Hospital, party, quilt, and Gus

So I know everyone is dying to know how Keziah liked her quilt. But before I get into that, I want to thank everyone for all the prayers, phone calls, texts, comments, and e mails that my family and I received while my dad was in the hospital.

For those of you that don't know, Wednesday morning, at like 4 am, my mom text me to say that she was taking my dad to the hospital. Now my dad never wants to go to the hospital, so I knew he was in serious pain. Turns out, he had appendicitis. He got to the hospital's ER sometime after 4am, but did not go into surgery until 5:30pm. So they put him on some meds for a while so he could "rest comfortably". Now, my dad has had more knee surgeries than any other person I know and his pain tolerance is really high. I have never seen my dad in so much pain. But they wheeled him into surgery and 2 hours later, he was out. The surgeron said he had gangrene all over his appendix and sourrounding areas. So, of course, he took it all out and cleaned it up real nice. My dad then spent the next few nights in the hospital draining out the fluids and healing.
Saturday, the day of Zia's party, he was relased to go home! He is now doing much better. So thank you for the prayers. They were definitly answered.

So on to the party for my favorite 3 year old. Here is a picture of Keziah.
And her sweet baby brother Kohen.
He's starting to be able to move around pretty good and his laugh is contagious! I love hearing him laugh.

I also baked the cake, but since my cake decorating skills aren't top notch, I won't post the pictures here. That, and I didn't take any of the final product. But here are some of Keziah and her quilt.
She just opened it and Kim is telling her that it's from Caren and Nuge.
"Thank you Carewen and Nuge."
I think she really liked it!
So while Zia is opening her presents, I got to the play with Kohen.
He is so sweet!
And what post would be complete without some pictures of Gus?
So while I'm baking Keziah's cake, Nuge and Gus sleep. Lazy bums!
Can't believe how big she is getting. The vet said she would be about 65-70 pounds!!!
Now see, Gus is a smart dog. I'm doing laundry and this face cloth falls on the floor. What does she do? She makes sure I'm not looking, then she RUNS off to the living room and starts to play with it. Now, she knows she's not allowed to be chewing on this stuff and she runs before I even have to time to see what she has in her mouth. I get into the living room, she rolls over on her back (I didn't get a picture) because she knows this is the one position that is hard for us to get her out of, and clamps down on the cloth. What a sneaky, smart doggie!

Very first quilt

I hope this will be the first of many posts about my sewing.

My friends, Kyle and Kim, have a daughter, Keziah. She will be turning 3 this month and her birthday party is Saturday. I will be baking her a princess cake but I also wanted to make her something. What do you make a 3 year old that will be special and not outgrow?

I decided to make her a quilt. Now, I know it was pretty ambitious of me to choose a quilt as my first major sewing project, but I have a friend who does quilting so I had all the confidence that she would not let me make a crappy quilt.
It all started with the fabric. First off, let me explain to you that I'm not a very good decision maker. I had talked to my friend about having a sewing party and so we were throwing ideas around, but I just couldn't make up my mind. I made my sister go with me to Joann so I could look around. Well when I'm in Joann, I'm like a kid in a candy store. Sewing has endless possibilities and I had no idea what I wanted. When I decided to make Keziah a quilt, picking the fabric was not as hard as deciding on what to make. So my sister and I picked 2 polka dot fabrics, 2 heart fabrics, and 2 butterfly fabrics. We also chose a nice pink for the backing.
Ok I forgot to take pictures of all the steps, so just pretend I spent over an hour cutting out squares, sewing 2 together, then 4 together, then laying them out so I can get the quilt to look the way I want it, and then sewing everything together. And Tricia and Catherine helped too, so we had a really nice assembly line going.
So now, I sewed on the border. So pretend Tricia cut out pieces to make the border and then sewed them together. Now I'm sewing the border to the quilt.
Then it was a group effort with the ironing. We ironed it flat so it would look nicer. Those are Tricia's hands but it's my shirt and Catherine is taking the picture. Team work guys, team work!
Then we laid the backing on the table, then put the batting on top of that, then the quilt on top of that. We used safety pins (while making sure not to scratch Tricia's new table) to pin all the layers together. We put a pin in each square and then on the bordering.
This is Tricia using her awesome, heavy duty machine to make the squiggles on the quilt. While she's doing this, Catherine and I are happily licking beaters to the awesome cookies that she made! Catherine, I'm going to need that recipe please! This process took Tricia a whole 7 minutes to do. Maybe longer, maybe shorter, but the point is: SHE'S AWESOME!!!
All the while, Gus is trying to get her afternoon nap. That's kinda hard to do at Tricia's because she has 5 kids, ranging from 14-5 (or 6, I can't remember) and 2 dogs. Everytime Gus got to snoozin, the kids or dogs wanted to play with her.
So then to make the edging, we cut pieces out of the scrap fabric. Since we didn't take cutting pictures with the squares, here's a good shot of me cutting the edging.
While I'm doing the cutting, Catherine is taking out the safety pins while trying to fight off Gus from taking a nap on the quilt.
So now it's time to sew the front side of the edging on. Pretend you saw pictures of Tricia sewing the edging pieces together and all of us ironing. Team work!
Now this part I thought was particularly tricky. After sewing one side of the edging on, you fold it over and sew along the line for the front part. I can't really explain it, but it was hard for me.
1.) I can't really sew in a straight line very well.
2.) It was really hard.
3.) I can't really sew in a straight line very well.
This part took the longest, I think. If not, it sure did seem like it. Tricia offered to do it for me, but I wanted to do it. I should have just let her. I mean, who would have known, right?
But in the end, it was all worth it. It took 3 of us 5 hours to do this whole thing from start to finish, give or take a few minutes. Not too shabby huh?
I can't wait to see Keziah's face when she sees this. I'm going to see what kind of left over fabric I have and maybe try to make her a matching something or other.

So there it is, my very first quilt. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and it wasn't as overwhelming either. I had a great teacher helping me and Catherine was a big help too. Thank you ladies for everything. And thank you, Tricia's kids, for wearing out Gus. She's been sleeping since we got home and has hardly moved. :)

Being Domestic!

So last night I was really domestic! I went grocery shopping and bought a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't normally buy so I can try out some new dishes from some cookbooks I got. After I got home, I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies that Nuge has been begging me to make again. I found this really awesome recipe from www.allrecipes.com under Ashley's Chocolate Chip Cookies and, if I do say so myself, these cookies are amazing!! I took pictures while baking so you can have the full effect.
First you need all the ingredients. We have flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, an egg, vanilla, Crisco, chocolate chips, salt, and of course, my trusty pink mixer!
Then you put the sugar, brown sugar, and Crisco in the mixer.
Then you start beating it.
Then you check on the sleeping dogs to make sure you aren't waking them up with the noise.
Then you add the egg and vanilla.
And I finally figured out what this little contraption was for.
To make sure when you put in the flour, salt and baking powder, it doesn't fly everywhere and you can just spoon it in nice and easy. Really handy!
Then you mix in the chocolate chips with your handy spatula. I love using my "Caren's Kitchen" spatulas that Karen Pulver gave me as a wedding gift. My mom always said to not trust a woman who uses a spatula while making cookies, brownies, cakes, etc since it doesn't leave much batter to eat later. Don't worry Mom, I made you proud at the end. Just watch.
So then you drop the dough, in tablespoons, on a greased cookie sheet. I actually did use a tablespoon to make sure I had it just right and then rubbed in in my hand to make them round.
You set the oven temp at 375. Of course, you don't have to bake your cookies at midnight, but I wanted to make sure they were nice and fresh for Nuge when he got home from work.
Then 8 minutes later, they come out nice and yummy!
Mmmmm! :)
Oh darn there isn't enough dough to make another cookie. Guess that's just gonna have to go in my belly! :)
Batch #2!
Yep, making sure they are still asleep!
Then you find a really cute cookie jar and put them all in. These fit perfectly inside this jar that Jan gave me.
So now the true test comes, does he like them or not?
Apparently he does.
Apparently he makes this face whenever he tastes something good. This is a pic of him after he tasted his Groom's cake.

So in case you wanted the actual recipe, here it is:

• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup butter, softened (I used Crisco instead of butter)
  
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups milk chocolate chips ( I used the whole bag because, well, I didn't see that it said to only use 2 cups. Maybe a whole bag is 2 cups. Either way, I used the whole bag. Besides, Nuge and I like a lot of chocolate chips in our cookies.)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients, then stir in the chocolate chips. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

So I hope you get a chance to make these awesome cookies yourself. They are wonderful. Once Nuge got home, he ate one, then ate 6 more. Then he ate more for breakfast. I'm almost out of cookies and it hasn't even been 24 hours. Granted, Jan and Kevin did eat some too, but still...they are that good. Too bad I can't take the credit for them.

Now on to my domestic activity #2!
I decided to make Gus her own doggy bed. Jan had 2 old, very flat pillows that she was no longer using. I thought it would be a good idea to sew them together and then tie fleece on it to make a nice, soft bed for Gus to lay on.
Here are the 2 pillows and the 2 different colored fleece. I bought them at Hobby Lobby and they were on sale since they were just left overs.
Now I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the project because I was in a hurry, but the instructions are simple.
1.) I laid the fleece out and put the pillows on top and kept a 4 inch (or whatever) margin all the way around so I could tie the ends.
2.) I then sewed the pillows together. It doesn't matter if your sewing skills are lame (which mine are at the moment but will get better, I hope) because it will be covered up by the fleece. 3.) Then I put the sewn together pillows on top of the yellow fleece and covered it with the red fleece.
4.) The I cut the strips (about 2 inches wide) all along the sides. After that, I tied them together.
This was the finished project. I forgot to take a picture of the yellow side, but you get the idea. Gus was pretty thrilled about it.
Although I'm thinking she liked sleeping UNDER it rather than on top of it. But whatever. It's her bed and she can do what she wants.
I still think this is her favorite bed though.