It's been awhile since I've shown up here hasn't it? I apologize for my absence, but he reality is still that I haven't crafted anything. At least until last night/this morning and the night before.

Yesterday kicked off teacher appreciation week at Dev's school and today was bring in flowers for your teacher.

Since I'm trying to save money at every turn, I decided to see what I had around the house that would work.

Enter coffee filters.

I actually tried this project a couple of months back, but never completed it so when we started this project Sunday night (nothing like teaching your kids about time management) I figured it would be quite simple to get it done. The instructions can be found {HERE} on Ms. Martha's site.


I'm so silly. I should know that nothing ever goes as planned, but despite my mishap the flowers got done and look lovely.

I would say a few things about them though.
1) Make sure that your floral wire is secured tightly with the tape and maybe even add a drop of with glue to the first set of petals so that the stem doesn't pull out while you're working with the flower.
2) This is probably a no-brainier, but don't use pen to trace your petals on the coffee filter. I couldn't find a pencil so I used a pen and that's why I have nice blue tinged petals in the purple rose.
3) Martha uses nice water colors. I used crayola watercolors. They're not as intense as what Ms. Martha got but I like them nonetheless.
4) If your stem does come out of the flower after you've painted it, like mine did, I just folded the tip of the tape back towards the flower and taped that up like a boutonniere. Worked just fine.

I'll be sharing another teacher appreciation gift later this week!

So one of my very dear friends is having a baby, and when she announced that she was pregnant some months ago - I knew just what quilt to make the new baby.

I'm relatively new to quilting, but in my searches early on (when I was getting interested in it) I came across this quilt tutorial at Moda Bake Shop.

Its call the Baby Life Quilt, and its adorable. What's better?!?! It works for any baby, any style.

My friend is doing a Classic Pooh scheme in the new boy's nursery, and while I found tons of adorable Classic Pooh fabric, I did not buy any of it.

I want this quilt to be able to be used for a while, and not be niched into just the infant category. I'd like her to be able to use this quilt for a good long while. So I picked fabrics that were yellow, brown, green and blue. Still within Classic Pooh colors, but a little more modern. I'm going to do a zig-zag stitch around these letters in a dark brown. I think that'll set them off nicely. Oh and I'm not certain about the fabric I used for 'eat'. I was thinking maybe I could use the harlequin pattern from 'repeat', but I'm not 100% on that yet. What do you guys think?
Here's a close up!

So here's where I'm at right now. Only the word 'repeat' has been ironed down to my background fabric, but this baby should not take very long to do. The only thing I'm scared of is the quilting part. In all the past quilts I've done - I've only done straight line quilting, but this time I think I'd like to maybe try some freehand quilting. Eeek!

Wish me luck!

Ain't winter grand? First H started getting the sniffles, then that went to full blown infection. Harrison oh so kindly shared his yuck with his Daddy and I.  He's so sweet and taking those sharing lessons we keep telling him about to heart. So Steve and I have been ill since Wednesday or so. By Thursday night, Devlin was feeling the effects although to a much lesser degree. There is light, because by Friday Harrison was mostly back to his charming, lets-annoy-the-crap-outta-the-other-men-in-the-house self. Steve felt good enough to go out and promote his new magazine (seen here!), and me and Dev. Well, I'm getting better slowly. My energy level is not where its supposed to be, but lots of vitamin C and fluids in general have been helping and Dev is getting his dose of Delsym and Vicks. Hopefully we'll return to our charming selves soon.

Being as that we're the house of ill, I did not get crap done. Well that's not entirely true. I started stuff. Its not done. Which is aggravating. So I am going to share with you guys what I made for my nephew and two nieces for Christmas. :)

I am so proud of me! I have started Christmas stuff! Well, actually I started back in June, but that would have just been obscenely early to post about it. :) So here's one of the things that are done! 

I almost feel like I should have a special 100th post. You know like TV shows do, but being as it's Father's Day...That will be my special 100th post special!

I'm going to keep it short and sweet, because I have lasagna to make for family dinner tonight, and it happens to be one my Dad's favorites!

This is what we're creating, sans the flap on the bag.

 So Mom has provided the base tutorial for her car.Go tote! It has two pockets and is deep enough to cram a ton of stuff into it. The flap however is not included. I will have to get after her for that. ;-) I will also apologize because there are no pictures to go along with this tutorial yet, but I hope that you all will get the gist of what we're trying to explain! I have finished pictures of Devlin's Tote to act as your guide.

So I got another Father's Day gift knocked out today, and I'm very excited to share it with you all. I've been on a definition kick lately and since there are a plethora of baseball terms to choose from, I decided that we needed some baseball terms defined for these coasters. I also bought this Omni Transfer Medium a while ago, and have not had a chance to use it until now. Other than being messy, and probably needing to improve my technique, I'm very happy with how they turned out. :) So without further ado, on to the show!

I know some of you gals will sympathize with me about being a baseball widow, but I'm not just a baseball widow....I'm a red sox widow. *sigh* I know that Papi has hit 8 home runs recently despite early-in-the-season talk that he was in a slump. I know that Jacoby Ellsbury just came off the injured list after breaking some ribs. I don't know these things because I want to know them. I know them because my husband told me, because like any good wife I have learned enough about his interest to be able to have a conversation with him. I'm sure you all can empathize.

It was not until I was a mom that I appreciated the above saying. It's hard to know what to write today. Mother's day was always kind of ubiquitous for me. I try to show my mom how much she means to me all the time, because she is not only my mom but my best friend, confidant, muse, and a host of other things when I need her to be there. She knows when I don't want to hear what's good for me, and then tells me anyway. She also knows that sometimes, no matter how old you get, that a hug from Mom while you cry on her shoulder is more healing than any medicine can ever hope to be.

With all that being said, I did want to do something for my mom, mother-in-law and my grandmother. I, of course, don't have cards, nor did I mail my mother-in-law's gift (sorry, Donna!) :) but I took a picture of part of them. Only part, because I'm not done yet, because I was so consumed with the master bedroom stuff that I forgot that Mother's Day was this weekend. Oops.

I am looking forward to Mom's brunch tomorrow, and I hope that everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day. As for the bags and sugar scrub. I found the tutorials in blogland, but can't for the life of me remember where. So if any of you know I'd be very appreciative to give credit where it's due! Oh and I'm very happy that my mom and mother-in-law have names that begin with the same letter!

Have a splendiferous day!

So I was surfing around How Does She? a while back and come across her tutorial for make four dollar store frames look good, and I was in love. I knew this would make a wonderful gift for someone.

Jess stop reading - unless you want don't want to wait to find out what I made you, then by all means read on. :)

So I found the frames that were mentioned in the tutorial, and then had a hard time deciding on the finish for the frames. I originally wanted to just paint them white and then glaze them and add appliques. Then I thought about just decoupaging paper to them like the tutorial did, but I didn't want anything to color specific. I know that Jess is redoing her kitchen in a pretty taupe color (very similar to what I've picked for our master bedroom!) and she's keeping the green  that was there along with white, but then I thought that while I envision these frames for her kitchen, she may not put them there. Oh the dilema!

Then I remembered that The Graphics Fairy has this lovely letter image! Bingo....we're golden.