Houston Quilt Show & Festival

This past weekend my wonderful Husband took me to the quilt show in Houston... or the International Quilt Festival... whatever... I got to look/drool over quilts for half a wonderful day. The only sad part was that I started to miss my baby (who was hanging out with his Grandparents) after lunch. That being said, I'm kinda glad he didn't come. Steven and I had a wonderful date!

We spent most of the day looking at the quilts on display. I did have a ton of money to spend so I figured the less time I spent looking at kits, fabrics, books, machines, quilting gadgets, etc the better! I came away only spending $30 on some awesome civil war reproduction fabric.

Here are some pictures (click on picture to make it bigger). After reviewing the pictures I realized I'm kinda drawn towards patriotic quilts. I guess I have some red, white & blue quilts in my future.

This quilt made me want a little girl... but most things these days makes me want a little girl. (Not that I don't love & adore my baby boy!)



Steven liked this quilt... all the applique made me cringe





This quilt was crazy... so much quilting! I didn't stick around long, but I'm pretty sure there were some kinda of raffle going on in this booth. Oh well, there was just too much to see.





Another quilt with the above quilt.



I like this one...



And this is for my Jewish friend, Jessie...



This one was one of my many favorites. It's simple and pretty traditional. I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the fabrics... and of course the picture doesn't do it justice.



The geese on this one curve... I've gotta figure out how they did this... probably applique, *sigh*



Another favorite!



People must spend all year on these quilts... maybe multiple years. There are some skinny, small pieces on this quilt! But I really like the butterflies.



Another favorite! I love the flying geese (of course) and all the stars. Steven liked the color, but I thought it could use some color. I think it would be great in red.



Every piece on this quilt (and the pieces were like a inch wide) had different quilting.



If only I had time to make John an alphabet quilt like this...



I like triangles...



The next few ones are antique quilts (all quilted by hand... ouch!... they were done before there was TV for sure!!!). The first one was actually from Enid, Oklahoma... we know a few good folks from there!



We kinda lost order after the antique quilts and just started "meandering" around the show. The fabric in this one was better in person, but I still like it.



This one was crazy! It was a calender quilt (quilting the different seasons), and all those little green specks (leaves) are actually little pieces of fabric! Unbelievable!





One that Steven liked...



Oooo... This one was definitely my FAVORITE of favorites. I really like the different sized blocks and the flying geese that border some of the blocks. I LOVE samplers that are done like this. I MUST make one... one day...



Look closely and you will see the evolution of the buggies in the border.



Things that are appliqued do look so pretty...



This is the quilt for me right now... and Steven... we both have a thing for flying geese.





I really liked the colors in this one... they make me feel girly!



This was a KING sized quilt... Like I said, people must work on these for YEARS!!!



OHHH, and the architecture quilts were so coooool! From a distance I couldn't believe this was a quilt!







Back in the patriotic area...



This one was done in silk & had feathers!... very, very, cool... it will be a while before I'm at that level... like maybe when I'm 90! I sooo wanted to touch it... don't worry, I didn't.





A pretty sweet medallion.



There were some crazy quilts that were... well... just crazy!



I'm not sure why I took a picture of this one... it's nice, though. Maybe I'll do something similar to introduce myself to applique.



I like the colors in this one and the little "folded" flowers.



Another quilt I took a picture of, but forgot why...



This was a civil war quilt that a guild did... I like civil war quilts.... I like the fabrics and the simple piecing.





This made my hand hurt! These pieces were like a 1/4 inch wide. Just crazy!!!



The border of this one was really fun... they put buttons on it!



Another favorite... can you guess why?



And finally, this cracked me up! Can you see the faithful hubsters peeking in? He didn't actually go in. He's so sweet to look at quilts with me.

back on track... Thanksgiving!!!

Okay, okay, I admit it... I jumped the gun. Can you blame me? The day after Halloween I went grocery shopping and saw employees stocking Christmas merchandise. And I can't count on two hands the number of Christmas commercials I've already seen. HOWEVER, I promise I haven't forgotten about Thanksgiving.

For me, Thanksgiving is up there in my top three favorite holidays. I think I enjoy it because it's a time of year when everyone is "counting their blessings." Have you counted your blessings lately? Doesn't it put you in a ridiculously good mood? A thankful heart is a very enjoyable heart to be around.

More than teaching John about the Pilgrims or the Indians (which are an important parts of Thanksgiving) I want him to learn to give thanks to God for all he has. And, of course, I have a couple of ideas for this season... again, we'll see if they pan out as well as they came together in my head.

All of my ideas center around writing down our Thanks. The funny thing is that this week's MOPs was about "counting your blessing" and we made a craft to help us do just that. I promise I wrote this post first... but more on that later..

I like the idea of doing a Thankful Tree for when John is a bit older. You make a tree out of craft paper to put on your wall (or a door). Then each kiddo gets a different color of paper to make their leaves (they can trace their hand to make a leaf). On each leaf, the kids write/draw what they are thankful for and puts it on the tree. The parents write their thanks on the trunk of the tree... I like the symbolism behind that. On Thanksgiving you can take the leaves down one by one reviewing each thanksgiving.

A couple of days ago I heard a similar idea on the radio, maybe better for older kids. All through the month of November you write what you are thankful for on a piece of paper and place it in a festive storage container. On Thanksgiving you go through the pieces of paper and share your thanksgiving with everyone. Of course, I have the perfect pumpkin in mind! We could use that wonderful pumpkin now for Steven and I. Later we can store the construction paper hand print cut outs in it for when John wants to do the tree.

Well, the people at Mops must listen to KSBJ because that is pretty much what we did this Thursday. They provided the boxes and we decorated them. I really like the way the top of my box turned out so I think we will be using this until we can finance a beautiful Jim Shore Pumpkin. The speaker was great and I definitely came back feeling refreshed. I really like MOPS.






On the decorating front, I need to make a banner/wall hanging to display Colossians 2:7,

"Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all He has done."

My decorating style tends to lean toward the traditional side... I do prefer simple lines, but in general I can thoroughly appreciate the traditional style. I LOVE the idea of rotating quilted wall hanging. The only problem is that I need to get on the ball when it comes to making said wall hanging... sigh. When I do get around to it, I hope to design a Thanksgiving one around Colossians 2:7.

Lots, lots to do! Happy Thanksgiving!

Thinking about Advent. Yep, already!

Thanksgiving is on it's way and that only means that Christmas is right on our heals. Halloween may have stumped us, but for Christmas I'm just oozing with ideas for traditions for our little family. My favorite idea is the Jesse Tree! This seems like such a great way to teach our children about advent. I love the season of preparing our hearts to receive Christ.

For a Jesse Tree you read an Old Testament story every day of December building up to Christmas. Each story leads up to the birth of Christ and has a corresponding ornament you place on the tree. The "tree" idea comes from Isiah 11:1, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit."

The hope is that our kids will look forward to the excitement of placing a new ornament on the tree each night, and Steven and I will look forward to sharing with our children all that God did to prepare the world for the best gift of all!

The are soooo soooo many ideas online for setting up a Jesse Tree. Here are just a few.

First, here is a pretty detailed explanation of the Jesse Tree and a chart (at the bottom of the page) of the readings and symbols. This is a great reference for establishing the tradition.

This blog is my favorite so far. It seems like last year she was almost done perfecting her tree, so maybe this year she will have some more ideas. Her ornaments are really nice and coordinate well. I also LOVE the idea of the bags under the tree, just like little presents. This is kinda my "goal."

This blog is less matchy-matchy, but still quite solid. She reads from the Big Picture Story Bible for their daily reading... convenient, we already read out of that book!

I don't quite have time to get everything together for a well coordinated tree. I think for this year it may be some paper symbols I print on card stock, color and string up on a ribbon. John won't have a memory of the ornaments so I still have some grace time.

I'm kinda undecided whether I'll buy (and slightly modify) the ornament or make them. All I know is that I want them to coordinate and look nice. And of course they have to be durable because we have a little boy who will be doing the "placing" of the ornaments. If I decide to buy them, I'll hit up some after Christmas sales to find the nicer ornaments. I will just swap out the paper copies as I find or make better replacements.

I'll probably start with this website. They have good printable symbols, but I don't think John will get much out of the devotions, yet. So, we will probably use this website as our reading guide. I'm thinking we will read the story out of The Big Picture for John, place the ornament and put him in bed. After he's down, Steven and I can go back and read the parental devotion. I hope it works out that easy...

Anyway, there are, of course, a plethora of ideas on the world wide web... and now it's just a matter of deciding on a permanent option and establishing a tradition. My goal for this month is to get the symbols printed and colored. And to print out all devotions to read. That should be a good enough start for this year.

Happy Tradition Making!

Come on, buddy.... you're sooo close

John is getting soooo close to crawling. He has started to push up on all fours. Don't be fooled, he only stays like this for 2 seconds... just long enough to take a picture. He started doing this over the weekend, but I feel like he gets better and better at it every time I get him up to play. He should be traditionally crawling by Thanksgiving.

I'm actually really excited for him now. With his little army crawl he can get pretty much where ever he wants, so the dreaded part of mobility has already been faced. In fact, he already knows the word "No!" It was a sad day for me, but I just keep reminding myself that training him now will make my job easier later. We have two major "no, no" areas... the vertical blinds & the trash can... and I think he's learning the rules. Anyway... enjoy some pics.

Fall Camping Trip

We love camping! We wanted John's first campout to be at the church's annual visit to Inks Lake, but John was just a month old and it was a stressful time for us. So when this camping trip came around I was pretty excited. We originally wanted to go to Lost Maples with some friends, but Steven had to be at work the day that our friends planned the trip. Instead we headed to Sam Houston National Park with a group of families in our church.

We need to become more efficient at packing. I feel like we bring so much stuff we don't need, only to discover that we left something that we really needed. I need to make a camping packing list or something. You can see in these pictures that we really know how to pack a car! Can you even find the baby inside?







We planned to go a little early so that we could visit the Sam Houston statue. We kinda took it easy and enjoyed our day.









I thought this was funny... I looked for an HEB one, but I guess they don't care about good ol' Sam.



Steven like to give John things to "explore"... but he only "explores" with his mouth.



We didn't do much on Friday. Mainly getting set up, then cooking dinner and hanging out. It was going to get really cold on Friday night and we could feel it when the sun started to set. We bundled up and tried to keep John warm.











John slept between us on Friday night. It was a long night! I forgot the pacifier so I spent most of the night in a strange position with my finger in his mouth. John also took turns in our sleeping bags. It got really, really cold.

To make things worse there was a burn ban so we couldn't do campfires. Campouts are a lot less fun when you can't have a campfire. When John woke up early and we both couldn't sleep anymore we just resorted to snuggling in our sleeping bags while he played in between us.







When his first nap of the day came around John was exhausted. It had warmed up and so we felt comfortable letting him sleep in the pack-n-play. He slept hard!



Before lunch we took a hike as a family. I tired the back carry in my wrap, but I don't recommend doing it the way most websites say to do it. Half way through the hike we had to invent a new way of wrapping it. You can see how he looks much more secure in the second picture. He took his second nap of the day during the hike.





We made lunch and some of the ladies from our group offered to watch John while we went on our second hike. So nice to get a little unexpected time together. The trails were nice... a little short, but still nice. The park was very ADA friendly so sometimes it felt less like a hike and more like a walk.

If someone wasn't holding John, he spent his day on the picnic blanket trying to figure out how to crawl off of it. He's getting so close to actually crawling. When he gets into position he goes more backwards than forwards, so he usually uses his army crawl to get around. I'm sure he will be up on all fours in a few weeks.





Saturday night was forecasted to be a lot warmer so we felt like we would all get a better night sleep if John slept in the pack-n-play. We covered it with the picnic blanket on three sides to keep any drafts out. We ALL got such a better night sleep... it was amazing!



The caged animal!



Sunday we packed up and headed out. It was a pretty quick trip and pretty uneventful. The best part of camping is really talking to all the couples we go with. We had many great conversations. It was a good trip!

Dad & John on Halloween