Me

We took advantage of Maeve’s week inbetween school and camp and the nice weather today and headed out to the beach again.

Pretty castles…

Until Liamzilla makes a visit.

This is definitely their favorite spot.

Back to quilts tomorrow.

I had a momentary lapse in sanity and decided to take the kids to the beach today.  Keep in mind we don’t really live anywhere near the beach.

But, it turned out being a great day with well behaved kids and no major disasters!

Wait for me!

Digging the big hole.

Lunch: Sand and Sweet Potatoes.

The good life.

The NCTriangle Street team asked for pictures and some words (that I still need to write!) about where I sew my quilts. If they had seen my room on the day they asked the question they would have retracted quickly since it was a disaster area. It’s clean now but with two little kids it won’t be for long.

This is our bonus room. Starting at the left: my desk, easel and painting supplies, fabric storage bookshelf with embroidery thread, quilting machine and serger on top, comfy chair, kids Lego table and bookshelf with their toys and a TV. I have a curtain rod with rings hanging above the bookshelf. I change the quilt out whenever something sells or I want something fresh up there.

The other side of the room. In the dormer on the left I store my 40 yard rolls of batting (which is almost gone… again!), then my sewing table, ironing board, bookshelves and then back to my desk. Above the ironing board is my typesetting tray with my various threads for piecing and binding.

A close up of my sewing table. I have a large cutting mat with an insane amount of rulers. A small basket of tools and notions plus some small drawers for pins, sewing machine feet, etc. I have a large set of drawers on the other side of the table that stores packing supplies, notions and large quilting thread spools. Since I only use the large quilting machine for quilting, I pull this one off the table and carry the other one over when I need it.

Finished quilts are stored in a closet way high up and out of the reach of small little hands.

It was beautiful this morning so we headed out.

And my little photographer in training.

My tiny love.

We spent this morning at a favorite spot of mine.

And had a very nice lunch followed by some fun at the mall with Miss Maeve.  The idea was for us to build a bear *together* but that quickly turned into Maeve’s bear.

Meet ‘Eye.’  Yes, Eye.  She insisted that she wanted a black bear that was a boy and was named Eye.

He had to have a hat (she wanted the straw hat with a pink bow but I nixed that one since it was supposed to be a boy bear).  He also had to have sunglasses like Daddy, a black shirt that matched his fur and black pants to match his black shirt and black shoes to complete the outfit.  Oh, and boy undies.  Rounding out the ensemble are the roller skates… just like (Curious) George.  Everyday she makes a pair of ’skates’ out of paper and then skate/ski poles out of her Tinker Toys and skates around upstairs like George.

So we headed out to pick up a new pair of shoes for her because she needed them and we were there so why not?

Of course Eye had to skate along.

And through Nordies too.

And eventually her arm got tired and I carried him and then he hitched a ride with Liam in the stroller.  Throw in some gelato and it was a fantabulous day.  Smooches to my babies ’cause I love you to pieces.

At 5:11 pm on April 29, 2007 Liam Cormac came into this world 4 weeks early.

He has become such a wonderful little boy. Everyday I see his smile and my heart just melts. This morning he and I went to Duke Gardens for some relaxation and pictures. Ok, a LOT of pictures. Here are a couple of my favorites.

This is such a Liam face. I laughed out loud when I saw I had captured it.

I might add pictures later of our little party from tonight. He wasn’t too big on the idea of cake so there might just be a bunch of scrunchy faces spitting out food.

Edited to add a couple more…

Liam on his new quilt reading his new Very Hungry Caterpillar book.

His super cool alien cake.

And his thoughts on my baking skills.

I try to be random in my quilts but sometimes (ok, most all the time) I just can’t do it. I have to lay it out first to make sure all the colors and patterns are evenly distributed. So this means all my quilts get laid out on the floor block by block (or in some cases piece by piece) and then stacked up to sew.

My sewing room is our bonus room. It measures about 20′ square and is supposed to by my room. My computer, my books, my lounging room and my space for me. The kids object to this. They have a playroom. Neither one of them plays in it. They play in my room.

So whenever I need to lay out a quilt or pin a quilt I need a shovel to clear all the toys out of the way.

That’s the Maypole quilt so far.

Progress on the other projects for this week:

The Cowboys got ironed, cut patterns, and started cutting fabrics.

The video game quilt fabric that I ordered last week just now shipped. Note to self: don’t shop there anymore.

Pants? Yeah, haven’t even started.

I saw a mention of this in the paper and off we went.  How could I pass up something called Herbfest?

Oops.

These got planted up on the wall next to the knot.  You can’t really see the plants because of the new fluffy pinestraw.

(The knot… in need of some weeding, de-leafing and mulching.)

And the coolest part of today… the Duck Parade.

I swear my next post will contain a quilt and not my kids or my house.  I swear.

…work in the garden! The plan was to sew all week and then clean up the yard this weekend but it is supposed to rain… again… on Saturday. I love the rain. We need the rain. But why does it always have to rain on the weekends? Doesn’t the rain know how hard it is to do major yard work and mow with 2 small kids? Hrumph.

So here is the uglyness of the front of our house. We have boring holly shrubs from the builder, leaves that were blown in at some point, mess from the masons and lots of blah. It needs spring cleaning and some prettification.

I am waaaay limited in what I can plant here since we have the hugest herd of deer in existence. They eat EVERYTHING. The only things they don’t eat are boxwood, holly, herbs and ferns. I try and be positive and think about how aromatic my yard ends up because we have so many herbs it’s not even funny. When you turn on the side spigot you get this whoosh of rosemary. Yum.

So we did a trip to Lowes for some dirty stuff…

And a trip to the farmers market this morning for the herbs…

Maeve had a blast there as she always does. And in a couple weeks the strawberries start coming in. Drool. And then the peaches. Drool.

We have some rosemary, thyme, sage, curry plants (!), lavender, germander, peppermint (for the pots) and a lot more thyme. And as it turns out, I need 6 more thymes to finish up. Back to the farmers market! Darn. I just hate going there and oogling at all the plants.

So while we were outside a little froggie decided to join us. Maeve was in love. She was jumping around behind him like he was jumping, laying on the ground staring at him and just being a curious 3 year old.

We pulled up all the stones, filled in with some dirt and put the stones back. Maeve was in charge of putting all the little stones into the little holes.

I totally wore her out outside. She’s now playing quietly in her playroom. We should do this gardening thing more often! And because I know Sean will say something… I was in this picture too. I cropped myself out. I’m ok with being sweaty and dirty in the family picture album but not on my blog.

All done. I’m going to venture to say that it looks a wee bit better than before. Hopefully everything will fill out nicely this summer.

We didn’t get the other side done. It’s all cleaned up but we ran out of dirt, mulch and plants… oh and Liam woke up.

Wow. This is a really long post that really has nothing to do with quilts except for the fact that it demonstrates that I didn’t work on any today (so far… it’s only 5!)

So it all started about a week and a half ago. My mouth hurt and I knew it was my wisdom teeth but I was in denial. When the pain didn’t go away I finally made an appointment with a dentist. After going to the appointment I realized she was a DMD and not a DDS and couldn’t take out the teeth herself. We called the DDS that she referred us to and learned that our lovely insurance company didn’t have any in-network oral surgeons within 45 miles of Raleigh. Lovely. So I go to that appointment and the DDS says that all 4 need to come out. Three were impacted and there was an infection around the fourth. The only good news is that it was bad enough that I would get to go to sleep for the surgery. I go to make the appointment for the surgery only to find out that the lovely insurance company, let’s call them Fetna, refused to pay for the $1700+ procedure because we hadn’t had the policy long enough. Keep in mind that on the medical side of our policy they had already paid for 2 surgeries, a baby in the NICU, and 3.5 hospital admissions. I couldn’t chew on one side of my mouth, had an infection and was in constant pain but couldn’t get the insurance that we pay for to pay for the teeth to come out. We decided to just pay for it so I could be pain-free. Stupid Fetna. I also learned that I need about $1200+ of work done at the DMD (that’s after insurance pays their part). Stupid Fetna. So by the end of the month I’ll have racked up almost $3000 in dental bills. Anyone want to buy a quilt?

So the teeth came out this past Friday. I am feeling better than expected but seemed to have come down with a nasty cough. Not good with heeling gums. At least the husband has dealt with the kids so I could rest… and sew. Sewing is resting right? I didn’t get to go to yoga this morning which I am not happy about. Hopefully I can get back to the gym soon. I’d actually be happy if I could just eat more than just mush.

I finished the quilt for the living room as well as the pillows and tiny table runners for the guest room.

So now the sewing is all done for the room!

And of course we had to watch the commercials tonight. Who is playing by the way?

And I’m still not used to seeing this.  And the little guy isn’t so little anymore. He weighed in at 20lbs10oz this past week.

And BTW, stupid Fetna. Stupid Fetna. Stupid Fetna.

Sean has this crazy idea of sewing me something for Christmas. I honestly have no idea what he’s up to but he scared the carp out of me when he asked for sewing lessons.

The conversation went something like this.

Emily: You want to sew? Using *my* machine? Do you know how much that thing cost?

Sean: Yes, actually, I do know how much it cost. I paid for it.

Ok, so he did pay for it.

I told him he could indeed use the machine but if he breaks it, I’m upgrading to Pfaff’s new TOL creative vision (lowercase letters included).

You have to get the price from a dealer but most dealers, or at least the PITA dealer here in Raleigh, won’t give you the price over the phone. They are so paranoid about the competition undercutting them on pricing they won’t give out a price unless you go into the store (never mind the fact that they are the *only* dealer in Raleigh. Who are they competing against?). And then they have two pieces of paper with two different prices on them. I guess the more special you are, the better the price is? So if I wanted to know how much it costs, I’d have to drag both kids in with me to listen to the 4 hour sales schpele while corralling a three year old who wants to pull all the thread out of the display and a 7 month old who wants to spit up and drool all over the fabric (smart kid… drooling over fabric at such a young age). And they’d probably be so annoyed with the kids destroying their store that I would get the more expensive price.

I’ve read things here and there that say the price of this machine is somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000. If I ever do have the money to buy this machine, it will *not* be from the dealer here in Raleigh. I don’t like them and I would never give them my business especially on a machine that costs that much.

Right, this isn’t supposed to be a vent about a Pfaff dealer.

Anywho… so Sean wants to use my machine.

So he asked for a lesson on how to use the machine. It started with winding a bobbin and threading the machine. It’s amazing how I don’t even think about what I’m doing with that machine anymore. I can probably thread it in my sleep so explaining how to was quite a challenge. Once Sean saw all the nooks and crannies he had to wrap thread in and out of, he started laughing hysterically.

So we made it through a couple practice runs and I think he might be able to sew a somewhat straight line now. I hope he remembers what all the buttons do.

Perhaps I will be machine shopping after the weekend.

Breathe in that fresh air, read a good book, eat good food and enjoy nature.

One person will understand what this is, roll their eyes at me, sigh, and then try to figure it out. And to that person, I apologize. Again.

‘Tis the season for sewing gifts!

My to-do list:

- quilt — partially pieced

- 3 coordinating purses — fabric purchased and washed

- patchwork scarf — done!!

- felt doughnuts, cupcakes, cookies, tea bags, cakes and petit fours for Maeve’s stocking — still just an idea in my head

- Alien quilt for Maeve and Liam — I have 16 of 20 blocks done

- Close Your Clothes fabric book — I bought and washed the fabric, have the printable fabric sheets and clothes from Goodwill. Now to just assemble it all.

- Ribbon ball for Liam

- Various things for Sean but since he reads my blog they won’t be going on this list.

- Something for someone in a gift exchange. I wonder who the lucky person will be!

How many days until Christmas? I better get sewing.

Maybe I should be more scared of the fact that I married him.

And yes, I really did let him design a quilt.  I’m sewing it now and it’s about a third done.  Just wait until you see it.  It will get giggles, snorts, and a lot of eye rolls.

‘Tis the season for holiday catalogs. Today’s batch included Dean & Deluca’s Thanksgiving catalog. On the back was this beautiful cake.

Drool worthy indeed. Then I saw the price.

$135.

Now, really. Who in their right mind pays that much for a cake without it being 7 layers and at your wedding? It must be full of truffles or dusted in gold or really big, right?

This cake takes center stage at any Thanksgiving
celebration. Dark chocolate is wrapped around almond
cream cake with raspberry filling and butter cream.
A cornucopia of marzipan fruit completes this work of art.
Each forkful is a bite of heaven, no matter how you slice it.

3.37 lbs., 7″ diam., twelve to fifteen servings USA

Besides the ickiness of almond and raspberry did you notice the size? Seven inches. Seven inches! No gold, no diamonds and it’s only seven inches in diameter. And no cake eater I know could get twelve to fifteen servings out of a seven inch cake.

Now I have an offer for anyone interested. I will bake you a chocolate cake for the bargain basement price of $99.99! And with my $97.99 profit I will go shopping for some more fabric.

What does this have to do with quilts? Nothing really I just felt like whining about a $135 cake. Did I mention shipping for the cake is $32.90? You’d think for $135 they could at least have free shipping. Maybe there is a code or cash back. I’ll go check.

Does anyone have the answer? How do you make the decision to take a hobby and move it into a business? Do you sell other places than Etsy? Do you market your quilts all over when you really don’t know how to market at all? Do you make a business plan and apply for a small business loan to get the long arm machine that would be incredibly helpful? Or do you save and save and buy the machine eventually? Do you just keep as is and just have fun? Not that making this into a business wouldn’t be fun. But that is the question. Or, really, questions.

So, um, is there an answer? Anyone?

The first beautiful day in months. Cool, crisp air. No humidity. Are you sure we’re still in NC? Maeve and I went off to enjoy the morning at the Duke Gardens.

My little photographer in training.

Cue Little House on the Prairie music.