Oooh, pretty!

Last night I was working on a custom order from the etsy shop and was excited to see that one of the items was listed as "contoured burp cloths. fabric: girly- I trust you." Ok!

This is officially my new favorite fabric combo.

Here's my (ground) beef with Pioneer Woman

Oh man... I just can't help but say stupid things that I think are funny. Sheesh.

So, I think we all know about Ree over at The Pioneer Woman. Some people don't like her, some people adore her- I lean towards the latter. However, she does seem to make me feel inadequate as a housewive. I can't wrangle cows, homeschool kids, cook amazing food and still be skinny and have the time to blog about it- I just can't!

Anyways, today I was making supper for our friends Kimberly and Steve (who just had a precious baby girl- Jillian! Eeeee!)- I remembered how when we had Noah, we had tons upon tons of leftovers, so I decided to make one meal and split it between Kimberly and Steve and Joe and I. I decided to go with Ree's Creamy Mashed Potatoes and Pastor Ryan's Cajun Meatloaf.

My beef with her recipes are that they absolutely DISTROY my kitchen and usually take all frickin' afternoon (although, in the end, it's always worth it).

Unfortunately, Noah woke up 45 minutes into his afternoon nap, so he did this while I cooked (for what turned out to be a total of 1.5 hours):

I made the mashed potatoes first and then set them aside and got a-chopping on the veggies for the meatloaf.

Yes, that is 6 TABLESPOONS of butter in that pan. You only live once, people.

Noah then got antsy and fussy, so I sat him in his high chair and let him eat a teething biscuit until I got the meatloaf in the oven

(which, by the way, ended up being roughly the size of a sheet cake).

... but TAMBA it was good!

Noah agreed. I've honestly never seen him go to town on anything quite like he did that meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Not one drop on the floor for poor ol' Rufio to lick up.
I guess I know what's for lunch tomorrow.

L-E-F-T-O-V-E-R-S.

(because even after splitting a sheet-cake-sized meatloaf with people, you're gonna have leftovers)

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

What do you think of the new look? It's definitely brighter!

a-quilting I will sew, a-quilting I will sew....

Lookie what I'm going to make:

I signed up for a quilting class!

If you think that's cool, let's be friends!

If you think that's lame, don't come crying to me to teach you how to quilt in 50 years when we're old and grey and then it's the "cool" thing to do.

I will be using the fabrics above (that's the sample from the quilt shop) and here's the pattern:

Don't you just love the big ol' fat ric-rac and huge flower?

I'm super stoked for this class- it's the 4 Wednesday nights in May. I can't believe that I'll make a quilt in the time span of 1 month! If I were on my own, it would take months or even years!

I'm nerdily excited to learn to quilt! I even bought a quilting foot (which isn't even neccessary for this quilt) to play with! The main reason I wanted to learn in the first place is that my great-grandmother quilted and when she died, she left multiple finished quilt tops and finished squares for other quilts, but no one in my family knows how to do anything with them! I'm very excited to learn and be able to use some of those to make quilts for my aunts and myself so that all Nezzie's hard work isn't wasted!

(Get ready for some visual changes around here. I used to think the grey was cool, but now it's just depressing! hehe)

Happy Easter!

"Sin has lost it's power, death has lost it's sting.

From the grave You've risen- victoriously!

Into marvelous light I'm running, out of darkness out of shame

by the cross You are the truth, You are the life, You are the way!"

I hope you had a GREAT day!

-theluckiest family

(please note both Joe AND Noah's closed eyes- and this was the best pic! haha)

my favorite pic of the day:

Well 5 posts in 4 days is sort of ridiculous...

... but then again, so is the amount of stuff that I've been sewing. Eh.

Remember that genius idea for a t-shirt quilt that I had back in, oh, February?

Well, the sorority shirt quilt was a little intimidating (since I literally have a shirt for every event that we had in 4 years... even narrowed down I've got 30!) so Joe suggested that I try a smaller-scale t-shirt quilt first- a little quilt for Noah using some of our shirts from college. Well, I started that one in February as well, then put it off and put it off until finally, 2 nights ago I decided to just suck it up and finish it- nothing fancy, just seeing if it's possible. Here it is:

It consists of nine 15" t-shirt backs and I used this tutorial to get me started (ironing on interfacing, cutting, etc.) but then lazily bound it with a flannel backing pillowcase-style because, really, let's be honest: the kid's gonna puke on this thing and it isn't exactly destined to be a family heirloom. I'm still in shock that it's actually a square and not incredibly wonky- and for that, I can thank a 15" quilting ruler and my 1/4" guide quilting foot.

I also just made a TON of stuff for a friend who is hosting a baby shower, but this owl was my favorite, so I want to share it despite the bad lighting (Meredith, I seriously need to figure out that white balance trick... it worked for me once and that was it!):

hold on to your hat!

'cause it's SPRINGTIME, BABY!

Which, in our house, means... (let me just say that yes, Noah does have a life jacket and yes, I did pop Joe upside the head for letting him ride in the boat without it. It will NEVER happen again.)

family crusing time...

and snacks on a boat


Also, my beautiful, gorgeous, amazing, strong wonderful friend Kimberly had her baby girl Jillian today! Kimberly and I were pregnant together, but unfortunately, she lost her first baby to miscarriage. However, her second pregnancy went amazingly smooth and Jillian was born this evening at 6:47pm -I AM SO STOKED to meet her tomorrow!
I made her this little summertime dress (tute here) ...because it isn't springtime in the south until you're wearing seersucker-
I don't care how old you are.