My first quilt ever!

I've always wanted to make a baby quilt and luckily my mother in law does quilting, so she helped me create one.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Let me say the only reason it turned out this well is because my MIL helped.  A lot.

I knew I wanted do a Christian themed one for a friend of mine and Noah's Ark seems like a pretty basic, not too crazy idea for a quilt.  The thing about the arc and animals on here, it's not a quilting pattern, but a free stained glass window pattern I found online.  Stained glass window patterns work really well for quilting because when cutting glass, it's hard to do lot of little corners like it is in quilting.

I found all the fabric at Joann's and I think it turned out well.  I was really torn on how to pick 'good' fabric for a quilt.  I washed, dried, and ironed all the fabric first, except that of the arc.  Which I should have done as well because when I washed it after it was finished, the fabric shrank and came out of the stitching.  ARG!  I had to go back over it.

The sun with the shape of the cross stitched through it was my idea and I think I'm pretty fabulous for coming up with it!  :)

Check it out and let me know what you think!!

What's in a Name? Scrapbook Page

Our daughter is named after a couple family members and I wanted her to know who she was named after and what that person was like.  In her baby album, I created pages for each of the people she was named af

I found some photos of those people from when they were kids to adults, typed up a little bit of info such as favorite colors, favorite flowers, activities they liked, and some of my memories of them.  I think it's a nice little way to remember those people since they have passed away.  Not the most amazing layout pages, but I like the idea!

The one for my Mom, I even found a small old cross stitch that was just sitting in a box and added it to the page.

Water Baby Scrapbook Page

There's nothing too special about this specific page other than I just like the way it turned out.  I struggle with looking at other people's scrapbooks because all of the really cool, artsy ones usually have one photo.  And to quote Sweet Brown: 'Ain't nobody got time for that!'.  I mean, just one photo?  Either I'd have to start taking way better photos that encompassed everything, or my scrapbook would be way huge.

this is a page from when we did a toddler swim class with my daughter and at this same time my husband decided to sport a porn mustache.  I warn you, it's not a good look for him.  I think I used the Cricut at the beach to the make the mermaid.

I think the page turned out super cute.  I love the way the title looks and adding the orange background around the area I journaled on white paper made it pop a bit.

Tracking Baby's Travels

This is another fun page that I created to show our daughter all the places she went in her first two years.  I was originally only going to do the first year, but I thought I'd keep going. Probably will stop after two years since I'm running out of space to write things!  I got the idea when listening to a teenager tell her Mom all the places she's never been and the Mom was saying - we did that when you were younger!  You just don't remember it!

Now I have proof!  I had big plans for cutting out a super cool map of the United States, but then I found this sticker.  It was actually a bit of a pain because all the states are separate, but it was faster and easier than all the other plans I had.  I marked with a sticky jewel where she had been and then wrote where and the date.  Plus, a lot of the photos are in the scrapbook as well.

On a side note, remember those little Calico Critters?  When I was growing up and playing with them they were called Sylvanian Families.  I loved these little things so much.  I had a ton of them.  My favorites were a little mouse I named Bartholomew and a beaver who I named Misty.  Or maybe that was her given name, I can't remember.  I'm hoping they're all at my Dad's house and I can get them up here soon since we just got a doll house for our daughter.  I bring it up because Zulily has them on their site and it is taking all my self control to not buy them.  We're trying to budget right now.  :(

Hand Print Memory Page

I don't think I blogged about this one, but awhile ago, before my daughter turned one, I traced her hand on a piece of paper because she was figuring out this pen and ink thing and I thought that it would be interesting.  Well, soon it became pen and skin and clothes, oh well, she's washable right?  But it gave me another idea, what about cutting out that little hand we had traced?  Originally I had different plans, but I saw the things on pinterest with the Mom and Baby hands.  Rather than doing paint, I also traced my hand and my husband hand, cut them out, and added to scrapbook paper!

Goodness, look at that tiny litte hand, where does the time go?  I like the paper version better because paint is a little messy and I think you would have to use a lot to get it to be a really good print.

The darkest purple is my husband.  Which leads me to defend my hand in the middle - I have long fingers!  I don't have man hands!  At least, no one has ever told me if I do.  And I've always heard I have long fingers.  Hmm...now to stare at my hands and wonder why they are almost the same size as my husband's......

Like Mother, Like Father

I'm finally starting to wrap up my daughter's scrapbook (yes, she's almost two and yes it was for her first year), I want to post some of the pages I love.

I'm not a huge fan of how this page turned out, but I love the idea.  What I did was find photos of me and photos of my husband when we were close to her age and put them next to photos of her.  Strangely she doesn't look like either of us, but more like my sister-in-law.  Go figure.  :)

Sorry for the terrible quality of these photos!  Ignore out nasty carpet we can't afford to replace yet.  We're working on it!

On a side note, I rented a cartridge called Sweethearts from the library for a friend of mine's wedding album and I love that cartridge.  Here's hoping to find it cheap on Ebay or Zulily will feature it on their next Cricut shop.  I highly recommend it for weddings and bridal showers, it's better than the other ones I've tried.

Memory Game

I'm struggling with blog posts because I have a ton of half done projects.  Ug.  I hate that.  Everywhere I look are things not quite finished.  But I'm trying to remain positive because I'm slowly working on a few of them now and hopefully will have them done soon!  Of course I have a ticking time bomb- I'm pregnant due end of August, so whatever isn't accomplished by then, probably will wait 10 years.

But hopefully now that it's Spring (even though the weather is still very winter), I'll be motivated to get moving.  Winter always makes me sluggish and depressed.  Though you think I'd take all the time trapped indoors to get projects done.  But no.

So anyways.  A friend of mine was telling me that she wanted to find a memory game for her daughter, a premade one, but not one with characters such as sponge bob or Disney.  I get it, I don't like inundating my daughter with characters either.  Even though I think everyone else does.  I want her to make up her own mind, or as close as possible, to what she likes rather than commercial.  Oh geez, am I one of those Moms?

I was motivated to get my cricut out and cut some little animals out from my Create a Critter cartridge to make a cute memory game.  Check it out below.

i think they turned out pretty cute.  I was also excited to play with my daughter since we can always use new winter time activities.  All she wanted to do was pull the animals off the cares, so that game ended quickly.  they were pretty fast to make, did them in probably an hour or two one evening while my husband entertained our toddler.

the projects I'm motivated most on are to finish a Noah's Ark Baby blanket I've been working on FOREVER (so close to being done too!!!), My daughter's scrapbook (two pages left!!!), and the dining room.  Basically everything about the dining room.  Repainting, decluttering (hahahaha, why do I always set that goal when I know it won't happen??), changing up the mantel, and a new rug.  Just need some money now so I can get one of these fancy rugs on One Kings Lane.