Change of plans.

Remember the post about My big project for 2011? Well, scratch that. I went to order the fabric the other night and it's sold out. Sold out everywhere except in Australia... I could certainly order from there, but it's $200 AUS dollars plus shipping... and I'd need two times that... plus the rest of the fabric... that was just for the fat quarters. Eek! I am so bummed, I really love that fabric. Oh well... have to find something else now. I'll be hitting up the local quilting store hopefully next week and see what they have in stock. I still WILL be making the quilt with that same pattern, just different fabric.

Laura says...

The other night I was so exhausted that I let Carson "cry it out" once in the night. He's been up every 2 hours every night since he was 4 months old. I am tired. I was so whooped I just could not get up the other night - and when I looked at the clock and realized it had been less than 2 hours since I'd last fed him... I let him cry. And cry. And fuss. And fuss some more. He was protesting for about 20 minutes when we heard... "Carson BE QUIET!" I giggled. Rich groaned. Carson fussed for maybe a minute more and then fell asleep... for all of 30 minutes. Then he was at it again - so I got up and fed him.

This morning we got in the car and pulled out of the driveway... Laura said to me, "Mommy, you're a super hero!" I asked her why she said that... "You're going Super FAST!" I was going 42 miles per hour.

Also on the ride in this morning...
Laura: When I get bigger Mommy, I'm going to go on a school bus to school.
Me: Yes you are. What are you going to do when you get to school?
Laura: The teacher talks to you and then you put your pack-ack on and get on the school bus.
Me: Yep, it'll be 2 years and you'll get to go to school.

... and then I realized that it's a year and a half until she goes to school! Wow! I told her she'll be turning four in September and she held up her 4 fingers and said "this many?" She's picking things up so fast and so quickly becoming a child, and less of a toddler.

The snow we had for Christmas has melted. Laura is pretty happy about that. She went out with her daddy this morning and she was playing in the sandbox... wool mittens - check! John Deere hat - check! Pink snow boots - Check! Good time? CHECK!

Rich has pretty much completed the demo in the bathroom and is working on sheetrocking and electric in our new closet. He went down to work and brought the dumptruck home today so he could load it up with the old stuff that has been taken out. I think now we need to go browsing and make some decisions on things like: new flooring (tile? lenolium?), cabinets (wood? painted?), mirrors (cabinets? flat?), lighting (above the mirror? sconces next to the mirrors?), paint (oooh so many colors to choose from!), tile for the tub... I really don't have any vision yet for what I want in this bathroom other than more space and 2 sinks.

Today is our last day home before we end this week of vacation and (semi) vacation. I worked 2 days last week - so it really has felt like a vacation for me too! Laura has really enjoyed her week home from daycare. She has gotten really used to waking up (happy) on her own time and she's been enjoying 3 hour naps nearly everyday! Bedtime has been pretty consistent around 8:30-9ish and she's been SO happy all week. We've not had a lot of whining (except a few instances like yesterday morning) and overall, she's been the sweet happy girl we know she is.

I told her this morning that our vacation is nearly over and that tomorrow she'll be going back to Lynnie's house while Mommy and Daddy go back to work. She coughed. Then she said "Mommy, I can't go to Lynnie's house." *cough* "I have a really bad cough." Richie told her "not today pumpkin, tomorrow you go to Lynnie's house"... she said something like "oH!" with a smile on her face and went back to playing. We've not heard another cough since. Wonder what she'll try to pull tomorrow morning! I sense that it could be rough getting up and around and out of here on time.

My big project for 2011...

I got Elizabeth Hartman's book "The Practical Guide to Patchwork" for Christmas. I'm going to make the "little leaves" quilt in a twin size for dd's bed. That'll be 3 times larger than the quilt in the book so I have to do lots of adjustments, and the material that I want to use will be much more expensive than I'd originally planned for when I had the great idea to make my daughter a quilt. I'm estimating ~$200 or so by the time I figure fabric for front and back and binding, thread, and batting... Eek! I should find something cheaper, but I think I'm so in love with this that I'll try to just save up for it and it'll be a keepsake for her.

Here's a pic of the Little Leaves pattern. What I really like about it is that the leaves are all applique. So the only real quilt piecing there will be is putting the 12x12 blocks themselves together.

My quilt will be 6 blocks wide and 8 blocks long.
I want to use this material for the leaves.

I want to do this back (also from the book, from a quilt called "Small Plates")

And I want to use these as the main 2 fabrics with swatches from the leaves for the middle part.

Oh, and the only quilt I've ever made was a small doll quilt for Laura for this past Christmas... I hope I'm not in over my head! I do know three very good quilters in real life though and one has a long arm quilting machine (That I'm hoping!) that I'll be able to use when I get to that part!

I hope that the way this morning started is not an indication of how the year will go for our family. Both kids were super whiney when they got up.

Carson has been really clingy and my arm hurts from carrying him around so much lately. Rich has spent the past few days this week home with the kids and his arm is sore too from holding Carson. Seems all he wants to do lately is be held... while someone is standing up.

Richie has been working on the bathroom remodel. We're making our red hallway bathroom much more user friendly - read: bigger and with 2 sinks! In turn, this makes our closet in our room smaller and gets rid of our tiny bathroom that was off of our bedroom.

Had plans for Richie to work much of the day in the bathroom, but when I heard him yelp and say he cut himself... plans for the day were derailed. He'd taken a huge piece of the wall with the tile on it out and when he carried it downstairs, he cut his knuckle on his left hand... pretty badly. It bled a lot and we were trying to decide if he'd need a trip to convenient care or not. I had some steri strips in the closet so we wrapped his finger up with an abdominal binder (read: huge fat bandage) and he put pressure on for about 20 minutes. When we checked it, it was still gushing but slower. I was able to slap one steri strip on it and then he held it again for awhile. Then I slapped 2 more steri strips onto it and the bleeding stopped with that. We'll see how it goes though...

We had David and Ally and their mom Laura over for a couple hours so the kids could play. They bounced and bounced and really enjoyed the bouncy house.

I've got a turkey in the oven now for dinner tonight. When we cook a turkey, we don't do all the fixin's. Our favorite part of a turkey is the leftovers to make sandwiches with - so we usually skip the big dinner and go straight for the sandwiches.

Laura is down for her nap and Carson is playing with his new blocks. Richie is watching a John Wayne movie and I'm about to get my knitting out... making a little hat.

I'm looking for a baked oatmeal recipe... one that has apple chunks in it... anyone have a recipe that's tried and true they're willing to share?

Our evening today was spent with 2 happy kids. Carson has a lot of speed with his little crawl these days and he can get from the living room to the bedroom end of the house super quick. He likes it when you chase him and he'll crawl and keep looking behind him and then giggle as he crawls faster.

Laura was having a grand time playing princesses... she was wearing her blue cinderella dress and her wedding veil. She went to look for her prince but couldn't find him because he must have taken their dog out for a walk. Then she put on her elmo backpack because it had dog treats in it. Then she grabbed her umbrella in case it rained when they went on their picnic. They were eating bunny on their picnic. Wow... the imagination of a 3 year old!


(I know all of that was totally random, but I figure posting something is better than nothing, right?) We'll see how 2011 goes!