A year ago...

My life changed forever. A year ago today was when my dear hubby was diagnosed with a tumor on his spine. And so began the nightmarish 5 1/2 weeks that was our Holiday season. I am so very thankful to God for all He has brought us through in the last year. Jason survived the utter pain that he was in for so long, the tumor was benign, his surgery went well and he had no loss of nerve function. His back healed well. He is pretty much 100% back to his old self, only with a bit of a new outlook on life. Our Aflac helped tremendously with paying his hospital bills. Our insurance at the time was exactly right for what we needed. Jason had surgery on January 5th. Our insurance coverage changed on Feb. 1st. With the old insurance we only had to pay $40.00 total for his MRIs and our out of pocket maximum per person was $1500.00. Our Aflac coverage paid out $1700.00. With the insurance that we now have, our out of pocket maximum per person is $5000 and MRIs fall under our $1000.00 deductible. That means if it had happened under this insurance, it would have cost us $5000.00 and the Aflac would be the same amount. God was definitely watching over us there. We would have really been in a bind to come up with $3300.00 last year.

In some ways it doesn't seem all that long ago, and yet in some ways it seems so strange and foreign as if we were on another planet or something, living someone else's lives. Probably because I was so utterly exhausted and stressed out. It is a chapter of our lives that we are definitely glad to have behind us, but at the same time it taught us some valuable things. Mainly, never take anything for granted, and as Jason puts it "Pain is all relative."

I just wanted to reflect on how good God has been to us through what has been a rather tough year for us.

What has He done for you this last year that has shown His goodness?

Time for a Christmas Background

Decided to change the background to a Christmas theme. I did however really like the fall one that I had, but thought it needed to be put away for now. I am LOVING this new template, it is soooo much easier to edit than the old one was. I can spend most of my time playing with the graphics program instead of monkeying with the HTML.
Wha cha think?

Adventures in pattern drafting....The Sequel


I told you I had something in the works for Etsy... Well Here it is. I decided that i wanted to make a dress and a pinafore to go over it. I picked out a dress pattern that I had on hand, and a pinafore pattern that I had on hand, but when I compared the two to each other, it was obvious that they weren't going to work together very well. SOOOO off I go to fetch the tissue paper and a pencil. I had to redraw the shoulder line and armhole of the pinafore so that it would work with the dress.

The dress turned out nicely and I decided to give it a separate listing. LOL, but I think the roomier armhole on the pinafore will be good with anything it goes over.


Now on to something else. I am looking for a few (2 or 3) volunteers to try out something for me in January. I am thinking of designing something new for etsy and I would like the mothers of a few little girls to give me feedback on whether or not they like the item. I'd like at least one to be a little bit older girl, like a 5 or 6 and at least one to be an older infant or toddler size.
If you would like to try these out for me (you get to keep the item) let me know. I will take the first 2-3 volunteers, depending upon the children's sizes.

Had to giggle....


My crazy niece, Kayla had this picture posted on her MySpace page, (yeah I stole it, I don't think she'd care). They are such a bunch of nuts! That's Kayla in the back, Alli in front of her, and their dad, Terry. Just a fun picture, I thought I'd share it. Life isn't always so serious, they have lots of fun, too!

Busily sewing away...

I haven't been posting much because I am working on something new for Etsy. I am trying to get it done by this weekend so I can list it. If you know a little girl who wears a 2t, stay tuned....

Redwork and Mail...

First of all, I received this in the mail today from my sweet friend Amanda.

Amanda and I have been friends for around 10 years now and I am honored to have won this bag from her. I have seen her grow and develop as a quilter from those first days when she was expecting her oldest child and made her first quilt, to the talented quilt artist that she has become. I am so blessed to have such a dear friend. This bag is a work of art and I will cherish it! I love the colors in it, something about it reminds me of chocolate covered cherries, or those chocolate truffles with the pink cream centers. You know the ones I am talking about?

Amanda is doing a quilt-a-long on her blog (see left hand side bar for a link). I joined hesitantly because I don't really feel like I have much of a stash to draw from. Most of my fabrics are ok on their own, but don't really go with much of anything else in my stash. SOOO I went and bought these.

I had been thinking about doing a redwork quilt because I had a set of these that I bought several years ago and never embroidered up.

I decided to do them as redwork embroidery. So, in a way I AM using something I already had on hand. I hope to combine the two sets of blocks into a quilt top when I get them all done. I'll have 12 of each, so I should have a good sized quilt when I am done. I am really trying to break out of that "I can only do a lap size" mentality. LOL We will see how it goes...

And just a quick word of thanks to Sew Mama Sew, they again linked to the kids clothes tutorials again yesterday in their "handmade for the holidays" series. They have been linking lots of fun tutorials for all sorts of things this month.

One year...

and a day. I began my blogging adventure one year ago yesterday. I can't say thank you enough to my new found blogging friends (and a long time friend who introduced me to the world of blogging, LOL) for the words of encouragement and sweet comments you have given me over the past year. Without your encouragement I would never have tried some of the things that I have over the last year. You have all been an inspiration to me to expand my horizons.
To say thank you, I am going to give away this hat and scarf that I made on my new knifty knitter (more on that later). I made it with two strands of yarn. One a light olive green and one a dark olive green. I made it with Paton's Shetland Chunky yarn. With winter winds beginning to blow, they might come in handy. To enter the drawing, leave a comment anywhere on my blog between now and Sunday at noon (or so).
Thanks to all of you who read and comment, I really appreciate it!

Woohoo!


I won! I can hardly believe it! I won Amanda's purse! Amanda is such an amazing woman, a great friend and a talented artist! I am so blessed to be able to call her my friend!

FA Quilt


This is my niece, Allison, who has the disease for which I made the quilt to try and raise money for research.
I finally have the quilt drawing under way. I put up the web page last night. Hopefully it will generate some donations for FARA. I put some flyers around town and I want to send out an email to family members, as well. I am attending a women's conference at church all day today, but hope to get the email done either tonight or tomorrow. There will also be a link at the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance website as soon as I get it emailed to the lady there. I would just ask that if you aren't able to donate, that you would say a prayer that donations would come in. I am a little nervous about the whole thing. I just hope it doesn't turn out to be a flop.

Block Swap Quilt Top


(Try saying that 10 times fast, lol) I actually got this far on Saturday, but just haven't had time to post since then. My husband's only comment was "It certainly is lively". LOL! It might be a bit loud for him. I plan to do a two inch white border around the whole thing, maybe with solid blocks at the corners, not sure yet. I'm only doing the border because I have so many bias edges at the corners. I was afraid it might get sort of wonky on me if I didn't. I will have to get it up on the block swap website soon.

"studio" Friday, a day late...



I saw a link to this post over at Amanda's blog and it sounded like fun so I thought I'd post this.
I'm really sort of hard pressed to call my craft room a studio... it's just the extra bedroom where I keep my junk and have a desk to put my machine on. I also keep my doll collection in there.
I have been working on the blocks for my block swap quilt, therefore all the bright scraps on the ironing board. My room really needs a good clean up. I tend to not put things away and just pile them on the desk, which is already too small for what I am using it for, lol.
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