Two Weeks Notice

For the last 6 years I have had the privilege of staying at home with my 2 beautiful girls. There were many times in the first few months that I dreamed longingly of going back to work. I have taken in a few jobs over the years but always with my kids with me, I got to watch a friends twins in my home, I worked in the children's dept. at our church, and I have done freelance graphic design. But now, I have to get a real job. I always thought I had one, but since I only got paid in kisses and hugs, it doesn't help to pay the mortage.

So starting August 3rd, I will be one of those women who choose a career over spending the day at home with her kids. My heart is breaking. I keep trusting God that this is his plan, BUT I WANT MY PLAN! I go to sleep in a state of anxiety worrying about them, I wake up all jittery still worrying. But with this recession, there are no guarantees that my husband will have a job next week, and with his hours already having been cut for summer, we needed to make some changes. So someone else will give them hugs when they're hurt, will get to read them stories, and will listen to the funny things they have to say. I miss them already!

I have always wished we had the money to do more for them. Unfortunately, now we won't have as much time to do it. Sigh.

In the words of Anne Shirley,

"I am considerably rumpled in spirit".

Kami

The Reveal

My baby is already 6 years old. I can't believe it has been that long since my life has been turned upside down. And although life is different, I realize I'm right side up again and life has never been better.

In six years I have learned that

kids ask a lot of questions, and they really do want them answered

even the tiniest of scratch hurts, and the ouchie has to be shown off for days

and that I love to tickle little tummies, armpits, knees, necks, feet, sides...

Katelyn had a lovely day with her cousin Hannah playing in the pool, with little toys on beach towels, back in the pool, eating Hawaiian pizza for dinner, and swimming yet again! Finally, she opened her presents, and we got her an American Girl Doll. Rebecca is the newest historical character and looks amazingly like Katelyn. Because the clothes are almost as expensive as the doll, I chose to make her another outfit for her American girl so...

May I introduce, Rebecca, now modeling the Miniture Selvage Dress.

I still need to hem everything. Because I had already wrapped the doll, it was best to not guess on the exact length of sleeves and skirt so if you see a few stray threads ignore them. I was shocked at how long it took to sew the selvages together. It "seams" so easy, but I really wanted a good mix of dots, and words, and of course I tried to find selvages that were just the right length rather that getting out my long ones. Will I use them again? Definately. Just give me a chance to find the flat surfaces on my sewing table first. My selvages had a way of exploding out of the basket.

Have a great day,

Kami

Sew many dots

Here is the final clue to the selvage project.

I am giving it as a gift tomorrow to Katelyn as part of her 6th birthday present.

Any more guesses?

And I had to include this blue selvage on a conspicuous location, it has a quote from A.K. Rush "Creativity is really the structuring of magic." It is so perfect for Katelyn who lives for craft time.

Also, I am a winner! Yellow Bird Quilts was having a givaway and I won one of their prizes. I really have no idea what to make with the beautiful fat quarters they sent me. I usually don't buy Asian prints, but these are lovely. What would you make with them?

Kami

An All Sewing Day...kinda

Yes, from about 10 am on I was able to sit quietly with very few interuptions and just sew. Unfortunately, I was on a hard plastic chair in the ER.

About a 1/2 hour after my DH woke up he had a grand mal seizure and after calling emergency services, an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. Let me tell you I was a shaky nervous wreck, thankfully the neighbor across the street came over when she saw all the emergency vehicles and watched the kids while I showered and packed. I grabbed my applique bag and a couple of books, clothes for Jason and left just as my dad showed up to watch the girls for the day. What I really wish I packed with everything else was my ipod. Jason dozed in between the docs doing their thing so I got to sit and sew while listening to beeps and the quiet conversation from the nurses across the aisle. I would have loved music, or an audiobook to help the time pass.

Thankfully, he is home and resting well tonight. He had to have a 5 hour drip of phosphates because his levels were "critically low". But he's stable and we are looking forward to a slew of doctors appointments over the next few days. I just hope he stays that way.

So here is your next clue for the selvages. I was first inspired to collect selvages because of Jodie at Vintage RicRac. Look around and you might find my inspiration piece. I am choosing pink as my coordinating color.

Kami

Home again!

I just started trying to post on my blog when I stopped to take a drink of water from my glass. Well in the 2+ hours since I last took a sip, a spider moved in and started making a web. I didn't notice until it started crawling on my NOSE!! I am now sufficiently freaked out.

It is nice to be back home from vacation. Did I forget to mention that I was leaving? We spent a lovely week in Shaver Lake relaxing with family, fishing, boating, and roughing it in our tent. Actually, the weather was lovely, warm durning the day when we wanted to play on the water and cool in the evenings when we could snuggle into sleeping bags. Well, all except Alyssa. From the time she was little, she has never been able to tolerate blankets on her legs... So here are some picts taken in the middle of the night when I kept needing to get up to tuck her back in.

I admit, she looked okay, but it was chilly enough that I kept hearing her thrashing because she was cold. So I would cover her, and a couple of nights before I could even fall back asleep, I could hear her kicking her little feet out again.

Do you notice how in the second picture she is buried under her blanket to try and keep warm. Silly girl. By the end of the week, I just layered her in extra jammies and we both slept through the night.

Like any vacation, this one passed in a blur. There were not nearly enough hours in the day to have all the fun that we had planned. I packed oodles of games, and we only got to play a handful. My mom brought lots of cards that she designed for us to craft with and there wasn't enough time for that. My book didn't get finished until the drive home... But we spent lots of time on the lake shore. Although the water was cold the girls kept going in and swimming, and they loved going riding on the wave runner. The highlight of the trip was the 8 passenger boat cruise around the lake with all of us and Aspen, my brothers' dog. While we liked the coves and floating in the water with no one else around, Aspen was bored. However when we stopped at a deserted island and let her off the leash, Aspen became hyper. Extremely! All week, Katelyn was tolerant of her but a little scared with her on the leash. With this beige blur racing around her on the island, she became hysterical--tears, shakes, screaming.... I could barely get her to walk back to the boat she was so afraid that Aspen would take a short cut and come racing past her again.

Does that look like the face of a killer? I didn't think so either.

I am still itchy thinking a spider is crawling on me. I killed it and can't stop feeling it's little legs tickling my neck. EEWWWWW!

Finally, the laundry is all done; mountains and mountains of laundry. I have washed enough that I have now run out of space to put clean clothes in the girls drawers, so it is time to go through AJs drawers again and see what she has outgrown.

But I thought I deserved a little fun, so here is your trivia question of the day. I have started sewing something together. Any guesses what I am going to turn this into?

I know this last photo is blurry, but I really like the soft colors that show up on the back side when sewing the selvages together. I wish it would show in the finished project.

Kami

Quilt Retreat

My first quilt retreat was amazing. I left the girls with a babysitter on Thursday morning and my mom and I went shopping at a LQS, had excellent Mexican food for lunch and were finally on our way to the convent. The convent is located on a famous road in Temecula, CA--famous for it's wineries. It seemed an odd place for the nuns to be with tasting rooms for neighbors, but the views from the room of the open fields and grape vineyards was amazing.

We were almost the last to arrive and set up our area in the back of the room. It was so pleasant, we had a lovely group of ladies and one man to spend the weekend chatting with and learning from. Our instructor, Pearl Pereira, was so lovely. She was patient explaining all the techniques for freezer paper applique, being self taught it was nice to have someone who was so patient even with teaching me easier ways to hold the stiletto to move the fabric better.

Here are some of the creations that people worked on or were brought in for show and tell this weekend. The first is from a lady who just stopped by for the trunk show on Saturday night. She made this one for her daughter & son-in-law, the signature blocks are from the guest at their wedding.

The flowers are from this pattern below of Pearls called Wildflowers. I love how unique the top one is. I love when people take a pattern and make it their own.

Linda worked on finishing the blocks up for a summer quilt "Gifts from the Sea" by Verna Mosque. I loved the bright colors. And I am sure that my girls would love the quilt... maybe one day.

This one was from another quilt shop owner Julie. She spent the weekend trying to get caught up making samples for her shop.
Here is Pearl's finished Baltimore Halloween Quilt. Four ladies were working on it at the retreat. After seeing the size of some of the tiny pieces that had to be turned, I can guarantee that this one will never make it to my to do list. But it is absolutely beautiful in person, and I certainly understand the attraction to make one.

Her Christmas quilt with the big pieces is much more my speed. Aren't the faces sweet on these guys?

Here I am industriously working on my applique pieces. The pink fabric is super cute in its finished spot, and the little brown arch turned into the handle on this basket. Do you remember the background I posted about a few weeks ago?

Aren't you excited to see the whole quilt? I am about 1/3 way done stitching down the applique. so be patient hopefully in a couple more weeks it will be ready to be quilted. Of course for each pattern that we are designing, we have it done in two different color ways, so maybe I shouldn't be so optimistic that this pattern will be ready soon, but I hope so.

Happy sewing,

Kami

Whirlwind

Life has been happening fast around here. Although I thought I was beat after supervising the 33 kindergartners on a field trip. That was a cakewalk compared to life since. So here is my life in a nutshell. (Granted it needs to be a really big nutshell.)

Let me preface everything by saying, I forgot my camera on fieldtrip day. Life would have been much simpler if I hadn't left my camera connected to the computer that Thursday morning. Halfway through the fieldtrip one of the other moms, Cindy, made a comment to me that in her other daughters class a mom collects photos from all the parents and puts together a DVD of the highlights of the school year. Me, without a camera, thinks "hey, what a great way to get pictures of today to put on my blog." So these words come out of my mouth,"I could easily do that for everyone if people give me a CD of their pictures."

WHAT!! Did I just volunteer to get people to give me their photos (Oh, the follow through), organize the photos (I don't even scrapbook), and then put together a DVD (only my second one ever)! And I was going away on the applique retreat in a week with less than 2 weeks left of school. Sure no problem!

To add to my stress, at this time Jason's hours at his job were cut forcing us to have a 20% cut in pay, so I applied for my first full-time job in 6 years! Thankfully, it is at USAopoly the company I worked for before "retiring" to be a SAHM. I had the job interview on Monday, and still no word. But back to my story.

So while staying up til midnight most nights for the next week to try and finish the piecing for the 6 quilt tops for the 3 new patterns mom & I hope to release, I had in the back of my mind this little DVD project. Wednesday morning I mentioned to Cindy that not many parents had given me pictures and I might not have a very well rounded movie since i would be gone for the next two days. Well leave it to the next Sarah Palin to organize the parents at the school. Honest if you have a project that needs to be done don't ask me, ask Cindy. By the time I dropped off Katelyn at school last Monday morning, Cindy had collected 3 disks, one flash drive, got 2 parents emailing me photos and one more set was dropped off to my house that night. In 2 days she got 7 parents to get their photos to me when I got 2 in a whole week!

I was so busy last Monday I didn't have time to look at the disks until that evening. Here is a little taste of my day. I helped in the classroom in the morning, fed my girls lunch, got KG's hair in a bun for her final dance rehersal, got a phone call from USAopoly about the interview time, got all distracted with horrid butterflies in the tummy and left the costume at home, finally got K to the theater, had ice cream with AJ, went to the quilt shop for applique thread, picked up K who was 1/2 an hour late getting out, dashed home dropped off the kids, went to my book club meeting where Marie Botswick actually called us. AND finally came home at 8:30 to start the DVD. Really, how am I supposed to fit a 9-5 job into that schedule. Thus, began week 2 of being up till midnight to get stuff done. Thankfully, the DVD turned out great, school is out for summer, and KG's dance recital was beautiful. I am hoping to finally start slowing down and enjoying life again.

I was going to add pictures of the retreat also, but I think I will wait til tomorrow. Since I refuse to leave the house for anything, I am hoping I will have time to post them early. Well, at least before midnight. I thought I would leave you with this last picture of Katelyn and her "boyfriend".