New Sewing Machine

Ya'll wouldn't believe how happy I am that I received a new to me sewing machine for Christmas.  I've been sewing on my mom's old Singer from the 1970's and it worked fine, but I wanted a machine that had an automatic button hole function and more stitches.  If you asked me when I was a teenager if I'd ever want a sewing machine for Christmas I would have said that you were crazy.  My mom sat me down a few times to teach me to sew and I took home ec in junior high, but I was by no means very good with the sewing machine and became easily frustrated with it.  My mom is an excellent seamstress and it wasn't until she threatened to cut me off from making anything on a sewing machine for me that I was finally motivated to learn to sew.  She made everything for me formal dresses, curtains, pillows, bedspreads, clothing and a wedding dress.  Come on I couldn't give that up.  Now I completely enjoy it and adore my new machine.  My new machine is a Bernina 1130 and my mom has the same one so she gave me a run down on how to use it.  It sews so nicely and I couldn't be happier.  Thanks Mom and Dad for the sewing machine!

Quilt Top

I put together this quilt top before Thanksgiving, but still haven't found time to get it put together and quilted. I can at least say I used the fabric I bought a year ago from the quilt festival.  Yay!  I found the pattern this year at the quilt festival and love how it's coming along.  The pattern is called Hokey Pokey.  Eventually I'll get around to finishing it.

Knitted Cowl

I've been seeing some beautiful knitted cowls on Ravelry and wanted to knit one for myself.  I found a free pattern called "Fear of Commitment Cowl" by Coco Knits.  I bought a really soft gray yarn and got started.  It's a quick knitting project and didn't take me long at all.  The button can be moved around because a toggle button is used on the back of the big button.  There are a few different ways that you could configure it and button it back up which is one of the reasons I love this pattern.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Silhouette Portraits

A little while ago a friend of mine, Kate at Between the Toys did a project with silhouettes and it inspired me to make some for my wall as well.
I just love how silhouettes look.  Check out this wall with silhouettes.  How fun that the top picture has silhouettes of animals.

Here is how my silhouettes turned out.  I haven't hung them on the wall yet, but at some point I'll show you a wall of my living room that I've been trying to get some sort of picture arrangement up on it.

Getting Organized

I tend to be a rather organized person, but this has gone by the wayside once I had my second child.  Now I'm making it a priority to get organized this year.  I feel like I spend twice as much time getting a task done because I'm either looking for something or there's just too much stuff distracting me from getting it completed.  I know I'm not the only one that is trying to get organized because I went by Goodwill to drop off  some stuff this past week and it was bursting with donated items.  Then of course Pinterest has all sorts of pins about getting organized right now.
It can be a little overwhelming to get organized and I found a great site to help me get organized through out the year.  The site is Home Storage Solutions and the challenge is called 52 weeks to an Organized Home.  I'm going to give it a shot and see if I can get my house under control again.

My other problem is keeping all the activities organized and in a central place.  My husband built me a wonderful dry erase calendar with bulletin board and that works great, but I found an awesome app called Cozi today.  There are so many cool things about this app.  You can put your whole family on it so once my kids get older they can be clued in on what's going on.  It can be accessed by your computer, phone, ipad, etc.  There is a grocery list feature on it so anyone in the family can add to the list. There is also a meal planning feature as well.  It's completely free and I signed up to give it a try.  I'm hoping this will be a useful tool for our family.  I'll let you know how it works for us.

Dandelion Painting

Here is a new painting I just finished for a little girl's room.  The dandelion mimics the fabric used in her bedroom so it will all coordinate.  I can't help it, it's the interior designer in me.

New Purse

Happy New Year!  Hope everyone had a nice night ringing in the New Year.  We went out the night before, so we stayed home for New Year's Eve and I worked on sewing a purse.  Exciting, right?  It actually was for me since I was trying out my new machine.  I'll post more about my machine later this week.
On to the purse, I was in need of a new purse and wanted one that I could sling around me and not have to worry about keeping track of it.  The pattern (Two Zip Hipster) is from Dog Under My Desk and you can find the pattern here.  It is an easy to follow pattern and has lots of pictures which helped me out.
I used a fabric I had on-hand which was an upholstery fabric that I bought at least 5 years ago from Anzea.  It looks great as a purse!  It was a little tough to sew in places because of the multiple layers of fabric and the thickness of the fabric itself, but it worked!  Here's a picture of the inside.  I'm kind of wishing I did a pop of color in there instead of just gray, but I do like how it turned out.