Ann Arbor Art Fair

I spent a lot of time at the Ann Arbor Art Fair this past week.  I work close to downtown and am lucky enough to be able to walk to the fair from my office.  I walked a bit on Wednesday (to get all the sales at the local stores, not so much the art) and ended up purchasing a pink maxi dress, a blue tube top, a green and white striped skirt and a bottle of D&G Light Blue perfume for me and a bottle of Giorgio Armani Aqua di Gio cologne for Landon, all for right around $100!!!!

Friday, I took the day off from work and my parents came into town.  We walked all day!  We ended up walking 7 1/2 miles (my dad kept track with his pedometer)!  I got a few, really nice, prints of vegetables.  I love them, they are going to go up in my kitchen.  We even stumbled across a fairy garden next to one of the parking structures.  I took a picture of it to show one of the neighbor girls, who is obsessed with fairies!  It was so cute!  We did get caught in a rain storm, but managed to duck into one of the bars and had a drink or two while we waited it out!

Fairy Garden!

Landon was out of town all week and he wanted to see the fair, so I ended up going downtown, yet again (yes, I'm a glutton for punishment) on Saturday and met up with a friend and his family.  We also went with them to downtown Detroit to go to Slow's BBQ and then the MGM Grand Casino!  It was a great trip!

Love these guys!

Creepy "Statue Guy", he wouldn't let this kids hand
go until someone dropped a dollar in his tip jar.
Smart business plan if you ask me!

Dinner!!!  Slow's BBQ!

Me and the hubby!

Sorry for my absence...

Things have been pretty crazy the last few weeks around my house.  I spent a lot of time a few weeks ago getting ready for a huge garage sale.  We had items donated from my parents, Landon's parents and a handful of neighbors.  I spent every evening for the entire week before the garage sale pricing items and organizing things.  We had an amazing sale! 

Unfortunately, I found out that my boss passed away the day after the garage sale.  Obviously this lead to a crazy week around the office.  She was so dedicated to her work and she will be missed dearly.  She provided a lot of support to me throughout the end of my college career, into the beginnings of my career.  I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without her. 

Things are finally starting to settle down and we're all getting back into the grove of things.  I definitely have some good updates to post.  My garden is out of control and I have attempted a few more fun recipes!!!!  I will get them up as soon as I can!

Crafting Time!

So I am not what I would call "crafty".  I have never been and I never really expected to be.  I quilt and sew a little, but that is about it.  But every once in a while, I find something that inspires me.  I have been collecting cards from "The Curly Girl Design Studios".  All of these cards have fun, uplifting messages that I feel like I can relate to.  I have had these cards for years, and have always wanted to find a way to display them.  I finally decided I was going to attach them to painted canvases and hang them on the wall to my quilting room.  
I started by matching the color of the envelopes for each card, to a paint color.  I painted the canvases the corresponding colors.

After the canvases dried, I was able to modpodge the cards to the canvases.  I think they turned out pretty nice!

 I am excited to put them on the wall!

Visitors!

One of Landon's best friends, who lives in Alaska, was in town this weekend!  He was visiting family and friends in Michigan with his wife and his 9 month old son, who no one has met yet!  The family spent Friday night at our house this weekend and we were able to host a get together with a lot of friends from around the state.  It was great to get to see everyone!  Here are a few pictures from the event!

Renee, Thomas and Neil

Neil, Thomas, Landon, Renee and me

All smiles!

Happy Baby!

 It was great to see them!  I hope it's not another year before we get to see this wonderful family again!!!!

Quilting!

For those of you that don't know, when I graduated college, I told myself that I needed a hobby.  I felt like if I didn't find something to do with my time and energy, I was going to find myself sitting on the couch, eating every evening...  To save myself from this almost certain fate, I decided that I was going to try my hand at quilting.  I figured it couldn't be that hard, all I would have to do is sew in a straight line, right?  WRONG!  But the more I practiced, the more I realized it was something I really enjoyed doing.  I have always been a mathematical person, and I find that piecing a quilt is like a puzzle.  I love it!

I have made baby quilts in the past, and even a large queen size quilt for myself.  (Although, it ended up being a little crazier than I expected and is probably too bright for use in my bedroom on a regular basis, but it was fun to make and I'm sure that I will find a use for it!)  This past month, I was asked by my best friend, if I would make a quilt for her from all of her old t-shirts.  Well I've never actually done a t-shirt quilt before, and I have been told that sewing with Jersey Cotton can be pretty difficult, but I told her I would do my best and see what I could come up with.  While she was pulling her shirts together, her roommate asked if I would also make her a quilt.  I told her I would do it and started with her shirts as soon as they arrived in the mail.

My mother-in-law has had much more practice with quilting than I have, and is very good at t-shirt quilts.  Come to find out, she has a trick.  She has a set of plastic squares that are all standard sizes for quilting blocks that she uses to cut out perfect squares.  This allows her to have perfectly straight squares and nice, sharp, crisp looking edges.  She gave me the dimensions to get my own plastic squares cut.  All you have to do is take the dimensions to your local hardware store and they can cut the squares for you.  (Here is the cheat sheet that she gave me!)

Using these squares (I used mostly the 12.5"x12.5", the 16.5"x16.5" and the 8.5"x8.5" on this quilt) I was able to cut out the appropriate number of blocks, all in nicely coordinating sizes.  Here is the rough draft of the layout of the quilt that I am making for my best friend's roommate!  She wanted the center of the quilt to be her letters from her college sorority.  She also has a lot of shirts from Carnegie Melon, where she attended college for her undergraduate degree.  So far, things are looking pretty good.

After the blocks were cut and laid out, I was able to sew all of the pieces together.  Because I knew that every block was the appropriate size and perfectly square, it made the process pretty easy.

The top of the quilt is now done.  It needs to be ironed and the batting and backing need to be put together.  Then I need to actually "quilt" the quilt.  But I hope to have it done and shipped off soon!  I will post pictures of the quilt when it is complete!