steph's stuff

Let the summer begin!

The warm weather is really here. Finally! And just in time for school to get out this week.

We had a marvelous weekend - spent most of it with family and friends - and I am so ready for this summer and the beach, trips and vacations, and spending time with friends. This weekend was a great start!

Saturday morning started off with physicals. Yep - physicals. We are buying some additional life insurance policies and the company requires mini-physicals. Including bloodwork and an EKG for Tom. Since he has gotten a bit faint in the past when giving blood, the nurse made him lay down on the floor. LOL!

And then Saturday night, Tom made us some chocoloate chip cookies from scratch. Yum! And look how cold it was - Tom was wearing a flannel shirt. It was freezing cold and raining hard outside.

 
After the cookies, we had wondeful and hilarious friends over and went through quite a few bottles of wine had a couple of drinks. ;)

Sunday morning started off with a cozy snuggle with my baby. I will be so sad when he gets too old for our snuggles.

 
And then it was time for the Indy 500! I grew up on the west side of Indianapolis - in both Speedway and Brownsburg - and many of my childhood memories center around the race.

 
This was the first year that Andrew was really interested in it and he got out his little race cars and the girls even played with him for a bit.

 
Soon after the race started, our house filled up with family. It was a wild, loud day with a lot of kids but so much fun. Emily decided that her uncle needed to try on Andrew's UT helmet for a laugh.

 
And then asked for a self-portrait with me. Which I happily obliged. I don't know how much longer she'll want to hang out with me, so I'll take advantage of every bit of her time as long as I can. :)

 
Unfortunately, as the afternoon wore on, the weather worsened and all of us ended up in the basement for about an hour while the tornado sirens went off. It all ended just fine and we managed to pass the time with some dessert but we missed the end of the race, which did not make me happy.

By 8:30 or so, the weather cleared and it was gorgeous out. We took a long walk around the block before everyone left and this is my favorite photo of the day. Tom and the boys walking his grandmother. :)

 
 
And then Monday was HOT. As in 90 degrees! Flannel one day and bathing suits the next. That's how Indiana summers always seem to start. Very suddenly. We spent the day outside, playing with water, sunscreen, and walking through our local zoo.

 
I hope your weekend was just as lovely. Today is the last day of school and the fun starts tomorrow. :)

This is a SMASHing idea

Even though I don't do traditional scrapbooking anymore, every once in a while, I miss the paper and glue experience.

Enter the SMASH journal. It's brilliantly simple. A journal meant to collect those little tidbits and ephemera that make up your daily life - what scrapbooking used to be about before it became about design.

I have two of them and love them! I have a pink one that I'm using to document our gardens as they evolve year-by-year. And I have a black one that I'm using for a family journal.

I'm so happy to dip back into this type of simple scrapbooking again and it's a quick and easy way to document stories from your life. Just my style. :)

She is my child

Anyone that knows me well knows that I love to organize. Love, love, love it. However, it is not to be confused with cleaning. They are two very different animals. My husband can attest to that.

Organization just calls to me. In any way shape or form. But especially when it involves school supplies. I know some of you feel the same way - and you know who you are - the beginning of school always involves hiding your new school supplies from the kids. Who can resist the call of new pencils, blank notebooks, and file tabs? Oh, how I love file tabs.

Emily has taken after me completely. School supplies and organizing send us both into delirium. And now, with the end of the school year just a week away, Emily has gone into organization mode.

First, there is her planner. The school gives them to everyone but I'm sure many kids don't use them. Em not only uses it, but writes everything down every single day and then......be still my heart......color codes her assignments based on their type - homework, quiz, test, or project. Sigh. I love this.

And then there is her binder. It's enormous - I think the rings are 5 inches. And for each class, she has a coordinating folder and notebook. Coordinating!!!! At the beginning of the year, she had five different coordinating sets of Beatles notebooks and folders. But those are full, so she switched to simple colors mid-year.

 
 
At the end of the school year (and periodically through the year), she goes through each notebook and folder and decides what to keep and what to recycle.

Which then demands the presence of the permanent file. The permanent file idea came from her former school and it's brilliant. Anything she wants to keep goes in the permanet file which stays at home in her closet. Every year or so, she goes back through the permanent file and decides whether everything is still worth keeping or if she's changed her mind and then recycles it.

She has no loose papers anywhere. Because everything is organized and in its place.

Have I mentioned how much I love this kid?

 
And then there is the other important part of organizing - making it pretty. In her case, that involves Paul McCartney.

 
And more Paul McCartney.

 
And even more Paul McCartney.

 
Next year, I'm hoping that she will graduate to scrapbooking the photos of Paul on the front of her binder. Once she realizes that scrapbooking is all about organizing your photos, I'm sure she'll be on board. :)

She needs the Iron Butt

About 11 days ago, Libby fell very hard and broke her tailbone. There is not much you can do to treat a broken tailbone except wait for it to heal. (Bonus points if you know what the title of this post means.)

She spent 4 days on the couch in a lot of pain but is back to school and doing much better now.

However, she's still limited physically and spends a lot of time just sitting (on her special donut pillow) because it's still sore.

And so I let her play checkers on my iPhone a lot. And apparently taking self-portraits is even more fun than playing checkers.

Believe me when I say that these photos are probably only 1% of the self-portraits she's taken with my phone.

Let the Sun Shine

 
The ice cream truck has begun to make its rounds and I am so ready for this summer season to begin. We have started planting flowers, weeding the flower beds, prepping for a small veggie garden, and doing a lot of yard work.

We've already had multiple gatherings of friends and neighbors on the sunporch and can't wait to have many more this summer.

Around our house, we also start planning for school this time of the year - we call it summer school at our house. The kids pick a subject or two that they want to work on over the summer, I take them to the local "teacher store," and they pick out the workbooks and accessories that they want. My focus is always on reading and writing for them so they almost all usually choose blank books for stories and illustrations, writing prompts, and science projects or fun flash cards. Summer school is fun at our house - there is no schedule or requirement - it's something we enjoy doing and pull out when we need a break from friends or on a rainy day. It's fun and they've started taking turns "giving out assignments." And by making it fun, the kids maintain their love for the learning process.

This year, Emily is doing an online math course on her own. I'm really interested to see how this goes and if she sticks with it. She is also contemplating working on a foreign language.

Elizabeth wants to learn about Greek mythology and I want her to work on reading comprehension so we're going to combine the two and we're both going to have fun with this one. She also wants to do some science projects.

Andrew is still a little unsure about what he wants to do but my guess is that it will be something to do with math and science.

We've been making them all work on math all year long and I'm so thrilled to see that they are enjoying it and putting it into practice on a daily basis.

Back to the ice cream truck's visit - Andrew (on his own) decided that he wanted to add up the total cost of the treats Daddy was buying and give Daddy the total. LOVE that!

Personally, I've had to work on some math as well. Big math. Big numbers. And high stress balancing my checkbook because I'm having to buy my youngest kids all new wardrobes. Would you look at how tall they have gotten this past year???? 

But oh well. It's almost summer and I'm ready to let the sun shine. :) 

The beginnings of a hexagon quilt

I am going to do something totally crazy. I'm going to make an entire quilt top by hand - no machine sewing until I get to the border and binding.

I love hand sewing and my favorite part of quilting is putting the binding on by hand. And I love to have something to do when I'm sitting with Tom in the evenings since we don't watch much TV. It usually involves me wasting time on my phone or laptop but that's purely out of boredom.

So, I went looking for a small hand-sewing project and stumbled upon hexagons. I'm using paper piecing and was very reluctant to try it I am so glad I did! I am 100% totally in love with it. :)

Wow. I see it.

Everyone tells me that Emily looks just like me. I hear it all the time. And sometimes I see that we look a bit alike but not exactly alike.

And then Em sent me photos that a friend took of her over the weekend after they had put on some makeup. She texted me, "I look exactly like you!"

And wow. I see it now. And I'm thrilled that she wasn't crying and hysterical about seeing the similarities - 'cause I know that won't last. :)

(top photo taken of me with my sunglasses on my head just to show a comparison with our hair styled the same way)

A viewing party

About a month ago, my girls were talking about the royal wedding constantly - begging for me to let them stay home from school to watch it (ummmmm....no way) and then planning on how and when to watch it with friends. I was joking with them about all the moms staying home and watching it without the kids and then it occurred to me that many of my friends probably were going to tune in to watch part of the wedding. So, why not use that as an excuse for a party in our pajamas after the kids went to school?!

And that's what we did. :)

Here's a few pics of that morning. I only took photos of those ladies who showed up in actual clothes. The rest of us were in pajamas so no photos. :)

The night before, I ran outside and cut some azaleas and buds from my pear tree to make a simple centerpiece.

 
 
We had juice, tea, and coffee.

 
And then lots of super simple foods displayed in silver trays.

 
And doilies. My friend, Mel, will probably laugh at me but I can't help but think of the UK when I see doilies.

 
This friend just makes me smile every single time I see her. And today was no exception. :)

And her lady-in-waiting who makes me laugh no matter what she does.

This was so much fun that I'll have to find another excuse to have a breakfast party sometime soon. It was a great way to spend a morning. 

 

Vintage Patchwork Pillows

Five months ago, I found some vintage fabric on Etsy and fell in love with it. So in love with it that I couldn't decide what to do with it. Vintage fabric is very cheap but I was still nervous about cutting into it because it's not always easy to replace if I messed something up.

But, after we got out the summer furniture again and set up the sun porch, I realized that we needed new pillows for that room.

This is how the sun porch looked last summer. I made the chair cushions and pillows but it was a bit blah. And the pillows were too small to be very comfy.

 
We've moved things around a lot this year in an effort to allow more seating and I don't have any photos of it yet. But as you can see in the quick photo of Libby below, we've been using the Line Art Quilt out there a lot.

Once I looked through the vintage fabrics, I realized that a lot of the yellow and orange fabrics coordinated beautifully with the line art quilt and the yellow pillows and chair pads. So.........I finally cut into a few of the fat quarters and made some vintage patchwork pillows.

And here they are. :)

 
 
Both pillows are the same size - 18" square but I made two different patterns. The first pillow uses 9 6" squares.

I quilted it with straight line quilting 1/4" away from either side of the seams and I love the effect. And, actually, the fabric from the quilt coordinated so beautifully that I used a few scraps. I'll bet you can't even tell which square is not vintage fabric. :) 

Although the back will be a hint. This is the Moda Dream On fabric that I used for the quilt. Both pillow backs are simple envelope closures with binding to match the pillow binding. The pillow insert comes out very easily and I can wash the covers whenever the need arises. And the yellow binding is the same fabric I used for the other yellow pillows last year. I love it when these things come together!

And I love how the front and the back work so well together.

The second pillow took a lot longer to make because I used 36 3" squares. And this one is all wrinkly because Tom started using this one the minute I finished it. He can report that it is very comfy for naps on the porch. :)

I used the same quilting technique.

 
 
Now, if the weather would just warm up, we could actually use our sun porch! 

Ten on Tuesday

 
1. Last week was crazy, crazy busy and this week looks to be the same. Except for the teenager who took advantage of the one nice day we had last week to lay down on the driveway while she talked on the phone (with a boy). Brings back so many memories of being a teen for me.

2. Libby had her first cross-country meet yesterday and ran an amazing race. So very proud! (photos to come)

3. Andrew had his school play and played his role of an ant with great style. (photos to come)

4. I hosted a royal wedding viewing party. Yes, you may roll your eyes at me but it was great fun. (photos to come - sensing a trend here?)

5. I have a new fabric obsession. Here's a sneak peek. (more photos to come)

 
6. We have had nothing but rain for most of the month but the good thing is that I've now discovered that we have beautiful tulips in our front yard. We never saw those last year so I'm guessing that they had already bloomed when we moved in. (photos to come)

7. Going back to the wedding...I loved sharing it with my girls. LOVED that part of it.

8. I have two other big gatherings/parties to host this month and I'm actually looking forward to both of them - unusual for me so not sure what is up with that.

9. I've gone back to work doing some part-time legal work and I am afraid that I'm tempting fate by saying this but I really like it. And I like feeling useful.

10. All I want for Mother's Day is to go to the nursery, buy some new perennials and annuals and spend the day in the yard. The forecast is for rain. We'll see what happens.