Christmas at the Pfeils

Michael and Lindsey came back to IN for Christmas! :-D And (obviously) they brought Noelle with them :-) And Becky came home from her first semester at college. Aaaaaaand!...MARTIN CAME!! :-D and what made it even better....it was a SURPRISE! :-D He didn't tell anyone except Mark's Mom and Dad who were in on the plan :-)

Apparently everyone guessed before he came (well, except me). He came up to the house and rang the doorbell, and they made Becky answer the door. She was so excited to see him :-) There was a hug-festival for a good half hour or so. And then! All of the Pfeil siblings were there for the holidays :-) Yaaaay!

It was really fun. We spent about a week all together before people had to go their separate ways and return to the real world. We played lots and lots of games, cooked lots and lots of food, and had a wonderful time.

It was also fun to swap pregnancy stories with Lindsey, since we were both pregnant at the same time! (She with their second and me with our first). It was a joy to stand around in the kitchen and talk with her and Becky and Mark's mom about girl things while the boys played games. *sigh* good times.

And Noelle was such a gem. She would let me read to her and carry her around and she called me "T" :-) It was adorable.

Here are some pictures that Lindsey took! (I forgot my camera...no shock there) :-(

The siblings all together again! Becky was tickled for a while before and after this shot. I am amazed it turned out this normal looking ;-) It looks like Mark and Martin are giving her a hug? Don't be fooled...they were restraining her for further tickle torture after the shot.

Here is Grandma Pfeil playing with Noelle! Noelle really liked playing with Grandma, and there were lots and lots of toys that marks mom had amassed for her granddaughter! This picture was taken at Great Grandma Pfeils house (Marks grandma) when we had a post-christmas family reunion with some of Mark's dad's siblings.

Noelle stuck on Grandpa Pfeils work boots. She looooved wearing around people shoes, so we generally stuck them in the utility room to minimize the temptation...I think she looks stinkin cute though :-)

Here is Grandma Pfeil playing the piano with Noelle! Noelle really liked it. Grandma played her primary songs, and would noelle keep saying "more, more" when she stopped :-) I think Mark's mom was in a little slice of heaven :-)

Another thing Noelle liked to do with her grandma pfeil is sit on the chair in their bedroom and have grandma read to her. When she would stop, or sometimes even before it the book was over, Noelle would say "more! more" or "moh! moh!"

Thanks for coming everyone! We were so glad to see you all and hope that we will not have to wait 3 years for the next reunion!

The Kitchen

I love the kitchen. Wonderful things happen there. Food. Warm. Dancing. Mac and Cheese. Music. Dinner. Family. Cookies. Messes.

The kitchen, plain and simple, is a wonderful place to be. :-)

However, there is one thing you should know about our kitchen that I do not like before we go any further:

We have no dish washer.

*moment of silence*

Oh, how I long for the day to once again have a dish washer! It will be 7 years we are married before we get a dish washer (that's ok though. This must be payback for all the years I complained to my mom for how stupid it was to wash hand dishes since "everyone" has a dish washer. Ah, karma).

Anyway! Here are some views of our kitchen/dinning area, courtesy of my cell phone:

I decided to go with a deep blue for the kitchen. Blue and white. In the day time when the sun is out, I will raise the blinds and put down the curtains, it gives off a lot of diffuse light and makes the kitchen seem brighter while still having privacy (people walk around a lot in front of out house and it freaks me out a little to have people looking in the kitchen when I'm home alone).

Mark's Parents gave us this corner cabinet and I put my grandmothers china in it.

I love my grandmothers china. The pussy willow pattern on it reminds me of her. She used to have a floral arrangement or something with pussy willows in it, and I remember running my fingers over them. I cant remember if we were allowed to touch them or not... Well, if we were or we weren't, I did, and I loved them. When I look at these dishes, I think of my grandma Norma.

This is the painting that my mom's friend Elena made and it hangs above our freezer. Elena is from argentina. My mom would teach her english, and she would teach me art. It was super fun to learn drawing from her. She would explain things to me in spanish, and I would do what I thought she said, and we would iterate back and forth. She was an extremely loving and patient mentor and I learned a lot from her (despite, or because of, the language barrier, I can't decide). She had a wonderfully talented eye. When she left to return to Argentina, she gave this to my mom as a keep sake, and when I moved away, my mom was gracious enough to let me have it so I could keep a little of the desert I love with me always. I love, love, love this painting and all the things it represents to me.

I also love this tile that my institute director, Brother Schapp gave to me and mark as a wedding gift. The quote from President Hinkley on it says: "In all of living have much fun and laughter; life is to be enjoyed, not just endure". I keep it on my kitchen counter and it helps me remember what is really important.

I am so grateful for the chance I have to be married with Mark and build a life with him. It is such an adventure. At times I feel so blessed and happy, I think my heart will explode. And all the little things that seem like such a big deal (like, for example, not having a dishwasher) really pale in comparison. Nothing bad that could ever happen to me and mark could ever outweigh the joy that we feel at being companions and trucking through life, side by side.

Wonderful things come from the kitchen, but I think what really makes it such a great place are the people and traditions that fill it. Thanks to all of you who have made the kitchen magical for me :-)

The Feast

After Thanksgiving, Mark's parents let me take their folding tables, their folding chairs, and their turkey roasting pan back to our house in preparation for...THE FEAST! :-D

You see. It all started by the magazine my mom gave me. The food network magazine, Thanksgiving edition. A glorious, wonderful, food network magazine with tried and true thanksgiving favorites. I kept drooling over it and drooling over it, and I talked Mark into letting me invite my research group over to our house for a holiday feast. YAY! :-D Thanks Mark! :-D

We did it after Thanksgiving, but before Christmas break, during the end of finals week. A lot of the group was already gone for the holiday, but we had about 20 people in our home, eating and visiting, and it was a lot of fun!

I learned a lot of things. First, it is good to pick sides that you can make a head of time that only need to be warmed after the turkey comes out, so that things are not so hectic the day of. Second, a turkey can cook in 2.5 hours, and it turns out AMAZING! :-D Third...brinning a turkey = turkey love. Thank you, Alton Brown.

The Menu:

Main dish:

Brinned Turkey and Gravy

Sides:

9 Cheese, roasted garlic, and Bacon Mac and Cheese

Sausage, sour-dough/corn bread stuffing

Cranberry sauce

2 kinds of sweet potatoes (savory and sweet)

green beans

rolls

cauliflower gratin

mashed potatoes

Desserts:

Apple/cranberry/cherry pie

Pumpkin bread pudding

Maple-pumpkin pie

It was a blast to make, and a blast to eat! Just about every recipe we made came from the magazine. Some of them were from Throw-down episodes of Bobby Flay (which I like to watch on hulu when I need a break from homework).

When the guests arrived, we had the tables all set up formal (sporting festive clear plastic ware), and people took their plates and got their food buffet style from the serving table. It was a lot of fun. People ate, and stayed, and visited, and then we packed up a lot of the left overs for people to take with them. We still had a lot of food left over. That is one thing that I need to work on still. Cooking self control. I will let you know how that turns out. ;-)

Thanksgiving with the Pfeils!

The Holidays area wonderful time to spend with family, and we are so blessed to have so many people that live close to use to share it with.

Like the last few years, we spent Thanksgiving with Mark's family, and most of Mark's dad's siblings gathered there. A special treat was having Bob and Rema there with the girls! :-D It was super fun to get to spend more time with them. Aunt Laren, Uncle Ken, and their two boys Trevor and Sam were there also, as well as Blaine and Brenda and their daughter Sara, and Roxanne and baby Justin! Grandma Pfeil also came and brought Rachel. It was a really nice time to get to spend with them. I particularly remember that Uncle Blaine had surgery on his thyroid, and he was probably not going to be able to come, but at the last, he was! Yay! :-) His voice was still scratchy and raspy from the surgery, but he said that it was feeling a lot better and that the procedure had went really well, and for that we are all glad!

In fact, one of my favorite activities that occurred over Thanksgiving (besides the cooking and the eating) was made all that much better because Uncle Blaine was there, and his voice was raspy. :-) He is such a jokester. He thought it would be perfect if we played Mafia and he was "The Voice". Since he sounded so scratchy, it was pretty awesome. I should say that most of the "cousins" played Mafia, I mostly watched. I tried to play a few rounds, but I was pitifully awful at it. Everyone thought it was hilarious after the first round and I was teased mercilessly. In my defense, I told everyone that I am not good at that game and it would be better if I watched, but they insisted that I play. My first round went something like this:

"Teandra, did you kill so-and-so?"

* awkward pause while violently blushing* "uhhhhhhhhh.....no?" *giggle, cover face with hand* "I DON'T KNOW! NEXT QUESTION! NEXT QUESTION!"

*sigh*

After everyone stopped laughing, Emily turned to me and said, "Wow! you really are that awful!"

Yes, its true, I really am that awful at keeping secrets. Its made more difficult by the fact that everyone knows you have a secret since that is the point of the game.

Anyway! We played other games as well, including Swashbuckled, a game that was giving to us by my parents, and which I love playing. And, as per tradition, Trevor and Sam challenged Mark to a game of Risk...and both boys were summarily squashed by my handsome husband. Its pretty funny to watch. Trevor and Sam both say they are going to gang up on Mark, and then inevitably turn on each other, and Mark just mops up and takes over the world. Mark loves playing strategy games over Thanksgiving with his family :-)

Anyway! It was a lovely holiday. We had lots of food, lots of fun, and lots of family!

The front room

I have discovered that I am much more motivated to clean a room if it is decorated than if it is not decorated. I am not sure why this is, but it is a fact. So really, decorating the house is kinda like cleaning the house.... (I'm still trying to sell Mark on this) point

Anyway, after I graduated, I was on a mission: must. decorate. house.

I kept coming up with excuses to start though. To tell the truth, I felt really inadequate and was plagued with doubts: What if it looks bad?What if Mark doesn't like it? Or worse, what if mark doesn't like it but never says anything for 20 years and then it all comes out at a family reunion?!

I blame it on college. I went to school for something decidedly NOT decorating related so I spent most of my time thinking about things like leakage and absorption and criticality. I felt like my creativity had expired or something. I bet my sister The Goose can relate to these sentiments. It's like, you think you used to be really good at making things, but it got squashed out of you by studying all the time and being holed up in a basement lab that has no windows staring at a computer screen building models all day.

The point is, I knew I really wanted things to be nice for Mark when he came home, and I wanted whatever was in our home to be ours and to feel like us.

The furniture we got from family or from friends who were moving after they graduated and got real jobs. The majority of the decorations we have are wedding gifts, or presents from my mom (THANKS MOM!) :-D . I wanted the room to feel more...cohesive. Like it was intended to look this way, and not that it was a moge-poge of possessions we threw together since that's where they fit best. I also wanted to have a place for things to belong, so that I could actually put things away, and not just out-of-the-way.

So, like any good engineer...I did some research. And you know what!? It really helped! There is a lot of advise on the internet on how to get started organizing and decorating your home. It was awesome. For the most part, I stuck to things that resonated with me.

ANYWAY! Back to the front room design challenge. I learned that I needed to set a budget and some goals to make this happen. 1st, budget: try not to spend money. 2nd, goals: we needed a place for mark to take off his shoes, storage spaces for our blankets, throws, church books, hats and gloves, and toys, and we needed to be able to cover the windows to keep the heat in and the cold out.

I decided to limit the colors we used in the room, since there were so many different types of woods in their already, to make it look more cohesive.

Aaaaand! Since I don't have any before pictures really, here is the after!

The cubby holes have the storage space (One of the black baskets is the gloves, the other is the toys, and the empty ones are where the blankets go when they are not on the couch) Behind the fabric covers: one has church books, one has our games, one has family picture albums, and the other some cook books :-)

To make the fabric covers, I took some cardboard, some burlap that I had left over from Trek, and some spray glue. I sprayed the cardboard all over with glue, then stretched the fabric over it and folded the edges back. Viola! A canvas! Then I painted them in all the colors of the room, black, silver, and burgundy. So! I didn't have to buy anything for the fabric covers, yay!

The curtains I made from a sheet I found at goodwill. I washed it, ironed it, cut off a strip from one of the sides to make into tabs, re-hemmed it, then sewed the little tabs into place. The sheet cost about $5.

Mark hung up the curtain rod we got from wall mart, and then we hung the drapes!

Here is a better look at what we have on the coffee table.

The scraps from the curtain I used to make a table runner, and the little rossets that match. The coasters I made by covering coasters I got from Purdue with some fabric (They were given to me for being a speaker for a Women in Engineering outreach seminar..I thought it was quite poetic ;-) )

We found this little sitting thing from goodwill also, and I recovered it with the same fabric I used for the coasters (coincidentally, fabric I had leftover from the computer bag I made for my mom). When I saw it, I thought it would be great in the front room. We take our shoes off when we come into the house, and Mark likes to sit down when he takes his shoes off, so this is his official shoe removing bench :-). It is right by the front door. Eventually, I want to put something beneath it to keep the shoes in, but we are taking baby steps.

Yay! And there you have it! This is our front room, and making it look pretty has dramatically increased my motivation to tidy it up. Its not tidy all the time yet, but I am taking baby steps to get there too.

Fair Oaks Dairy Adventures!

Janene had a wonderful idea...a day trip to the Fair Oaks Dairy! :-D

And believe me, if Janene ever invites you to go on an adventure with her, say yes! It will always turn out wonderfully :-)

She is like Marry Poppins.

This Dairy is pretty fascinating for a lot of reasons. But, the number one reason why I think its fascinating? It's powered...by cow poop.

How amazing is that?!

You see, this is how it works. They have the cows allowed to move around where ever they want in these long stall building. The cows can leave the building, but there is nice shade and sprayers inside the stalls, so I didn't see any cows out in the pasture place. Anyway, while the cows are getting milked big trucks come and fill up the stalls with clean sand a few times a day so the cows have something nice and soft and clean to lay in. Before they put down the fresh sand, a different kind of truck with these big sprayers go through and they spray all the waste from the stalls. The waste goes into this pond that slopes down to the silo, where all the poop is collected.

There is the poop pond! I couldn't get a good picture of the poop tower/silo.

Anyway, inside the poop tower, the poop is collected and bacteria is used to break down the poop and produce (get this)...methane gas! And then the methane gas is used to power the plants! :-D

One cows poop is another cows...well never mind.

And guess what else?! It cuts down on stinky emissions by 90% !! The dairy barely smelled at all.

Wow.

I was totally impressed.

But, I love diaries. We used to have a dairy by our house in Rio Rancho (sadly, now it is a walmart) and when we would drive by I would wave to the cows and say, "There are our cow friends who give us milk!"

*sigh* I love things that come from milk. Its too bad we currently have a love hate relationship :-(

Anyway, I was so happy to go on a tour of this dairy! It totally made my week, and I keep telling my mom and my sister how I need to take them to this dairy. It's awesome.

It is also pretty cool how they milk the cows.

They have this rotary stall set up, and the cows just walk in and get milked. They said that they liked to be milked, and they don't have to make the cows get onto the milker thing (I am inclined to believe it. When your milk comes in, and there is no way to get rid of it...oww).

If you look in the back of this image, you see there are no people back there putting the cows in to be milked, they are just walking in, and then walking out! It was pretty interesting to watch. The cows were just waiting in line, and one would back out of the stall, and then the rotary table would move over, and another cow would walk into the stall, and then the process would repeat! And while the stall table turned, people would clean the teats and then put the milker things on, and then they would get milked most of the way around the table until they got to the next person that would take the milker things off, and put on moisturizer.

The amount of milk the cows give and the amount of steps the cows take every day is monitored by this amazing collar thing they have hanging around their necks. Its like a glorified cow pedometer. This allowed them to look after the cows health, and tell if the cow is sick, or going to give birth soon, and stuff like that. When the cows are going to have a baby, they take them away to a special barn to watch over them better and help them along. It was really cool.

There are also lots of other fun attractions at the Dairy. There are outside attractions for the kids, including a bouncy-jump place called "Dairy-Air" and a giant bottle of milk fitted with rock climbing holds.

It was kind of cold when we got there, so we didn't participate. There was also a little mini-tractor area for little kids to drive around these tiny tractors. I was pretty jealous.

There is a lot of fun things to do inside also, including trivia games about milk, a milk awareness tour, and a 4-D movie about cows. It was definitely geared towards small children, and very fun. When I left, I had been bombarded by so much milk propaganda I was convinced it was the wonder food and I needed to consume some asap. Clever, clever marketing.

and clever cow illustrations...

Here were are in our cool 3-D glasses, getting ready to watch the movie!

And! there is a birthing barn where you get to watch a baby cow be born. (poor mama cow, that giant baby was inside of her, with hooves! I don't even want to imagine what hooves feel like)

It was amazing to see how quickly the baby cow would get up to walk around after it was born.

You can do it little man!

Quite impressive.

There is also a cafe that serves delicious food, and gives cheese samples. Its a good thing that we are poor college kids right now, or I could probably have purchased my weight in cheese, and that would have ended very, very badly.

I. Love. Cheese.

We had lunch (I had an amazing grilled cheese sandwich), and then (yay!) we had ice cream!

Thanks David and Janene for such a wonderful (and tasty) adventure! :-D It was lots and lots of fun! If anyone is on their way to Chicago and would like to make a really fun pit stop, I highly recommend this dairy. Overall, super fun.

And its not every day you get to support an establishment that is powered by cow poop.

Camping with the family!

I have great childhood memories of family and ward camp outs in the Jemez mountains. I remember rolling up my pant legs and climbing all over the rocks up and down a slimy stream, hopping from rock to rock, with my sisters and our friends. I remember damming up the little creek by our favorite spot to make an adequate lake to float our acorn men (acorns with little faces scratched into them) in their leaf boats. I remember tripping and hitting my knee on a rock and getting a "Z" shaped cut, then looking at the cut while it was still all white and being traumatized when the blood starting coming out really fast. Then my friend told me it was, "like a Zorro slash!", and for some reason I thought that was cool and I tried to make it look like it didn't really hurt. I remember running off and exploring in the woods and finding "secret" places with my friends that we would name weird things that involved our initials. I remember lots and lots of yummy breakfast burritos and hot chocolate. And sausage. And bacon. And pancakes. mmmmm.... And I remember stopping in little shops on the way up to see the lady that made candles and buying honey sticks. Mmmmm... I remember sleeping in a pup tent with my friend and then our siblings taking out the stakes so our tent fell on us and freaking out when we woke up like the world had ended. I remember my dad teaching us how to sleep out under the stars and showing us what a different light pollution made, and the feeling like I could see forever into the stars. And then I remember being really cold and their being bugs. I remember it always being freezing when you woke up in the morning, and you could never sleep in, so you huddled by the fire until you were nice and toasty. (although...my definition of sleeping in requires that I sleep till 11, so waking up with the sun always ruined that for me). I remember the guys in our ward having pine cone wars. I still have no idea why people voluntarily do such things. I remember meeting the best friend of my youth by her sticking stick weed down my shirt. Its strange how you make friends when your little, isn't it? I also remember getting my eye burned really bad from flying ash off a stick that had been stuck in the fire and then waved around. I will always, always, always believe my mom when she says "don't do that, someone could lose an eye" since I almost lost mine. (I got to wear a patch like a pirate when I was in grade school.) That particular camping trip did not last as long as planned.

*sigh* Childhood is a wonderful, magical place. I am so grateful to my parents for making mine so fantastic.

But! This blog is not about past childhood memories, it is about repeating a family camping tradition with all the new members of my family. My aunts and uncle and cousins, my husband and brothers in law, and making new memories :-)

When we visited with my parents, we went camping with my Dads side of the family at one of my aunt Trisha's favorite places. Uncle Devin, Aunt Cathy, Brendon, Brandon, Kiora and her kids, My parents, Iwalani and Remy, Goose, and me and Mark were ALL there!! :-D The only one who could not make it was Alex, and he was missed. The camping trip was a blast while it lasted, even though it got cut short (a big time confusion and mess up with camp reservations and the park ranger and what not, not because someone got hurt, thank goodness).

Here are some pics!

We had three camp "pods" I guess you could say. The Max Evans pod (my dad and his kids), the Trisha Evans pod (with Brendon and Brandon)

and the Cathy Evans pod (but eventually we all congregated there when we got kicked out of the other pods, and we have a really fun big yummy meal and played games into the wee hours of the night and got yelled at by the park ranger for being too loud, and then we got kicked out all together).

There was this nice meadow near our campsite, and in the morning we would see herds of animals passing through. It was a super pretty camp site.

There was also a lake/reservoir thing that we could go and fish at. Here is the goose fishing early in the morning! What a beautiful day! :-D I LOVE THE NM SUNSHINE!! :-D

For the little kids, we could go and fish at the stocked fish hatchery place a little up the rode. We took chio and alex and brendon and let them fish there, it was super fun.

Chio totally loved playing with the live worms we used for bait ("bugs" she called them) and the other jars of bait.

Here she is stacking the bait jars like blocks...

and here she is trying to open the container of worms, with her teeth.

Chio. You are awesome.

I was so excited that the Teek and her kids were able to come. I had no idea they were going to be there. When we drove up to the house, Mark was like, "is that alex playing in the front yard?" and I looked at him incredulously and remarked, "alex....Kiora's kid?....NO! they live in TEXAS, why would they be here?" and thought he was completely insane. Then I was told that I needed to go in to help my Grandma Pauline so I went to the back room, and I started really confusedly at this moving pile covered with a big sheet....until the big sheet flew off to reveal my sister and her two kids!! SURPRISE!!!! :-D

I was completely and wonderfully shocked. :-) Mark mocked me big time for not believing him. It was pretty funny.

We slept there for a few nights, but on the last night we were planning on staying we had to leave early. It was a forced exodus, and in the clean up madness, chio was left to entertain herself by this tree and she decided to bury her hands in the dirt.

Then her eyes got itchy....
...I give you....
RACOON GIRL!!! :-D

He he he...Her mom was really glad she left her daughter with such responsible adults.

Here is chio being tossed by handsome Mark and aunt Goose!

For our feast gathering at Aunt Cathy's pod, I made rolls! In a dutch oven! They were really really nummy. It took a lot of TLC to make those rolls happen, let me tell you. I messed up the first time, and I only brought enough yeast for one try, but I really wanted to make rolls, so the Teek went with me to the little teeny store in the middle of no where, and guess what?! they had YEAST! and honey. So, we got some more honey. You know, to go with the rolls. Very important.

After dinner, my parents left to go home, but we stayed to play Quelf with Brendons family. Oh, my, goodness. It was so much fun. And we were so loud. That game is fun to play with a large group of people, and you don't really have to pay attention since there is no skill involved, so it is a good game to play if you want to catch up with people that you have not seen in a while. What a great idea you had Aunt Cathy and Aunt Trish! :-D

And here is chio, looking adorable and wistful. I wonder if this is a camping trip she is going to remember fondly when she grows up? Ah, the magic of childhood!

The Room: Before and After

All these recent sewing projects are going into the baby room/ guestroom/ craft room- room. Since our duplex has three rooms, one is the master room, one is Mark's office, and the other is...the baby room/ guest room/ craft room -room. "My-room" for short :-)

I cleaned and organized Mark's office first so he would have a nice place to work, and my room kind of got left for last and acted as a catch-all for all the things that didn't have a home yet from the move in the rest of the house...yikes.... :-/

So! Here are some before shots of the room I needed to work with (brace yourselves):

Before:

*shudder*

Man, was that room a disaster!

This was still pretty soon after the move, and we were storing some furniture and odds-and-ends for a friend of ours who was between moves at the end of the semester. I saved this room for last since I needed to wait to organize until all the extra stuff got taken out of the room --it was pretty much full to bursting. I don't even know if these pictures do the clutter justice, it wa s bad. We had so much stuff in that room.

But! I wanted to work on my projects oh-so-much! I just opened up the sewing table and worked on any surface available (generally the floor), which made everything that much more cluttered. Meh. When you get to a certain point or chaos, a little more never hurt, right?

*gasp!*

for shame!

I know, I know....

Poor Mark.

But! Never fear! The After shots are here!:

Ahhhhhh.....

much better :-)

The last image even gives you a much better view of the blanket and the flower design, as well as the window curtain things and the tree thing in the bookshelf.

I could not get the same angle on the images because the after shots were taken with my cell phone (again, sad day for losing the camera) so I tried to take multiple shots. I realize now I never got an angle of the right side of the room. Sorry! The crib is on that side, and the bookshelves.

So! I will now talk a little more about some of the details:

Headboard: when my mommy comes out to visit us in the frigid north in the wintertime, it really bothers her shoulder to be so close to the cold cold wall. We thought that a headboard would help that. So! I found a gigantic cardboard box that was being disposed of and I snatched it up!! Then I cut my shape out, 4 layers deep, and stapled them together with a staple gun...and applied a judicious amount of duct-tape. I then made a headboard sandwich! First I laid out my white fabric (what would end up being the front), then the batting, topped it with the the cardboard, the pulled/wrapped the exposed edges of the fabric (the bottom layer) around to the back of the cardboard (the top layer) and stapled it all into place! Worked great! The front looked really smooth and fluffy and nice, and it is su-per sturdy.

And what, do you ask, did I use for the white fabric? Another white sheet! Yay! I found out it is much more cost effective to use a lower thread count sheet for a large biece of what fabric for the headboard than using cloth yardage. If there is a downside to that...I have not found it yet. I got a nice big area with no seams and was so much cheaper than yardage of fabric. Brilliant idea.

Then! After everything was stapled all nice and tight together, I folded it over to the front and stapled the dimples into the front side of the headboard and then hot glues buttons in place.

***note: While that sentence may have sounded easy...it was anything but. Let me just tell you. My mother can vouch, as she was on the phone/skype with me at the time, and there were DEFINITE hard feelings toward both the staple gun and the headboard during this process. But, let me tell you this little hint that I learned after much duress....lean all your weight on the gun, then pull the trigger like 5 times in a row. If you put enough consecutive staples in, that baby ain't goin' nowhere.

So! The first dimple took like 10 minutes of repeated stapling, and crying, and unkind feelings, and then once I figured that out, the rest of the dimples took like 5 minutes total. Then I hot glued on the buttons to cover the staples and that was it!

It cost less than $10. I like the way that it looks, and with enough cardboard, it is super sturdy, and feels like a legitimate headboard, so I would highly suggest this method to someone else.

Curtains: The sheer underfabric I got at goodwill for a few dollars. I cut it in half, sewed a sleeve along the top, and then just had to slip it into the curtain rod. The top of the curtains I made with the scraps of the fabric from the blanket! They have a flower on them (similar design to the blanet) and they are also top stitched.

Sham pillows: These I made from another white sheet, and they worked out ok. I am not sure how I feel about how ruffly everything is....but its ok for now.

Bookshelf covers: I have a lot of books from school that I want to keep. They definitely don't look like they belong in the room, but I don't have anywhere else to keep them. Maybe this looks a little strange, but I think it looks better than the books. I took a vinyl sheet, cut it to fit inside each of the shelves, and then painted a tree on it. I plan on painting a tree on the canvas I put up to cover the closet (to measure the height of the kids as they grow) and so eventually it is going to match.

The Pillow

Since I showed you all about the blanket, I couldn't help but show you what I did with all the scraps:

Isn't it she so pretty! :-D

Well, the picture isn't that great, courtesy of my cell phone since I lost the camera. Oops :-(

But! Even though it is not that great, I wanted to give you a glimpse of this little gal. I got the idea and instructions from here.

Im glad all the scraps turned into something so fun! :-D

The Blanket

So!

I was SUPER excited about being out of school. For a lot of reasons.

YAY! YAY! YAY!

*sigh* :-)

One of the reasons I was so excited was to work on some lingering projects I had had my eye on.

Let me tell you alllllll about it :-)

So!

Basically.

I wanted to make a blanket.

Specifically, I wanted to make a duvet cover. We bought a big fluffy insert blanket thingy from Ikea and Mark said it was ok if I made a cover for it :-) The spare bed is in the babies room, so we wanted to use a neutral color, and since that is bedroom is in the darkest corner in the house, I wanted to go with a yellow, happy color.

I drew this design:

and after consulting with my wonderful mommy who, by the way, is brilliant and made my life a million times easier when I undertook this project, I used a king sized white sheet, some yellow fabric, and some wonder-under to construct THIS!

isn't it pretty?!? :-D

After putting it on with Wonder under, my mommy also suggested that I do top stitching (also something I had never dabbled into) to make sure that the flower petals stay put.

"hmmmmmm," I said to myself, "top stitching...that sounds difficult"

Luckily, I have a sewing machine manual. (I love reading manuals. They are so helpful!) And look! The manual is teaching us how to sew on little ducks.

Too bad it wasn't a goose or else that would have been AWESOME!

Anyway, it did not turn out to be too difficult, it just took a lot of patience, and a loooooot of thread. Like, a mile.

And when the bobbin runs out and you don't notice so you continue sewing for a long time and then look up and DRAT! its all for NOTHING! ....How exasperating. The other thing that was a little tricky was bunching up the giant blanket under the sewing arm, so it got a little dicey at times.

I loved the overall effect of the top stitching. I used the same color thread as the yellow petals, so while its a subtle effect that defines each petal, when viewed all together it gives the overall design a fantastic texture.

Top stitching = yummy.

So! Once the top was all finished, All I had to do was connect it to the back! And that is where the other other brilliant idea that my mommy had came into play! Have you ever heard of, french seams? I hadn't. Apparently a french seam is "a seam stitched first on the right side and then turned in and stitched on the wrong side so that the raw edges are enclosed in the seam". Que interesante, no?

French seam = magic.

Here it is in all its finished,rumpled, on the bed glory!

.... its kind of hard to take a good picture of it while its on the bed corner, but trust me, its beautiful. :-)

So! Thanks mommy for all your wonderful ideas and support, they were WONDERFUL! :-D