Saturday, February 23, 2013

Sew and Show Saturday—#19. Star Garden…

My mom made this beautiful quilt for my Little Miss.  I have the best memories of this quilt because it decorated our bare apartment walls before when we had moved away from home—it was a little bit of happiness in a rotten little apartment!!
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The nine-patches alternating with the pastel colored, machine-appliqued stars make a wonderful pattern for a little girl’s room.  The meandering vines along the border were always my favorite part!
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The shadowed quilting around the vines and stars is exquisite!!
Another beautiful quilt, mom!!
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Monday, February 18, 2013

PB Inspired quilt pattern for boys…

I finally have my Quincy Space pattern completed and up for sale on my ETSY shop!!  Click HERE and take a look !!  I have two other patterns close to finished that I will be putting up for sale in my shop in the next few weeks!!
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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Sew and Show Saturday—#17. Strawberry Smoothie…

This Strawberry Smoothie pattern by Barbara Jones at Quilt Soup is the perfect Sew and Show for Valentine’s Day this week!!
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Like I have mentioned before, my mom does impeccable applique work!!
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This is such a sweet, cheerful quilt!!  And look at those flowers….still dreaming of Spring!!
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Friday, February 15, 2013

Board and Batten, how I love thee…my Dining Room

One of my favorite designers is Sarah Richardson—I love her style!!  I was watching one of her shows on HGTV and she showed a dining room with Board and Batten and I was hooked!!  I told my husband that we needed to do that someday to our dining room….and then I followed it up with, maybe someday SOON!!
Here’s some pictures of our dining room before—not the greatest pictures!!  I had a chair rail and had painted the entire room aqua.  It was nice, but I needed to break it up with some white, and board and batten was the perfect fit!!  This also shows my lovely, hand-me-down dining room table that my husband remodeled into an awesome farmhouse table!!
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 My neighbor Marci moved in a month after I told my husband we had to redo our dining room—and she was a board and batten expert and had done it in her previous home!!  She got to work on her own house so quickly that I was lucky enough to go get tips from her before we started.
Remember her little boy’s nursery and the gorgeous board and batten grid she did??  LOVE it!!
We painted the walls white first, and then added the wood and molding, caulked and touched up the nail holes.  And ended up with a dining room that I absolutely love!!  I made the window valances and it was complete!!
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My favorite thing about this look is how much light it brings into the room.  We haven’t done ANY board and batten in our new home—it’s on the to do list!!  But I miss seeing it in my old house!!  It was the perfect backdrop for our family celebrations…
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I love the way my black chairs pop from the white board and batten…I can’t wait to put some up in my new house!!  Someday….it’s on the list!!
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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine’s Day…and the winter blues…

We don’t have any Valentine’s traditions at our house, no cute breakfasts, nothing—kind of weird when I think about it!!  We just try to be nicer and write a little note to each other.  I don’t dislike Valentine’s Day, but I really dislike the time of year it is—couldn’t it be in July??  So the only thing I worry about on Valentine’s Day, or really any day lately—is just making dinner at all!!
I’ve got the winter blues—which has happened to me every winter since I was little.  Some years are worse than others, depending on how many gray days we have.  It does help tremendously that I live in the South and generally get a whole lotta sunshine.  But if we happen to have a few gray days in a row—I am toast!!  My husband knows this about me, and is great to step up and cook and do things that just seem so overwhelmingly difficult when I’m struggling with the winter blues.
So I AM going to make dinner tonight, even though I have two sick kiddos who are pitifully miserable today!!  I feel bad for them.  But the sun is out, so I am going to just do it and make today work!!  My favorite thing about Valentine’s day is that it means that February is almost over and that means Spring is on its way!!
I did manage to hang my valentine’s day bunting that I made last year….
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I hope you have a Happy Valentine’s Day without any gray!!
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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Justin turns 10…

I didn’t think anything could top Justin’s great Angry Bird’s birthday party last year….but we are celebrating so many great things this year for Mr. Justin!!
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Justin has grown up so much in the past 6 months!!  He started some new medication that we feel has really helped him focus more and his tantrums have decreased significantly!!
We thought that was great, and then one day we found out that there was an opening at a local private school in an autism classroom.  We were not looking for a school program for him at all….here’s the summed up back story… (We had pulled him from school 4 years earlier after they had physically lost my child at the school---AND couldn’t provide appropriate services for him.  We fought the school district, but in the end we found that 30 hours of ABA therapy services from a top ABA provider is what he needed.  And I couldn’t handle the stress of trying to prove to the school district what a special kid Justin was and that he had potential and that I wasn’t looking for just babysitting.  I felt like I was trying to convince them to love him the way I did and it finally hit me that they would never love him that way, because I was his mom—I WAS HIS MOM!!  Those words rang through my head, and for the first time in a long time I believed in myself as a mother.  I believed that I could be personally inspired to make decisions for Justin and I ended up feeling directed to pull him from school.  It was hard at the time, but I look back now and can see what a turning point that was for Justin and our family.  And amazingly, our attitudes changed, there were no more negative feelings and wasted energy on fighting the schools, only positive, proactive energy and celebrating his daily progress no matter how small it seemed.  And our hearts changed and became happy again.  That’s what ABA did for our family, it taught us how to celebrate every step of Justin’s progress.  With that celebrating, we forgot all about school—it just wasn’t on our minds because we were too happy about everything else that was going on to worry about school dreams.)
So when I saw the advertisement for an opening at a private school that we were already familiar with, I wondered if it could work??  I dismissed it for a minute, almost afraid to let myself dream of that opportunity.  And then I emailed his ABA Supervisor and asked her if she thought it would work….and after several conversations and meetings….. MY BOY STARTED SCHOOL AGAIN!!!  I cried like a baby the night before and the first morning I dropped him off.  I cried with joy for a blessing that came our way that I wasn’t even expecting—how great is that!!  And then it was like a crazy turn of events as each day I picked up Justin from school and he seemed to be making leaps and bounds of progress every single day.  And you want to know the best part of it all???  He LOVES school!!  I still cry about it a few times a week, but it’s all happy tears.  Here’s my sweet Justin writing the date on the board at school…
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I remember when Justin was 2 1/2 years old and I so desperately sought answers to what was wrong with my sweet baby as I watched him rapidly lose skills he had previously gained and sink into his own world—I was so depressed and spent every day researching and crying and wondering, “why is this happening to us?!?!”  It was ROUGH!!  It’s such a sweet turnaround now, to be crying tears of joy now instead of all those tears of sorrow!!
Looking back at this picture of me with my first baby, so worried about how I could ever protect him and take care of him!!  All those sweet fears and worries that every first-time mom carries as she leaves the hospital…I had no idea how challenging my life would become, but I also had no idea how much growth those challenges would bring and the beautiful blessings that would follow.  I know that God has blessed us with strength and peace and we have been so blessed by several inspired service coordinators, therapists, friends, church leaders, and family.  I love you, Justin!!
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