What's Up Wednesday

Good Wednesday afternoon, everyone!  It's a cold and wintry day here in western New York.  We've been just getting hammered by the snow!  We probably got 6 since yesterday.  That's a decent amount for December. I'm going to make a big pot of soup for dinner, because what's better on a snowy day than hot soup?

I know I promised to post a free pattern last Friday, but some events came about that made it so I didn't have time to do that.  They're really good events though!  I had sent off my Lovely Lavender Set to Annie's so they could sell it on their website, and shortly after I got an email from the lady I work with that said she wanted to make it a printed pattern and put it in their spring catalog!!!  I was so excited that I forgot how to reply to her, and then sent a nonsensical email because I pushed send too soon, lol.  She needed me to make a holder for the mug rugs though, so that's what I was working on Friday afternoon, yay!  And I got it all done and sent off to her on Monday.

I don't know when their spring catalog comes out, but I'll be sure to let you know when I know!

As soon as I finished sending that off, I pretty much immediately started knitting a hat because I can't sit still for five minutes, honestly.  It's like I can't just chill out, I have to be making something all the time.  It's coming along nicely and I bet I can have it done by tomorrow!

I spent a little time today getting my Christmas cards made out.  I used to send out a lot of them, but lately I've been trying to cut back on stuff like that, so this year I only sent out about 10 cards to the people I really care about. 

Oh, I got some news about my ring!  They finished working on it and it's amazing!  The jeweler is a two hour drive from our house though, so we have to wait until Saturday to go get it.  OH it's so hard to wait!

 And here's a nice shot of the snow in my back yard :)

Well, I guess that's all for this week!  I hope you're all having a wonderful week, and as long as nothing else comes up, I should be able to get a free pattern posted this Friday!  See you then!

What's Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  Boy, have I had a busy couple of weeks!  I'm so sorry I haven't said anything lately.  I guess I just got so into everything going on around me that I forgot to sit down and work on my blog.  Have you guys ever had that happen to you?  It's kind of frustrating to be so busy that you don't have time for what is really important to you, which for me is my designs and my blog.  Thankfully, things are starting to calm down for a little while so I thought I'd update all of you on what I've been doing!

Our Thanksgiving was very good.  We do dinner at my mom's house on Thanksgiving day, with my mom and dad, sister and her son, my oldest niece and her two boys and her boyfriend.  It was crazy and chaotic, with noisy kids and loud laughter and people everywhere!  But it was also so nice to see everyone.  I made the turkey this year for my mom's house, and it turned out just perfect!  I brined it the day before which made it juicy and so flavorful.

The next day, we went over to my hubby's parents' house for lasagna.  It was a nice change of pace, both with the food and the company.  Nice and quite!  I guess the truth is that I prefer a quite evening in with grownups! 

The weekend after Thanksgiving, my hubs and I started putting up our Christmas decorations.  We got the tree down on Friday and set it up right away because it's just so cheery.  No decorations or anything,  just the lights.

We had some traditional Scandinavian glogg while we were at it!  Sooo good!

Then it took me about a week to get the whole downstairs decorated.  It seems to get a little harder every year.  This year was especially hard because I'm trying to do my pattern designing at the same time.  You know, sometimes I really miss being a full time housewife; it may have been boring at times, but at least I always had time to work on things like the decorations.

I lived with the downstairs looking like this for a few days, which just about drove me crazy *neat freak*

Best present under the tree :)

Here's our tree unlit (also with a boy behind it)...

And here it is all lit up!  I'll be sure to get some more pictures of the decor for next week.

Another thing keeping me busy the last week or two has been a very special Christmas present.  My hubby and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in September.  When we got engaged, we were both really young.  I was 20 and he was 23!  At the time, I was living at home with my mom, and he was living at his home with his parents and working at a gas station.  Needless to say, we were both pretty poor.  So when he proposed, he had a small budget and couldn't get me an amazing ring.  I loved it though because it was special.  It was a simple, small sapphire with two side diamonds. 

Then, when we got married, I had a gold band made to fit next to the engagement ring, and a couple years later, I had a second band made for the other side. 

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we decided to get the center sapphire replaced with something a little nicer.  We managed to find an amazing metalsmith jeweler two hours away, and after visiting them twice, they managed to find the perfect sapphire for me!

That's an emerald cut tanzanite on the left that they used as a comparison to get the perfect color, and that's my oval sapphire on the right!  They're going to start setting it soon and I should be able to go get it next week!  I'm soooo excited.  I'm going to wrap it up really pretty and nice, and open it on Christmas :)  I know that seems silly, but it's such a special gift I thought it deserved to be wrapped.  up.

Hubs and I went for a lovely hike this past weekend, too, since it was so nice out. 

And finally, another reason why I've been so quiet lately is because I've been super busy stitching up some new patterns for my shop!

I definitely will have the lavender set up in my shop by the end of the week, and I'll get the snowflake tbc up next week probably. 

So now we're all caught up!  I hope you've all been having a wonderful December so far, full of happiness and joy and good cheer!

What's Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  I hope you're all having a great week so far.  Mine has actually been amazingly good!  I guess I was due for a good week after so many bad weeks, right?  And I'm sure having a positive attitude will help me continue to have a good week.

My biggest news this week is that I got a new smart phone!  Well, ok, let's be honest here.  I got my very first smart phone!  Yes, you heard me right; a 33 year old middle class American woman just got her first smart phone.  Until now, I've had an ancient flip phone.  Even my mom got a smart phone before me!  Let's just say I'm extremely frugal and that's why it's taken so long.  I got a Google Pixel 2 which has an amazing camera, and that's where all of the pictures are coming from this week.

So let's start with what's up with my garden.  I did the last thing with my garden for the year; I planted my garlic.  I've been growing this garlic for I think 5 years now.  It's a variety called German Extra Hardy, and it's never failed me. 

I've been really getting into a cooking mood lately.  I guess that's just what colder weather does, it makes me think of hearty stews and pies and delicious smells.  I've been rummaging through my old Taste of Home magazines looking for good cabbage recipes, since I have about 30 pounds to use.  One of the cool things I made the other day was Blueberry Cranberry Sauce.

It's a pretty purple sauce with mild blueberry notes that mellow out the cranberry twang.  Since my hubby and I don't eat sugar, I used a mixture of stevia, xylitol, and erythritol to make it taste almost like the real thing. 

The city went around and collected the leaves off the streets yesterday, using their amazing crazy leaf picker upper machine.

It works like an escalator, and shoots them off the back into a dump truck that's driving backwards behind it.  It's pretty amazing to watch.

Ironically though, we hot a heavy frost last night that made all of the remaining leaves fall.

I don't really mind so much.  We usually rake our leaves and put them into our compost pile out back.  It's just hilarious timing.

I got some nice pictures of the frost, too.

Nature sure is pretty, isn't it?

And here's some gratuitous cat pictures.  Spices got herself tangled up in some charge cords, and Sunshine is just being a cutie.

I'm still working on the Christmas plastic canvas boxes.  Unfortunately, it's going slower than I wanted and it may not get put up into my shop until next week.  I really want to get some Christmas patterns out before the holiday is over.

And this is how my work area usually looks when I'm working on a project.  Pretty terrible, right?  I'm like a messy kid.  I may have a craft room, but the crafts usually move all over the house.

And a little side note; Annie's is selling a couple more of my patterns!  You can check them out by clicking the links below.  I'm not an affiliate, but if you buy the patterns I will receive a royalty (or you can buy directly from my Etsy and I'll receive all of the money from the sale).

Well, that's all for now!  I hope you all have an amazing week.  I'm going to enjoy this beautiful sunny day we're having because it's supposed to start snowing on Friday!

What's Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  I hope you're all having a great week!  It's been absolutely lovely here.  The leaves are at their very peak right now; the beauty of fall never fail to amaze me and thank God for the chance to experience it.  Falling leaves, the smell of a forest, a big juicy apple, pumpkins sitting on the porch!  Life is amazing, isn't it? 

Which brings me to one of the best parts of my week!

What's up with nature

My poor hubs was feeling pretty down in the dumps a couple of weeks ago.  I don't know about you guys, but when someone I love is feeling blue, I want to do everything I can to make them feel better.  I decided for my hubs, the best thing for him was to make sure we got outside and walked/hiked/biked every day, especially now that nature is is so lovely.  And you know, it's worked so well for him!  He's like a brand new man, happy and lighthearted (just a thought for anyone else feeling blue this time of year).

So what we decided to do last weekend was to take our bikes to Allegheny State Park.  They have amazing bike trails all through the park, which is humongous!  We spent at least three hours exploring the place.  It was so nice.

The park is in what the county calls the Enchanted Mountains.  It certainly seemed enchanted last weekend.

It was pretty cloudy at first, but the sky turned blue for our ride back to the car.

We got to ride through this cool bridge on the way out, but on the way back, it was closed because someone was getting their wedding pictures on it.

And there we are!

I also had to stop to take a picture of this cute woolly bear.  I've never seen one like that.  It only had black on its head!  Hubs said that the other ones he saw were mostly red too.  Does everyone around the country try to predict the winter with woolly bears, or are we the only crazy ones?

What's up with plastic canvas

Well, I had planned on posting the apple coaster as the free pattern this week, but I decided I needed to make a ghost wind sock!

So keep your eye out for the pattern for this cutie!

What's up with sewing

So I said I want to keep working on my shirts and get them all sewn before cold weather really gets here.  But... actually, I'm easily distracted!  So instead, I decided to start sewing together a cool flannel quilt kit I got at the Erie quilt show.

It's really simple, just squares, so I figured it would be a great way to get to know my new sewing machine.

What's up with everything else

One way that I knew my hubs is feeling better is that he actually got motivated and started on working on a home improvement project by himself!  Our upstairs hall has been unfinished for a long while now.  It needs to be painted, and then we're going to replace the floor.  And he got up and started painting on Sunday!  How cool!

We got the trim primed and the linen closet door taken off and painted.  Now I need to do the caulking (of small holes and cracks near the ceiling), and we can start painting.

Today is actually the first really October day.  I realize it's the 11th of October, but today is the first REAL Octobery day.  It's gray, the colored leaves are decorating the lawn, it's drizzly, and there's a nice crispness to the air.  It's beautiful.  I tried to capture its wild beauty, but of course a camera can't do it justice.

Doesn't it just break your heart with how lovely it is?  Sigh.  I love fall!

At this point, my kitty Spices decided she wanted to come out on the porch with me.  So I put her leash on and took her out.  Immediately she's like, Mom, No

Mom, this isn't what I signed up for.  It's WET.

Ok Mom, I'm ready to go in now.

So she and I went in and started looking at my collection of Taste of Home magazines from the 90s.

I don't know why, but I love pawing through them this time of year.  It's comforting.  I also have a huge stack of 90s Country Woman, which I love.  They just aren't as nice today, I don't think.  They seem to be all ads and full page photos of tomatoes.  What I like about the ones from the 90s is that they have stories about real women and their lives and their families.  That's nice.

Well, I guess that's all for today everyone.  I hope you have a great rest of the week!  Make sure to go out and enjoy the season!

What's Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  I hope you all had a good weekend and a good week so far.  I'm feeling better this week.  Thanks for being patient with me last week.  I guess I'm just feeling overwhelmed with all the things on my to-do list, and once in a while it's nice to crawl back into bed and stay there for a couple of days to get my head back together.  Thankfully I'm in a place in my life where I can do that.

Well, on to all the things I've been up to lately!

What's up around the house

It's a lovely 75 degrees here in western NY!  I've been taking advantage of the unseasonably good weather by putting up my Halloween decorations.  I'm going to have my hubby help me put up the Halloween lights on the porch tonight.  He's 6'5 and he doesn't need a ladder or chair the way I do, so that's handy!  I've gotten everything else up though, and it looks really nice.

Here's a pretty little home.  I got the ghouls out yesterday, and the tombstones and the pumpkin buckets on the railing.  My mums are starting to fade a little bit, but that's ok, that's just the way life is.

I have lots of decorations inside.  Since we were married in the fall, we have lots of fall decorations leftover from the wedding, and over the years I've added some nice things to the collection.  Here's a tour of my fall home! (PS, sorry for the bad pics; it's really cloudy today.)

Here's my front room.

And facing the other way in the front room.

Here's our niche in the front room.

And the desk by the front door.

We have a bigger tv this year.  For many years, we had a small tv and an old fashioned entertainment center, and I could decorate the top of it.  I don't have that now, so I did the best I could with the new set up.

Here's the bookshelf in the dining room.  The bouquet on the left is my wedding bouquet that I made myself! (It was a very frugal wedding!)

Here's our dining table.  It's currently a mix of fall and Halloween stuff.

This is the centerpiece on the table, a bowl full of fabric eyeballs I made a couple of years ago, lol.  I like to point one right at my hubby, lol! 

That's all the pictures I took, but there's so much more that I couldn't get a shot of.  I love getting out my fall decor because it makes the house so warm and cheery, which is so important as the year gets dark and cold. 

What's up with plastic canvas

Well, I started out last week by just making free patterns.  I wanted to get a good pile of them made up in advance so I wouldn't have to worry about them for a few weeks.  However, on the second day, I made a really cool pumpkin box I liked so much that I decided to put it in my shop.

And then I made a couple more boxes to go with it!  I should have the pattern up by next week sometime, and then I decided to make Christmas boxes too!  Yay! 

I did get one free pattern done last week, lol, so you'll be seeing this again soon.

What's up with sewing

I decided that before I get back to my quilting, I need to get my clothes pieces sewn for colder weather, which will be here shortly.  I made a pretty shirt a couple of weeks ago, and last week I decided it was a good time to make a pretty jacket.  It came out so well!

It looks very professional and I'm actually excited for cold weather to get here so I can wear it.  I'm going to start a turtle neck tunic dress tomorrow, and after that, I just have one more piece to make.  That will round out my winter wardrobe pretty nicely.

Well, that's all for me this week.  How are you all doing?  I hope you're getting a chance to enjoy these lovely days before winter gets here.  I'm certainly trying to!