Finished!

Took me about 3 weeks (working on it off and on) but I finished the hardest puzzle I have ever done!

*yes I know there is a piece missing, I inherited it from my parents after they got frustrated with it and one was lost in the transfer :(

Lately...

I realized the other day that its been a long time since I posted something! We have had a few things going on, but nothing major, so just chalk it up to laziness on  my part. Here's a little  really long  run-down on what's been going in my life....

   We have been cat sitting! Now, let me just say that I am not the biggest fan of cats, but I do love my in-laws. They have been staying with Michael's sister Lisa for the past 2 months while their new house is being built, and Libby (the cat) needed a place to stay. She has done pretty well, and has tried really hard to endear herself to me. Its kind of working, at least to the point where I want to pet here when she decides to come out of her closet and grace us with her presence. Although, she does wake me up every now and then in the middle of the night when she decides its fun to meow at the top of her lungs.....


   I have been able to accomplish several new sewing projects. I made a quilt for Rachel's newest little girl Sophie, made a couple of really cute onesie dresses for my new niece Leah, and I am 3/4 of the way done with the quilt blocks for another quilt!

   We have a new niece!! Her name is Leah Katherine, and she is just as beautiful as her name :).

   And, speaking of babies, my friend Rachel had her second little girl, Sophie Marie!

   I do have some sad news. Gaius went and broke my heart when he made a hole in one of my quilts. I received it as a graduation present from a lady who was my mentor all through high school. I still see regularly and love her so much! Anyways, one of us (we have no idea who) forgot to close the guest bedroom door all the way and Gaius decided that it would be fun to take a nap on the bed where the quilt used to live. He has done that before, and whenever he does, he paws at the blanket to make it more comfortable and to his liking (at least that's what it looks like). After one of these times, I noticed that his nails had caught an area and some of the threading came out. So I thought, no big deal, we would just keep the door closed all the time to prevent that from happening again and getting worse. WELL, the door was accidentally left open one day, and he did what any dog would do in his position.....he went in, moved the blanket around and took a nap. Except this time, I found a hole in the blanket when I got home from work. I know (now that I am emotionally recovered) that he did not do this maliciously or intentionally (he IS just a dog) and other than the one spot, he didn't do any other damage. In spite of knowing all this, many tears were shed. I am hoping that there is a way to patch it or somehow make it whole again. The quilt will probably be making a trip to San Antonio soon for my friend Emily (who is basically a sewing expert) to work some magic on :).

   One of Michael's co-workers gave us his tickets to the UT vs Kansas State Game back in September. It was on a Saturday night, and they won!

   I have been working in the kindergarten-1st grade children's choir at my work every Sunday evening! I wasn't all that excited about it at first, but I really do have fun when I am there with the kids singing all the fun songs we are learning. Plus, its good for me to do new and different things out of my comfort zone every now and then.

   It's finally feeling like fall here! The weather has been cooler which is SO nice. And, I found an amazingly good smelling pumpkin candle at Kohl's that we light like every day. I haven't done much fall decorating in the past, but this year, I decided why not? I realized that its almost as fun as decorating for Christmas :)

   We have a new foster dog named Ace. He is really sweet and loves to cuddle and explore at the park. He's a mix we think, and about 2 years old. He's been easy to have around which is nice, but I hope he finds a good family!

Weekend in Dallas: 
   We went to Dallas last weekend to meet the newest niece and got to go to the State Fair of Texas! We actually took Hannah and Abby with us for about 3 hours and it was crazy fun. Just the 4 of us went and they did so great being obedient and seemed to really enjoy hanging out with just Michael and I. I really enjoyed doing a few different things than I usually do since I have not been there with little kids in quite awhile. We went to the petting zoo, watched a dog show, rode some rides, saw Big Tex, "painted" pumpkins (with sharpies) and I even let them eat some fair food (but don't tell their parents) ;).

After the girls were picked up by Lisa, Michael and I got to walk through all the buildings and eat lots more great food!

The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with the fam :)

sweet, chunky Lizzy.....love it!

She is the proudest big sis ever!

Consider yourself officially caught up! Plus, if you made it through this whole thing, you get a gold star AND the pleasure of enjoying this fabulous video of 2 of the most precious girls ever :)

Taylor Swift!

Last night I got to go see Taylor Swift in Concert!! I went with my friend Christine and we had SO. MUCH. FUN! We may be 27, but are really still teenagers (especially me) at heart. Call me crazy, but I love her music. Yes, it is emotional and dramatic at times, but who cares. Our seats were up in the balcony, but in the front row, which doesn't get much better than that. We both sang along with every song and had a blast :).

P. S. Video evidence of our fun below ;) (You can't really see her, but she is in the center bright white light, in every picture and video I took, all the spotlights just washed her out)

The Liebster Award

My sweet friend Julie nominated me for this award (her blog is: http://confessionsofanapper.blogspot.com/). The rules say you are supposed to tell 11 facts about yourself, then answer 11 questions given to you by the nominator. Julie has a fun and interesting blog to read, and was nominated last week by one of her friends.  Basically this award is just a way to connect a bunch of small blogs all together and form one big online community. So here goes:

11 Facts:

1. I used to despise running, but over the past 6 months I have made a point to give it a good try, and I am finding myself enjoying and (gasp) even looking forward to my runs
2. I love birthday parties
3. I have watched every Grey's anatomy episode since it started when I was in college
4. I am addicted to peppermint mochas from starbucks
5. I have learned everything I know about fashion/how to dress from my little sister who is 8 years younger than me
6. My mom used to take away my books as punishment when I was younger
7. I took classical ballet lessons for 8 years
8. I loved all 4 years of high school, and would consider that time my favorite out of all my growing up years
9. I went on my first date my freshman year of collage
10. If I had endless funds, I would spend most of my time traveling all over the world
11. I love roller coasters 

11 Questions from Julie:

1. What is your favorite part of the day?
Around 9 am, I like mornings the best, but hate waking up early. 9am is perfect because you can still enjoy the day beginning but you get to sleep in a little bit :)

2. What is your favorite cereal?
Captain Crunch

3. Are you named after anyone?
Yes, my mom; her name is Donna Kay

4. What is your dream career?
I have dreamed about being a nurse since I was around 7 years old, and thankfully I am living my dream!

5. Where is your favorite place on earth?
Michigan, specifically the cottage that Michael's family owns in Grand Haven

6. What is your least favorite fashion trend right now and why?
I am not really very tuned into all the current trends, but I have seen people wear high heels with shorts, and I think it looks really weird

7. Morning person or night owl?
Morning (mid to late morning specifically)

8. What is your guilty pleasure?
TLC bridal shows

9. Would you like to have lived in any other decade?
Not really, I'm pretty content with the 20th century and all the advantages we have
If I had to pick, I think the 50s might have been fun

10. How did you and your best friend meet?
My best friend is my husband, and we met at church

11. What is your most cherished possession?
My puppy dog


Now I am supposed to nominate 9 other people who have small blogs, but the only people I know have already been nominated, so I am going to be a bit of a party pooper. Thanks Julie for thinking of me!

Maiden Voyage of the Miter Saw

Michael went camping with some boys from sunday school this weekend, so me and the pup decided we would go visit Emily, B, and Garrett! Russ was there too, and he's a pretty nice guy ;). We had lots of fun and I even accomplished a sewing project!

Emily is a pretty handy gal, and she has decided to dabble in some woodworking projects. She saved her first project for when we were there, and so I got to play with power tools :). She decided that little G needs some wood cubbies for his growing toy collection, so Friday night we went and bought a saw. We only ended up getting about halfway through the project due to buying the wrong drill bit and some important naps getting in the way of time, but here's what the final product will look like:

Pretty cool! We got all her wood pieces cut out, and here's a video of the first cut :)

Look out, that girl is a pro! Lots more wood-working projects coming soon to the Baur household!

Color Me Rad

Last weekend Julie came to Texas and invited me to run with her and her friend Kerri in the color me rad 5k. I have never done anything like that so was pretty excited to give it a try. Basically you run 3 miles and at various points, people throw colored corn starch or spray paintball paint at you.
Here we are pre-race with our nice clean shirts:

me, Julie, Kerri's sister, Kerri's mom, and Kerri

 And here we all are afterwards!

\

 Basically, we were filthy, but it was so much fun! Me and Julie ran together and we were so proud of ourselves for running almost all of it. We estimated that we only walked about 10%!

At the end of the race they passed out extra packets of the colored corn starch and had a big "color bomb" to celebrate the race maybe? It was pretty crazy.

 It was a fun way to start the weekend, that's for sure! Then, as the cherry on top, Rachel and Emily met us for lunch at PTerry's and I got to squeeze on these 2 nuggets.

After lunch, I had a great nap and then me and Michael had a game night at Eric and Amber's house. Good times :). I vote that every Saturday should be this fun!

Julie!

 The weekend before Thanksgiving, we went to Dallas for a wedding and to see our nieces who we had not seen in way way too long. I mean, look how big these girls are getting!

Anyways, the highlight of the wedding was when we got to hang out with Julie and Josh! In case you were wondering, we had a blast together as evidenced by the following pictures:

 So, hurry up and move back to Texas, ok? We miss you guys.

Weekend Fun

I got my wisdom teeth taken out on Friday. I had all 4 still and they were all completely grown in.I didn't get them out sooner because 1. I didn't even have any in my head until college and 2. because I am lazy. Finally I got them out, and boy have I been sore. The second day was probably the worst pain-wise, but as of today I still can't open my jaw all the way or chew totally normal yet. Oh well, at least they are gone!

This weekend was still a very fun weekend despite the mouth pain! My friend Emily and her baby Garrett came from San Antonio to spend a long weekend with us since her husband was out of town. It was nice to have her here because I just love her, and she is pretty low key so I didn't feel bad taking a nap every day and sleeping late :).

We actually did all kinds of fun things this weekend. Friday night, we had taco soup from the crockpot and she brought her fun kitchen aid attachment to make homemade ice cream :). Rachel, Paul and little Lucy also came over for dinner. On Saturday, we both slept late, played with Garrett, and checked out a craft fair that was close by. It was pretty crowded and I was sore, so we didn't stay long. After naptime (for everyone), we did some project planning and broke out the sewing machines. Sunday was a repeat of the sewing, napping, and talking. Plus we found an amazing online rug sale and both ordered rugs for our houses :). I was able to finish my Christmas tree skirt (that I showed in the previous post) and she worked on a super cute embroidered pillow and place mats for a friend. We also tried making some Christmas ornaments. I took off from work monday afternoon and she helped me figure out how I am going to get started on my major re-organization of the house. I am pretty excited about getting my house organized! I'm gonna start in the pantry and kitchen and do a little minor decorating at the same time; should be a lot of fun.

Here's some pictures from the weekend!

Kirsten took care of my all day on Friday so she got to play with Garrett too!

Sweet Bernoulli 

Lucy Bug!

Garrett loving on Gaius

Emily cooked us dinners like this every night!!

our ornaments

I hope they come back soon!

A New Sewing Table

Since I got my sewing machine, I have been using a card table to sew on. Not really an ideal set-up. It worked ok at first, but once my sewing skills started to improve and I collected more supplies, etc, I decided that it needed to be replaced by something bigger and better.
Here's what my sewing area looked like:

Pretty messy with zero storage space, and the table was not sturdy at all.

So began the craigslist search. I looked off and on for several months. It took me a long time because the space I had available was in a small weird corner. I was also really picky on how I wanted the desk to look. But finally, I found this beauty for only $50!!

Ok, so it wasn't really very pretty when I bought it, but I knew that it could be pretty with a little bit of TLC (and maybe a good harsh sanding).

I borrowed my dad's electric sander (lifesaver!) because I am not even kind of patient enough to sand something that big by hand, and bought some wood stain, sealer (to prevent scratches), new hardware and got to work. As I told you in the last post, its been a little busy around here so after it sat in my garage for about 3 weeks, I slowly worked on it during any free time I had over about a week and a half. But I finally finished and here's what it looks like!

bonus cubby

I stole a chair from the kitchen table til I find a good permanent one to keep up there

Looks sooo much better right?? I picked a really dark stain to hide the fact that its an older desk. Also, I just like dark wood colors.

I cannot even begin to describe how perfect this desk is! It is literally just the right dimensions for that corner without making the area feel cramped. Plus the drawers are huuuuuge so now I have tons of great storage space! 

Way to go craigslist!