Happy Friday

Had to share this picture of Gus. 
Have a great weekend!

Taking a Break

The girls are on spring break this week and they are enjoying some much needed down time.  They're lounging, reading, playing outside and relishing in the unstructured time.  They even complained of boredom - lucky girls!

Surprised and honored that one of my hipstamatic photos was included in Pioneer Woman's Phone Photo Challenge (group 3)

FIXED THE LINK!  This time I really mean it.

Cats on Shirts

I was folding the laundry the other day when I had this realization:
Cat shirts. Lots of cat shirts. 8 cat shirts between my 2 girls. And since they are not old enough to buy their own clothes you can guess what crazy cat lady purchased them. Sheesh. As the girls get older my days of buying sickingly cute cat shirts are numbered. Good thing I have a niece on the way (!!) who can continue to support my obsession; starting with the turquoise onesie in the bottom corner.

Any themes in your children's clothing? Trucks, butterflies, dinosaurs? Do tell.

Friday Funny

My new fav tumblr site. Cat + Scanner = The Cat Scan
Have a great weekend!

Happy Halloween

From Gus the Bat Cat
(2 cat posts in a row.  I'm one purple sweatshirt away from being a crazy cat lady) 

Bat wing inspiration found here.

Glimpse of Gus

 
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  We're kickin' it sans kiddos.  Oh, the possibilities!   The agenda looks like a musical weekend which we started by watching 20, the Pearl Jam documentary by Cameron Crowe (which was great, btw.)  More details on Monday. See you then.

Right Now: Late September

Feeling ~ A bit more settled after a week and a half of living back in our house.

Enjoying ~ lots of kitty love.  We're so happy to have Gus back with us.  It is like no time has passed at all.  

Watching ~ Season 4 of 30 Rock.  That show is hilarious.  Alec Baldwin is amazing.  Will start this next. 

Eating ~ Homemade macaroni and cheese, the dish I christened our new oven with.

Making ~ What feels like a million trips to the store in an attempt to get our household organized and functional again - light bulbs, shelf paper, trash bags, flour, sugar, salt, broom, paper towels. . . .

Listening ~ to local radio.  The chatter keeps me company as I unpack, sort, and put things away.

Remembering ~ our friends in Luxembourg and really missing them!!

Smelling ~ coffee from our newly purchased machine. Ah, life is good!

Appreciating ~ wonderful neighbors and old friends. 

Coveting ~ routine.

Where are you right now?

Photo Friday

Oh, Gussy sleep peacefully while you can . . . if you only knew how your life is going to change.

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It's almost here!! I'm soo excited for our shape challenge on Monday. Everyone ready? I've already gotten a few posts and and I can't wait to show them off!
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Photo Friday

Our sweet little gray face kitty, Gus is recovering nicely after having 3 cysts removed. In fact, she hasn't lost her spunk at all.

Embroidered Kitty Art

Just completed my first project inspired from Amanda Soule's book The Creative Family. Her blog, Soule Mama, is chock full of ideas just like her book. This project involved turning one of my 4 year old's drawings into a wall hanging. After the image is traced onto fabric it is then embroidered. This was a fun, easy project ~ I have another drawing all penciled and ready to sew.

For the embroidery, I started out using a backstitch but then switched about 1/3 through to an outline stitch. I'm much better at the outline stitch and I also think it has a more polished appearance. I used a regular ol' pencil to trace the drawing on some linen fabric. I used a thin cotton batting for the middle and backed it in 100% cotton. Instead of a traditional binding, I used a method called birthing (yeah, that's right) a quilt to finish it off. I gave it 2 hanging loops out of red rickrack.

Looking through The Creative Family reminded me of all the projects my mom did with our art work. She used fabric crayons and pens instead of embroidery, but the idea is just the same. I dug up some potholders she made with my drawings. They are dated 1980, I was 8(!). She made pillows and potholders. Mostly potholders. Millions of potholders. We must have given these to family members and friends for many years. Not only did she turn our artwork into stuff, she did so for the neighborhood kids too. Hmmmm, I sense a post about my crafty mom coming up .

Stay tuned.

Photo Friday

At night I've been perusing blogs, fascinated with this sub culture that I'm just learning about. One thing is for certain. Crafty people who blog also love to take pictures. I've seen such beautiful pictures over the course of many a late night. So I decided to start Photo Friday on my blog (yeah, yeah I know it's Saturday. Gimme a break). No, my pictures are nothing to sneeze at, but maybe over the course of time (years perhaps?) they may be worth a sniffle.

This is Rumpy our neighbor's cat. I went outside on Thursday and there he was in our patio.