Fighting the Good Fight

For you moms out there I think that you will all agree that you want the best nutrition for our children.  So one of the things I do is I try to steer clear of things like mac and cheese, ramen noodles and hot dogs.  In fact my 7 year old came home from a playdate once and said, "Mom, we had the best lunch, it can from a box and it was cheesy- iloved it".  I found myself smuggly proud that I was the kind of mom who did not feed her children this 'stuff'.  Well, having four kids I have realized that I don't want to be too rigid- afraid of future eating disorder issues, i am slowly introducing things like hot dogs and mac and cheese into our diet (I still can't do ramen noodles).

Here you see what my 2 year old did while I was in the shower.  He pushes the kitchen chair to the fridge and helped himself.  This is a boy who knows what he wants.

"Opps!  Mom caught us, if we look cute maybe she won't get upset."

Here they are together- Ben lovingly protecting his loot.

Rather tight grip!

So here is the debate..is it OK to let my children eat raw (presmoked) hot dogs?  To help you make an informed decision, here is what the USA FDA says.

Love to hear what you have to say!

Lots of Quilts

Here are some of the products from my long arm frenzy.  They are so cute.  I loved exploring the various patterns that I could do freehand on the long arm.  My neighbour had fun helping me take these pics.

My First Quilt Along Ta-Da- My Submission for the Blogger Quilt Fest

Blogger Quilt Festival

I made this quilt with Crazy Mom Quilts quilt along this past summer.  All off the fabric is a collection from Sandi Henderson's line over the years.  My daughter loves it in her room!!  I really found this to be more challenging than I thought.  I am discovering that I have a hard time following specific instructions when I think that I already know how to do it.  Does this ever happen to you?

Taking pictures of a large quilt is much harder than I thought!

I like how this one shows the fabric combo.

Machine quilting a queen size quilt on a regular machine is very challenging.  I tried to do the quilting like this
http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?sku=10810.  Machine quilting is an art that takes time and practice.

Loving the sun on this summery quilt.
Spring-bqf-2011-button.jpg

Pickle Dish Quilt Along

I am so excited to participate in this quilt along http://pickledish.blogspot.com/.  She is guiding us through this very clever and adorable quilt designed by Rebecca Johnson from Chasing Cotton.


Here is my fabric selection:

I have never had the binding done before the quilt.  This is leftover from my king sized dresden plate quilt that is almost complete!!

I am going for the calm and spa-ish feeling for this quilt- I am liking it.

Can't Stop Myself

Today I drove 2 hours total to donate a bunch of fabric (7 garbage bags full).  Most of it was scraps, remnants and denim.  I have been collecting fabric for a very long time.  I find fabric and think to myself, "this will be great, I just need to cut it into squares or something useful.  Well four kids later and I have not really touched them and feel guilty having them unused in my basement.  So I donated them to Project Linus.  This is a great organization that I had the privelegde to work with this summer.
However- the place I took the fabric too has a surprisingly amazing collection of fabric.  I used a lot of self restraint but still ended up spending too much- yikes.
They had a great collection of Kona solids which I need (wanted) really badly.

Here are some pics of my goodies.

A Good Stack

While I had my long arm (sigh) I did a bit of quilting!  Here are 13 of them.  They still need binding.  All that binding is very overwhelming.  I also did a king sized dresden plate quilt that has the binding but needs a few more appliqued circles.  Two twin sized and another quilt that I had the bright idea of mixing hand quilting and machine quilting- it is a lot more hand quilting than I thought.
I am excited to show these quilts when they are done.
I wonder what will happen to each of these quilts.
One is going to a silent auction for our friends with MS.  One will probably be a Christmas present.   The rest?  Not sure.  Does this ever happen to you?  You make the quilt for the love of quilting, but what to do with the finished product...

A Girl With Many Sides

Three years ago I bought an industrial sized vinyl cutter start a little business from home. I really wanted new couches and a Bosch mixer so that I could make bread every week. The problem was I only had money saved for one of them, so logically I bought neither and purchased the cutter instead. I had a great business that I worked hard at establishing- then we moved. I don't do very much of it any more. I do enjoy it and since it doesn't cost me anything I have kept it. Here are a few of my latest creations.

A side note, if anyone is interested, contact me and I make it for you.