with 2 2 1/2 year olds. Should be fun times.

1/1 – They are leaving early for a long drive home….

1/2 – supposed to be a company holiday, but we have to work to prepare for D-Day on Tuesday.

1/3 – GO LIVE! Also known as I-don’t-want-to-be-in-the-office-this-day-at-alllllllll!!!!!

IS IT MARCH YET????

From our family to yours…