Anna Maria Horner – Loulouthi – Pink Castle Fabrics Giveaway! (And An Update On My Recovery)

What could possibly bring me crawling out of bed rest to blog? Oh… I don’t know… free fabric? Yes. Free fabric.

Just A Bit Frayed is hosting a giveaway for bloggers. The winner will receive some GORGEOUS new Anna Maria Horner fabric!

It was a hard call, but I think my favorites are 3, 5, 15, 20, and 25! I’m always partial to the dots 🙂

So if you’re a blogger, and you LOVE free fabric, head on over and check out the details of the giveaway!

I’m hoping my entry will secretly count for more, since I am completely stoned on painkillers, and begged my husband to hook my computer up to my tv so I could do this from bed.

I haven’t posted any post-op pictures yet, partially because I haven’t really felt like doing ANYTHING, but also because I’m not sure anyone wants to see those 🙂 I did decide I’m not going to create a blog specifically for them, but I’m going to post them on a jaw surgery blog I’ve been frequenting and then just link to that.

Please continue to pray for me, because this is rough stuff! I think I’m about 1/3 of the way through the hardest part, and things should start getting better maybe by the end of next week!

Jaw Surgery

Tomorrow I’m having jaw surgery, so I will be away from my blog for a (hopefully short) while. I’m hoping to still document my recovery, but it won’t be on this blog. If I do, I’ll link it for the non-squeamish!

Dexter Turns 2!!!

We celebrated Dexter’s 2nd birthday last weekend, and it was such a nice day! We let the kids play at a park, everyone got a sugar buzz… What more could a kid want??

My theme was bugs, but I didn’t want to go with a bug cake. I saw a terribly cute idea in the last issue of Parents Magazine. They stacked wood rounds to make a cupcake stand, and then decorated their cupcakes as mushrooms. My sweet brother-in-law attempted to HAND SAW some rounds for me. But the wood and his hands wouldn’t quite cooperate, so he supplied me with a still-cool stump and a few rounds.

My INCREDIBLE husband took over (after I semi-destroyed both a batch of cupcakes and a batch of frosting) and made these precious little mushrooms! I did my part by playing Dance Central and cheering him on 🙂

 
After we got everything set up, the table looked awesome! I wish we’d gotten a picture of the balloons. I picked red, orange, green, and cream, and they went perfectly with our theme.

We let the kids have cupcakes immediately. We didn’t really have a choice, as soon as we sat down about 30 grubby little hands started clawing at the table 🙂

Dexter was thrilled to sing happy birthday to himself, and I was surprised when he blew out the candle by himself without even being told to!

Then he proceeded to slather himself in icing. It was exceptionally cute 🙂

 
Here are Ty and Micah getting down on some cupcakes. I think one of Deborah’s boys managed to snag 3 cupcakes by the time the party was over!

Could this child be any cuter??

Another big birthday thrill for Dex was getting to drink out of a real juice bottle. And to actually get to drink juice! He rarely gets it unless he’s sick!

He was given a lot of sweet gifts, and he has loved playing with them for the whole week. It’s been a lot of fun watching him explore and interact with the new toys. After I put him to bed the other night, I was turning out all the lights and found that he’d nestled his tiny dump truck into his big dump truck. I really wanted to wake him up and squish him for that. But I didn’t. 

I love you teeny-tiny-big-boy!!! Happy Birthday!!!

Sorting Little Squares

With all the things I *should* be doing this week, my mind is continually pulled to my postage stamp quilt. Maybe I just want what I can’t have, because I know I technically can’t start working on it right now. But those fabrics are soooo pretty!!! I keep help wanting to play with them.

Remember how my stash looked like this?

I thought I was doing the smart and right thing by keeping them all mixed up so that when I started sewing, everything would be all random and scrappy. That makes sense, right?

Well, not technically. If you truly want a random quilt, then sure, go all willy nilly. But Mary at The Curious Quilter  pointed out that doing things this way could result in all of one type of fabric ending up in one area, despite your best intentions.

And that bugs me a lot. A lot.

So I’m going to go for a controlled-random look!

A few weeks ago, after reading Mary’s advice, I sorted, painstakingly, through all my squares. So far I have just created stacks of like fabrics.

 
One thing excluded from this shot is my stack of unique squares. I’m going to have to sort them in a different way, and make sure they are distributed around the quilt.

It was nice getting them all stacked like this because I was able to get a feel for what fabrics were going to be most present in the quilt.

I think it’s really a tie between some of my reds and a fabric I dyed orange. (One day I’ll do a post about my dyeing escapades!)

What I plan to do next is to make 4 groupings of fabrics, one for each quadrant of the quilt. And I’ll divide my color stacks amongst those. I still may go as far as to halve each quadrant.

I’ll let you guys know how that goes!