Quilters Blog Festival

I am writing this post to participate in Amy's Creative Side's Bloggers Quilt Festival.

I have not had a lot of time to be doing quilting lately. I think a full time job and two small children get in the way of that some times, but I am still sticking with my quilting, and have recently completed several baby quilts.

But I wanted to share this quilt. This is, by far, not the best quilt I have ever made. It is one of the 1st ones I ever made out of the Washington Quilt Shop Hop 2004 blocks. That was the shop hop that made me want to learn how to quilt, when I innocently tagged along with my friend Lisa to check out a few quilt shops. Little did I know.

I ended up making this quilt for my Oma, which she loved. She had me hang it on the wall of her kitchen/dining room, right where everyone could see it. And for a woman as crafty as she was, that meant a lot to me.

What I like about this quilt is that it taught me a lot of different techniques that I had to learn to finish the blocks. So is it perfect? Nope. Are the colours perfect? Nope! But it was one of my biggest labours of love, and inspired me to keep learning more and more.

Thanks to Amy for organizing this. There is a lot of beautiful stuff out there! I'll share some pictures of my more recent quilts soon.

Datebook: May 1, 2011

Good morning! It is a gorgeous day today!! I look forward to getting outside with the kids. I think maybe we'll go up to Alouette Lake this afternoon. Duncan has been asking to go to "the mountains when the weather gets better" for a while now.

Today is: beautiful and sunny. May 1 and spring has finally arrived!

I am reading:
I am reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's "The Dream Hunter" in paperback, and Kate Morton's "The Forgotten Garden" on ebook through Stanza on my iPhone. I am really enjoying that one and my Mom says her friend may have lent it to her, so I might borrow it to read the hard copy. The iPhone is not an ideal format for reading books. Nice to have on hand though.

Weight loss:
I am doing pretty good!! -18 lbs as of yesterday morning!! I am averaging about 1.5 lbs a week right now and am happy with that pace.

Exercise:
I have taken to walking every day at lunch. It is 2.5 km around the block I go, and aside from the one road which is all construction and has no sidewalk, the rest of the walk is dead quiet and very peaceful. I love it! As some people may have seen on my facebook, I met a personal fitness challenge on Friday. I said about 3 months ago I was going to walk home from work over the bridge. They laughed at me! They weren't being mean, but they just thought it was a ridiculous plan. Well on Friday I did it! It took me 15 min longer than planned, but probably b/c I stopped to take pictures on the bridge. I am really thrilled having done it. I need new runners though.

In the kitchen:
Beef stir fry
shake and bake chicken and either french fries or rice and veggies
left over chicken soup casserole
BBQ beef and rice
Kraft dinner Italiano - a favourite of ours. We make it with veggie ground round and it's not that horrible for us!

This week:
Bill starts swimming lessons again tonight. We received a call this week saying that Duncan got in on the waiting list for lessons to start next Saturday. We're very happy about this b/c he loves swimming! So he starts again. Monday is the Federal Election, so we'll drag the kids along to that. We think it's good for them to see the process. Friday I have a flex day. I might send the kids to daycare anyhow just so I can get some stuff done. Otherwise, normal week.

Around the house:
We're hoping we can get someone to take the kids on Saturday morning so we can borrow my parent's carpet cleaner and do our living room carpets. They are in bad shape! Bill plans on digging up around the side of the house to put gravel down to keep little creepy crawlies getting in. We're rather paranoid of ants since that incident a few years ago in the old place. The kids and I have the garden dug up. I am going to go lime it this afternoon (better done with little people not around), we'll fertlize next week and then get ready for planting! Looking forward to that.

Okay, Cordie wants "up!" so I should go get her.

The Tuesday that feels like a Wednesday

Yay for short weeks! I'm so glad Friday is a day off. Although I get flex days, official long weekends always just feel better. Most people also get Easter Monday - like my husband - however my company does not. But I do have it as a flex day, so I also have a 4 day weekend. Yay!

Due to the availability of family, we're actually having our family dinner on Friday. A little unconventional, but thast's okay. Sounds like it will be quite the crowd.

We're all doing well here. Just happily trucking along. Weight loss is going well for Bill and I, despite various colds and sinus infections etc... Bill is down 20+ lbs, and I am down 14.6 as of last Saturday. Yay! We're happy with the pace - although faster would be nice, but you know we didn't put it all on in 13 weeks either.

I told Bill the other day he should start a book review blog b/c it seems there are so many out there, he likes to read and he likes to write. He said sure, but now I need to do the foot work to figure out how to get started. I have an idea for the blog already. So let's hope we can get that going.

The kids are fantastic. Duncan only has a few months left of preschool and in the beginning of June we have orientation for Kindergarten. Kindergarten! Already!

Let's see... we're going to Day Out With Thomas again in June, Bill and I are going to see Wicked a few days after that. I'm really looking forward to that. The Wiggles are coming to town in August, and we're definetly planning on going to that show again. Always fun.

Work is... mmmm frustrating. I was going to vent on my blog tonight, but it is probably better not to. I'm not an emotional person, but I was in tears today. Not a good thing. It just gets frustrating. I know it is in my better interest to not vent, but it gets hard not to you, you know? Anyhow, Bill heard all about it on the way home, and now my Mom will be calling or emailing and asking what happened :) I'll tell you when your busy social life settled down okay, Mom?

And that's it! Cordie want's UP UP UP so I should probably do that. Hope you're all well!!

Monday Misc.

Hey everyone,

9:30 at the end of a good day. I had a flex day today... gotta love flex days! I am tickled we've made it work with our car pooling for me to do full flex days. What's funny is I leave the office at 4:30. We work right beside the freeway, and so I walk across the overpass and meet Bill in a parking lot on the other side. This is b/c the lights at the overpass are so bad that it would easily add 10-15 minutes to the drive if Bill were to drive over and pick me up. So I walk over and we pretty much meet up exactly at the right time. This past week it was quite funny though b/c Bill was stopped at the light from the freeway off ramp, and I was able to run through the middle of the stopped traffic and jump into the car. The other drivers must be wondering what the heck...

So I had a flex day and kept the kids home. We had a blast. It was Theresa's birthday today so Duncan and I baked her a chocolate cake, and we iced it this AM. We had Theresa over and Phil and Karen and the kids. Bill tried to get the day off, but was told there was training today so no. However, it turns out he was misinformed and he could have had the day off! Oh well. We still had fun.

It would seem our cat Strider had a bit of an adventure yesterday! We don't know for how long, but we think for several hours, he was outside. He is an indoor cat - always has been from the time he was 8 weeks old and we adopted him. But Bill came home yesterday evening and in came Strider. We had gone out to our friend's place in the afternoon so we think he was out for a good 5 hours. For a cat who has never been outside, can you imagine how that would be? I wonder if he went exploring or just cowered in place? But he came home again... yay!

Had a good weekend. At Chris and Ronnie's on Saturday - watched MegaMind and enjoyed it. Sunday we visited John and Amy at their new place, home for dinner and watched the movie Red, which we really enjoyed.

Weight loss efforts are going well for both of us. I'm down 11 lbs over all, Bill is down more than that. And you can tell on both of us, which is awesome. We're both working out, and just sticking to it. The more results you get, the more motivated you become.

So for menu planning this week
tonight we did shepherd's pie with scamburger (veggie ground round... scam hamburger... Bill came up with that one tonight)
we also have on the menu for this week
tacos
tropical chicken made in coconut milk
pineapple chicken
something else I can't think of :)

Have a good night!

Menu Planning Monday

Really, I do my menu planning from Saturday  - Friday, but I can post things on Monday.
So here we go:
Saturday was Chicken Fried Streak and Potatoes from Pioneer Woman. Yes, this was way out of the range of my daily points, but since Saturday is my free day, I decided to enjoy it. It was good. I can not imagine there are people who eat stuff like that every day.
Sunday - Jambalaya in slow cooker
Monday - turkey sloppy joes in slow cooker
Tuesday - taco chicken and potato foil wrap
Wednesday - Mushroom Burgers
Thursday  - Spaghetti and meatballs
Friday - Bill is home and I will be sending him grocery shopping and we'll make a new menu for the following week by then.
Cheers!

Sunday afternoon

We decided to let Duncan not nap today - yes, he is still a pretty good napper, which is awesome. But due to the time change, we figured if he didn't nap then he would be tired a bit earlier tonight and it will be good to get him back on track for getting up earlier tomorrow.

Weight in on Saturday  - down 11.2 over all in 7 weeks. I am thrilled with my progress. And it's nice that I can look at myself and notice that weight is going down. This week I started - once - the Jillian Michael's 30 day shred dvd. It about killed me. I will keep doing it. Friday we went swimming, so I opted out, and Saturday was about 2 hours of grocery shopping and I decided that pushing a cart and a child around for that long counted as exercise. I have no excuse for today. Maybe I'll go work out yet.

Duncan got into the school we were hoping, the one not in our catchment. It has a reputation as a good school, and all his little friends go there, so it should be really neat for him. June 3 we have orientation. Nikki explained what you do is go in for a few hours with your child and then at the end they decide who is going to what class. We agreed heaven help the teacher is all 4 boys end up in the same class :) Can you believe my little man is going into Kindergarten? He'll need to get used to no nap then, b/c it's all day K in the fall!

Cordie is good. She is such a funny, funny girl. This week she found the Dinosaur's Binkit book by Sandra Boyton. Duncan loved that book when he was little too. But everytime Dinosaur said "Where's my Binkit?" Cordie would just laugh and laugh and laugh. It's awesome. Her words are so good!! 3 word sentances. I don't remember Duncan's words being that good at that point, but as it has been pointed out, she's a girl. And she's my girl!

I'm working longer hours for flex days now, which will be nice. It's funny b/c my 1st normal flex day is a week Monday, and I was looking forward to bringing Duncan to school, and Mom pointed out it will be Spring Break. Duh.

Well seeing as I have room in my points, I think I might go have some crackers and cheese. Nom nom nom...

Things I don't miss

I just realized it's been a month since I blogged. And to consider I once thought of starting up a reviews and giveaway blog. No way. It's funny how easily you can give up something that used to just suck you in.

Things that I have given up recently that I don't really miss:

1. tv. We're not watching much tv these days. Oh, we PVR for a later date, but even a lot of the stuff we're recording we're just not interested in watching right now. I think Castle and the Mentalist are the ones we're really watching every week right now, and everything else can wait.
2. More specifically - American Idol. I admit that the new judges threw me off, although Mom assures me that they are doing an excellent job. But I really didn't want the 2-3 night a week committment to watch this show this year, so I'm not. I kind of miss it, but at the same time and not really.
3. Facebook. I am spending nil time on facebook. I am not actively playing any games - although I started a Cityville so my friends can get an extra neighbour, but I have not even gone so far as to see how it works. I imagine a lot like Farmville, which I once loved. I don't miss that either. 
4. My blogs. I still follow a bunch of stuff as I still like to try and win things. Most recently (last week) at $25 gift card from Chapters. I already have some credit on Chapters and am seriously considering ordering the Cities and Knights expansion for Settlers of Catan. 
5. My weight. ha ha ha... Yeah so it's been 5 weeks I've been on WW and it is going well! I had one week where I went up .4, but over all I am down 8.6 and am really thrilled with how I am doing. I am not finding it hard at all to follow the new Points Plus program and don't really feel like I am missing out much on food stuff. Okay tonight I super wanted a nice big hamburger and home made deep fried french fries. But I didn't. We had macos like we planned (tacos made with veggie ground round). Duncan ate 3 tacos!! Growing much?

Things I am enjoying as I am no longer doing those things:

1. Time with Bill and the kids. Duh. Evenings are fun. Last night we moved the art desk that Chris and Ronnie gave us a while back into my craft room. I taped some paper down, pulled out the paints and both kids had a blast! Was it messy? Yep. Did they need baths after? Yep. But what's the point in having a craft room if it isn't going to get messy?
2. Swimming. This kind of goes with the spending more time with the kids theme. Duncan has swimming 2x/week and for $2 each we get to go while he has lessons, so we've all been going together. Cordie loves it. Duncan loves it. I swam a few laps the other day. I am out of shape!! But you know, I'm doing something about it, so not beating myself up there. 
3. Quilting. As most evenings we don't feel like watching tv, I wander into my lovely craft room and, well, craft. Sunday I finished the top to Cordie's quilt I've been meaning to get to for some time now. I love it! It's all blocks given by my quilty friends online, and I just love it. I need some backing fabric for it. I'll post pictures when it's done. And I also started a quilt for Nikki who is due in one month now.

Oh, one thing I miss that I can't seem to get enough of: sleep. It's bed time. Good night!