Currently

Currently I am...

Loving finding new flowers and plants growing. It's so fun to find new things growing and blooming that you had no idea were there. 

Smelling the lilacs. One of my most favorite flowers. 

 Facetiming with my friends cute dog. Not really, but kind of. Can't wait to meet Annie in real life.

Hoping my family will come again soon.

Amazed by what a difference a week and a half makes. 

 Attempting to sort though all of the tools and gifts were were given this past weekend.

Nurturing my little seedling(s).

Admiring my new plant. It's an "Ornamental Onion" or Allium, I've been told. All I know is it's purple and I like it. 

Wishing you a happy weekend!

Lauren

Outside Tour

I realized I never showed any of you trusty reader the outside structures that came along with our house. They are not move-in-ready, but we (I) have grand plans for them. Let's begin the tour. First up is our lovely shed. It needs some paint. We have to paint the house so I figure while I am hating life I might as well paint the shed too. Then I can add a cute window box with flowers, probably of the faux variety. 

The door will also get a re-vamp. Wouldn't this make the most fun little play house ever? If only I was still a kid.

 The inside features peg walls, lots of shingles, hay, and a scent of rat droppings.

It's not really that bad for a shed. I think we will keep our lawn mower in there. Once we actually buy a lawn mower. The grass is growing very slow here so we have not had to rush out and buy one.

Next up on the tour is our chicken coop. We have no chickens because our little friend Penny would surely eat them all. What is there to do with a chicken coop and no chickens? Hum. We shall see.

The inside looks (and smells) like a chicken coop. I'd love to have chickens. We did when I was a kid and I learned early on that there is nothing like a fresh egg. My Mom spoiled us with French Toast made with homemade bread and fresh eggs, nothing has ever tasted so good since then! But alas, once we went on vacation and came home to our neighbor cleaning up chicken remnants from our yard because a predator had killed all of our chickens. After that we just started buying store eggs again. All of the chickens were named Fred, even though chickens are girls. What were we thinking? 

If we did want chickens the coop is pretty much all set up. It even has electricity for a heat lamp for the winter. And it has water cans.

Aside from the fear that Penny would kill them all, the fencing around and above the coop makes me think the people before us had had some chickens stollen by the hawk that flies around here. I'm thinking about making the coop into a potting shed. It would be nice to put a garden up in this area, since it gets a lot more sun than other parts of the yard. And I have been gardening for approximately 1.5 weeks now so I should most definitely have a potting shed. 

Those are the two outside structures on our property. Hope you've enjoyed the tour. Maybe I'll show you our trail next. 

Lauren 

We Book: March and April

I still can't believe it's May. Today I wanted to share our first  "We Book" pages.

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to make a page for a book highlighting the important events of the month. I also wanted only one picture that encapsulated (whoa, big words Lauren) the feelings of the month.

I was tempted to go back and do January and February so that the book would start at the beginning of 2013, but then I told myself to stop being such a perfectionist and to focus more on the feelings of the month in question.

It's a bit plain but I figure it will be easier to keep up with if and when things get a little crazy with renovating, painting, outdoor care etc. I'd rather all the pages be plain than have some that are over the top bedazzled out and others that are thrown together in 10 minutes. I think I'll stick with it for longer (forever?) if creating a page only takes a few minutes.

For March I wrote the page in one day. For April I saved the template and added to it to remind myself of things that had happened. Even thought I am not big on the news, I did include something about the Boston Marathon Bombing, just because it was pretty big and impacted us in some way. The events are not exactly in order. I wanted the house buying to be the first thing, since it was the biggest, even though it happened at the end of the month. The picture I used first is terrible, I can't tell which of us has the worst hair. Looking back it was the only picture I had of us for the whole month.

After printing it out I remembered that our realtor had taken pictures of us too, so I asked her to e-mail them to me. I put the new one right over the first one, so I suppose if you wanted to you could see both pictures since the new one is only held in by the black tabs. 

I like this idea so far. We shall see if I am able to keep up with it. As of right now the two pages are just in a binder. I'd like to get something a bit nicer at some point. I'm also thinking of ideas for a cover and a first page. 

Lauren 

Stairs= My Third Most Traumatizing Fear

This post has a purpose, I think. I just need you to stick with me while I get there.

My parents built our house so it was a work in progress for most of my childhood. When I was in late Elementary School they build an addition which involved a play room downstairs and an office and sewing room upstairs. This meant moving the basement door down a half flight of stairs and opening up the stairway to the playroom. So from the kitchen you can go upstairs to the bedrooms or downstairs to the celar or playroom (which is now my brother's bedroom). The problem with this was that there is this open space there. It was fine in the day time because you could see down the stairs to the playroom, the trouble was at night when the lights were off that the stairs to the playroom were super dark and I always got scared that someone was hiding on the stairs and would grab my leg when I went upstairs to bed. If I was the last one to go to bed I always had to turn the kitchen lights off, which meant standing in the darkness. For the most part I just ran and tried to jump past the open spot so no one could grab me. When I got to visit, I still do that. I realize writing this how crazy it sounds. In all 20 years of living in that house no one ever grabbed me, no one was ever hiding, I am an educated adult and know that monsters don't exist. And yet, I am still freaked out by open stairs.

see....that's my petrified face. 

Why am I wiring about this you ask? Well, because our new house has open stairs in the basement. The basement where my sewing room is. The sewing room that I spend time in by myself. I have thought about just taking the back door out of the house and walking around the outside of the house to skip taking the stairs. Talk about crazy. I don't walk around but I do ask nicely for Charlie to come downstairs with me, which he does, all while making jokes about how scary it is. I'm not so freaked out by going down, more so going back up.

Charlie monster=scariest monster ever. Wouldn't you be afraid of a monster with a GPS watch?

I keep telling myself to get over it. That doesn't seem to be working though. I'm thinking I should just accept that this is something I will always have an irrational fear of. At least I'll be in shape from running up the stairs at full speed, leaping 4 steps at a time.

I'll admit, this was not where I was going with this post. Sorry. Hope the idiotic pictures deter you from  the mindless ramblings of a 27 year old with a crazy fear of stairs.

Lauren

P.S Don't even bother asking me about my first and second most traumatizing fears....I can't even go there!

P.P.S I just googled "What floor of a house do most murders happen on?" expecting the answer to obviously be the basement. Well, I did not find the answer I was looking for and have decided to never sleep again! Don't google things you're already afraid of is the moral of that story.

Baby Quilt

My friends Sarah and Justin are having a baby girl in June. I'm super excited for them. Over February vacation I begged Charlie to take me to a quilt shop in Burlington VT called Nido. A fat quarter bundle of Nursery Versery fabric struck my fancy and I knew it would be perfect for a quilt for the new baby. 

True to my fashion I bought the fat quarters and then realized there wouldn't be enough for a quilt so I thought about it about bought a few grey fat quarters to give me enough yardage. Then I made up the design and sizing via Pinterest and a quilting app for my iphone.

I always seem to go for the triangle quilts. Since chevron seems to be the new big thing that's the path I went with. I sewed up most of the quilt top during a snow day in March. That's my kind of snow day. 

Once the front was done I ordered some Riley Blake Chevron fabric for the back. If you're going to go with chevron's why not go all out right? Since my measuring was off I had one square of each fabric left, which made a good strip to break up the backing. 

For the quilting I used my walking foot and stitched in the ditch. I love the way it turned out on the back. I promise someday soon to start using my quilting foot, but I'm so pleased with how the quilting turned out. 

For the binding I used a Nursery Versery fabric. I kept sending pictures to my friend who is friends with Justin and Sarah as well to show her my progress. It's hard for me to keep secrets so that was good. I also kept telling myself that if I texted Sammy pictures then I wouldn't be able to keep the quilt for myself. 

As with every quilt I've ever made, it's kind of a funny size. I think it will be good for the baby to lie on the floor on. This gives you an idea of the size. 

The baby's name is Norah so I embroidered a little tag for the back of the quilt. 

 I couldn't go to the shower since my Mom and Rich were here visiting, and helping do lots of projects around the house, and also celebrating Mother's Day. I really hope they like it. I had so much fun making this quilt.

Lauren

::Right Now::

Right now, I am...

:: watching the leaves grow on the trees in our yard. 

:: loving that Spring is here, and here to stay. 

:: wanting two cute twin sized bed skirts. I'm hoping to find some relatively cheap ones this weekend. 

:: looking forward to seeing my family this weekend. 

:: heading outside for a run/walk/hike. Now that we live on such a big hill my runs have turned into hikes. I love it though. 

:: patting my pup. She's been doing better. Slowly but surely. 

:: enjoying the peace and quite that comes with not living down town in the middle of a construction zone. 

:: appreciating all of my co-workers. It is teacher appreciation week after all. They all work so hard and are some of the nicest people I know. 

:: surprising myself, and Charlie, by finding scraps of fabric in a nest in the yard. I'm so excited, it's a bit ridiculous how happy I am about it. 

:: feeling full of cupcakes and fruit salad.
:: working on my ability to be patient, as well as remembering to water plants. 

:: hoping that someone this weekend will show me how to turn the outside spigot on. I know you turn them off every Winter, but that was always a job my Dad did while I did something else. 

I'm also hoping you have a lovely weekend. Be sure to wish your Mom a Happy Mother's Day. And if you are a Mom, thanks for all you do!

Lauren