Picnic Time!

I recently realized our family needed to keep a quilt in the car--you know, for emergency picnics and playground adventures!  I love simple patchwork so I cut up my fat quarter bundle of Anna Maria Horner linens (from Amanda) and whipped this up!  For those eagle-eyed fabric junkies, yes, I left out one of the feather prints (the purple/maroon one) because it just wasn't my fav.

I decided to try hand-tying a quilt for the first time!  I have to say, it won't be the last!  Super simple and quick!  I used pearl cotton and tied the center of every square and at each 4-square intersection (so roughly, every 4").  To see a how to on hand-tying, check out this VIDEO by Mary Fons.

My squares were cut at 9" so they finish at 8.5".  The quilt is about 60"x68"  I really love the texture and durability of the linen.  It's perfect for something that will be used outdoors with boys tromping all over it!  

For the back I had the perfect amount of this adorable Lucie Summers Summerville letter fabric!  I think  it's a nice contrast the craziness that's on the front!  I also used some premade Anna Maria Horner binding I've had for a while.  I can't wait to get this washed and in the car.....I feel a picnic coming on!

Just a Walk

Sometimes, it's the small things.

Like taking the dog for a walk.....

Or trying to.....

Or watching him walk ahead.....

That remind me these moments are fleeting and precious.  All too soon he will leave to become the man he is destined to be.  

All too soon I will stand alone and watch....

As this little man enters the great big world.

But for now, I will live in the moment, love every second, and thank my lucky stars.

A New Baby and My Very Own Quilt!

SHOP NEWS:  I'm moving at the end of the month so from now until April 20th you can get 20% off in my shop (excluding custom order quilts) with the code "BIGMOVE"  Please help me clear out my shop so I don't have move more stuff!  :) Tell your friends!

I set a new land speed record with this quilt!  I found out a little after 1pm that my husband's cousin gave birth to her first baby.  

By 5pm, I had a completed quilt!  It would have been done sooner, but I kept changing my mind on fabric!

I used my Wonky Alphabet letters.

I backed it with some pretty red and aqua Bliss print!  Voila!  A baby quilt in the space of an afternoon! 

I also completed the quilting and binding for my Far Far Away quilt!

After much harassing by Flickr friends, I've decided to keep this one for myself!  It didn't take much arm twisting to be honest.  I love it.  It's super girly and super soft.  With two boys, a husband, and a boy dog  my house could use a few girly things!

I also got to test out my new fabric labels from Stefanie of Stationery with Style.  Stefanie is so sweet and awesome to work with!  She designed my blog, cards, labels, stickers, and anything else I can think of to match!  Love ya girl!  The fabric labels aren't up on her website yet, but just email her and she can create custom colorfast labels for you in any size/style and with whatever you want on them! 

For the back of this one I used Kona Cerise and bound it in Kona Lime.  It's my new favorite thing to snuggle.....besides my kids. :)  

My Totally Inspired Birthday

Saturday was my 32nd (yikes!) birthday and I spent the day in Nashville attending a workshop with a group of SUPER talented women.  More on that in a bit, but I came come to this awesome cake handmade by my sweet hubby!  It's chocolate cake with orange mascarpone frosting with hazelnut brittle in the frosting!  Yummo!

I also used this trip to schedule an appointment to order shades/drapes for the new house!  I managed to pick out all the shades and I know which rooms I want drapes, but I didn't have a lot of luck picking out fabrics--shocker!  All of the fabrics were either too plain, too fussy, too metallic, or too old.  There wasn't a large selection of modern designs.  I did manage to find some for the bedroom, but they still haven't quoted a price on those so I may be shopping for my drapes somewhere else.  

Now to try and summarize the workshop.  I apologize in advance for my lack of pictures, I was too busy paying attention! :)  I've been struggling the last few days trying to articulate what the workshop meant to me, what I learned, and who I met, but I'm not sure I can do it justice.  This gathering was the brain child of Amber Housley.  To give you all an idea of what this workshop was about, I'm going to quote Amber a bit, the workshop was for

 "creative women who currently have or are looking to start their own business. Our content will be applicable to most creative businesses with special emphasis on aspiring or current designers, crafters, photographers, stylists, bloggers. But of course, we welcome all creative businesses! Everyone is sure to go home with a heaping truck-load of applicable information and action items for their business."

A truck load is right!  I still don't feel as if I can streamline the amount of ideas, inspiration, and practical tips I received!  I have been toying with the idea of making my quilting/sewing into a business, but I haven't fully decided on a direction.  I'm leaning toward teaching newbie quilters, doing a some custom quilts (like for nurseries), and selling the random things I make like I do now.  I wanted to attend the workshop to help me figure out how to best accomplish my goal.....as soon as I figure out what my goal is. 

Can I pause for a minute to say how *cute* the table was decorated?  Flowers, goodie bags, orange Crush bottles with swirly straws, and a journal to write down all our notes for the day!  

I knew the day was going to be amazing when I realized who I was sitting next to--Kelly Boyd of Anne Kelle fabric/stationery/etc.  Remix or Urban Zoologie anyone?  Yeah.  I pretty much flipped out.  Everyone else is cool, calm and collected and I'm totally freaking because I'm a fabric groupie and I'm sitting next to one of my favorite fabric designers.  In all fairness, only one other person attending was into sewing, most of the ladies do party planning, custom stationery, graphic design, etc--I'm trying to justify my nuttiness, or the lack of nuttiness of the other ladies.  She was completely delightful, sweet, and even a tad shy.  I, in my attempt to make polite conversation and seem casual, mentioned that I just saw on the Pink Chalk newsletter than her fabrics came in laminate and how I didn't realize that before.  Then, I said how it would make such a cute shower curtain for a kid's bathroom (I had my new, undecorated house on my brain).  She then proceeds to ask if I'd be interested in doing a tutorial for that.  I couldn't scream "yes" fast enough!  I then completely ruin any façade of sanity by pulling out my iPhone and showing her the quilt I made using her fabrics--this one

and proceed to gush like a complete idiot.  Then, she about gives me heart failure when she exclaims, "Oh!  I remember that one!  It was like you were in my head!  We should work together!"  Goosebumps literally rise on my arms as I try not to hyperventilate!   I-am-such-a-dork.  Even if she was simply saying it to be kind to the crazy fabric junkie, it made my day.

There's Amber getting us started!  She told us her 20 top tips--one of the greatest was "Your friends and family aren't going to understand what you do."  This was huge for me, to realize that I wasn't the only one.  Other people have significant others, friends, and family that are completely clueless about why they love to do what they do.  I think coming to terms with this and not EXPECT them to get it will be liberating.  They don't have to understand what I want to do in order for me to be successful.  Genius! 

This is Courtney Dial who is a party planner, blogger, and author.  This girl needed a day unto herself!  She is the twitter queen and knew SO SO SO much about how to maximize the benefits of using the social media for your business.  It was incredible.  I felt as if we were all sitting there with our jaws on the floor when she was done.  Learning about WiseStamp alone was awesome! 

This is my sweet, sweet friend, Sara Rose.  I apologize to her for the sad picture, but I was really far away and she cried through a good bit of her talk, as did I.  She is the purchaser of, um, lets say a number, of my quilts.  I think she's a tad addicted, but I don't mind because she has great taste in fabric and I get a thrill over seeing my quilts in her pictures.  Sara is a FANTASTIC photographer and is such a sweet, supportive friend.  Not so surprisingly, she spoke on family and mentors.  She is passionate about the love for her family and her work (hence, the tears) and grew her business by leaps and bounds in three years!  Have I mentioned she's booked through the end of the year?  Yeah, she's that good.

The adorable Jessica Bishop of the Budget Savy Bride also spoke, but I didn't snap a picture!  Jessica is a media whiz and has done tons of TV work for retail-me-not.  Cool, huh?

This post has gotten a bit long so I'll share more about the wonderful women I met in later posts.  Get ready to add to your blog lists, I met a bunch of creative and talented ladies!  I'll leave you with the inspirational quote on our goodie bag journals:

Some Finishes and Sadness

I cut into that awesome stack of fabric from my last post and made this!  I used Holly's tutorial for the herringbone blocks.  This went together sooooooo fast!  

It produces a lot of waste, but I love the final result so much I don't even care.  Plus, all the scraps resulted in a large scrap swap with a friend!

This is yet another quilt for my friend Sara, the quilt-o-holic!  I can't wait to see pictures of cute babies on this one!

I had a few larger scraps left over from the Herringbone quilt so I made this simple patchwork rectangle. It wasn't that large so I added some borders, did some simple "organic" quilting lines and bound it in one of my favorite things, AMH pre-made binding!

Voila!  I was going for modern and a bit unexpected with the off center patchwork.  This one sold over Instagram (an iPhone app) if you can believe it.  It's destined for a cute little boy in Tennessee!

I've been playing around with this stack lately.  This is a Pintrest-inspired combo.  Hopefully it will look as pretty in quilt form as it does in my pin!

As all my Flickr and Facebook friends know, we had to put down one of our dogs (Bailey) this week.  She was 14 and could no longer stand up on her own.  It was heart wrenching to watch her try and try to get up and follow me around.  Thankfully the process was very quiet and gentle and she seemed to simply fall asleep while I held her head.  I know we made the right decision, but it's so painful to catch myself looking for her or calling for her only to remember she's no longer here.  When I reach for only one dog bowl I feel like crying.  I've been more emotional than I expected because the entire event brought back so many memories for me.  Most of you don't know, but our first child died when he was 25 days old.  It's a really long story, but, in a nut shell, he got an infection and had an unusual reaction to it.  We had to make the decision to stop his treatment because his body was simply too tired, he was ready to go.   I was so scared I was giving up too soon, not giving him a chance, despite the doctor's reassurance.  I felt the exact same way with my dog.  I held them both as they took one last breath and I prayed all they could feel was my love.  Pure, honest, unconditional love, they deserved nothing less.

Two Quick Things

I finished piecing a quilt top that will be for my own bed!  I'm hoping to get it basted tonight and, if I'm in the mood for a wrestling match, start quilting all 90"x102"of it!

Also, USAA just sent me a check to cover all the expenses we incurred due to their massive error!  All I did was report the problem to the manager in charge of the pre-approval department and voila, money!  It wasn't a small amount either so I'm really surprised we didn't have to get a lawyer involved.  I was all prepared to have the JAG department write a nasty letter, but I guess USAA realized they were getting off easy since it could have been a *lot* more money.  Hooray!  We now have a house (we closed February 2nd) and a resolution from USAA.  Miracles do happen!

The BIG Bad

Just after the holidays I told you all that the BIG BAD happened, but I didn't fill you in.  I was waiting until we had a resolution before spilling this story.  Thankfully, it has a happy ending!  This will be our new house at the end of the month!!!!  We're moving to Franklin, Tennessee (just south of Nashville).  Get ready for lots of pictures and a crazy story.

(kitchen)

We toured this house in May of 2011 while it was still under construction.  It's a new home in a new development.  We fell totally in love with it and wished we could buy it right then!  We decided we would build new using the builder of this home.  We never thought this house would stay on the market.  

(view from kitchen into breakfast nook/backyard)

In November, our relator sent us an email stating the builder had completed the house and was lowering the price during the winter season by $30,000!!!!  Holy cow!  So we started thinking, we should just buy it now and save ourselves the hassle of building a house from scratch!  We got pre-approval from USAA and thought it was meant to be.  We were all set to close on the 29th of December.

(more kitchen pics--the granite is a dark green)

When we got the loan paperwork from USAA I noticed a mistake in my husband's employment history. They had typed that he worked at his second job for 5 years, but he's only been working there 5 months. I corrected this mistake in my first conversation with our loan officer.  Just so you guys understand, my hubby is a physician in the military, but he moonlights at civilian hospitals for extra money.  He has a job lined up in the Nashville area already with a signed contract.

(view from the living room to the front door)

The weeks pass and we are constantly having to come up with some document or bank statement from USAA, but everything seems routine.  No problems or issues.

(eeek! my 5 burner gas stove!)

I talk to the loan officer regularly to make sure everything is going ok and they don't need anything more from us.  Then, we leave for Christmas vacation to my in-laws in Missouri and we plan to stop in Nashville on the way back to close on the house.  I talk to the loan officer a few more times since we're getting close and the title company still doesn't have USAA's closing info and money required.  Two days before closing USAA says they need some other doc from us and we send it.  Never does USAA express any problems or concerns.  They just say, "the underwriter wants X".  The day before the closing USAA leaves another message requesting some other document.  I email it to them that night (we were on the road to Nashville when they called).  

(patio, it's not completed yet in this pic)

The day of closing I still haven't heard from them and we're supposed to do the final walk through on the house.  I call only to find out they did not approve our loan!  WTF?!?!?!?  To say I was pissed is putting it mildly.  Apparently, since hubby has only been working at the part time job for 5 MONTHS they can't use that income.  They can't use his future income because he will be an independent contractor.  They are only able to use his military income--which isn't enough to qualify us for the house.  THEY TELL ME THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE PRE-APPROVED US!

(living room/fire place/built-ins)

Had the pre-approval department entered in the information correctly we would have never been pre-approved!  While normally this would be upsetting, you wouldn't be losing any money.  However, we had the builders do custom work on the home after we got the preapproval and put $20,000 down for those improvements.  We will not be getting that money back.

(view from stairs into living room/backyard)

Now comes the very long process of us trying to get a loan, because USAA's right, with the new mortgage rules, no one will give us a loan!  This is particularly crazy to me since we are able to put 20% down on this house and we both have credit scores in the 800s.  Nutsy cuckoo!

(dining room/front porch)

In the end, we find we can get a "Doctor's Loan" with a few banks, but the closing date has to be within 60 days of his contract start date.  Sigh.  We were not looking forward to convincing the builder to wait to close on this house in April!  Oh, and we have to pay $90 per DAY for every day we push back the closing of the house!

(my sewing room!)

At the last minute, right before the builder was going to give us their decision on delaying until April, we found a bank that can do the loan at the end of the month.  HOORAY!  We got our confirmation letter (meaning the underwriter has approved our loan, not just pre-approval) yesterday. To say we are relieved is an understatement!  This is our dream home and we were heart broken when we thought we couldn't get it!  Needless to say, I'm still supremely pissed off at USAA for their mistakes and how they handled them---like not informing us there was a problem, EVER.  A customer should not have to call the day of closing to find out something is wrong!  I'm in the process now of having them compensate us for the fee we will have to pay for moving the closing date.  Fun times!  Here are a few more pics, drama free! :)

(where my fabric will go)

(master bedroom)

(master bedroom looking into master bath)

(master bath)

(shower)

(tub with cool tile work)

\

(master closet)

(hubby's man cave at top of the stairs)

There are three more bedrooms, two bath rooms, and another bonus area upstairs which will be the boys' playroom.  I just figured you all were tired of pictures now so I'm summarizing the upstairs.

So that's our BIG BAD story with our happy ending!  We can't wait to move!