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!

What the heck I've been up to

So I finally got to go on that vacation that I've been whining about. I took the kids and we went to visit my cousin, his wife and newly adopted son in Virginia. It was my daughter's first plane trip, and my son's second. He said he was too little to remember the first one, so he felt like this was his first too. We had a FANTASTIC time.

Our first day we spent at the National Zoo. It was close to 90 and just downright steamy. The kids are wet from the water sprays they have along the walkways to keep cool.



All that they cared about was seeing the pandas, which we did. From far away, but they were live pandas nonetheless.

The next day we spent at the Museum of Natural History and walking the National Mall. It was a wonderful day, but LONG for little legs.

The true excitement was being in a terminal at Dulles when the EARTHQUAKE hit. The whole terminal sort of slid side to side. Some pieces of tile fell from the ceiling. After a brief "huh, what was that?" my kids went right back to reading their books. Really. They are tough to impress apparently.



Now that we're home, I've been working on this blanket for a co-worker. I've made so many of these "a la Betz White Warm Fuzzies" style blankets now. They are really loved. I try to put some of my salvaged trims on each one. The blue on this one is one of my favorite and almost gone.



I usually put flannel on the back and they are just super soft and cuddly.





Last but not least, I am still on my two-per-week pace of making pillowcases for Conkerr Cancer. So far I've got nine. My goal is to donate a cool 100 over the course of the year. I'm hoping to find time to branch out and use different patterns as the year goes on. This one is just so easy and sews up so quickly, I've stuck to it for now.



What are you working on these last few days of summer??

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.

Annual Christmas Trip to Beantown

It's actually become and annual tradition..we started going four years ago when we were just getting to the "serious dating" stage. We take a trip to Boston for some great food in the North End, some Christmas shopping, and a quick little getaway in the chaos that is holiday time.

This year we stayed at The Langham, Boston. It's right in the heart of the financial district. The room was very nice, but no free breakfast. A pretty big drawback in my book! We decided to walk to dinner, although it was pretty windy and cold, and saw this along the way, and I just loved it.



We got to dinner, at Trattoria di Monica on Prince Street in the North End. It came pretty highly recommended, and being the research geek I am, I read tons of online reviews. It was exactly the type of restaurant we love. Small, great atmosphere, romantic (ok, that's my favorite, not Rob's), and amazing food. Very cozy on a cold wintery night.



Even though it was tiny, Rob managed to snap a few pics, and caught me smiling at the amazing choices. At least this time I wasn't tweeting, or updating my Facebook page, which is what he usually catches me doing.



After dinner we stopped at Mike's Bakery, on Hanover Street, which was actually rockin' at 10:30. There were literally throngs of people going in and out. Some sitting with coffee, some taking boxes of sweet deliciousness home. That I did manage to tweet about.



I got a decaf cappucino, and about 8 different chocolate treats. Giant peanut butter cups, giant chocolate dipped pretzel rods with toffee crumbs on top, coconut clusters...oh lord. All of them were amazing, and we actually have a few left.

When we got back to the hotel, the concierge actually managed the truly rare and elusive photo of Rob AND Rebecca. These don't happen often, so I was glad it came out as well as it did.



The next morning we went to Sowa Holiday Market, which is a fantastic show featuring 80 amazing artists and craftspeople. I tell myself that I'm there to buy gifts and then manage to come home with presents for myself! My favorite artist was there, James Polisky. He designed my logo.



He has an amazing perspective. He manages to show the darker side of people, kids, animals, you name it, with what to me feels like a beautiful, funny overlay. For some reason, his work just speaks to me.

As we were eating lunch on Newbury Street, I was looking out the window and saw all kinds of people in Santa hats run by one block up. As luck would have it 5 minutes later, the Speedo Santa Run went right past us. I had never heard of it, but I guess it's to raise money for a few local charities. Needless to say Rob got TONS of pictures, but just to give you a flavor...these people were CRAZY.





As always, it was a wonderful, memorable trip. We will most definately be going back next Christmastime.