Happy Birthday Presents

...for my youngest and oldest sisters today.

Happy Birthday Liam!!!

My first born is 14! Can't believe it's been 14 years of being a Mom already. We're very lucky to have such a great son. We celebrated with a lunch pizza party at our house with tons of family. This photo shows our birthday breakfast tradition. I always want my kids to start the day feeling special ... blowing out a candle at breakfast does that. They expect this every year. And, because of today being on a weekend, my husband was home this morning to be a part of this!

Small Book Bag

Tote I made this week. Simplicity 5435 It's a small tote bag..I'm trying a few fabrics so I can make this bag in a bigger size...the stiffer fabrics seem to work better. My teacher sister wants a book bag/tote for school. I like the easy pattern. It is a cute style that only needs minor altering. I added 2 extra pockets on this small blue one. I'll need to make hers bigger, with a pocket to fit an ipad, use a stiffer fusible or a fleece to add padding on the ipad pocket, and of course, find the right fabric, longer handles. blue bag Green bag was made last year and given away to my sweet Aunt. green bag

Grey Yellow Tote

A Happy Birthday present for my friend Lena. Hope she likes it :)

Baby Quilt

1 hour old

This is my new Niece, Sidney Ava, my sisters new baby! I was so lucky to be there when she was born. And it's exciting to have a new baby in the family. She's so adorable and good to be passed around from Aunt to Aunt to Grandma to cousin to sister...

This photo is my daughter, Riley, meeting her new cousin for the first time(1 week old). Yesterday I finished and delivered her baby quilt. I've been working on it for a few weeks. The fabrics came from Hobby Lobby. Very bright and bold but they called to me. I'm already thinking of whats next that I can make for her.

It's machine pieced, hand quilted, machine bound. Finished July 29th. I was nervous of using straight pins, when I started making this. I had accidently left a pin in the purse that I made for my mom...she brought it back to me and said that she had jabbed herself but it was sewn into the bag. So I made the quilt with safety pins instead of straight pins. I still felt over every bit of the quilt because I had used a hand needle to do the quilting...just to be safe

San Francisco

driving across the goldengate California Academy of Sciences: Our third trip to the new science and history museum. It was not so crowded this time. We were able to walk around and see things and watch the shows. They've changed some of the exibits and the movie in the dome was one we havent seen yet. New exhibit about earth quakes changing the earth. And how ostriches on two continents are evidence that the continents were once joined. waiting in line for the earth quake simulator

Beach Trip

We always manage a beach trip before school starts. This one is thanks to my in-laws. They were camping for a week in Bodega Bay, North of S.F. We joined them for a couple days. The kids stayed with them for 3 extra days(due to work schedules). This was my first time camping on the beach. I've always camped in the mountains. We were on a peninsula between the bay and the ocean. It got very windy at night. The first night, the sound of the fog horn kept me awake, I had to fall asleep listing to my ipod to drown out the horn. The second night I stayed there was Williams 1st night and the kids and in-laws last night. It was so windy the tent-trailer was shaking. We watched "Murder on the Orient Express" on the computer. The sounds and the way the tent-trailer was shaking felt like we were on board a train.. It was windy and cold...but beautiful to hear the water and feel the sand in my toes. The kids had a blast collecting shells and tiny sand dollars, flying kites, getting spoiled by grandparents.

Idina

Last night William took me to see Idina Menzel in concert. It was amazing! She was amazing! Her voice is amazing! I had a chills, tears, happy-happy-happy!

More handbags

More handbags. My youngest sister asked for a black and white one. The floral one is for my Mom(Riley picked the fabric).

Crayon and Pencil Rolls

I Made These :)

I made 13: 9 crayon rolls, 3 color pencil rolls and 1 marking pen roll. This was my Christmas present 2011 project for all my nieces, nephews and kids(and one for a friend at work). The first one I made took a few hours to figure out. I had seen a photo of a crayon roll(if you google search for 'crayon roll' you'll find tons of images). I took what I saw and did what I usually do by altering the design a bit to make it mine. I wanted each crayons pocket to be a matching color to the crayon. Most of the images I saw were not like that. Most looked plain: super easy to make but looked so plain. I also thought of changing how to keep it rolled up. Most of the images I saw had two strings that tie in a bow...I made mine with a band of elastic...I thought that would make it more kid friendly. Towards the end I got very fast at making these. I'm actually not burned out on them. I wanted to keep making, but ran out of kids. Maybe I'll make some for my girl scouts... Since I've done this project...I've become so familiar that I can name all the colors in a box of crayons.

To Kill a Mocking Bird

Today, on lunch, I googled 'best historical fiction books' and found This website. I went to the Barnes and Nobles and bought a new book: To Kill a Mockingbird. I think most people read this in school... I never did. I had Mr. Jordan for English and so we didn't do alot of reading. We would start to read something and would never finish we would end up watching the movie. We actually did alot of movie watching in that class.
I did read when I was in school. I didn't read for fun and I didn't know how much I loved to read. I think I just didn't have the attention I was a more active kid.
About the list.. I almost bought a book called Outlander, but read the reviews and the negative reviews were negative for a reason while the positive reviews were positive in defense of the negative. I'll let you know how it goes. Because I buy a book doesn't mean I'll read it if I find something else to read first.
I like the list I found though. I've read alot of the books on the list(or have seen the movie).