one shabby chick

4:30 am

Woke up that early this morning so I could take a shower and get ready to head to the beach at 6am and get our pictures taken by this amazing photographer!

We had so much fun....of course, we are SO lucky to be able to just drive a few miles down to the beach...filled with tide pools, waves and sand. We took a bunch on the beach and then all changed and got into suits for some underwater pictures.

We did a trade - remember this quilt? Although I feel like I should make her another one after all the work she did today! We had a blast!

And Hubby and I are actually headed down to the same beach later this afternoon for a wedding.....(I gave the bride this quilt at her shower).

Should be a fun night...beach wedding and then the reception in our friends' beautiful yard up the hill.

We came home and I took a quick nap (sort of...hard to do when all the kids are awake and making noise!) and then made a skirt for Bela's friend - they are having a last-minute birthday sleep-over tonight.

Got a cute shirt at Old Navy last night (along with the cutest Hello Kitty lunch pail to wrap it in - can't find it on the website though!) and whipped up the skirt today.

Been a fun day and it's only 1 pm!!

test

 

Beautiful day in paradise

What I've been up to:

(based on this amazing embroidery on Flikr)

and this is how we spent our day:

I know, we have it rough here......

Helm & Anchor

A friend of mine and his buddy/co-worker have started up a blog featuring their "still-motion" videos. 

Here's a little peek of where we live:

No End from the "Helm" on Vimeo.

They have some really great videos posted already - go check it out!

Thanks

Thanks so much for all the wonderful suggestions.....the scrap winner is #19 - Amy!

In the end I settled on doing a quilt for my sister-in-law in orange and aqua. I already have quite a few in-progress quilts and quilting bee blocks that I plan on keeping so I decided I should start making a few quilts for other people too.

And since it is such a talented group of ladies, I want to make sure their own style comes through so I'm asking them to make log cabin-ish/improv blocks - I cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with.

Here's a peek at the fabrics I'm sending....

   

I finished up another set of quilting bee blocks - these are for Sarah (Common Threads Bee):

She asked for texture and a pop of color.

Yesterday we had a princess birthday party so I made up a little skirt on Saturday for the birthday girl.

We also ordered her a little paper doll - aren't they so cute?! I need to get the girls their own sets but for now I just printed out some of the ones we bought for recent birthdays for them to play with.

I'm working on two quilts this week....

and I practiced writing with my machine (it's just free-motion quilting with black thread)

(I blurred out the name - it's for an order and I wouldn't want to give anything away!)

I went and played some soccer yesterday too and am SO sore now...trying to work up the motivation to go sew!

ok I need some help

It won't be hard and I'm even bribing you all too!

You see, my month for this amazing bee is August and I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what to do.

I've already done dresden blocks, wonky log cabins (2x), houses, stars, Drunk Love style blocks - and I really want something that will showcase the talent of the amazing ladies in the bee.

So if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them......and to bribe you all, I'm giving away a big bag of scraps.

 

Just leave a comment/suggestion and I'll pick a winner on Monday morning.

Edited to add:

*** Thanks for all the suggestions...comments are now closed!***

Baby Mason

He's doing good....had his surgery on Friday and it went great. Now they are waiting for him to be able to eat well enough so they can bring him home....his mom said he's been intubated twice so he doesn't like anything in his mouth...poor little guy!

They are coming back to Hawaii as soon as they get the all clear and then he'll have another surgery in November (here in Hawaii). Can't wait to see the little guy and hold him!

Thanks for all the sale help :-) Got a few more fabric packs and lots of scraps - the funny thing is I still have two drawers full of scraps!

Mo sent me the most wonderful box. She had seen me raving about her cheater print on someone's blog and sent some to me - how sweet is that?! Along with some other prints from her new line - which you can find here.

I cannot wait to make a quilt out of this cheater print!

Have been baking a little too - Pioneer Woman's chocolate cake and banana bread - yum!

Today is our last swimming lesson - have a quilt basted and ready to be quilted and then I'm planning a baby quilt out of this line - fun! 

Quilting Bee blocks

These were the first thing on my list after I finished the quilts (which I did and got them all mailed off!).

I'll post more pictures soon (once I know they have gotten delivered to their recipients - can't wait to tell you who they were for!).

Today after swimming lessons I came home and worked on all my neglected quilting bee blocks - and finished them all.

This one is for Heather for the Bee-autiful Bee:

She even made up a great tutorial on her blog for this block!

This is Amy's way overdue block - She had us each make a pinwheel block so she'll have a sampler quilt.

 

Here's the tutorial for this block.

Kate's blocks for Busy Bees were nine patches with a center white square - they were small so I made a few of them.

and this is Jess's block for Common Threads - she gave us this as her inspiration quilt but wanted the blue to be the background instead of the white.....

 

can't wait to see all her blocks together - should be a very cool quilt.

I have another baby quilt I need to make and a few other quilts to finish up...not to mention my Doll Quilt to work on!

Be back tomorrow with some fun mail and an update on baby Mason!

Finally back

Hey all - I know it's been a while. I have emails to send but just thought I'd pop in to tell you I'm doing a little de-stashing in my Etsy shop.

 

I have a bunch of scrap packs and will be loading a bunch of fabric packs too.

 

And the best news of all - I finally got those quilts shipped off and will post pictures soon!

What I'm up to

Quilts....one down, 5 more to go.

And this one was from the first Old Red Barn Quilt-a-long. I've had the top in the to-be-quilted pile since I was a little intimidated about quilting such a big quilt on my machine.

Not anymore - my new table is working wonderfully and I've quilted two twin size quilts in the last couple days.

This one is going to a friend tomorrow - she's getting married at the end of the month and tomorrow is her bridal shower.

She loves yellow and I knew this would be perfect for her (I made the ties and little dress for her too).

 

I'll be cheering for Spain tomorrow - so sad that it's all over!