New Blog

Since the move to South Carolina my life has changed so much. How I blog and what I want to do with it has changed. I want to blog more using mobile devices and more of a micro blog journal than the long drawn out posts of the past. If you would like to continue to follow me and my adventures come check out my new blog at Sea Me Sparkle

Halloween 2012

With Thanksgiving right around the corner I wanted to get the Halloween pictures posted before it was too late. The day started with a festival at Chloe’s school where they had a bouncy castle along with some outdoor games & face painting. I picked her up from school and got her dressed in her Rapunzel costume. She wanted to have a chameleon friend just like the Disney Rapunzel who has a chameleon named Pascal. I was able to find a small beanie Pascal online and sewed him onto a hair scrungee so she could wear him on her arm. We then went to the neighbors Halloween/Birthday party with a group of kids in the neighborhood. After the party Chris and I and a few families with kids Chloe’s age all went trick or treating together. Here are some pictures from Halloween.

We all had the best Halloween ever and feel so lucky to have moved into such a great neighborhood with lots of wonderful people. I am truly a happy Mommy to have great kids so close by for Chloe to make friends with.

Vote Today

In 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified and gave American Women the Right to Vote. After many decades of sacrifice it finally brought an end to the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movement. I will forever be grateful to the women before me that paved the way for me and my daughter. Yes, I took my turn and voted today, and will always take my right to vote.

We Made It

We officially live in South Carolina now. I had forgotten what a big ordeal it was to move to a new State. Sorry I have left you hanging for so long. Truth be told I have had several issues with my computer since the move. I have a feeling the movers played kick the box with my computer and monitor. My computer should be up and running by the end of this week after some parts come in the mail and hubby puts it all back together. We have been busy cleaning up our rental house and unpacking. We have also been exploring Charleston and the near by towns and beaches. We checked out the closest beach with in 12 hours of getting here. Above is a picture of Chris and Chloe as we are about to step on our new beach for the first time. We stood at the waters edge and felt like we had just discovered paradise. Chloe in her shorts and t-shirt running into the water laughing and giggling, with a smile from ear to ear we knew in that moment that we had just turned the page and started a new chapter in our lives.

Moving to South Carolina

We are moving to South Carolina. It is official we are packing up and moving from the Desert Southwest to the Southern East Coast. We are so excited!

Here is South Carolina highlighted on the map.

We have chosen the Charleston area to live. A few years ago we started looking into a few different States and places we would possibly like to live and Charleston was on the list. Then once it was time to find a place to move to we narrowed the list down to 3 places and Charleston won us over. The movers are coming next week and we are on our way to a new beginning. I really should be packing at the moment but took a quick brake to let you know where we are heading. I should be back posting in about 2 ½ weeks when I get my computer all set up in the new place.

August Wrap Up

Look what started to flower a few days ago. One of my Irises is starting to bloom. The days are starting to get shorter and it feels like Autumn is right around the corner. We have been busy cleaning out the house with several trips to make donations and filling trash bags by the dozen. I think the kitchen is the last room I have to go thru and see what we don’t want to move with us. The pantry is scary. We have been trying to eat every thing. I plan to donate all the can goods that have not expired to a soup kitchen. Sadly there are many items in there that have expired. I think I have like 8 cans of pumpkin. What in the world was going on in there? Note to self try to clean out the pantry once a year.

Speaking of food, I made the best scones in August. These are Sweet Cinnamon Scones. This is one of the Pioneer Woman’s recipes. These are my new favorite scones. You can find the recipe HERE. They were perfect for breakfast with a cup of coffee or tea.

Chloe has been playing more with her dollies. Here she is being a good mommy using the boppy pillow to feed her baby. That pillow I used every day for the first year of Chloe’s life. I definitely recommend them to all new Moms’ to help your arms holding the baby. Chloe has also been playing with her Barbie’s. Her Barbie’s live a boring life and the routine is they get up and drop the kids off at school then spend all day at work to then pick up the kids and make dinner before they go to bed, then do it all over again. Maybe it is time to get her some fun accessorize for her Barbie’s like a camper or a pool or something.

We went to the local zoo in August. Here is the large turtle that walks around his circle enclosure. He is pretty cool. He is the only large turtle I have seen that walks so much.

Here is my August block for my Quilting Bee. This is the Links block from the Modern Blocks book. Our Queen Bee sent us all the fabric to put together our blocks. I can not wait to see how this quilt turns out. Love the London prints with the red fabric. It was an easy block to make and was a relief since I have been so busy. I have my fingers crossed that Septembers block will be easy.

I have packed up my sewing machine and will not have it set up again till we settle into the new house. So not being able to play with fabric for a few weeks I decided to finally start a hexagon quilt. I am going to start making some Hexagons and paper piecing them together by hand. I dug thru my stash of really old charm packs and found this one by designer Chloe’s Closet called Picket Fence. I think I have had it since 2008 maybe sooner. I don’t think they sell the line anymore. It has a lot of flowers and colors in white, red, blue, yellow and pink. I am starting to cut out hexagons for my 1” Hexi papers. I figured I would be able to make about 21 flowers from this charm pack.

Well that about wraps up August. My next post should be the big reveal as to where in the US we are moving too. I will drop a hint and say it is on the East Coast.

All a Buzz

There is a happy buzz in my house as we are all excited for the changes taking place. It is a little weird that Chris and I are unemployed and that he is home with me everyday. We have been busy getting ready for the big move out of New Mexico. We have decided where we will move to and I will fill you guys in on a later post when we have all our ducks in a row. For now I will share what we have been up to this month. I can not believe how big Chloe is and how much she has grown this year. The biggest thing is she is potty trained and is in underwear all day and even at night. Woot Woot! I have dreamed of the day she would be potty trained since she was born.

I have started the process of cleaning out the closets. This is the top of Chloe’s closet before I went thru the stuff. All those clothes on top are ones she had out grown. I would just toss them up there when they no longer fit her. I planned to go thru it later. I still pick out a few outfits that she has worn that I love and save them in a box to pull out when she is all grown and I can look at them and remember when. Then I go thru the rest and if they are in good shape I donate them and toss out the ones that are worn or stained. I still have a baby quilt I started a few years ago using squares cut from her infant clothes. I really need to get that finished.

It has been my routine as I am going thru things to start piling stuff at the bottom of the stairs that I plan to donate. Then when the pile is a car load I drop it off. Some stuff is hard to get rid of. It helps that we will be moving cross country and the movers will be charging by weight. Knowing that we will have to pay for everything that gets moved, has helped us get rid of some things that we really don’t need.

This is my favorite Baking recipe book. I got this a few months ago after checking it out at the library it is one that was essential to have on hand at home. I am kind of using it as a coffee table book and have been dreaming of all the things I will bake. I have even been thinking of next year working my way thru this book recipe by recipe and see how many I can make in a year. Kind of like the Julie, Julia book where she cooks her way thru the Julia Childs Art of French Cooking Cookbook.

Chloe and I have started to bake together. We both put on our aprons and tackle some good old fashion cookies. This batch was a double chocolate cookie that turned out almost like brownies. They did not last long in our house.

It seems like whenever I have a ton of things I should be doing it is the time I wander around my craft room and pick up something else. Remember earlier this year when I did the hand pieced quilt along. Well I am still short one block. So I pulled out all of the ones I did so far, 11 total. They are only 6 ½ inch blocks so the quilt will be a small one. I originally planned to make it into a doll quilt. I decided to make it a little bigger and use it for a table topper. So I am adding 5 more blocks to make a total of 16. Here is the start to my 5 blocks I am adding. I am making them each an hour glass block. I lined up the center of the blocks and thought they would make a cool quilt border, or even a neat quilt done in hour glass block rows. Anyway this is as far as I got on my 5 blocks then I tucked it back in with the others to finish later.

Here is my progress on my Beach-y Mood cross stitch. I like the pelican on top of the letter E. Just one more letter and a few more objects.

Here is a sneak peek of the baby quilt I have been working on. I plan to finish this up by the weekend and get it shipped off to a good friend of mine and her new baby girl.

I am a Netflix junkie. I love to find great shows on Netflix that I never got around to watching when they aired on TV. Here is my latest find “Rescue Me”. The show aired from 2004 to 2011. It is a little raw and rough around the edges. So if you are looking for a fun feel good show this is not it. It is about a group of Fireman working in N.Y. after 9/11. I think I am already in to the 3rd season. It is great to watch a show with out commercials.

It is still pretty hot around here, so we have been spending time in our blow up pool to cool off. Here is Chloe with her water table in the pool.

Here is Chloe on Chris’s Ipad. She has accessorized her nightgown with a winter hat, funny girl. That about sums up what has been going on with us; we are keeping busy and having fun. We hope to move next month if every thing falls into place. So life is about to get messy as we box up the house.

July Crafting Wrap Up

Although we traveled for most of July I still managed to get some crafting done in July. I made this Union Jack Mug Rug. I have seen a few Union Jack quilts pop up in blog land and just love how they look. I was in need of a new mug rug for my desk and thought I would try to make a Union Jack. You can see that it is not perfect. I learned a lot thru the process and feel confident I could bust out a cool quilt one day all in Union Jack blocks. I put that on my very long list of quilts I must make.

I am still moving along on my Beach-y Mood cross stitch. I have added a lot since June. I am going to try and get the stitching done this month.

In my Quilting Bee our July Queen requested this block from the Modern Quilt blocks book. This was a tough one to get all the points lined up. So glad I got it done and shipped to the queen by the end of the month.

Last but not least is a catch up on my In Color Order’s Half Square Triangle block of the month. These are my June and July blocks for the quilt along. I think the block on the right is one of my favorites so far in this group. I could see doing a whole quilt in this block.

Well we are all melting around here with a 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside temperature. We are tucked into our home with the air conditioner blasting trying to think cool thoughts and only leaving the house to catch a movie or two. There are so many good movies this summer. I took Chloe to see the new Ice Age movie and we were able to stay and watch the whole thing. Usually after about an hour she is ready to leave but for this one she was into it and watched the whole movie. So the movie gets to thumbs up from Chloe and I. I hope everyone is having a great summer.

Life Changing Good News

Well we are finally home from our road trip. This is a photo of Chloe on the Rim Trail along the Grand Canyon. Seeing the Grand Canyon in person is an out of body experience. I will show more photos of the Grand Canyon and our road trip when I write my trip report and have time to go thru all the photos I took. It is time to spill the beans on some of the things going on around here. Drum roll please. We sold the dental practice. Woot! Woot! Ok, I know who cares. This is a wordy post so feel free to check out now if you like, I should have more crafty posts soon.

Let me give you some back story. Three years ago Chloe was born. We had a lot going on at the time and soon after her arrival realized we needed to change some of our priorities and reassess how we wanted to live our life and where we wanted to live our life. We set several goals that year and started the process of achieving those goals. One of the major goals that were set at that time was to sell off our alpaca herd and move off the mountain back into town and civilization. (Ok for you new followers yes we had a herd of alpacas and did the whole living in the country thing scooping the poop.) This whole alpaca thing was going on at the same time as our thriving dental office. Long story short throw a baby into the mix and you are in over your head. We did manage to find homes for our entire alpaca herd which came out to around 40 of them when we got out of the business. We also moved into town at the end of 2010.

The dental office has been for sale for 3 years. Of course when we decided to make some major life changes that was around the same time the economy tanked. So thru out the 3 years we had very few nibbles of buyers interested in the office. Mentally we were kind of prepared that it would take many years to sell our dental practice. So when a dentist from Idaho all of a sudden was interested in our office we did not think much of it. Then step by step he continued his interest and after several months poof we sold it.

Ever since Chloe was born I have been itching to move closer to the ocean. The majority of my life I have lived near the ocean and did not realize what a big part of me needs to be near it. I have so many fond memories of my child hood and all the time spent at the beach and I want that for Chloe. Now New Mexico is great for sunshine and big blue skies but it is very land locked and very dry. Chris and I have lived in New Mexico for 10 years now and we are both so excited to move to a new region of the U.S.

So there is our big news. Chris is in the process of applying for his dental license in some of the Eastern States. We will know soon where we are going to check out for possible places to live. Right now I am starting to clean house and donate & toss stuff that we don’t need to pack up and move. Life is exciting at the moment. I can’t wait to see what is around the corner for us.

Baby Quilt for My BFF

My Best friend Alicia had her precious baby boy in June. I made her a baby quilt. Her nursery wall has a large mural of a tree with an owl in it. I kind of took that as an owl and bird theme for the quilt.

I used part of a Bright Owl fabric panel by Alice Kennedy. I used some fabric from the same line for the border and used some cotton king size pillow cases in orange and blue for the outside border and the binding. I love how this turned out.

For the backing fabric I used a bird print by Emma with Northcott fabrics.

On the back I put a little personalized heart label with Noah’s name and birth date.

For the quilting I just did some lines up and down thru the center and then went around the outside borders.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit with my BFF Alicia while in Oregon at the beginning of July. Noah is so adorable. Mom and baby are doing great. I think baby quilts and blankets are so great to just toss on the ground and plop baby down for floor play. Since the babies are not moving around much at this age it makes for nice photos to change out what they are lying on. I have another girlfriend whom just had her baby girl on the 17th, so I need to get back in gear and sew up another baby quilt.