Quilty Kitty

Just thought I'd do a quick share of another quilt project I completed earlier this year.  These were a thank you to the neighbors across the street who were always so amazing and watched our kitties whenever Chris and I left town.  They never accepted money so I would always leave treats, but thought a big gift was in order after two years of this.

The neighbors have two little girls and last year they got two grey kittens named Cupcake and Westside.  I was thinking something fun and trendy that incorporated the kitties would be fun...here are the finished products!

So fun to make!  Unfortunately we lost our kitty sitters in June as they moved to Arizona...good thing we are heading back to Portland!

The Fire Fountain

I've been so excited to share this one with you because it's so awesome.  My husband, the mad genius engineer, created this little beauty in our backyard last fall and he finally perfected it this summer.  Slight trial and error when you don't want to spend a fortune on a giant bowl for the water feature, but I think it turned out amazing.  Since the yard needs some sprucing currently I'm only showing you the new feature.  I've been so preoccupied indoors the last couple weeks the weeds have decided to have their fun EVERYWHERE.

Soon, I promise.

I'll probably post some more photos of it again later as they include another project that I'll be sharing soon.

In the meantime...here is a pic and a movie to wet (hehe) your appetite.

It is such a fun backyard bonus when we have people over to hang out.  Cornhole out, yard lights on, good friends...doesn't get much better!

We're Moving!

That's right!  It's official!  As of October we are free to head back to good ol' P-town.  To sweeten the situation, Chris' company is actually allowing him to stay on with them and work independently from Portland.  Isn't that amazing?!  We feel so fortunate that he works with such an awesome group of people and I feel fortunate that my husband is so amazing that the company doesn't dare let him go!  WIN!

So now all the fun logistics of moving get to begin.  Blah.  This week I started on the long process of clearing out the house and packing non essential for the next few month items.  It's so crazy how much we accumulate in so little time.  Starting early has been great as I found a yard sale site on Facebook for the town of Springville that has over 9,000 members on it.  I've been able to sell a lot of stuff we no longer need to make some cash to put into staging the house for when we put it on the market, and hopefully, some leftover for decorating the new home!

Another great thing about this yard sale site is the treasures I find!  Check out this beauty in need of a little TLC.  $35!  Cray cray.

That'll be a later project since the garage is now full of boxes and we'll be listing the house at the end of the month!  I can't wait to show that one off in the next house.

Speaking of next houses...everyone in Portland/Beaverton/Tigard keep your eyes peeling for a diamond in the rough for us.  We're hoping to find one with a big backyard and plenty of renovation work to keep us busy for years.  Everyone's dream, right? ;)

And as for this house.  She's been great and I'll make sure to show you some of the backyard updates we did before we take off.  In the meantime we can reflect on her front yard beauty as we begin our goodbyes...

(Ignore that uncut grass...that's tomorrow's project!)

Quilting Up a Storm

Yes. That's right. I'm back.

At least for today, anyway.  J/k!  I hope...

So I'm aware that this was a very long absence and I blame it on Christmas time crafting.  And then perhaps an extreme case of the lazies.  My bad.  But the important thing is that here I am writing again.  Yahoo!  I have so many projects to share that I was about to burst.  I needed this outlet.  So bear with me as I meander back in time in no particular order to catch you up on things over the last (almost) year.

As you could probably guess from the title of this post, I'm sharing with you a quilt that I made.  Since Christmas I haven't been able to stop quilting.  I caught my grandma's bug.  It's too fun.  Nothing better than a glass of wine, a Pretty Little Liars marathon on Netflix, and designer fabrics underneath my fingertips on a peaceful Utah evening.  Since you heard from me last, I've made nine quilts!

Here is the latest that I finished a few nights ago.  The top piece is made up of Michael Miller fabrics from the Birds of a Feather collection by Mark Hordyszynski.

My grandma took me shopping at Fabric Depot when I was back in P-town a few trips back and wanted to treat me.  Who am I to say no to Grammy?

It's actually the second quilt using this fabric and was originally going to be posted up on Etsy (I kept the first one for myself!) until I read the copyright on the pattern which doesn't allow me to sell it.  BOOOOO!  Looks like it'll be gifted to someone who really needs it!

Mrowwww

About a month ago I got a request from my seester, Emily, to make my niece, Maddie, a knit kitty hat for Halloween.  She sent me a picture from the Etsy shop, pixiebell, of the hat that she was requesting I copy.

Here is pic and link.

pixiebell cat hat

After a few trial and errors I came up with one that was pretty close.  The shop uses a thicker yarn than one I could find at the local craft store, so I had to double mine and go with the flow.  When I finished, Emily received this photo to let her know.

So obviously, when she received the package in the mail, this is the photo I got back of my nephew, Andrew.

Awesomeness.  Clearly it runs in the family.

While Maddie did not wear her hat out for Halloween, I still got a good picture from Emily to showcase.

LOVE!

Finally the Fence

Due to reader demand (Linda, *cough*) I have decided to finally grace you all with fence photos.  Yippee!

It was quite a fun time, let me tell you.  And although Papa John did most of the hard manual labor, even he has to admit that I am a mighty fine post holder person.  Also post capper person.  Yes, I stole the most glorious job of capping all the fence posts as he finished.  Equivalent of stealing a puzzle piece and waiting for me to finish so he can put the last piece in, right pops?  Karma.

So as I think I told you guys, the first summer trip my parents took down here was supposed to be for the fence, but we ended up doing a number of other projects (just remembered I need to show the cat boxes...I am way behind!).  We did manage to get all the fence parts ordered and delivered though, so Chris and I were left with all this awesomeness in our garage for a month.

Xena in the back there had to sit out in the sweltering sun.  Poor little car.

I may or may not have been equally as excited to get my garage back as I was to get the fence up.

So, one unfortunate thing about where we live is that it's in the middle of an old lake bed.  Springville homes tend to not have basements because the dirt is hard packed clay.  SO AWFUL. You have to bring in truckloads of good dirt to get a lawn to stay green and be healthy around here.  We knew that ahead of time and opted to rent an auger to speed things up with the post hold drilling.  That is one power tool I will never use, FYI.  Scary!

Papa John was up at the crack of dawn and probably got about halfway down into ten of the holes before giving up and just returning the thing.  The dirt was seriously so tough that the auger just quit digging.  Which meant that all the rest of the holes got to be dug out with the post hold digger.  Oh what joys.  Chris came out one day and put a little elbow grease into them, but as he was working, it was mainly just Papa John and I.  And lets be honest, I lift ten pound weights when I work out, so yeah, mainly just him.

Chris' day of contribution = more work than my whole week.

Holes galore.

Farmer Joe with his hole digger.

Since we piled up the back berm with extra dirt...this is how deep those babies went.

Don't fall in!

Dwight also was helping...I can't believe I forgot to mention.

His specialty was finding lost birds in open posts.

He sat by that post all day until Chris finally figured out there was a bird trapped in there.  He spent an hour making a contraption to set him free.  Dwight was very disappointed.

Notice the nice post spacing in the previous photo as well, and the exact height of each one.  Anyone who knows my father, or has read my blog, knows that he has a slight perfection tendency.  And by slight, I mean really intense.  So I would say that about three quarters of our time spent building this fence was actually measuring and remeasuring and remeasuring.  If you think I'm complaining, I'm not.  This actually makes me very happy, because if we had not done this, our fence would be looking like the new neighbors who put theirs up in about two days.  It shows.

Notice the awkward one post higher than the others, the different post distances and, my personal favorite, the sloping gate next to the house.  REALLY?  And yes, that is snow on the mountain...I just took that picture two minutes ago.  It's begun.

After all the posts had set for a few days, we Papa John started adding the rails and slats.

And by the end of the day, voila, we had a finished fence!

With purdy gates.

Yes, he even did the neighbors with no extra labor charge.  What a guy!

We also filled in bricks facing the neighbors yard so we could dump our dirt higher without issues. 

Yay for being fenced in!  Sneak peek of another project in the lower left corner.  This backyard is getting so close to done...I keep telling myself anyway.

So Scary!

This year I opted to actually decorate for Halloween.  I tried to keep a low budget and think I managed pretty well considering I really had nothing already purchased to work with.

First project was to take styrofoam blocks and make some headstones.  I purchased cheap grey spray paint at Walmart and then used up some leftover faux brick spray paint from our wedding bridge.  I threw a little bit of black on there for more texture as well.  After shapes were cut and spray paint dried, I used black acrylic craft paint to write inscriptions.  I searched the web for the most fun names I could find.

When I was at Walmart I picked up some Zombie Crossing tape and figured that would serve as a cute theme.  I grabbed a zombie hand as well to place in front of one of the gravestones.

The other decorations I made were some bats that I cut out from black foam boards.  I used some glow in the dark acrylic paint for eyes.

I strung up black lights on the inside of the porch awning and replaced out porch light with a black light bulb as well.

My pumpkins I spray painted black then covered with glow in the dark glitter on some and painted glow in the dark designs on some others.

Last project was to cover everything in spiderwebs!  So spooky!

I hope you all have your decorations up!