Wow am I behind!

I have far too many things to post about. My last post was about the letter B for E's collection and I'm already done with C and D! Not to mention my baby turned one and is almost walking!  So, a quick recap of the last month.

E turned one. We had a birthday part for her over Easter weekend with my parents, P's parents, and P's brother and sister. Here are some pictures from the party and Easter!

We also got nice pictures taken of her at JC Penny, here are my favorites.

Next, in my ongoing effort to put more art up in the house, I made two new pieces.

The first covers up our really ugly doorbell and thermostat:

The second is a magnetic scrabble board for your wall!

Both of these ideas were from pinterest. You know that bumper sticker that says "I do what the voices in my head tell me to?" Mine should read, "I do what the pictures on Pinterest tell me to."

In other crafty news I made little finger puppets for E's friends for her birthday:

and for my friend's birthday I made a shopping bag that folds up in your purse. I had to learn how to make a french seam, which is a very useful skill!

Ok, I think that's all the news that's fit to print.  Oh, I'm probably not going to be as crafty for the next 8 weeks because I'm taking an online logic course through Coursera. I tried one other course before, but it require reading a book a week for 8 weeks and I just didn't have enough time. This one is a little tricky so far, similar to a course I took in college but that was ten years ago now and I am rusty. The courses are free though and very well done in case you're interested!

B is for Banana

Moving on in the alphabet, here we have a Bodacious B. 

This is my second attempt and making B, the first one will be seen later as the letter P. It didn't go so well.

I finished this yesterday and it has already spent a considerable amount of time in E's mouth.

Two down, 24 letters to go. Sometimes I worry by the time I've finished she won't need them anymore!

Table Runner

I saw a pattern for a 10 minute table runner. It seemed like a fun, quick project and I wanted something to decorate our table in the kitchen. I tried making it yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised that it really took only 10 minutes!  I think I will add some buttons to the end for a little bit of extra flair, but other than that, it's all done!

A is for apple!

Ok, even though Evelyn is only 10 1/2 months old I wanted to start working on her alphabet. I like putting a little bit of structure in our days and giving her different things to play with and think about.  I decided to make magnetic letters for her to play with.  I just finished the first one yesterday and she's already playing with it.

It helps that I put it on the dishwasher and she already loves the dishwasher.  I plan to put different pieces of paper under the magnet with images of things that start with the letter A.  Either that or just let her play. She's figured out that it's a magnet and can stick to certain things, but she hasn't quite figured out how to do it successfully each time.

Tag Blankets Revisited!

Last month, I mentioned that my mother-in-law and I had made a tag blanket for E with a kit from Mill House Quilts.  We had so much fun, and it was so easy.  I thought it would be nice to get some friends together and try to make our own! 

I had a lot of fabric, but everyone brought some ribbon to contribute to make a lot of variation.  Here are some of the finished projects!

Bench Seat

Yesterday I started with these ingredients:

2" thick foam, three separate pieces all glued together and then wrapped in a layer of vinyl

A large bench seat, 72"x31" from putting two Ikea Expedit shelves together with some sturdy hardware.

Then add a surprise fabric, zipper, time, one broken machine needle and you get:

Finished Bench Seat Cover!

This is just one small step in our family room makeover, but I really love how it turned out.  Next we need to get the futon out of there, add some book shelves, and get some art onto the walls!

Another Blog!

As many of you may already know, I have another blog that I share with my art night friends, art night posse.  You would think since I rarely post there and I rarely post here that those would be enough for me, but apparently not.  

Art night posse is for all of us, and mainly for crafts we make at art night.  And this blog is for anything and everything, so I wanted to make a blog just for my sewing/quilting.  That blog, The Quilted Lane, only has two posts so far, but that's only because all of the things I'm working on right now are gifts and I can't show anyone yet!  

I hope to be posting more on all of my blogs soon as I've finished my Christmas gifts for the most part so nap times can have more blog posting!

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Now to share someone else's amazing craftiness.  My mother-in-law made this quilt for E and we just got it in the mail today, what a great surprise!  

Tag blanket

I'm sure it is obvious that I love my daughter, based on the quantity of posts that are about her, but believe it or not, I've not made a quilt for her yet.  My mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law both quilt, and they have made two quilts already for her.  I haven't needed to make anything for her yet.  

I am now working on an activity quilt for her, but I'm not ready to show that yet.  As a teaser, I will show you the little blanket that my mother-in-law and I made for her this past week.  We were at Mill House Quilts, looking for kids fabric, when we saw these kits for tag blankets.  The kit says it's a Luvi blanket, and that is well suited, because Evelyn loves it!  We gave it to her and within minutes it was soaked. It's only 12 inches square, but it's the perfect size for her.  

Our new couch

We have now been living in this house for 6 months now.  It honestly feels like just yesterday we moved in here.  This is a very exciting time in our lives with so many changes happening.  E takes up most of our time, but we have managed to work on a few household project here and there.  One room we have been slowly trying to make our own is the family room.  We had a futon in that room for the first five months and when E came, I practically lived on that thing.  Last month, we finally got a couch.  This is the first step to redoing and decorating this room.  I of course had to immediately make pillows for the couch. 

I ended up making three pillows, one for each end and one for the bend in the sectional.  The next project is to wall mount our TV and try to reduce the amount of cords below the TV.  Then comes painting!

The Nursery

We moved into our new house December 1st.  For those of you doing the math, that means we moved in when I was approximately 5 months pregnant.  That meant no painting, no heavy lifting, etc.  Because of that, I haven't really decorated any of the rooms in the house...except the nursery.  I was so excited that we moved in time to have a nursery, and my family was so generous with gifts that I've decorated the nursery with.  Here are the pictures I've been promising.  It's still not completely done as I don't have any sort of permanent storage solution to all of her clothes, but for now they are all folded or hanging in her closet.

The quilt on the left was made by my great grandmother, the one on the right by my mother-in-law, I love them both!  E will only be using the one made by her grandma though as the older one is falling apart.  It was well loved for many years.

This Mobile was made by a friend of mine just for E.  There are also more things to put on it as she gets older, animals that my friends made for my baby shower.

The vinyl decal was an etsy find.  The only problem is the walls are textured, which I didn't realize when I asked for it for Christmas.  I had to use a little glue stick glue to get it to stick in the highly textured areas of the wall.

The paper lanterns and other decorations are from the baby shower my friends threw for me (3 days before I gave birth!)  I kept as many as possible as decorations for the nursery.

My grandma made this cross stitch and my Uncle gave it to me after the baby was born.  

My favorite craft project in any room, the light switch cover.  I love the little details in a room!

I've had this desk since I moved into my first house.  I couldn't let it go, I love it so much so it is now a changing table!

This chair was a craigslist find, so comfortable!  It rocks and reclines, perfect for late night feedings.

Yoga mat bag

I read a lot of crafting blogs, maybe too many, but I love seeing what great ideas other people come up with.  I saw this project and knew I had to do it!  I have a yoga mat, but no bag for it.  I didn't have any extra pillowcases like she did, but I found a two pack at target for under 10 dollars so it wasn't too expensive.  I used the second pillowcase to make a case for my mother, I can't wait to send it to her!

Here is the raw pillowcase:

and here it is completed!

click on the project link if you want the instructions.  I didn't use a drawstring though, I used elastic since that's what I had on hand.

Our wedding mementos

P and I were married last year.  Our friends and family were so generous, and gave us so many cards and well wishes.  I didn't want to just stick them in a box, and I didn't want to throw them out, but it was a pretty big pile:

And I really hate clutter.  So, I decided to make an album with the cards and pictures of the people who gave them, as well as other paper memorabilia from the wedding.  Here is the album:

And here are some of the pages:

It was really fun to go through all of them again over a year later, it was such a great wedding!