post hurricane recap

Hey Everyone! We made it through the storm mostly unscathed.  Other than no sleep or power for 2 days and a post hurricane cold that has beat me down for the last two days we're doing well.

I snuck out to the beach on Friday morning as the surf was supposed to start getting rougher.  It wasn't as impressive as I'd have liked, but the waves were pretty consistent and big. It's hard to really see in the pictures but there are more beach photos on Flickr.

We lost power just after 10 Friday night.  At 11 the tornado sirens went off.  So we brought everyone downstairs and they thought it was a party.  The kids were all up for at least another hour.  And babylouwho decided to babble to herself well into another hour after that.  The winds started howling about 3 AM.  It was hard to sleep.  I'm so glad we had our emergency radio and Facebook on mrlouwho's smartphone.  They kept us up to speed throughout the day.

Since we didn't have power we didn't see any news coverage so I had to go out and see for myself what the damage was.

There was a lot of this Saturday evening as I drove around our neighborhood.

I thought our yard looked bad, but we just had a smattering of pine boughs and a couple large branches down.  The street behind us had trees down at about every other house.  The storm was only a CAT 1, but with the amount of rain it brought and the fact that the storm moved slowly through the area meant a lot of shallow rooted trees were simply water logged and blew over.  You can see more photos of what I saw in another Flickr set.

This was a nice sight as it was the first light we saw after the storm moved through.  It was about 7:00 Saturday night.

We spent most of the afternoon on Sunday cleaning up our yard.  There was debris everywhere. 

The kids helped out quite a bit. Even if the tools were way bigger than they were.

We were exhausted and HOT by the time we were finished.

We were VERY happy when the power came back on that night so we had a cool house to sleep in.  The kids were so excited that we thought they were going to jump through the ceiling when the lights all came on!

Then I caught mrlouwho's cold.  I'll spare you the gorey details but let's just say by Tuesday afternoon I was slammed in bed without any energy to do anything.  Good thing my kids behaved themselves and mrlouwho came home early with a pizza.  I'm feeling much much better today.  Maybe now I'll be able to finish up some things I've been working on.  I might even have some down time to blog about them!  It's nice having sisterlouwho in school.  She loves it and I've regained a little bit more time during the day.

See you soon!

batten down the hatches!

You might have heard about our little friend Irene who's coming, uninvited, to visit this weekend. I drove down to the beach today to check out the pre-storm surf and this is what the cottages on the beach looked like.

So, I'm hoping to get some sewing done. I like being housebound...I just hope our power isn't out for too long.

Maybe I'll even get some blogging done. Who knows.

See you on the other side of the storm!

remember when?

I used to blog all the time?  Well maybe I'll get back to that once school starts up and I have one less little person at home during the day.

Until then, well, it may be a little sporadic.

But I did start her on her first sewing project last week.

Sew & Tell - Live! Utah edition

Did you know that Sew & Tell on this little blog here was born between two blogging friends who needed the motivation and deadline to finish some projects?  The whole idea is that as you all joined up with a link of what you had finished and we all shared and commented and ooh and ahhed over each other's work - it would be like my virtual living room where you all came over to discuss all things sewing.

So, I've often lamented how I wish you could come to my house for real and we could sit and chat.  Luckily for me my mom lives in Utah and so do a lot of the friends I've made here.  When an opportunity for my whole family to be together this summer surfaced we had to make plans to go (much to my dismay at the thought of traveling alone with 3 littles).  I immediately emailed Pink (aka pinksuedeshoe) and told her we were finally going to get to meet and hang out!  Then she offered to throw me a party.  A blogging party! A BLOGGING AND SEW AND TELL PARTY!!! I was so excited!!

It turned out to be as fabulous to meet my people (as Amy S. - Diary of a Quilter put it) and share some projects. And eat some delicious treats.

lime pie cakes courtesy of pink  - see recipe here.

and drink some Diet Coke (to stay awake...)

and see Pink in her other element:

It was so fabulous in fact that we got together again a few nights later so some others could come who missed the first night.  Nadine of Material Girl's Quilts was so awesome to let us come to her shop and eat our Cafe Rio (YUUUUUMMMMM) in her back room and shop until past 11.  She's like the fairy fabric godmother!  I think I'll have to share that night in another post...

I've been trying to figure out how to share all the goodness with you, so I've decided to just go the inundate-you-with-pictures route.  Hope you don't mind!

To start out - here we all are at Pink's house:

From left to right we are Amy, Diary of a Quilter, Amy, Vintage Fern, Erin, Two More Seconds, Leigh, Leedle Deedle, Elizabeth, Such a Sew and Sew, Vicki, Sew Inspired, Pink and me.

We went around the group and shared what we like about blogging, how we met our husbands, and a project.  Entertaining for sure!

Now a disclaimer, most of these pictures were taken while people were talking.  So ignore the talking faces and refer to smiling faces above.  :)

Here is Elizabeth's snowball quilt.  I was amazed at the detail in the quilting.  That she did on her own little machine.

And Vicki sells the pattern for this adorable Ruffle Crush quilt. I love the colors!

Erin showed us a block for her month of the bee we are in together, Bee Tweet.

Erin is the co-coordinator of The Sewing Summit. I'll be there - will you? I can't wait!

I loved and was impressed by the handwork of Leigh's hexagon project.

There are more pictures of this (and the other projects) in my Flickr set.

My cute mom came to join in the fun and she brought this little tessalation quilt that she recently finished.

Ironically enough, the charm pack she used for this was purchased during my last visit at the shop where Amy S. works!

Pink shared her awesomely pink hair and quilt.

Amy R. brought two quilt tops. This cute one from a mystery quilt along she participated in:

and this one, from the first year of the bee we were in together. It's wonky log cabins out of vintage sheets! so cute! and of course, we love the birds around here.

One of my favorite things about the evening was finally seeing Pink's creative space! I always love the pictures she takes in there. Here are Leigh and Erin enjoying it:

and pilfering it!

They may or may not have arranged some fabric swaps while in there.

It really was great to meet all of these ladies and spend the evening talking fabric together.  The best part was the initial meeting where I had to match up real life faces with pictures I've seen!

So I shared the skirt I was wearing that night, and I finished yet another one yesterday.  Aren't you sick of seeing them though?

Okay, I'm wearing it right now, so here's an iPod photo for you:

I have a great idea to take pictures of all the skirts we've been making around here all together. We'll see if it happens...


What did you finish this month? And of course - if you were able to help someone with a project,  do share!

A few guidelines for sew & tell:

1. Please write the post for sew & tell - or add a blurb mentioning sew & tell to a post written since the last sew & tell.  If you are linking to a post with your own tutorial, please make sure it was a finish from this week and that the completed project is shown first.

2. One linky per person.

3. Link to your specific post.  (See here for permalink instructions - or email me.)

4. Link back here with a link or a button.

5. Be sure to visit and leave comments on other's posts!

vacation all i ever wanted...

I just got back from a trip to see my mom who happens to live in Utah fabric shop mecca.  I took a bunch of projects with me, but didn't get as many finished as I'd hoped.  I was too busy hanging out with family, friends and sewing bloggers in real life!  It was so fun!  But I'm afraid 2 weeks wasn't quite long enough.

I have over 500 pictures to go through, so I'll leave you with a few snapshots of some of the things we did.

It was my mom's birthday while we were there. So I made a little cake. Lemon cake mix, lemon curd filling (recipe here) and cream cheese frosting. And yes, that is basil on the top - just for decoration. The cake was a hit! The boys (and there were a lot of them) ended up cleaning up the leftover lemon curd out of the bowl with their spoons.

I finished another one of these tops. This time I made it a bit longer, and I like the length better. I also used bias tape to finish the neckline like it says too. Once again I used elastic thread to finish off the sleeves. I also learned that I like my serger (a White) better than my mom's Hobby Lock. It's probably because I know my machine better.

I finally got the back of this quilt figured out. I was hoping to quilt it on my aunt's longarm while I was there but I didn't get it put together. Luckily I have an awesome mom who said she would do it for me! THANKS MOM!!

My sister-in-law made this cute dress out of a size 14 thrifted skirt. She just took chunks out of the sides and then sewed some pleats in the top and added the straps. Genius!

I tried to spend as many nights as I could watching the sunsets from the back deck. Seriously gorgeous.

There are some other fun things I was able to do, people I met and fabric I bought. I'll share more soon!

flashback, retro, vintage... whatever you want to call it

My mom made me this dress when I was about the same age as my oldest is now.

I didn't know she had held onto it but it found it's way to my house a year or so ago.

My oldest found it in the closet and wants to wear it every day!

It's true, we might look a little bit alike. I really think it's that dress that inspired me to make this one for her earlier this year.

Although in true amylouwho fashion, the one I made has an elastic neck and no zippers or bias tape finishing.  The one my mom made? Zippers, trim, bias finished edge, ruffle, you get the idea.

And I really ought to get a picture of her in the new one before she outgrows it, no?

teacher gifts

I whipped these dishmats up the night before the last day of school.  I love a quick, easy and unique teacher gift. In another life when I taught school, the handmade heartfelt gifts were always my favorite.  I hoped my daughters PreK teachers would feel the same way. 

I reeeeeeeeeeaally wish I'd ordered some more of this Meadowsweet 2.  Sandi Henderson, if you ever read this, I love you for making such amazing fabric.

And thanks again Kim for the amazing chenille.    If fabric addiction were illegal we'd both be in jail. Kim is my 'supplier'.

This time I put some cotton batting in the middle to give it some heft and absorbency.  Then a little stippling and a super easy rustic serged edge.

And you don't really need any wrapping paper for presentation.