More Babies

I finally found a night that I was home early enough to take pictures of the afghan I finished. I found the yarn for this at Hobby Lobby on clearance. It turned out to be one of the softer afghans that I've completed. I ran out of the pink and had to use white for the border but I really like how it turned out. After playing with several different ribbon colors Jason and I decided that we liked the wine ribbon that was left over from our wedding. I decided to give this one to the neice due in December since we aren't certain if it will be a niece/nephew in March. I've also had another "family" baby to add to the crafting list due in April.

I also finished a few more pages in the 2009 scrapbook and almost done with the year. I have two Christmas' and New Years Eve left to do an then I need to print pictures and finish the wedding in October. For this layout I used my new Chomas Gel Pen holder to write the title.

I've started on a quilt to match the afghan above using this pattern. I love mixing and matching patterns so I usually go purchase my fabrics at the local quilt shop, Joanns or Hobby Lobby and cut down rather than purchasing precut fabrics as most of Moda's recipies call for.

Here is the initial stack.

This was a piece that I found that I thought would be great for a quilt especially as the child grows older.

This is the pile of trash otherwise know as "quilt vomit" At this point the pile is still growing.

I've currently have finished squaring up my blocks and I am ready to sew the strips together.

This past weekend I also taught myself to knit and have started a scarf for my niece for Christmas using this Ravelry pattern. Check back in for progress pictures of my quilt and my attempt at knitting.

Bad Me

So I've been horrible at posting again this month. Typically I don't post when I haven't had time to do anything but I've got a lot done in the last week. I've even done a pretty good job of taking pictures. The problem has been taking the time to get them uploaded.  To keep this post from being a book I'll limit the commentary but please feel free to leave me a comment if you have questions.

Here are a couple of the scrapbook pages that I've completed. I into December of 2009 but need to go back and finish an October wedding now that I have pictures.

Saturday, I took my neices and nephew to the local October Festival Parade.  

I finished this afghan for a potential nephew. We are not sure if my sister-in-law is going to have a girl or boy so there is a girl afghan in the works too just in case. 

The next three are for my neices and nephew for Christmas. I still have one more to make.

Making progress again.

I'm finally making progress on the scrapbook again though things. I'm really enjoying SCAL and have found that I'm adding more embellishments because there are so many cute ones out there and it's a lot easier to do an interenet search rather than sort through cartridges. Here are the pages that I've completed this week. Sorry about the picture quality the lighting in my scrap area is really horrible for taking good pictures. The first two are also taken through the plastic

Caden and Kiley love making cookies while at our house. On this particular occasion Kiley had pink frosting all over her face thus the random bathroom mirror shots. The mixer is from svgcuts.com in their free section.

 Caden requested a farm cake for his birthday. Lukily his mom is a wonderful cake decorator. She embellished the top of his cake with toy tractors and combines in green of course.  

This page took forever because my ideas weren't working. Originally it was going to say "give thanks with family" with a couple of very detailed pumpins. Unfortionately it kept tearing. "Give Thanks" was salvagable and then I found some leaves. I made the acorns using SCAL2's autotrace feature from a clipart that I found online. I tried to use my cricut sharpie holder for the text block but I couldn't find a font that was still readable at a smal size. 

After looking at so many woderful blogs, I have decided that I need to work on taking better photos, so be patient as I try to find better ways to showcase my work. If you have any ideas please feel free to share. 

SCAL

I've finally gotten a chance to play with my new Sure Cuts A Lot and I have to say that I love using it.

I used SCAl to weld the letters together on this page. This is also the last page of our honeymoon.

Both the spider web and trick or treat are SVG files that I downloaded off of the web. Both were found via google search.

Beautiful Morning

This morning since I was wide awake at 5:00 AM (why?) I decided to ride out to the pastures with Jason to check on the cows. We leave here in the dark so that we can arrive at the first pasture at first light to catch the cows before they start seeking the shade. This morning there was a real unsually fog but when the sun came up it was beautiful.

Unfotionately the picture doesn't quite do it justice. I'm glad that I got up this morning.

This is a sunflower that Jason brough home to brighten my day.

I finally had a chance to work again this weekend. I started by totally rearranging my craft room.

This is my one of my latest layouts. I've also been working dilegently on my first "girl" afghan and can finally say that the end is near. Six more rounds and I am done! Hopefully one of my sister-in-laws will have a girl. If not I have a "boy" afghan started with a second set of yarn purchased. Check back soon for afghan pictures!

Christmas Cards

More Card Ideas

A week in review

This week was fair week here in central Kansas. Wednesday night we went to the parade with the neices and nephew. Thursday night we went back to the fairgrounds to judge Herdsmanship for 4-H. Friday night the kiddos came to stay with us. This was the first time that we've had all three of them at the same time. Soon we will have two more nieces or nephews making the total count 7. I doubt I will ever be want to have all of them over at the same time. While the kids were playing with legos I decided that I should get started on the second baby afghan. Since I couldn't easilly find the end and managed to create a knot while searching I decided that I should balll my yarn. Kiley thought that it looked like fun and and balled my yarn for about 10 minutes.

Here is the shower invited that I was working on last week. It was one of the simplest that I have done but I loved the way they turned out.

The craft board on the nest has started a bi-weekly scrapbooking layout challenge. This challenge was to use a pagemaps.com July map. With extra points for using something that you had never used before. I didn't add any embellishments because it didn't seem fitting for the page.

My cousn-in-law Eriq asked me back in March if I might do Christmas cards for his company EON Consulting (if you are in central Texas check him out at eonconsulting.net). Here are a few ideas that I've come up with so far with more playing as time allows.

The next round of invites.

The last few days I have been working on shower invites again.  I currently have two sets that need to be in the mail by the end of next week. I'll post pictures soon. This week is also fair week and this year both of the local fairs that we attend are the same week. So our schedule for the week look something like this: Wednesday - Parade in Salina, Thursday - 4-H judging in Salina, Friday - Rodeo in Abilene, Saturday - Rodeo in Abilene, Monday - Combine Demo in Abilene and somewhere in there my niece is going to stay the night with us.

I'm ready for September to be here so that my life can slow back down. I doubt I'll have much time to crochet or scrapbook between now and then. Here are a couple of pages that I have finished this week.

This is a map of the Big Island of Hawaii that shows the location of some of the sites we visited were. This is the intro page for our Honeymoon.

This is the first page that I made using a pagemap. I really love how it turned out.

I'm currently working on another layout for The Nest layout challenge and I hope to get it posted soon.

Hawaii

As promised here are the pages that I worked on while Anna and Jan were here. They are all of our Honeymoon on Hawaii

The shells on the right page were picked up off our beach.

My cousin Anna had boughten a roll of these arrows at a local Tuesday Mornings.

The leaf was picked up on one of our many hikes and pressed in a magazine during our trip

The Volcano die cut came from a scrapbooking store that I found in Hawaii. I love the embelishments that I found in Hawaii

The oval cutter from Creative Memories is now on my must have list.

I didn't realize that I had taken pictures of the entire tree until I had gotten home and was trying to figure out this layout. The paper on the left also came from a Hawaiian Scrapbooking Shop.

Again its been a while since I've posted. During the last week and a half we have gone to a wedding, a bridal shower and a birthday party.

Memorial Day weekend we went to my cousin Clint's wedding. Here are a couple of pictures of his and Aly's big day. Jason and I sat in the  balcony with my cousin Emily, her fiance Robby and Shelly.

Here is a picture of all of us dark haired cousins.... you can't tell that we are related... can you?

Tuesday I went to Lindsey's first dress fitting and got to see her in her dress... I have lots of pretty pictures but can't post because its a secret. :D

This past weekend we went to my cousin Emily's Bridal Shower. Here is her and her fiance Robby opening gifts. I also made the guest book pages for her scrapbook.

Sunday night we celebrated my mother in-law's birthday

Here is the birthday girl as she was yehaa'ed to at Logans.

Farm Update** Jason and his brother's have got all the beans planted just in time for the last three days of rain. Jason's dad is doing well after having his knee replaced three weeks ago but it itching to get back to doing things.

I also have gotten a ton of scrapbooking time in during the last week and a half and I'm very pleased to say that the wedding books are not offically FINISHED!

Here are the final layouts:

Hawaii here I come!