Whew!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I sure do love these EATING holidays. I'm a foodie, and luckily my best friend and my husband are also foodies, so we like to get together and eat!! This year I had the good fortune of splitting the holiday cooking with my best friend. Wow, this was so much easier! I am so thankful to be around my family again. I've known my best friend for over 10 years, and she has become close to my family also, so she is considered family. Besides her, I had my mother, stepfather, brother, sister, and brother-in-law over also. A full house in our tiny apartment, but what fun!



Look at all this food! The next morning my friend and I went shopping at 2:30am. We went to Kohls and got some amazing deals! Diamond earrings, beautiful jewelry and cashmere sweaters, oh my! We had so much fun. I love getting all my Christmas shopping done in one day! I just have three more people to shop for and I'm all done!

No quilting in these last few days, but I've got my eye on my room tonight! While you're online, make sure to surf over to Stray Stitches, she is having a fabulous giveaway. She's giving away the mostly complete set of Thimbleberries Quilt Club 2006 BOM Quilt Kit. While you're there, become a follower. Linda writes a fantastic blog, full of encouraging thoughts, gorgeous pictures, and awesome quilts. I make it a point to save her blog for my bus-ride every morning so I can start my day off on a good foot!

See you later, I'm off to quilt!

Friday Night Sew In results

I haven't had a night like that in a long time! It sure felt great to be in my own sewing room surrounded by my things with plenty of room and no interruptions! Let me show you what I worked on!



I put this on my design wall. It's Charming Squares from Moda Bake Shop, recipe by Stephanie of Little Lady Patchwork. I made it in Bliss. And since I'm looking for a lap quilt, I decided to make it from 2 charm packs instead of 3. It's going to be my cubicle quilt. I think it will really liven up my workspace!



Here's my cute little bunting! This will go in my cubicle too. My poor cubicle is industrial blue and one of the most boring and depressing places you've ever seen. But it won't be when I'm done with it! I used the triangles scraps I cut from my lap quilt and just sewed them straight on a ribbon I found. No hemming or turning or planning, just plucking and sewing! Then I really took the easy route and glued buttons on! I wish I had some colorful buttons, but all I had were white and clear. They're still very sweet though!

I was thinking of leaving the quilt on the design wall and the bunting on my wall until after Thanksgiving. That way, my mom and my best friend can see for the first time my creative process. Yeah, I'm hoping they'll have fun moving my squares around and decide they want to quilt with me!



I also worked on my Autumn wallhanging. This pattern is a free pattern from Sandy Gervais. I got it during the Fall-O-Ween Blog Hop. I changed it around a bit (of course!). I stitched Happy Autumn on the top and bottom (even though it looks like Hoppy). Still need to stitch down the binding and put a cute little orange bow on the stem of the pumpkin. Then it will be ready to hang for Thanksgiving!



I free-motion quilted swirls around it. It's not too impressive, but it was practice!

It sure was fabulous to block out some ME time! I drank my bottle of wine, watched Bones and House and just sewed!

I'm so glad I live in BlogLand!

Look at all the fun we have here!

Have you checked out SewCalGal's Christmas Quilt Show? Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year and just seeing these fabulous quilts parade through BlogLand gets me so excited! I don't yet have my own Christmas quilt, so I won't be posting. But you can still participate by commenting on the show!



Then there's the Mistletoe Make and Bake 2010.


A fun blog hop of designer projects that includes...cookie and candy recipes!! It's like my perfect Friday night...free patterns, giveaways, and cookies!! I'm not sure who the main organizer is, but I follow Spun Sugar Quilts already (Check it out, Vickie is an amazing designer!). Vickie posts links whenever there's a new post, and I just follow from there. I think I'm going to gain 10 pounds on this blog hop!

Speaking of a perfect Friday Night...It's that time of the month! Friday Night Sew In!



This will be my first Friday Night Sew-in. In the past I've been envious of those Friday Night Sewers, all comfortably in their pajamas, sewing away at home. While I always had to work a busy Friday Night at the restaurant. Not this time! On Thursday I plan to hopefully finish unpacking my sewing room and Friday Night to be busily sewing away! Woo-Hoo! If you want to join in the fun, just click on the Friday Night Sew-in button on the right hand side of my blog and you'll be taken to Handmade by Heidi to link up with us! I'm hoping to start my Layer Cake Quilt Along (see button bar on the right) blocks.



And some more BlogLand awesomeness: Beth from Love Laugh Quilt is hosting a Neighborhood Block Party. Her idea is for everyone to make a house block that represents your blog. Write your blog address somewhere on the house. Send it to her. Cross your fingers and hope you get back 9-12 blocks to make into a BlogLand Neighborhood Quilt. Isn't this the best idea ever? So symbolic of our little community.

So take off your jacket, kick back and stay awhile! There's plenty to do in BlogLand!

Hi again!

Wow, it's been awhile since I've last posted, but in real life it seems like a lifetime ago!

A few changes around here:

I got a new job! It's totally fabulous. I am a state employee. I get to wear really cute clothes to work and take my lunch and decorate my cubicle and earn vacation time. Wow. I also have to ride the commuter bus in the morning but that hasn't been so bad. Better than searching and paying for parking daily.

Another change:



We moved! We got our own place finally! Of course, working full-time and moving don't go together well, so we are still unpacking. We've been here for two weeks now and are definelty loving it. Coming from staying with my parents and having no jobs to living on our own again and having fantastic jobs makes us feel so blessed and happy. It feels so nice to be content with what you have. Even sitting on the couch and having a lazy day feels perfect.

It was a hard time to weather, but we survived moving to a new state and staying with my parents for a few months, being unemployed together, and feeling utterly hopeless and desperate for work. And we stayed strong and in love. And now it's paying off.

So I'll be keeping my second job at the restaurant for as long as I can (right now I'm on 1-2 days per week there, which sometimes means no day off for me). We both quit our retail jobs in favor of office jobs. I've worked on my sewing room (of course!) for two days now because I thought it was Friday Night Sew In. But it's not. I guess I have a head start now! My room is almost ready to sew in. Not organized, but almost ready to sew in!

In other news, I won a giveaway:

This amazing lace table cover. It's meant for a small round table but looks fantastic on my tiny dining room table. We will definetly use it! My husband and I both love it. It has candles and trees and snowmen in the lace. Thearica from Pigtales and Quilts sent me yummy homemade chocolates and a strip of awesome fabric. I love it. And she sent me a 10% coupon for her store: Coveryourlittlepiggies.com. Awesome!!



I also received my Fall-into-Fall prize. It got lost in the mail for a little while, but thankfully found it's way to me! I won this Christmas Tablerunner from Julie at Sweet-Quilt-n-Bee-Shoppe. We put it on our breakfast bar. Yes, I know it's not Christmas yet but it will be soon and that's where it will stay until then!



This little beauty came in the mail too. It's The Rose of Sharon Block Book and matching notecard set. Too cute! I love applique, but am just learning how to go about doing it. I won it in Kay's giveaway at All About Applique. That's such a terrific resource for applique beginners, check it out when you have the time!

So I haven't been just been sitting around winning giveaways. I've been adjusting to a new work schedule (up at 5am, yuck!), learning how to juggle my time more efficiently (like shopping once for all week instead of a ton of tiny trips to the store), learning the ropes of commuting, and (too slowly for me)unpacking and organizing our cute little apartment. I'll post again soon, I promise. Hopefully with something quilty to show!

Until then,