Personal Post

Pollination

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Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful mom’s out there!

One of my pet projects this year that I have been working on with Anne is our garden. Her favorite plant so far is our Blueberry Bush. I think she likes the idea of being able to walk out the front door and pick them right off our porch and honestly, I like that idea too!

Today I walked out the front door to share some homemade cinnamon rolls with my neighbors and I was greeted by a bee pollinating our blueberries! This is great news for us! I quickly grabbed up my camera, popped on a magnifying lens and snapped off as many pictures as I could before the bee flew away.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Mother’s Day!

A few pictures

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Happy Friday Everyone! I thought I would share with you a few pictures from our vacation. A few of my favorites if you will.

This first one was taken by my hubs, before he married me the only cameras he had ever used were disposable, my how his skills have grown!

This next one is special because every time I have ever gone to Yosemite National Park (almost every year of my life until I moved to WA) I have had my picture taken in the fireplace at the Ahwahnee Hotel. With each picture you could see how much I had grown. This is Anne’s first picture in front of it and our first family picture. Very sentimental if you will.

While we were in Yosemite we went up to Badger Pass, the ski resort that is inside the park. We didn’t go to ski, we went so Anne could have some fun playing in the snow, and believe me she did. She spent the whole time throwing snowballs at “her people” as she was calling us.

I hope everyone has a great day! Today is my hubs last day of leave, back to the Army he goes on Monday. We have had such a wonderful time off.

Pictures next week of what he did to my sewing room while he was on leave, holy moly he made some big changes!!!

Vacation Time

10 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, Personal Post / By

We had a truly wonderful vacation in California with my family. We decided to stay until the day after Easter so that Anne could celebrate in the sun and warmth and also have that time with her grandparents.  Here is her pic with the Easter Bunny.

Do you like the dress? I made it! I was super lucky, Debbe from Pieces to Love ended up doing a quick picture tutorial for me because I really struggled with the collar. Kristy from Hopeful Threads also helped me via email. I love my friends, they are so wonderful and generous with their time!

We are still recovering and unpacking and doing laundry here. We spent most of Wednesday working in our garden. It is super fledgling right now, we planted 2 strawberry plants, a huge blueberry bush, 2 lavender plants, we hung up another strawberry plant and a gorgeous hanging flower basket as well. Mr. SBD rented a huge tiller and tilled our backyard, next up is building planter boxes. I have to say, I am really excited to turn our backyard into one big science project for Anne. It should be lots of fun!

I will try and get more pictures of our vacation up next week. All the yard work on Wednesday was not so great for my hands it is hurts to type. In the mean time, make sure you link up your project for April – A Lovely Year of Finishes and get sewing!

Quilting Progress and an injury

26 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, Personal Post, Sew Intertwined QAL / By

I would like to start this post with a heartfelt thank you to the amazing response I got to my post on Friday. I was truly touched by the outpouring of support that you have shown me. Thank you so much. (I apologize for not responding to comments, my hands are screaming bloody murder just from typing this post.)

On a similar note, I definitely pushed it too hard last week trying to get the Sew Intertwined quilting done and binding sewn on before we leave for vacation. I have unwittingly caused an RA flare up in my hands. The pain has been so severe that it has been waking me up at night. This means no sewing for me the last 2 days. At this point I have no idea if it will ease up enough to get my binding on before we leave for vacation – the plan was to bury threads and hand sew the binding in the car as we are planning to drive to California and also have multiple side trips planned – lots of car time. Luckily I have some amazing friends and one offered to do my bee blocks for me for do. Good Stitches for March. Without her help I know I would have fallen down on that commitment because there is no way I could get 3 done by Friday.

In other news, I did push myself and here is my progress. My question to you…is am I done quilting? Before you answer, you should know that I am planning on entering this quilt into our county fair this summer. So I don’t want a judge saying to him/herself, “Why did she stop?”

**** Sorry for the crappy pictures, it is 5 pm and I’m still in my jammies and it is also raining, so no going outside.**** (don’t judge the jammies 🙂 it is the weekend and I’ve been sick)

Here is the view of the whole quilt from the front

View from the back. I did a solid muslin backing using 90″ wide fabric so I wouldn’t have any seams. I also did matching thread on the front and the back so you could see the design of the top on the back.

Now my question is about the outside round of blocks. I only quilted the HSTs (the white portions and the prints) and the pink parts of each block, there will be close up pictures below. Do you think I need to quilt the gray and orange sections as well?

Close up of back

I would like to be done for a couple reasons:

  1. I don’t want the quilt to look over worked
  2. My hands are killing me and I’m not sure how much more they can take
  3. I’m running out of time, we leave in 4 days

So…am I done?

Fears

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Source: mdig.com.br via Liz on Pinterest

 

Fears, I think that we all have them, some are rational and some are totally irrational. When I was younger I had an overactive imagination and I was afraid to look in mirrors when it was dark. I knew it was only me staring back but my overactive imagination thought it was about a thousand other things.

Yesterday I conquered one of my fears, giving myself injections. My RA has not improved on the medications that I started during the past summer, in fact, in many ways it has gotten worse. After much discussion and waiting 6 months to see if the meds would make a difference my doctor and I decided to start Humira. It is an injectible medication that helps many people in my situation. It comes in a pen injector and I have to admit I was petrified of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of needles. I take shots and give blood like a pro (I’ve only fainted from a blood draw one time and in my defense, I was 7 months pregnant!). However, giving myself injections has always petrified me. I had a bad experience with an injectible medication as a teenager and it has haunted me ever since.

Well yesterday, I did it! I gave myself a shot. The nurse and doctor told me I might see results as soon as one month but it could take up to two for pronounced differences to be felt. This is huge news for me as it might mean a true improvement in my (and my family’s) quality of life.

I really hope that in a month or two I will be reporting back about how much better I have been feeling. In the mean time I am celebrating overcoming a fear that was so deep I was practically in tears while preparing to give myself the shot.

Have a happy weekend everyone! Go conquer a fear!

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