It's a start....

After months of procrastination and indecision, I have FINALLY begun my first quilt!!!! I am really excited about it! There is so much inspiration out there for modern quilting and I become obsessed with these fabulous quilts that are being made. I really really want to make some fabulous quilts of my own, but I'm so scared of messing up or not having it turn out perfect, that I've had "stage fright" for a while now. But I came to the conclusion that A quilt (perfect or not) is better than NO quilt! Right?!?! So I've decided to keep this first one very simple. It's going to be a "stacked coin" baby (or lap) quilt and instead of using my best fabric, I'm using fabric from a charm pack I bought a long time ago at a quilting store with my mom. I'm not familiar with the designer, but the fabric is decent enough and is in bright, summery colors. (Califon by Mark Lipinski). My main concern is to not completely destroy it. So far, so good. I've cut the square charms into rectangles and sewed 4 rows of 15 blocks so far. Now all thats left is the (really) hard part of figuring what sashing and borders and (God help me) binding to use, and then sewing all that together. The binding is what scares me the most....I've read books and tutoriasl about it, and had my mom explain it to me over the phone, but when I actually tried to do it on a pillow, it was a disaster and I ended up not using binding at all. So. I'm really just trying to focus on getting through the process of it all and not worrying about how good everything turns out; I just need the learning experience. It is SO HARD for me though! I've never considered myself a perfectionist.........okay well maybe I have. It's just so frustrating when you're learning a craft like this and you KNOW perfection is not expected the first few go 'rounds........ohhhh but I want it so bad!!!! Patience is NOT one of my virtues. :-( But anywho, without further adeu, here is the beginning of my first quilt!!! I plan to call it "summer splash". I think its fitting enough. Any ideas or thoughts about colors for sashing, border, etc are appreciated!!


These are the fabrics I'm using. They were 5'' squares that I just cut in half. I wanted to do a rainbow sort of thing with having all the same coordinating colors grouped together, but the fabric didn't allow for that, so I ended up decided to have one strip be a rainbow progression and the rest of the strips be random, sort of like creating order from chaos.....so philiosphical, I know :-p



Here's my calming, rainbow strip.




And now here's all the stips sewed together. I decided for the sake of randomness and moderness to put the rainbow strip in the middle....but I dont know if it would look better on one of the ends.....still trying to decide. Miss indecsion here. Anyone have an opinion? :-p

Can't wait to see how it turns out!!

Tony Romo!

This past Saturday, Luis and I went to the Ginger Man in Dallas to watch The After 5 Band. A buddy from my bowling team is their drummer. They covered some really good classic rock and we had a great time sipping on our Sam Adams and Shiner Bock. My friend, Danielle, from college met us there with some of her friends. A few minutes after she got there, she ran over to me and exclaimed, "Tony Romo is HERE!". As you can imagine, I just about fell off my bar stool. "OMG! REALLY?!?! WHERE?!?!?!?!?!?!" Oh, geez, like 2 whole feet in front of us! He was sitting at a table a few feet away from us with what looked like some friends and, of course, his blonde-haired-barbie-faced gilfriend, who, I must say, was entirely way to overdressed for the Gman. C'mon. At least he was perfect. White tennis shoes, blue jeans, baseball tshirt and ball cap. Mmmmmm. :-) So while the band was really good, the remainder of the evening I spent drooling and trying to take inconspicuous photographs, of which I will post later. For now though, I'll leave you with this picture, which Tony requested; it's of him and the band. The guy in front with the cig and beer is my buddy, Mike. The tall drink of water in the back with the hat on is Tony :-) .....I should have run up there and photo-hijacked that.

Let 2010 Begin!

Sooo I have a feeling this year is going to be amazing! At least I hope so! I have lots of goals set that I want to achieve, some of which include: run another half marathon; do a triathlon sprint; maintain a 4.0 in my graduate classes; make it BIG in my Silpada business; stick with my taekwondo practice and at least graduate to red belt by the end of the year; get all kinds of crafty on my sewing machine and basically become a master at it; join a young professionals or volunteer organization; and of course, have a ton of FUN!

I've got the fun part down already after spending the beginning of the year in Cancun for 4 wonderful days. Pictures posted below. Lou's company takes an annual trip there and pays for everyone to go! We stayed at the Beach Palace, an all inclusive resort, and soaked up tons of sun and fun!

the view from our room

the ocean waving "hi!" to us

all 16 of us in the sports bar

playing at the market :-)

beach time!

we're WILD for Cancun!

I've also got the sewing thing going pretty well. Right before (literally the night before) we left for Cancun I decided I needed to make a tote bag to bring along with me. Luckily, thanks to my dear friend Angela, I had already bought the perfect fabric for a tropical tote, so I got busy on that, and whahlah!

And its only mid-January! I'm really looking forward to the rest of the year!

A New Direction

I have some exciting news!!!!

I received my acceptance letter in the mail today for the graduate program at Texas Woman's University!! Yay for me! I am going to be working towards my Masters of Health Systems Management, which is basically like an MBA with health care management as the focus. I will continue to work full time and go to school part time; just 2 (or 3) classes a semester. For this program, it will take me about 2 years to complete, which isn't too bad. Especially considering that if I pass my classes, my company will reimburse me for my tuition. How could I not pass that up?!

Needless to say, I am very excited about this and really looking forward to being back in the classroom. I can already feel a new sense of direction, structure, and purpose. I know it will be challenging, but I am definitely up for it and ready for whatever they throw at me.

So that's the update! Thanks for sharing in my excitement!

GO PIONEERS! ;-)

How I Roll.....

As many of you know, I have been needing a new car. Badly. When I went to college, my momma gave me her '96 Honda Accord (thank you momma!) so I could get around like a big college girl! That car was a blessing at school and it saw me through a lot of great road trips :-) Alas, 9 years later, that car is now 13 years old and has over 207,000 miles on it. The A/C does not work; the drivers side window takes 5 minutes to roll up; the paint is coming off everywhere; the left front headlight is held on with duct tape; the radio has been stolen out of it 3 times. Seriously. I NEED a new car.

And now I got one! All thanks to an unforeseen chain of events that started a few weeks ago. I noticed my car started missing gears; I could tell because the RPMs were really high and I couldn't feel the car shift into the next gear. Not to mention its had its share of transmission issues; 2 years ago we had to put a new (rebuilt) transmission in. It wasn't happening all the time, but enough that it got me a little worried. Then, last Friday, I got my tax return! And thanks to my recent homeowner status, I got a very nice return :-) Saturday, I went to watch a friend's softball game at my old high school (Naaman Forest). I was cruisin' down the highway, made my exit, and did a u-turn to come back down the service road. Surprise! Right as I came out of the u-turn, my car dies. After a few tries I managed to get it going again, amidst the racing oncoming traffic behind me. After the game it drove home fine; I took the back roads, of course. Well the next day I was taking precious puppy Didgeradoo back to his grandma's house and...GASP...I can't even drive my car out of our street! I couldn't even reverse back to my parking spot! I knew then, that our beautiful 9 year relationship was over.

Needless to say, the next few nights and days were dedicated to research and car hunting. And of course to haggling and financing. Big thank yous to my Daddy and Luis for helping me throughout this exhausting process; especially with strong-arming the nasty salesmen. :-) But finally.....FINALLY it was all said and done about 6:15 last Thursday night. A new relationship has begun, and I would like to take this moment to introduce you all to....

The Silver Bullet!

2006 Saturn Vue :-)


So cute!


Nice and roomy!


A working radio, CD player and A/C!!!!


And a sunroof!!!!!

I'm a happy girl :-)