Spring/Summer Catch-up

I'm baaaaaaaack!! Busy life, laziness, then a broken computer kept me from updating, and now I have tons of catch up to do! To start, this is going to be a hodge-podge post of some smaller things that have happened since March.

First up, we went to San Antonio for a little weekend get-away and spent the first night there with our sweet friends Eric and Christine. When they lived in Austin, Christine was my sewing and Grey's Anatomy watching buddy. We did a marathon quilting day and Christine finished her first ever quilt! She is quite the natural. She made a lap quilt for herself and I made a baby quilt for Chelsea. 

The next/last night we were there we spent in a nice hotel downtown and visited the Alamo, then walked along the riverwalk. Our hotel was right on the water front so we were really close to fun restaurants and shopping.

Randomly, Ramona and John were also staying in San Antonio that weekend at a hotel close to ours! We met them for lunch and shopping the afternoon before we left which was a lot of fun. 

Our souvenir! 

A few other things that happened from this past couple of months were Phillip rode his bike in a 100 mile race (pretty stinking impressive), our garden produced green beans like a champ, we bought a new car (the Kia died), and we had a spring girl's pinterest party and I made a really pretty wreath for our house.

he did this with only about 1 month of prep!

2013 Nissan Murano

We also had a weekend visit from Emily, Garrett and B at the end of Russ' deployment. I always love when they come! 

Not long after the Baur's came to visit, they added sweet Lydia to their family! She is adorable and super sweet! Michael and I went to visit about a week after she was born, and even got to see Julie and Josh (win-win!)

We have also done a good amount of dog sitting. Hess has come over twice and even upgraded to getting his own bed! We watched Michael's friend from work Jim's dog, and Zelda for 2 weeks in June. The most recent was Duke for a week after Chelsea and Robert had their baby

We have had a long-term dog named Snow since mid-June and will have him until September. His story is that his owners went to S. Korea for the summer and decided they would just leave him in the yard for 3 months with someone going to give him water 1 time a week. Basically the dog was going to die. My friend Bonnie called me one day after she learned of this situation from the woman owner who said she was "distressed" about leaving her dog, but didnt want to pay to board him. We took him in, and hopefully they will not do this again. I am actually going to suggest they give the dog to someone else since they obviously can't take care of him well when they get back. The dog has been good, but he does have a good amount of anxiety and also is scared of our wooden floors. He runs from rug to rug and is ok walking on tile. It's kind of hilarious but also sad. 

For July 4th this year, we stayed in Austin and Cam and Judy came to visit. We had a really fun weekend with them and even got to paint a guest bedroom! (those pics coming in a later post about house updates). We got to go watch fireworks with some friends from church at the Quarries and they did a really nice show.

Chelsea had her baby a few weeks ago! His name is Daniel Martin Presley and he is adorable! He is a very alert baby and loves to stare at the ceiling lol. We have been able to visit a few times and love that they live so close!

Kristen and I made a quick 24 hour trip to Dallas to pick up a dresser since she is graduated and moving to a new place with her own room. Vincent drove down after work in downtown to spend an afternoon with us, we went shopping and Vincent and I did some pokemon go playing. 

Last but certainly not least (and most recent) was the first weekend in August Vincent came to town and we had a fun night hanging out just us siblings/spouses. The night he got in, we met and went to dinner at Chuy's and then went to the new Pinballz up north to play. 2 of Phillip and Loren's friends joined at pinballz. We went to lunch again the next day after lunch as well. It was really nice just spending some time together b/c Vincent ended up moving to Korea for a year the very next week! That Saturday, Michael and I went tubing to celebrate Liang's birthday and had a lot of fun with that group of friends. 

Pinballz fun: mini bowling and playing the game nerf ball game that was similar to lazer tag. We also did a fun lazer maze that was hilarious watching every go through

Whew! quite a busy few months! up next: wedding showers, wedding and a disney trip!

Christmas Crafts

I haven't shared the recent sewing/crafting projects that I have been working on lately, and I actually made a few Christmas presents this year. I forgot to get pictures of all of them (since a couple were pretty last minute), but here's a list of most of them!

I made my bro-in-laws each a case for their ipads using fabric representing their favorite teams. In case you were wondering, yes, the A&M fabric was very difficult to sew with; in fact, my hands are still a little rashy from the endeavor ;)

 For 2 of the little girls in my life (Lucy and Halle) I made Christmas tree shirts/onesies. I was actually going to make shirts for my nieces, but ran out of time :( maybe next year.

Garrett got the boy version of the Christmas tree onesie, and I'm so glad his mom was sweet enough to send me a picture of him wearing it! Ok, let's be serious, is he a heart-breaker or what??

 Thanks to pinterest, I found a really easy and cute tutorial for making holiday themed coasters. I was really happy with how they turned out, and still need to make myself a set!

One Friday afternoon before Christmas, my manager had a "team building" exercise upstairs in the ob/gyn office where we all made wreaths out of real christmas tree branches. I liked mine a lot, plus it smelled great, so I hung it in my kitchen and put some ornaments on it.

Man, looking at all this makes me sad that the season is over.  Hopefully my skills will improve over the next year, and I can make even more (and better) presents for next Christmas!

Craft Fair

A few weeks ago, I did a craft fair with my friend Christine. I sewed like a fiend for several weeks leading up to it because I decided it would be fun to procrastinate and kept telling myself "oh I have plenty of time" Yeah, probably not the best idea, but I got it done!

Even though it was quite a bit of work, I really enjoyed hanging out with Christine all the time and getting to know her better. Neither one of us sold a ton of stuff, which could have been for a lot of reasons (for example, the tx/ou game and austin city limit music festival was the same day). But since we had a great time and did sell some of the things we made, I considered it a success :).

Here's what our booth looked like!

The set up was actually really easy thanks to some great pre-planning :). We did a "mock set up" a few days before the show to decide what looked best and where things fit. All the table accessories were great goodwill finds.
We both sold kinda random things. She made bibs, burpies, onesies, changing mats, journals and bows. I made bibs, burpies, travel cases to hold diapers and wipes, toilet-paper holders (to decorate your bathroom), door silencers (good for nurseries and kids rooms), and travel towels to hold toiletries. Here's a few close-up pictures!

We both wold like to try this again together, so hopefully sometime soon we will be able to. We tried to get into a christmas fair in roundrock for this weekend, but the organizer people were kinda jerky. Or maybe I'll get real motivated sometime soon and open an etsy shop to help sell what I have leftover (but don't hold your breath) If nothing else, at least I have lots of great gifts to give people! :)