Scripture Graffiti, a Beautiful T-Shirt Redesign, and a Walk in the Woods

I may or may not be getting slightly carried away with decorating my home with vinyl. I've been feeling overwhelmed lately at my new church calling (I was sustained today: I'm the new primary president in my ward) and I found some comfort in this scripture from Isaiah:

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

And so, I decided to put it up on the wall in my dining room:

You can call it scripture graffiti, I call it inspirational decor. : )

We just got back from a great little family reunion in Raymond last week. I don't have any pictures to post from it. Even though everyone else was taking pictures the whole time, I never thought to pull out my camera. Oops. But, we did get a professional photographer to take our picture so I'll post those when they come back.

But while we were down there, Jess' sister Bee gave Shae a t-shirt that was too small for her, thinking it might fit Shae (I think it was Bee, or was it Caley?) Anyways, Shae's into embellishing t-shirts lately, this was her third one, I believe, and I couldn't believe how beautiful it turned out! She did it completely on her own, I just came down to my craft room one day and there it was, all done. I'm not sure how she's going to wash it since the sparkles are glued onto the flowers, but we'll see!

She also made the turquoise bracelet, following this tutorial, and that too, just appeared. I sent her the link for the tutorial, thinking it would interest her, and the next thing I knew, there it was!

Edmonton is beautiful right now, all green, with all the fruit trees in bloom. We decided to go on a walk to the off-leash park yesterday and we all had a great time, especially Howie. Hudson spent most of the time collecting as many sticks as he could:

Connor didn't want to go at first, he said it would be too BORING but we had to keep reminding him while we were there to stop having fun, this was all supposed to be boring!

When we were in the woods, I saw this great log that I thought would make a really cute picture of the kids so I asked them to all sit on it. BUT, we never did get a single picture with them all looking at the camera. Especially since Hudson decided too soon that he was ready to get down and Connor had a little meltdown. Oh well! At least it made me laugh to look at the pictures afterwards!

The light of the early evening was beautiful and trees were sending out their fluffy seeds so thick that in places it looked like snow. Now if only there hadn't been any mosquitoes, it would have been perfect.

Before and After: My Craft Room

I was lucky enough to get my very own craft/sewing room a few years ago when we finished the basement in our new house. I have loved having my very own space to work in. But, it has been feeling very cramped and uninspiring lately, especially with my two newest additions: my Silhouette and Madge - both absolutely lovely but both space hogs. (Madge is what I named my dressform that I got for my birthday. Madonna's nickname in London is Madge and she's a Material Girl - get it??) So, I got the very exciting idea to renovate my room. I envisioned something with a much better use of space and where only pretty and inspiring things were allowed. If it wasn't pretty, it had to go. At the same time, I had a limited budge (I wanted to keep it under $500) so I couldn't just make up a wishlist and buy whatever I wanted.

After sketching out what size of desks I wanted and searching Kijiji for them but coming up empty, I headed over to Ikea and totally scored in the As Is section - I got 2 desks exactly the size I wanted and a big dresser for less than $400! They all have a few scratches here and there but they are still definitely pretty so I'm thrilled.

Here are some before pictures of what my space looked like to start with:

It's hard to spot, but I kept my Silhouette on the floor because I had nowhere else to put it.

Messy, right? Cluttered, crowded, cramped.

Now, here's my beautiful new space:

Notice the pillow on the floor under the desk? It's covered with the same fabric as the new curtains and it's a bed for Howie - even the dog's bed is pretty!!!

I even put a new light fixture on the ceiling to cover the plain lightbulb:

Now, I should really paint the ceiling one of these days...

My Favourite Smoothie

Two posts in one week, crazy, I know. I just wanted to share my new favourite recipe. This is a protein packed smoothie that I like to make for a post-workout lunch. It's pretty high calorie for a smoothie (I think it's close to 500 calories) but it's full of protein so it fills you up for a long time and it's really healthy: they're all good calories, no empty or wasted calories here. PLUS, it's delicious and creamy and I look forward to it, I don't make it out of duty like lots of other healthy/diet foods.

OK, so here it is:

Protein Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

1 cup regular soy milk (but vanilla or chocolate would probably be yummy too)

1 chunk of tofu (maybe 1/4 cup? I don't measure it. And it's optional, it just adds more protein and makes the drink extra creamy and smooth)

1 frozen banana

2 Tbsp of ground flax seeds (again, optional but adds nutrition)

1-2 Tbsp creamy low-fat peanut butter

1 packet of stevia

Blend it up and enjoy.

Also, I just wanted to pass on a fabulous idea I saw on a craft blog for a fun way to display your kids' artwork. I loved it so I copied it and here it is in my kitchen:

I took a piece of baseboard, painted it grey, and then nailed it to the wall. I used lots of nails and then I used rare earth magnets to attach metal binder clips to each nail. Pretty easy, and the kids love it!

A Sad, Frosty End to my Garden

August and September have been terribly cold, cloudy and wet so my garden went from thriving and flourishing in July to stalled in August. And then last night, there was a killer frost overnight and when I woke up, my garden looked like this:

My pumpkin and cucumbers that I planted had grown like weeds and were almost taking over the backyard but after one night of frost, they just wilted and died. And because there wasn't enough sunlight and heat after July to ripen anything, they had dozens of flowers on them but no fruit. OK, one fruit, a little tiny 2 inch pumpkin:

And my beautiful Roma tomatoes also never had the chance to ripen:

But we did get a lovely harvest of carrots, peas and beets so it wasn't a total write off. And, there's always next year!

And, on another topic, I got all 400 of my I Spy squares back in the mail (I ended up joining 2 swaps this summer) and I've been busy sorting and arranging them into all sorts of fun quilts. Here's a small peek at what I've been up to:

Some Crafty Goodness

I've been on a sewing binge lately and I've still only made a dent in the pile of projects I have in mind. Here are a few of the things I've been working on.

I finally tried my hand at shirring, after reading a great tutorial on how to do it at Flossie Teacakes, and this is my first project, a blouse for M, using 2 fat quarters of Amy Butler fabric, bought at The Fabric Addict. The shirring worked so I was pleased with that and I love the fabric but, 2 fat quarters really weren't big enough, the blouse needed to be a bit longer. But now I'll know for next time!

Next, I decided to try my hand at shirring something for me, and when I saw this lovely linen on sale at Fabricland, I decided to turn it into a skirt.

I love, love, love this style of skirt. I think I will make all my skirts this way from now on. It's so comfortable, easy to fit, and I like the line it makes, how it hugs my hips and then flares out from there, I think it's more flattering on my body than a skirt that gathers and flares at the waist.

Next, there's the bag I made. I used Oh Fransson's tutorial and I love the pattern. It's more time consuming than it looks but then you end up with a quality project at the end so that's OK. I like the fabric but I'll probably get tired of it sooner than later...

The next project is a blouse I made for myself using Cal Patch's amazing, wonderful, can't-say-enough-good-things-about-it book, "Design-It Yourself Clothes: Patternmaking Simplified". I love the fit of this blouse and the light airiness of the fabric which is perfect for hot summer weather but I feel a bit frumpy in the small floral print so I'd like to try it again in another fabric (and again and again). I have some lovely fabric from Sandi Henderson's Meadowsweet 2 line that I will try next I think.

Then there was sewing to do to get ready for David and Laura's wedding. M is going to be their flowergirl and C will be their ringbearer. Their colours are navy blue and pewter. So, here is the dress I made for M (it will look much cuter on her than on the hanger but she didn't feel like putting it on yet again after all the fittings I made her do.

And a closeup of the headband she'll be wearing:

And this is C's slightly wonky tie (that satin fabric is really really hard to fold in a straight line, hence the wonkiness). I used the tutorial for a boy's tie on the Purl Bee website. Luckily, Connor already had a dark grey suit that fits him just right so the tie is all I had to make. Although I'm thinking a little dark blue hankie sticking out of his breast pocket would be pretty cute so I might make that too.

Along with a shot of the back where I used one of my trusty labels for the tag that holds the shorter end of the tie behind the longer end.

And finally, there's the dress I'll be wearing to the wedding. I went shopping and fell in love with this dress but it wasn't quite modest enough so I had to make some alterations. It was too low cut in the front and it had sleeves but they were more like half sleeves and I needed to fill in the bottom part of the sleeves. Luckily, the skirt is very full and is made up of a bunch of tapered panels so I just cut out two of the panels, sewed the surrounding panels back together and used this extra fabric to fill in the sleeves and the neckline.

Much easier than sewing a dress from scratch! I'm looking forward to dancing the night away at David and Laura's reception in this dress!

I-Spy Swap

I signed up for my first I-Spy Swap this weekend at Obsessively Stitching - this is a new concept to me and I think it's a fabulous idea. I made an I-Spy quilt about 6 or 7 years ago and it was really really hard to gather enough fabrics, each one different and with some kind of picture on it, to put together a fairly small quilt. I think I came up with about 75 different squares and felt happy with that. Well, by entering this swap, all I have to do is buy 0.2 metres of 10 different fabrics (2 metres total), cut them up into 20 4" squares of each fabric, mail them off and then I'll receive 200 different squares back. TWO HUNDRED different squares! I'm so excited to see what I get back.

And yes, I do realize that I already have an I-Spy quilt, as Jess has already reminded me. But that's not the point.

A Couple of Quilts

So, I finally finished Connor's quilt a couple of months ago but I'm a little disappointed with how it turned out. You can't really tell in this photo but the strips in the middle would not line up in a straight line, no matter how much pulling and muttering/mild cursing I did. So, instead of starting over (which I never do), I just sewed it together with crooked lines and a few bunches in the fabric here and there. What was supposed to be a simple quick quilt ended up taking way longer than I thought. Oh well, I learned a few lessons along the way and after a bit of a break from that pattern, I'm ready to go ahead and make a matching quilt for Hudson which will hopefully turn out much better.

Howie's favourite place to sleep is snuggled up close to Connor.

And here's another quilt I just finished (finally - I've been working on it for about 6 months). It's a Yellow Brick Road pattern with a kit of fabrics I bought at Earthly Goods. I really love it, it makes me happy every time I see it. Even Jess likes it (he's never complimented one of my quilts before!), especially because it's long enough to cover his feet when he uses it for a nap on the couch!

And since Hudson was hanging around while I was taking this picture, I thought, what better way to cuten up a shot of my quilt than to add a cute baby?