Log Cabin

I started a Log Cabin Quilt in the summer of 2011, but after messing up a few of the blocks I put it on the back burner -rather the back of the craft closet!

I really want to finish up some of these old projects so I pulled it out, fixed the blocks, and started laying it out.  The log cabin is such a simple block, but I love how complex the end result can be!

Take a look at the different layouts. ("Quilt in a Day: Log Cabin" by Eleanor Burns is the book I used.)

I've decided to go with this one...

I Quit!!!

I'm quitting my job!

I've been wanting to focus on Gate17 full time for about 9 months now and I'm finally there!

You know, I did the accounting and found out in the first year of business we've cleared a couple hundred dollars profit so it seems like the perfect time to quit my full-time job! Ha!!!

If you don't risk anything you can't gain anything, so I'm risking it here, but I'm very confident.

Plus, a great new opportunity has presented itself to me -helping to maintain some of my stability.

I'm going to start babysitting two cute little girls who love to do crafts! If that isn't just my cup of tea I don't know what is!!!!

I'll be spending about 12.5 hours a week with the girls, giving me time to teach more sewing classes, host more pinterest parties, and develop new things for Gate17 Etsy!

I can't wait to see what comes in the new year!

Kissin' Tine

Every year when I see my parents in December my Stepdad hugs me and says "Merry Kissin' Tine!"  Back in my olden days this is how my sisters and I proclaimed that it was Christmas and time for Santa to come see us!

Here is our Kissin' Tine round up for the year!

After a fun mess of wiggly eyes and mini red pom-poms in the floor we were able to produce this lovely stack of Christmas Cards!

To celebrate our first Christmas as a married couple we made Mr. and Mrs. Reindeer cards!

Unfortunately many of the wiggly eyes popped off in shipping making for lots of blind reindeer. However, our recipients were gracious enough to remedy the problem, either with another touch of glue or a sharpie!

A Christmas Tradition! Making a pallet in the floor one night to watch a Christmas movie by the light of the Christmas Tree!  This year we watched "Holiday Inn". It is one of my favorites! Josh said he didn't like old black and white movies so I found a re-digitized color copy!!! It's not exactly what he meant, but he was a good sport and watched it with me anyway. Next year he can pick whatever goofy Christmas movie he wants. 

Christmas Eve we went to Josh's Parents to celebrate.

Christmas morning I made us French toast like his mom made for him.

And Christmas night my parents and grandma came over to celebrate.  I even cooked my very first ham. (picture is before it was cooked lol)

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I hope you had a great Kissin' Tine with your family!!!

December Pinterest Parties

This month I had three private Pinterest Parties!! They were so much fun.

I'm also excited to announce that Owl and Drum and The Gleeful Peacock are planning to have month Pinterest Parties!  More details coming in 2013!!!

Kendall Time

I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with my niece, Kendall, lately, but yesterday I took her to Target with me. It was so much fun! At the very grown up age of 6, she has definitely developed a personality of her own.

Sometimes its a bit demanding and temperamental, but that is easy to overcome with some productive interaction....

Like helping me get a few groceries, and adding to my list because she is learning to read and write!

She has a bit of fun spunk in her too! It is so awesome to watch her grow up and be able to talk to her like a grown up. (Okay so not exactly like a grown up, but grown up stuff on her level like why she can't get a $15 toy when she only has $10. *smiles*)

Winter Wreath

After a few curses at the hot glue gun and bandaging my wounds I proudly present this year's winter wreath!

(Note the love birds. *smiles* Keeping up with the "just married" theme.)

Working on the Railroad

So Josh has been applying to work for the railroad for at least 8 months.  He really loves aviation and working at the airport, but the railroad will provide so much more for us as we start thinking about having a family.  Plus the job security is pretty awesome all by itself.

Well he finally got the job!!!

He is going to be working around moving train engines back and forth or something like that! He starts on December 3rd. We are so excited about it.  He hasn't decided whether or not he's going to keep the airport job part time to maintain flight benefits, which is why we had to squeeze in our trip to the Atlanta Aquarium. Either way this is a great opportunity for our family!

Time for Tights!

 One of my new obsessions this year - Tights!  Oh my how I do love them!

I have others, but I don't have pictures of them yet. Besides, do you really need to see my black boots again?

Here how about you see my new Toms from Grandma Arlene! Sparkly!!!

Here are the "new" Toms that my Bestie, Lacey, helped me recover!  I love them. (Used Art Gallery Fabric.)

Lacey is thinking about starting her own blog and making a recovering tutorial for Toms. As soon as she does I will share the link!

Oh yeah, one more picture...

This is a better picture of my new reversible skirt. I'm going to create a tutorial for this, but I messed this one up and salvaged it so that tutorial is busted. Don't worry though, I already went to Owl and Drum for the fabric for a second skirt!

I was Interviewed!!

I was interviewed for Owl and Drum's Blog!

I'm so excited, and happy to start teaching classes there! I hope to see you soon!

Christmas is Coming!

Our theme this year was "Take Flight"!
I did the majority of our Christmas shopping on Black Friday so we are ready to go!

I've also started some of the Christmas crafts.

This is the start of our Christmas cards.

Little mock presents made from candy and mini tissue boxes.  These are for my very first in-home Pinterest Party!

Two Christmas craft fails for you:

My snow globe was cute to start with, but about a week later everything popped out of place! Now its a snow globe feature a mystical land where there is no gravity!

These were suppose to be cute snowflake ornaments.  It took about two hours to condition the clay, get the "perfect" circle, stamp the snowflake in and paint it.  Then I thought, "This could use a finishing touch to had a little bling so I'm going to add glitter!".  Bad Idea!!! I was to irritated to do any more trials. The supplies are back in the box in the closet to wait until another time!

Conclusion: I hate tinsel glitter.  Extra Fine glitter will forever be my friend!

Atlanta

This month we put the flight benefits to use again on two different day trips, both to Atlanta.

The first trip I went with my Mother-in-Law.  -I'll have you know that I'm one of the lucky, seemingly few, wives that has In-Laws she loves! We get along great, have similar interests, and we always have a good time together!

Anyway, Mom and I were trying to go to Fort Lauderdale to see Josh's Aunt Debbi, who I haven't met yet.  However, the draw back of free flights is that we fly standby, and it happened that the Saturday we went was to soon after Hurricane Sandi so it was impossible for us to find a flight out of Atlanta to Florida.

It was unfortunate that we didn't get to see Aunt Debbi, but on the bright side we did get to spend the day in Atlanta. Aunt Debbi even found us an Ikea in Atlanta and texted us detailed directions on how to get there!

Since we had planned on going to the Ikea in Fort Lauderdale I already had a wishlist a mile long prepared.  I think I did pretty good though. I was able to say no to several pretties. Of course, it helped that it all had to fit into our carry-on luggage! As an extra bonus to the trip, Mom and Aunt Debbi surprised me by paying for all my goodies.  (If you guys are reading this -Thanks Again!!!!)

I'm pretty excited about all of it.  I love the canisters and I'm looking forward to using everything.  The rainbow fabric is going to be perfect for the colorful bedroom!!!

The second trip was just for Josh and me.  One of Josh's friends at the airport was telling him about the aquarium in Atlanta and how amazing it was so we decided we had to go.

We had to squeeze this trip in before the holidays, a little earlier than we had been planning because Josh is going to be starting a new job soon! (More on that later!!!!)

Hehehehe this medium guy has teeth!

Poor guy was trapped with no hope of escape. (Cute though.)

A Sea Dragon!! This was probably my favorite new animal to see.  There was also another picture of a tank of fish that had so many neat colors. I have it saved somewhere - i just thought it could be a good source of inspiration for a quilt later in the future.

Penguins gathered around the water grate! (Get it? Ha!!!)

I'm thinking "dang glare", and the fish is probably thinking "dang human".

Last, but not least, another MARTA is another example of a great public transportation system.  This was dirtier than Minneapolis at times, a couple times it was much more crowded, and once it was a little scary, but still it is better than Tulsa.

New Class Samples

I'm working on a couple new projects for Owl and Drum!  These will be classes starting in 2013!!!

This quilt is a spin off of on of the pillow patterns in Tula Pink's book, "Quilts from the House of Tula Pink". (The same book used for the Vortex Euro Sham Pillow.)

This is the quilt we will be making in the Beginning Quilting Classes. I'll post more about it once the quilt is finished and I have more information.

This little guy needs his finishing touches, but he is completely pieced.  He is going to be so stinkin' cute it's ridiculous. I'm using this cute wall hanging to teach paper piecing at Owl and Drum.  This pattern is by Sonja Callaghan of Artisania -an independent pattern designer I found on Etsy!

Wax Paper Packages tied up with Fabric Scraps

Little things like matching His and Her lunches make me smile. :)

I use the scrap edges of fabric from sewing projects to tie our lunches wrapped in wax paper. So much better and prettier than the plastic baggies.

No Motivation

Today I had no motivation. I should have been cleaning the living room, but instead I cleaned our stewardess cart and that alone.

At least I finished one thing, though in the bigger picture that is the living room it doesn't count for much.

This cart is going to eventually go in the office, once I get that room organized.  And since my sewing machine is banned from the office for being to loud I decided to put my hand work projects in the baskets.  Now I will have something to work on in the office while Josh is in there.

Little by Little

When it comes to decorating the bland walls of this apartment, finding the time and the supplies for cheap is an upward climb sometimes.

Our living room and kitchen are grey and yellow. Our bathroom is kind of white and blue, but mostly its just a rug and mostly matching towels. Our office isn't completely decided yet, but it is leaning towards black and white with a blue of some shade.  So when it came to our bedroom I needed color! Bright, beautiful color -all of them to be more exact.

I've been working on it little by little over the last couple of months, and this is what I have so far.

I find these frames at thrift stores and garage sales. I usually don't spend more than $1.50 for a frame, but the oval one I did shell out a whopping $3.50!  I have 8 more frames waiting to be painted, but Josh has asked that I take break for a while.  I can't blame him because my painting space is the kitchen floor which kind of touches the living room floor which is my sewing/crafting space -all of which makes for a giant booby trap!

This little guy has been eyeing me at the thrift store for about a month.  He was $3 though and I didn't really need him so I kept putting it off. Then I went with my Bestie and she almost bought him! When she put him back I was relieved and decided at that moment, I really did need him! (It is always a good idea to wait about 30 days before making a big purchase! hahaha!)

He was an ugly brown owl, but a little spray paint and now he is all clean and pretty sitting on our dresser.

The two jewelry trays are also both thrift store finds totaling at $3 plus about $3 in supplies! I'm super happy with the way it turned out!

Last, but not least, the wall above our bed needs lots of work still, but I'm going to do the collage of "S's" so far we have 3.