jump up and down

friday road trip

On Friday, after I had taken my last exam before finals, I picked up the boys from the babysitter and we headed off for a multi-tasking adventure.  Twenty miles down the road, at our first stop, we dropped off an item I had sold on Craigslist - the purging has begun in full force around here.  Hooray for Craigslist to help me make some money from all of that purging!  At our next stop, about thirty miles later, we stuffed our trunk full of free moving boxes that I found on Freecycle.  And another 30 or 40 miles later we stopped to visit a friend who was a missionary in Argentina with me that I hadn't seen since we flew home together.  I reconnected with her on Facebook a couple of months ago and found out that she is remodeling this great old home (which I forgot to take pictures of because we were having such a great time chatting - next time, next time) in a town not too far away from me.  The boys loved the house and her kids and we had such a fun time - thanks Heather!  We can't wait to come visit again.

And here's what you will see on a road trip in Idaho:

Potato Fields...

Potato Trucks...

and the one picture I did get at Heather's house - the most awesome vintage couch (Heather is a thrifter) that I just could not stop staring at.  I'm thinking my staring at the couch may be a large part of the reason why I didn't take pictures of anything else at the house...

nie nie day

Oh wow!  Have you seen all of the wonderful things out in blogland that are being auctioned for Stephanie and Christian Nielson?  Check out Design Mom for a boatload of spectacular items!

And now it's my turn.  I'm doing two auctions, one here and one with Leslie at a room somewhere.  She is hosting a whole ton of fabulous auctions there - go check it out!

I donated a Retro Hostess Apron to Leslie's efforts - here is the post if you want to bid on that.

And here, I'll be hosting an auction for one of my latest Happy Birthday Banner creations.  A Friday (8/29) ADDITION:  JoAnn of Wish Upon A Necklace just contacted me and asked to add one of her lovely necklaces to my auction.  Happy Birthday wishes and a wishing necklace - what a great combination!  Thank you JoAnn!!

Please start the bidding at $20 and bid in increments of $1.  The first comment will then be the first official bid. Comments are for bids only please. Feel free to email me if you have questions about the banner (jjumpupanddown at gmail dot com). The bidding will remain open until Sunday, August 31st at midnight PST.  If you win the item I will have you send the money directly to the Stephanie Nielson Recovery Fund at PayPal and then forward me the receipt.

In addition, for the foreseeable future, I'll be donation 10% of the profit from my shop the the Nie Recovery fund.  

Happy Bidding Everyone!  Now I've got some of my own to do....

quilt show and NieNie

Thanks for your advice on Friday.  I was worried that no one would find the humor in the situation, but apparently I was wrong.  As I explained to some in my replies, usually this little guy just gets thrown in whatever basket with whatever other toys, but about every two or three months, I go in and really organize.  Today we are back to normal and he is in a basket with all of the other little people - animal and people all together.  But next time I get that extreme organizing need, I'll be able to come back to that post because I will need it!  It's not the first time I've wondered where to put him

On one of our summer jaunts to see family, my mom, grandma and I went to a quilt show.  They were all so amazing and inspiring.  Someday I want to make a quilt to put in a show.

I think this is my favorite -it's a mini quilt and those hexagons were miniscule.  The detail is so amazing in this quilt, the colors are just perfect, and I love the theme.  It's no surprise that this one won a prize.

This quilt top was actually an antique that the quilter had found, added the border and then hand quilted - definitely my kind of project.  I could only be so lucky to find such an amazing quilt top!

This is another one I loved for it's vintage goodness- each Dresden Plate is made with scraps from the quilter's grandma. 

Another shot to show just how yummy those Dresden Plate fabrics are!

And this one is just fun - I love all these little aprons!

And the aprons bring me to something else I wanted to mention.  Design Mom has declared this Thursday, August 28th NieNie Day.  If you haven't heard about the tragic airplane accident that Stephanie Nielson and her husband Christian were involved in, you can go here to read about it here or here.  I have been reading Stephanie's beautiful blog, the NieNie Dialogues for quite some time now and have been truly inspired by her lovely life. Her accident shocked me.  She and her husband are in for months of recovery and the cost will be enormous.  In order to help, Design Mom will be holding a silent auction on Thursday and donating all proceeds to the Nie Recovery Fund.  She will also provide a link to anyone else who wants to host a silent auction on their blog.  And if you feel like you don't have the readership to host your own auction, Leslie at A Room Somewhere will host your item for you - just go to her blog for details and e-mail her.  I'll be hosting a silent auction here, probably an apron, in honor of Stephanie's love of aprons. 

i heart handmade

When it comes to gifts, I definitely prefer those of the handmade variety, both in the giving and receiving departments.  I do especially try to give handmade, although occasionally it doesn't happen.  But, during my blog break, I was able to make two handmade gifts - one for Peter's best buddy's birthday (sorry, I couldn't help myself - all that alliteration was too tempting) and one for Ryan's cousin for her wedding.

For the birthday boy, I used the serger one last time to whip up an all purpose tote made from red corduroy and a fun sea faring print I got from JoAnn about a year ago.  I filled it with a notebook and box full of fun things - a crayon roll (also handmade - this was my first attempt at making one of these), pencil, scissors, and glue.  I thought the bag can be used to carry all sorts of things to all sorts of places - quiet activities to church, toys to the doctor's office, pajamas to grandma's house, etc.  This was definitely easy to put together - I did it the night before in a couple of hours and the birthday boy seemed pleased. 

 When we got married, I vowed that I would never give any couple a gift from the clearance table.  I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but we had four hand mixers and none of them could be returned - and believe me we tried at about ten stores!  So, we kept them and when we would hear that someone didn't have a hand mixer, we would give one away.  I think it took us about five years to get rid of them all.  Anyway, from then on I decided I would either buy something off of the couple's registry or give something that you could not have too many of - like towels!  Incidentally, we did get about a bazillion towels for our wedding and I couldn't be happier - eight years later and I still haven't bought a single bath towel and probably won't have to for at least another ten!

So, my handmade gift to Ryan's cousin of appliqued towels and crochet dish cloths definitely fits into the can't have too many of category.  I took some of my Amy Butler scraps, cut some pears and apples out of Heat and Bond and put them right on those cotton dish towels.  Then with a little zig zag around the edge, they were ready to go.  This was such a great way to use scraps.  I think I see Christmas gifts in the future and possibly some for the shop. 

playdates and sergers

Summer is here and I couldn't be happier!  It's still a little cool here, but not so cool that you can't go out and enjoy a little sunshine.  I have a few things up my sleeve to make this summer lots of fun for me and the kids - more on that later.  But what really made it start feeling like summer was a visit from my friend Phoebe - we were pals when we both lived in California and both moved at about the same time to other locales.  Her cousin, Karen, lives here and Phoebe introduced us and shortly after I moved here, Karen and I were pals too!   Phoebe was in our neck of the woods last week and stopped by for a fun visit.  I made a plate of hummus, carrots, cucumbers and pita, and a plate of Mary Beth's Chocolate Chip Cookies - these really are the best!  They've replaced our previous favorite recipe and an empty plate can't lie! The boys played hard, running in and out of the house and jumping.  We chatted and caught up - it was a great afternoon!  Phoebe - thanks for stopping by and Karen - thanks for having us over!  (and yes, Ned is crying in that photo - he was having a hard time that afternoon.  I only look like I'm grimacing because I was trying to take the humorous approach to dealing with my fussy child!)

And I had a few requests for the model number on my Mom's serger, so I'd thought I'd share it with all of you for future reference.  It's a Janome MyLock644D.  I've been very impressed with it so far - I don't have much serger experience, but I think that speaks for this machine's ease of use.  I also keep meaning to share the book my Mom lent me that I've also really liked.  The actual owner's manual doesn't have any photographs, just black and white drawings and I am a visual learner, so this book, The Complete Serger Handbook by Chris James has been very helpful with all of it's full color photographs.  This would be a great book to get if you inherited a serger from someone or bought one second-hand, but didn't get the owner's manual.

I hope you all had a great weekend - I'm sad it's over, but excited for my first week of summer to start!  Happy June everyone!

why I love blogging

About a year ago, when I started blogging, I also started reading Sarah's blog.  I quickly discovered that she lived in Davis, the town we had just moved from a few months earlier.  We loved living in Davis for the six years we were there while Ryan went to graduate school at UC Davis.  It has the best farmer's market, bike paths down every street, wonderful weather (ok, except for those couple weeks in the summer when it's 110), green living, fun people, great parks, double decker buses, lots of fun things to do - am I painting the picture for you?  We really did love it there!  It was a great place to spend six years.

Earlier this year we thought we might try to get back to Davis for Picnic Day, but for several reasons we just weren't able to go.  Instead we went to visit our family and Ned got sick and threw up all day on Friday and we had a tiff with Ryan's brother (I cringe to even mention this because it is so not like us to argue with family - this is really the first argument we've had with anyone in either of our families since we've been married) and basically our weekend didn't turn out very well.  We came home early and spent Sunday recovering.  And then on Sunday night, I started seeing pictures of Picnic Day on blogs of friends and I started feeling sorry for myself.  And then on Monday I went to get the mail and there was a key in our box.  Keys mean packages and I wasn't expecting one.  I opened up the door on the mailbox and found a box from Sarah inside.  She had told me a while back she would send me a Davis care package - something that I had totally forgotten about until I saw it.  And her timing was perfect - just the thing to cheer me up when I was really missing Davis!

She sent a great tote, made by her (take a look at that fab button detail on the strap -love it!) - such fun fabric and excellent workmanship - french seams inside and super straight stitches.  And she sent another tote bag from the absolute best grocery store in which I will proudly carry my groceries.  Also included were an assortment of treats from Pedrick's Produce - the best produce stand/store in the area -cheap as dirt and fresher than fresh.  My only regret is that I didn't discover this gem until we'd been living there for about four years - I'm not sure how I missed it!  And the books -assorted fun reads and "The Toads of Davis " - one that we always meant to get and never got around to it.  How can you leave Davis without a copy of  "The Toads of Davis"?   Thank you so much Sarah - perfect timing and the perfect package - you really made my day!  And I keep smiling every time I see it - so I guess you made my week too!

and p.s.  Revolution Money Exchange is extending their offer until May 15th - everyone who signs up gets $25 and each referral gets $10.  I actually had someone pay me with it last week - it worked well and so far I'm happy.  I don't expect to use it much at first, but hopefully it will gain more popularity and I won't be paying so much of my hard earned dough to PayPal.

my super socks

Yesterday we woke up to this  (hopefully we are almost finished with it)...
And it reminded me that I had never shared my fabulous new socks.  After taking Peter to pre-school without socks on (I think I was in denial that the snow was back), my feet really needed my new socks.  I actually got them for Christmas from my best friend Cayenne, knitter and spinner extraordinaire.  I have kept meaning to share them because I think they are so amazing.  They are so warm - the perfect thing to warm up my feet when nothing else would work.  And look at all the detail in the cuff!  Isn't she amazing?  I had no idea things like this could be made by human hands.  I have decided that I really need to learn how to knit, if only for the purpose of knitting socks.  Thanks Cayenne! 

Have a great weekend everyone!  Here's hoping for some sunshine and spring weather for everyone!

pink and ruffles for baby

It's been a busy couple of days - a friend and I threw a baby shower for another friend.  I haven't thrown a baby shower in a long time - I think it's been over two years.  There was a time when I was throwing a baby shower every month or two.  And wouldn't you know it, I'll be throwing another one here in a couple of weeks - these things all seem to come at the same time, don't they?

I made these super easy invitations - printed the white part on cardstock and then attached them to a patterned paper with these fun brads that I found at JoAnn in the $1 scrapbook items.  I think they turned out well, especially for a person who doesn't do much papercrafting.

Decorations included a couple of pennant banners and bouquet of colorful carnations.

And I made this for the new little girl who will be making her way into the world sometime next month.  Frilly pants and a decorated onesie from Ginger Blossom and a little bit of Amy Butler.  I have to admit that these were very fun to make.  I'm trying to come up with  some sort of boy-ish version of the pants.  The only thing I've decided for sure is that the ruffle has to go;)!

I love giving new babies a warm welcome into the world - I hope Melanie and Dan's baby makes it here safe and sound and I can't wait to see her in her frilly pants in a few months!