Crafty January

Between the house remodel and a super busy work schedule, I haven’t been very crafty over the past few years.  After finishing my Christmas craft, I decided that this year I’ll complete at least one crafty project a month.  To start January off right, I decided to finish up a baby quilt I had started a few years ago, and luckily got it finished just in time to give to a co-worked the week before she had her first baby.  I figured I probably shouldn’t start on 12 new projects without finishing the ones I had in limbo!

To make this quilt, I bought a set of flannel receiving blankets from Target or Fred Meyer (like I said, it was a few years ago that I started this!).  I then just found a pattern that seemed like it would be fun to make and cut up the receiving blankets into the right right sizes. 

For the backing I found some flannel at JoAnn’s that matched the rest of blanket and cut it down to size. I used the same fabric for the binding as I used on the back. This is only the second quilt I’ve finished (besides a bunch of little patchwork quilts as a kid ), and I’ve used this tutorial from Heather Bailey for the binding of both of them. 

Here’s the top:

And a close-up of one of the blocks:

All finished!

One project down, 11 to go!

A Fun Christmas Craft

During November I stumbled across a tutorial for an adorable little Christmas ornament of a Matryoshko Doll.  I decided right then that I just HAD TO make some as gifts for family and friends.

Here is the Matryoshka Doll Ornament from the tutorial.

I’ll be the first to admit that my embroidery skills are seriously lacking, but Danielle’s instructions were SO easy to follow.  I made a few tiny modifications…I didn’t do quite as much embroidering, I used some different stitches, and I just put all my pieces on my top background instead of embroidering onto the white pieces and then onto the back…but I think they turned out so cute!!  (oh yeah – and I picked out a bunch of different colors too!)

I cut out the pattern (I think I printed out the pattern at about 25%), and traced it onto a manila folder.  I then cut that out and used it as a guide for all the dolls I made.

Now I just need to make one more to keep for myself!

 

A HUGE thank you to Danielle of MySparkle for putting together this awesome tutorial.  Everyone I gifted these to just loved them!

Spicy Cedar Plank Salmon

Joel surprised me tonight and brought home a whole coho salmon. What can I say – he knows what I like. (a quick side-note - a couple times a year when salmon is in season and the grocery stores have good prices on fresh wild salmon we’ll buy a whole fish to filet out into individual meal sizes, vacuum seal, and freeze for a later date.)

Living in Seattle we have the opportunity (privilege?) of eating delicious fresh seafood all year long. Even with all the seafood we eat, we have pretty simple tastes and normally make things the same way every time.  Steamed clams, steamed crab, shrimp with lemon and garlic, salmon on a cedar plank…while I love to cook, we aren’t about to take risks with our precious seafood. 

Tonight I decided to take a small risk with our salmon and tried a new recipe (of course I wasn’t stepping too far out of the box, because we still grilled it on a cedar plank and one of the main ingredients was brown sugar). It was definitely a risk worth taking – I would highly recommend trying Real Simple’s Cedar Plank Salmon.  Sweet, with a surprise spicy bite – Joel and I agree this recipe is a keeper!  Easy ingredients – thyme, cayenne, brown-sugar and of course salmon, and while the recipe said to grill it for 40 minutes, since we didn’t grill up a full 2 pounds of salmon – we just grilled up 2 portions worth – it only took about 10 minutes of grill time.

I forgot to take my own picture – but here is the Real Simple picture – DELICIOUS!

Playing Dress-Up

We’ve done a substantial amount of work to the inside of our house, but unfortunately over the past (almost) 5 years that we’ve been in this house we’ve neglected the poor outside.  We did upgrade the paint job, but other than that we’ve let nature take its course..literally…blackberries completely overtook the backyard, in fact, if you only saw the backyard you would have thought that the house had been vacant for twenty years…This summer we’ve been putting a lot of work into the outside of the house. More posts will come, but we rebuilt the backyard fence, pulled out all of the blackberry bushes, created a little patio off the side of the driveway (okay, really more of a parking spot for the bbq), and laid down some bark. 

The outside is definitely coming together, and is leaps and bounds better looking than it was 4 months again, but really still needs some help. 

Here it is now…well almost now – a couple weekends ago we replaced the window on the left, but I’ll post about that later.

I’ve been playing a little photoshop dress-up tonight.

Cedar shingles on the upper front triangle of the house

Re-roofing (our current roof is nearing the end of its life) in a darker shade

and now for the chimney…stucco

or maybe some faux river rock…ooo…pretty….

I’m not sure we’re digging the cedar shingles, but I do think the front face of the house needs something to add a little personality…any ideas?

San Diego Zoo

We’re getting ready to head down to San Diego for a fun weekend getaway this fall…I just stumbled across this picture from the San Diego zoo and now I just can’t wait!

Thank you TripAdvisor for the awesome pictures!

Summer Reading (part 2)

A few more of my summer reads.

Summer Reading

I’m managed to do a lot of reading so far this spring/summer (thank you rainy Seattle summer!)

Here are some books that have make it onto my nook…a big thank you to the Seattle Public Library – I haven’t had to buy a single book!