Well, that's 2011!

January: We found out we were pregnant New Year's Day!

February: We met Miss Audrey for the first time via ultrasound. 

 I took my mock boards at school and it snowed a lot!

March: Lots of work at school and a growing belly, 

but time to work on some quilts here and there!

April: I took my dental boards and passed!

May: I graduated and became a dentist!  

Now I could really focus on baby crafting...and finding a job!

June: I started working super-part-time and avoided

 all that crazy Texas heat making Audrey's quilt.

July: Still working and putting together a nursery!

August: We met my niece, Hattie, and two weeks later, Miss Audrey came!

September: I enjoyed a nice, long maternity leave loving on my sweet girl

 and even squeezed in a little quilting ; )

October: Back to work super-part-time with lots of

 time at home watching Audrey grow!

November: Audrey started rolling over and loves reading books with us!  

We have so much to be thankful for!

December: We had a wonderful Christmas with friends and family, 

celebrating our Savior's birth.  Audrey is so active,

 rolling both ways and starting to creep!

I really miss my creative time, so if I have a sewing resolution, it's to get upstairs in my sewing room for some "me time" every week.  It'll do me good ; )

Oh, and then there's the Capitol 10K in April!  Gotta get used to that jogging stroller!  (and get a head start on our costumes!)

happy new year!

Christmas!???

Already? Time flies and has definitely left little time for crafting or quilting of any kind! I did have a little Christmas shirt making party with my sister in law, Lisa a week or so ago. I found this cute idea on Pinterest and we figured we'd give it a go! Easy peasy, right? We even just used fabric glue except for the bows. Well, there were 3 shirts to make, two onesies and one for my 3-year old niece. With 2 babies in tow, and a missing onesie, we only managed to eek out her 2 shirts. So I'm here in the car on the way to Houston doing a little Christmas crafting just in the nick of time!

Hope you're enjoying a restful celebration of our Savior's birth! Merry Christmas!

My Current Project's Progress

 1 Day

1 Week

1 Month

2 Months

3 Months

This girl is growing fast!  Recently, she's started picking up small toys and today, she rolled over from tummy to back!  She started refusing the occasional bottle we give her, so we've had our hands full with that one.  She's doing so much better, though!

Surprisingly, I've had some time in my sewing room, but so far it's just been some mending.  I did pull out the Hope Valley quilt I started for my graduation present to myself, so I'll have to start getting after that.  I also have to make sure her onesie is ready for December : )  My cousin, Nicole, makes these shirts (Nicole's Bows on Facebook) and she made a cute snowman for Christmas, but alas, I'm pretty sure Miss Audrey won't fit in it come December 30th.  But I have a plan up my sleeve to make it work ; )

Back in the Saddle Again

Although I technically started this quilt and had all the blocks made before baby, it was a pretty big deal to be able to finish it after Miss Audrey made her arrival.  I made it a point to try to quilt our first week home.  We were home on Thursday, we were in my sewing room by Tuesday.  She slept the whole time!  It got harder as she woke up to the world, but soon I started taking her activity gym up there and she would play away for 15-20 minutes at a time with lullabies playing on Pandora.  Erik also gave me a morning to sew while he and Audrey watched college football at my parents' house. So here's the result

 

My mom bought this fabric 3 years before baby.  My room was decorated with Peter Rabbit as a child and I even started collecting more of the Wedgwood when I got a bit older.  I thought it would be a great idea to decorate our baby-of-unknown-gender's nursery with Peter Rabbit, Erik did not think so.  So my mom decorated her nursery with all of my old things and so it deserved a quilt from her fabric.  The rick-rack was added to ahem hide some imperfections in my fussy cutting, but I think it adds a vintage look that fits with the nursery.  I gave it to her for her birthday : )

Here's our little 12 pound turkey from yesterday's festivities!

We have so much to be thankful for this year: happy, healthy baby, wonderful family, and good jobs! 

I really have been so blessed to find part time work as a general dentist in Sunnyvale, Texas working with a great dentist.  I've been working around 4 days a month and will work at least two days a week starting in January.  I love that I get to stay home so much with Audrey, but I love being able to work in a great office with a great staff and do what I worked so hard for these past four years!  Erik's having fun, too, developing a marketing campaign for me.  That business degree is sure helping out!  Check out the website he made for me!

We plan to decorate for Christmas one box at a time.  Sounds like a good nap time activity : )

Hope you're enjoying the season!

The Nursery, the Quilt, and Some Portraits

 So, here it is : )

 (Please ignore the piles of laundry that I just couldn't get put away in the few seconds I had to take these photos...)

The wall color is the same as every wall in our home...Summertime.  We use to have such a hard time picking out beige wall color until the day we asked the paint guy at Home Depot what all the builders use.  He said it was Summertime.  And we like it : )

Erik did the crown molding and plate rail.  We bought the letters on Etsy from Simply Sawdust and Erik sanded and spray painted them.  We attached them to the wall with those 3M Command Strips.

These lovely paintings are from our dear friend Vanessa who also has an Etsy shop called Nessa Dee Art.

Aren't they perfect in the room?

 

The dresser is IKEA, the lamp is Target with some added ribbon, and the chair is from Walmart online.  We really wanted an upholstered rocker, but they are soooo expensive. This rocker got good reviews on Walmart.  You have to buy the slip cover separately, but I kinda like that it's a slip cover, anyway.  It's really comfortable for me when we're nursing and my nursing pillow fits perfectly.  

Right now on this wall, there's just a little black/brown chest on the floor with toys, books, and junk piled on top of it.  We're looking for a bookshelf to go on the opposing wall so we can store all of that stuff.  Not sure if we'll keep the chest as a toy box or what.

And the quilt makes an appearance!  I did the Fat Quarterly Jelly Roll Quilt Along with fat quarters.   

The fabrics are the same ones we used in the frames plus a few more.  Some of the greens are so muted, it kind of washes out in all of these pictures.  I need to take some in better lighting.

 

Some of the prints have some light blue, so I did the border in the same blue to pick it up a bit more and brighten up all the green and brown.  I hand quilted it with shades of green and white using perle cotton.  It went pretty quickly as I avoided the record-setting heat by watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix on our Roku with my feet propped up to dodge swelling.  Yeah, it's been finished for a while now. : )

I kinda have a feeling she'll be getting a girlier quilt now that we, well, know she's a girl : )

This is the dress I wore when I came home from the hospital : )

Those dress pictures comprise my most successful photo shoot with her now that I have my new camera.  The trick?  Nurse, drape blanket over papasan/bouncer chair, and take some sleepy pictures!

I'm also loving my birthday present from my in-laws: a 50 mm f/1.8 lens : )

We also had some professional pictures taken by Jo Brock of Jo Brock Photography.

Sweet girl!