My Favorite Place on Earth (and it ain't Disneyland)

In the last post, I mentioned that the lake is my happy place. We've had our family reunion at Deep Creek Lake, MD every year for about the last 25 years, and it really is my favorite place on earth.

Wanna know why? Here's why:

All Photos © Me

Peace,

Cowboy Quilt—Finished!

In typical procrastinator fashion, I finished quilting the cowboy quilt and had the binding partially on with literally hours to go before we left for our family reunion. I just couldn't wait to give it to my brother and sister-in-law, so I wrapped it up, binding only half-sewn on, and tied a bow on it. Thankfully, they let me take it to the lake to finish it up, and it is now in the possession of my new nephew, Isaac Lawrence, born on August 24th.

Front (love my model, he's so handsome!):

The quilting shows up really well—good or bad as that may be—on the back:

And a couple more, just for fun:

All Photos © Me

The lake is my happy place!

Peace,

The Aloe That Wouldn't Quit

When we planted the garden over Memorial Day weekend, I decided to replant my aloe. I've had it forever, and no matter how many times I've almost killed it (trust me, that's hard to do), it just keeps coming back. Take this last time, for example.

I realized that it was probably too big for it's pot—given that succulents like to spread their roots wide, not deep—and it looked pretty sad. As I lifted it out of the pot, it's entire root system fell off. Oops! Meh, I potted it anyway.

This is what it looked like that weekend:

Pathetic, no?

BUT when we returned from vacation about a month ago, he looked more like this:

Not only is it reviving, it's reproducing. This guy is nuts!

So now I have all these little guys:

All Photos © Me

I'm not sure what I'll do with all of them. Christmas gifts, maybe? ;)

Peace,

Aw, nuts...

Wanna hear a funny story?

The other day I was watering my garden, and then I went to pick some basil for dinner. As I was getting ready to take my harvest back inside to start cooking, I noticed something funny hidden under all those leaves.

That sure doesn't look like basil. I figured it was a weed, so I pulled it out. But, ohmygosh...

That's a PEANUT!! What in the world?!?

Yup. A peanut. With a root. And leaves. Like, growing. In my basil.

Well, I did what any sane person would do.

I planted it. I figured it was apparently growing well where it was, let's just see what happens. ;)

My theory at this point was that we have tons of very active little birdies and squirrels that frequent our backyard. One of them must have dropped it from the tree over our deck or maybe even tucked it away for safe keeping.

The next morning...

It's GONE! Where did my li'l peanut go?! All I have is a big old sad hole. :(

Sigh.

As I turned around, head hanging in sorrow over my lost peanut plant adventure, something in the corner caught my eye.

All Photos © Me

My peanut! But there's no peanut. Apparently whoever left their treasure for safe keeping decided to come back and collect. Or maybe it was some other slacker trying to reap somebody else's hard work. Either way, no peanut for me.

Although I still have hope. I've found other peanuts scattered around our yard. Maybe one of them will sprout. ;)

This is definitely the strangest thing to happen in my garden to date.

Peace,

Finished Product

So, I finally got pictures of this dress. I've worn it to two weddings. I feel so frugal. ; )

Here's the front:

Grease spot? What grease spot?

 And here's the back. I added a few extra "patches" so the ones on the front would look less like "I spilled something on this dress, and now I'm trying to mask it..."

All Photos © Me

Pretty good, no? Works for me!

Peace,

My New Old Dress

We have about a bajillion weddings this summer (and by "bajillion" I mean 4), which always begs the question, "What to wear?" To make matters worse, as I've mentioned before, we're on a pretty tight budget (no fun for the wardrobe, but hey, we paid the last car payment a few weeks ago!). So what's a girl to do? Going back through my closet, I found the little white dress that I wore for our wedding rehearsal last year. It was so cute, and it was a steal at Nordstrom's Rack. I knew when I bought it that I would probably never have another opportunity to wear a white dress, but I got it anyway thinking I could just have it dyed. Well, it was time to revisit that idea.

I didn't think to get a Before picture before I got it wet, but at least I thought to get one then. It's not that translucent when it's dry.

One small problem here. I think I got a little too close to the chicken wings at our second reception (which we had for our friends in Colorado who couldn't come celebrate with us in Cincinnati), and there's a bit of a grease stain down toward the bottom.

See it there? I figured that I'm dyeing it dark, it'll cover it up. Problem solved.

So. I got my biggest pot and filled it with water and lots of salt, according to the directions on the dye.

And I got my dye. Rit actually has a great color selection, and a color mixer on their website. They give offer different formulas for getting colors other than the basics they offer! But I decided to go with just straight up teal.

I wanted as dark a teal as I could get, so I dumped the whole thing in.

That, my friends, is scary dark.

Get the fabric (dress, in my case) soaking wet. There was still soap left in it from the last washing—I could tell, because it bubbled out as I wrung it dry—so I had to soak, wring, soak, wring, soak, wring, several times.

In it goes!

3...

...2...

...1

What was I thinking?!? Welp, too late to go back now.

P.S. Those oh-so-fashionable gloves are left over from my textiles class in college. Nice, huh?

Let it simmer for over an hour (directions were on the dye bottle, thank goodness). I let it go even a little bit longer, since I wanted a darker color. (Plus I was doing laundry at the same time and was downstairs when the timer went off. Oops!)

Then rinse.

And rinse.

And rinse.

And rinse. You have to get all that extra dye out of there, or else it'll wear off on your skin when you wear it, or it'll dye all your other clothes the next time you wash it.

Then dry! It can be tumbled in the dryer or drip-dried on a line.

Apparently, grease doesn't take color the way un-greased cotton does, so there's still a hint of the stain. I've found an embellishment in a slightly darker teal that I'm going to sew over it, but haven't gotten around to that yet.

But anyway, that's what I did to make my old dress new!

All Photos © Me

Peace,

Work-In-Progress #2: Cowboy Quilt

Here's the beginning of my other WIP.

My brother and sister-in-law are having their second baby in August. They also happen to be having the first grandson! I had seen some amazing retro little kid cowboy fabric by Alexander Henry a few months ago and bookmarked it for some future project.

When they told us they were expecting, I sent an email saying, "If you have a boy, this is the quilt you're getting." So, when they found out that he's a he, I went to plannin'.

I ordered both the red and the white version of the cowboys and cowgirls.

How cute is that?! There are even these little groundhogs that I hadn't seen until it came in the mail.

Oh, it kills me! I love it.

Anyhow, I was browsing some other kiddo fabric and found these horseshoes by Michael Miller. So I ordered it too, and wouldn't you know, the colors match perfectly! (Phew, thank goodness...)

All three together.

My mom & I made a date of fabric shopping (we were pretty busy for those four days!). We were looking for the rest of the fabric to make this quilt. I'm going to base the design off this quilt by Amy at ACommonPlaceLife. I knew I wanted a blue with white stars, something green, and something yellow.

Perfect, no? We kind of went back & forth on the green one, because it's floral and maybe not super-masculine. But then we thought Rob would probably jump at a chance to wear a shirt made from that fabric, and he's very manly. So we went for it. Hope the baby doesn't mind... ; )

What do you think?

The final touch is this red & white stripe for the border. I'm hoping to find a great gingham or bandana print for the binding, but I'm not there yet, so I'm not going to worry.

All Photos © Me

We got a little bit nauseous as the lady cut the stripe for us. It was pretty intense coming off the bolt. But it'll be perfect in small doses.

Peace,