Facial Hair

Finally got back in the sewing room and made some headway on the mustache placemats from the giveaway...I'm sort of terrible at this blogging thing.  Sorry it's been so long, Keeley.  They'll be shipped this weekend though, I promise!  Tomorrow is Friday Night Sew-In, and that's top of the list (if I don't get them done tonight even). 

Best dog ever.

I digress.

On the docket for Friday night:
* Finishing what's to be finished of the placemats.
* Piecing the back and basting the sandwich of the Christmas quilt. 
* Making serious headway on our Ohio Stars quilt (hoping to get at least all the triangled squares sewn and pressed...that's the worst of it, the pressing.)
* If there's time, maybe I'll finish the top of the Valentine's quilt.  That's still in a box, and I have like 5 rows left to sew together to make it a finished top.  Really should just get that done.  Don't need to baste it or anything, I just want the top done.  Maybe I'll move that up the list some. 

I need to figure out a couple of Christmas gifts too...I want to do more handmade stuff this year, but I'll be honest...I'm a little nervous about making stuff for MOTU's family.  I don't know what kind of precedent to set and all that. 

Oh that reminds me...I should start on Christmas cards too.  I have ideas.  That's another precedent I need to set right.  Yikes.  No pressure. 

Winner, Design Wall(ish), and Weekend Report

Oof, what a weekend!  I went to Boston Balance with a friend of mine on Saturday, and learned the hard way that I am very much a big fish in a small pond in my local spin classes.  6 hours of grueling cardio later, I now know the definition of "advanced" in terms of spinning. I am maybe upper intermediate.  I am also in no small amount of pain, but it was so, so worth it.  I'm getting certified to instruct in 2 weeks, which I'm so excited for.

Which leads me to my design wall.  Mostly right now it's kind of in my head.  I still have the Ohio Star blocks going (lots and lots of ironing going on with that actually) and I still need to finish the place mats for our winner (quick digression here) who, according to random.org, is #2...Keeley!

I will get on those and send them out hopefully by the end of the week. In case you missed them, here are the pictures:

The "in my head" projects are definitely more in progress.  I've been thinking about making my spin towels more fun by adding some kind of silly applique to them.  I was thinking something like this:

I'm thinking I can just applique each picture/letter individually or something.  The dino would be probably 4 inches tall, with everything else to scale.  It would definitely keep me giggling during a workout.  I could make a running one too, for treadmill workouts.

Anyway, that was my weekend, that's my design wall, and now I'm off to work.  It's Hungarian week over at my cooking blog, so if you have any good Hungarian recipes to suggest, I'm all ears!

Friday Fave Five - Last Chance Edition

First and foremost, I'm giving everyone one last chance (until 5 PM tonight) to enter Wednesday's 200th post giveaway.  You'll just have to go on over and see what the prize is (because you need the visuals to get the real fun of it). 

And now, Friday's Fave Five:

1. Accidental victories. A couple months ago, I came up with a very efficient way of doing some stuff for work which literally saved me days of tedium.  I shared it with my team, and they weren't really interested in learning the method because they were too busy.  No big.  Yesterday, the IT crew did some stuff behind the scenes that ended up breaking a lot of our files, translating to a HUGE overhaul of everything and some very panicked emails, particularly about my files. Thing is, the method I'd come up with had accounted for this kind of issue, so where it could have taken DAYS to fix everything, it took me 15 minutes.  At the risk of gloating too much (and having someone who may have chosen not to employ my method read thing), I'll leave it with a simple "booya" and move on.  I'll leave the victory dance to your imagination.

2. Kini.  I swear, this dog is on my list every week.  Right now, she's curled up on the treadmill (again), cuddling with her bone.  Dogs are so weird.  This week, we hit a milestone...her first buried bone!  I wasn't there for it, but MOTU says she buried it then immediately missed it and dug it up to carry it around the yard some more.  That's our puppy. 

3. Generosity.  I finally finished the thank you notes from the wedding last weekend.  It still blows me away that we needed over 70 thank you notes...even people who barely knew us (some who didn't even know us and were friends of our parents) gave us way more than we expected them to (and my expectation was that if they were coming to celebrate with us, that was gift enough)!  We are blessed.

4. Spin. I went to 2 spin classes this week, and while the first one was pretty terrible (sorry, but if it would fit in on a station called "The Eagle", it's not workout music.  Sailing Away was my breaking point...I literally walked out it was so terrible) the second one (last night) was AWESOME!!  The music was great (Time Warp, techno remix of My Heart Will Go On, etc.) and the workout was NUTS.  I was feeling fantastic and pushed hard.  I am in a little bit of pain today, and that's awesome. This weekend is Boston Balance, and I'm taking 5 classes...that's 7.5 hours of working out (3 classes are spin).  Sunday is going to be a long day, but so worth it.

5. Speaking of pain, my upper body is hurting too, because for the first time in a long time, we went rock climbing this week. I'm pretty bad at it now, and my arms/back/shoulders are in pretty sad shape, but it felt so good to pull some plastic.  Especially when I ended up showing up one of MOTU's friends on one of the routes.  :-)  Oops. 

The weather here has been great...warm and sunny most of the week (minus the creepy fog that settled in on Wednesday night), and overall it's been a great week.  I hope everyone else had a fabulous one too! 

I think...

...this girl may have just inspired me to make a quilt with a mustache. Everyone seems to be doing mustaches and TRexes lately.  I think my designs need to get way funkier, and soon. Stay tuned.

http://www.etsy.com/people/CyanideStitches?ref=ls_profile

Also, this is my 200th post.  I feel like some kind of giveaway is in order, but I'm not sure what.  Let me think on it...if I get more than 5 comments on this post (has to be on the post, not on FB sorry), I'm thinking maybe some mustachioed (wow, that's seriously a word??) placemats are in order.  Because seriously, who doesn't need facial hair looking back at them when their plate gets taken away?  Set of 4, up for grabs, pending 5 comments ON THIS POST.

***Update***

I forgot to mention when this closes, duh.  It closes when I find something interesting enough to write about in another post, so likely sometime tomorrow night or Friday morning. Also, if you're someone I don't know personally, please make sure to include some way for me to contact you (a reply-to email address is fine - check your Google settings).  Winner to be selected by random number generator.

***REUpdated***

Couple quick teaser pics of the placemats.  How can you resist a moustache on lemons??

 And a cute polka-dotted backing to boot!

100th post!

Here I was about to write something about the Marines and how I just found out I CAN send MOTU letters while he's at OCS (YAY!!!), but blogger has just informed me that this is (gasp!) my 100th post!  Considering I only started this blog in January, that probably says something I don't want it to, huh?  Ah well.

I should probably do a giveaway to mark the occasion, but I really have nothing to give at this point.  Lemme see what I can come up with and I'll get back to you.  In the meantime, if you want to be entered into this mystery giveaway (it won't be awful, I promise), the rules are as usual: mention it on your blog and leave a comment pointing to the mention.  Or if you don't have a blog, leave a comment with what you would have said.  Or just leave a comment.  I like comments.  This'll remain open until...umm...2 days after I decide what I'm giving away or the 26th, whichever comes last.

So that's that.

I didn't do any sewing last night, but MOTU and I did go for our first non-race, outside run together.  It was fun...great weather and a good pace.  About a quarter of the way through, we suddenly had company...out of nowhere, this dog (a big puppy really) just sort of...started running with us.  He was happy, running right next to us, getting distracted, catching up...he ran with us for over a mile!  Good thing we were doing an out and back.  His owners eventually showed up in a big truck, mad at the dog and thanking us for keeping him safe.  (I'm not sure we really did...he ran into the road a couple of times and without a collar on, we couldn't do much but yell.) All in all, it was pretty entertaining.  He just wanted to play.  I'm sure we looked like the world's worst pet owners with him running around us...he wasn't ours, I swear!  Ours will be on a leash at all times, especially when running next to a road like that!

In any case.  I want a puppy.  I want a running buddy.  I can't wait.  The puppy in the picture might not be Zucchini, but we'll find one to bear the name proudly when we're all ready.

Another giveaway!

I love the texture of the fabrics she's used here!  Go check it out!