Friday Five

Yaaaaaaay for Fridays!

I'm pretty sure that today is going to crawl by as slowly as possible, mostly because we are leaving tomorrow for vacation! We are going to Michigan (don't even get me started on how much I love this place, I could ramble on forever) and I CANNOT WAIT!!!!

Anyways, here's 5 random things that happened the past 2 weeks (our lives haven't been all that busy which is very nice, so I don't think I can come up with 5 things from just this week)

1. I helped throw a surprise bridal shower for Julie Claire Morrison -almost Williams!
I seriously love this girl, and while I am really happy that she is gonna marry Josh, I am also very very sad that she will be moving to New Mexico where his job is :(. Gaius especially is going to miss her babysitting him when we are gone! But it was a really fun party, and her new sister-in-law had an awesome game that I am totally stealing for future showers that I help host. :)

2. Me and Michael saw The Sound of Music at Zilker park last Friday night.

It was a live musical at the outdoor theater, and everyone brings a blanket to sit on the grass. That was the first time we have been to the yearly musical and it was pretty neat! Next time, we decided that we need to get there a lot earlier because it was already extremely crowded when we showed up (and we got there an hour early!).

3. As of last night, my house is completely clean AND  all the laundry is done! Go Me!

This may sound like no big deal, but I have been very lazy with housework lately, so it was pretty bad. Since we are going out of town, I figured it would be nice to just get it done so we can come back to a nice and clean house. 

4. We had dinner with the Nixon family on Wednesday!

One of my favorite things is hanging out with this precious baby girl and her parents :). 

5. I'm not sure that I mentioned it, but WE ARE GOING TO MICHIGAN FOR A WEEK!!
I. cannot. wait. :)


Hope everyone has a great weekend, and I'll be sure to post lots of great pictures when we get back!

4th of July

The 4th of July was on a Wednesday this year, so we took a long weekend right before and went to Dallas to visit family. It was a super low-key weekend and that was so so nice. Plus, both my brothers were in town, so everyone was home!

Friday, we slept late, took the pup on a walk in the field, and Hannah and Jacob and my grandma came over to visit. Me and the kids made fruit tarts that were decorated like american flags. 

That night, my dad grilled and we all just sat around playing games and visiting.

Saturday, Michael's sisters  and some of my mom's family came over and we all visited, had lunch, and the kids played with bubbles and a slip-n-slide. Good times. That's really the extent of the weekend, but it was really nice to just be able to be with family. So here's a i-phone picture dump from the fun on Saturday (aka lots of pictures of my dog and nieces). Enjoy!

Abby thought it was really fun that she could take a picture of herself

Gaius liked the slip-n-slide too :)

Chair Makeover

I have become very motivated the past few days to start doing some decorating projects around the house. I kinda have a plan, but we will see how it plays out. To start, I spent my Sunday afternoon re-covering the chairs in our dining room.
This is what they looked like before:

Basically, they were boring and icky. Plus they looked dirty all the time b/c who really is able to keep a white chair white? Not me, that's for sure. This was a very easy project and all you need is fabric, scissors, a ruler, and a staple gun. 

First, figure out how to get the cushions off of the chair. Mine had 5 screws securing it to the frame. Then, measure your cushions and cut your fabric, making sure to add an extra 2-3 inches on each side so that the fabric will wrap all the way around the padding in the cushion. 

Next, place your cushion upside down on the non-printed (or "wrong") side of the fabric. 

Then, start pulling the fabric tight around the edges and stapling it down. Make sure you don't staple on top of a screw-hole. I found that it was easier to staple the top and bottom, then do the sides. For the corners, I just made it as smooth as possible and put a lot of staples to secure it down. 

When you are all done stapling, the back looks like this: 

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And now I have chairs that are super cute!

Bernoulli

We have a visitor! His name is Bernoulli (or B for short) and he is staying with us while his mom and dad adjust to having a new baby at home. He has been quite the gentleman this week: he's stayed off the furniture, played well with Gaius, and was very obedient at the dog park. Such a great houseguest!

A Birthday Quilt

I recently decided that I missed my calling as a quilt maker. So far, I have only made 2 baby quilts, but the process was so fun! I got to pick lots of fun fabrics and figure out the best way to put them together, it was kinda like working a puzzle. And I do love a good puzzle.

So I decided to expand my quilting horizons a bit and make a queen-sized quilt for my cousin Hannah. Her 8th birthday was June 25th, and since I came up with this idea around the beginning of June, I figured that I had plenty of time. I did finish it on time (hooray!), and it was pretty nice to be able to work on it slowly and not be under a time crunch. 

I googled quilt patterns until I found one that looked cool, but wasn't too complicated (and that had good instructions with it). The pattern I found called for 6 different fabrics cut into 6 inch squares. Then, once they were all cut, I assigned each fabric a number so I could follow the pattern easily. 

Here's the pattern I used:

6	1	2	3	4	5	6	5	4	3	2	1	6
1	2	3	4	5	6	1	6	5	4	3	2	1
2	3	4	5	6	1	2	1	6	5	4	3	2
3	4	5	6	1	2	3	2	1	6	5	4	3
4	5	6	1	2	3	4	3	2	1	6	5	4
5	6	1	2	3	4	5	4	3	2	1	6	5
6	1	2	3	4	5	6	5	4	3	2	1	6
5	6	1	2	3	4	5	4	3	2	1	6	5
4	5	6	1	2	3	4	3	2	1	6	5	4
3	4	5	6	1	2	3	2	1	6	5	4	3
2	3	4	5	6	1	2	1	6	5	4	3	2
1	2	3	4	5	6	1	6	5	4	3	2	1
6	1	2	3	4	5	6	5	4	3	2	1	6

And here's all 6 of my fabrics all cut out. Picking out the fabric was probably the hardest part of this project because there are just sooo many fun fabrics out there! I just want to pick everything!

So once I had sewn all the squares into strips, then the strips all together, here's what it looked like:

Pretty awesome! But the problem was that it wasn't quite big enough. It would cover the top of a queen sized bed, but there wasn't enough to hang over the edges to really cover the bed. She has a full-sized bed, but just in case she ever upgrades, I wanted to make sure it would be big enough. So I ended up adding a small transitional fabric around the outside then about 7 inches of another really neat fabric to finish it off. Michael had the idea of adding the transitional fabric, and it really made the quilt look so much better. 

When I was doing the actual quilting, I just sewed diagonal lines across the squares, and I think it turned out really cool. Oh and I used a hot pink zebra fabric for the backing, because what 8 year old doesn't love a good zebra print?! 

Here's the finished product:

back of the quilt

close up of the quilting lines

I am really really happy with how it turned out! We went to Dallas the weekend following her birthday, so I gave it to her then and was able to see it in her room. Here's a picture of it on her bed, it matched her room perfectly! :)