No sewing last week...for a good cause

I got absolutely nothing sewn last week. But I had a good reason. My husband and I took a 4 day trip to Colorado to stay with friends and ski. Sans children. That's right. Grown-up time. It was a lot of travel for two days of play, but it was worth it and we had an amazing time.


Here we are on our first play day after skiing at Breckenridge. I did blue square trails and was very pleased with myself. Blue squares are not all created equal.




This is us after our second day of skiing. We skied Arapahoe Basin and drove up to the Continental Divide afterwards. We may look cold, but it was a balmy 55 degrees, even up that high!




And I have to share, out of pride and complete amazement...my husband is a really accomplished skier. He loved Arapahoe Basin and skied "The Legend". Our friend took this picture of him, because I sure as heck didn't go up that high. Notice the signs...it basically says it's a cliff covered with jutting out rocks. Go ahead and ski it if you dare.



I'm happy to be back home and looking forward to posting about what I was able to sew this weekend on Sunday!

One of my last winter weekends

I don't know where you all live, but here in CT it has been a strange, not-very-winter-like-winter. This was probably the last weekend for local skiing. Unless you go up north (VT or NH) it won't be cold enough to make snow, or keep what they did make...so we tried to enjoy it.

This is my step-son, who is a PERPETUAL teaser, chops buster and all around prankster extraordinaire. Lucky for me, Rob gave me this great photo opp. I NEVER get to pull one over on him, and he had no idea.



The best part though was, that he had a great sense of humor about it, and we both had a really good laugh.



I also have spent some time this winter making home made dog treats, and I think I've perfected this one recipe. I know how to alter it so that the texture is consistent and I can actually easily make these little disk shapes. I got the recipe here.



My daughter had her second horse riding show this morning, and she made such HUGE improvements, she actually took one blue ribbon home today. She was ecstatic.



And the tiny little bit of sewing I did manage to sneak in, was a strip based quilt that I started out of a Kaffe Fassett design roll I got on sale somewhere. Of course, I didn't realize that design roll means 28 strips, not 40. Thankfully though, I had enough to make the quilt. Once I get the top done, I'll blog about the book and the pattern.



Now off to watch the Oscars and eat popcorn. Not bad at all for a non-winter-like weeekend.

March - In like a lion, out like a lamb.

It was a loooonggg month of March at my house. I had two kids with strep throat, and ended up sick myself. Sicker than I can remember being for an awfully long time. The germs have passed, along with the ending of Daylight Savings Time, and I am really ready for spring to kick in.

I did quite a bit of sewing at the beginning of the month, and just finally finished the top to a baby quilt for some friends on Sunday. It's another "thanks to Twitter" project. The pattern designer, Rachel Griffith, tweeted about her new pattern, "Flipside" being available at Fat Quarter Shop. When I saw it, I knew I had to make it for someone. Anyone. So I ordered the pattern right away. Just so happened, that I also saw a tweet (or a newsletter) from Above All Fabric saying that Kate Spain's Central Park was available. Just what the pattern called for! Much internet shopping ensued.

I didn't read the pattern carefully enough, and I just started cutting as soon as the fabric came. I ended up making the larger size (not the crib size) of the quilt, which was 4 blocks by 4 blocks. I decided to keep it that size, I'd always rather have a quilt a little big than too small. Don't you think??

Here is the finished top. Which I LOVE. Funny though, when I finished my blocks, I was so proud...they all measured around 12 1/4" and I thought "look at me! I'm finally not making those wide seam allowances anymore. I can just trim them all to the perfect 12" size, isn't this GREAT". So trim away I did. Then I re-read the directions to find that the blocks were supposed to be 12 1/2"!! So, I had to trim my sashing and center squares to fit. But everything is nice and square now!!



After my "adjustments", I'm very pleased with how my sashing lined up.



On a more personal note the best part of March, by far, was my first "vacation" with my husband since our honeymoon almost 3 years ago. We went to Vail, Colorado to ski for 3 days. I had only ever skied in the "east" and was absolutely blown away by the breathtaking Rocky Mountains. My husband is a photographer AND a skier, so he was in his glory for this trip...


This was the first year I would actually call myself a legitimate skier. I'd been skiing before, a handful of times, but I went around 20 times this year with all of the record breaking snow that we got, and my skiing improved dramatically. I was actually able to ski this...which is part of the China Bowl on the back side of the mountain at Vail. It was SO much fun and I was really proud of myself.



We had an absolutely fantastic trip. Best of all, I'm actually looking FORWARD to next winter, which I never imagined I would say. The weather was perfect, and we came home to happy kids. You can't ask for anything more than that!



Hopefully, I can hop back on the blogging bandwagon. Up next, I'm going to start on a raincoat for my daughter with Amy Butler's Little Splashes pattern.

Starry Night progress and how to enjoy a snowy winter

It's hard to believe, but February is the 8th month of my Starry Night BOM. With each of these that I do, I can really see improvement in my piecing. I really like the colors on this block too. I'll for sure be making one of the filler blocks with these colors.



Switching gears...as you may well know, it has been the snowiest winter in VERY long time around here. The result is that my sweetie has gotten full on back into skiing and has pulled me along with him. Last weekend we drove up to Stratton Mountain in Vermont on Friday so we could ski for the day Saturday.

Here's WBR (that's World's Best Rob) at the top of the mountain...look how low to the ground those trees are and how caked they are with snow!



I'd never been to a "big" Vermont mountain, so I really enjoyed the view from the top. It was challenging skiing for me for sure, but there were loads of trails to try, and many lifts, so we got a full day of skiing in. I went down my first "glades" trail (where they don't take out the trees and you have to ski through the woods) and only fell down four times!



Just so you all can see what a goober I can be...this is a picture I took of myself (with my new iPhone, my old one got dropped in a bathtub and died the night before). You can see how giddy I am, both to be at the top of the mountain, but also to be enjoying my new toy.



We had so much fun on our day away, that when we came home, we decided to take the kids to a smaller local mountain in Massachusetts called Butternut on Sunday to see how THEY liked skiing. These pictures were taken BEFORE any skiing was actually done. Note the happy faces.



And here's Ally, making sure her big brother is actually smiling for the camera (which he wasn't).



For better or worse, they both did ok, but neither of them seems to be clamoring to go back. So for now, it looks like skiing will by my thing to do with Rob. Which is ok by me.

What do you do with your family outdoors in the winter? I'd love to hear about it.

Next up, an update on my argyle quilt for my little (big) man, and my first wonky block!