{It's My Birthday, It's My Birthday!}

Hi everyone! Friday was my 32nd birthday and what a wonderful day it was! First, the weather was so beautiful. Partly sunny and in the mid-60's. Perfect! My birthday festivities began at happy hour(s) on Thursday night, the eve of my birthday. Everyone was so generous with the birthday drinks that I ended up staying until about 12:30am! Thanks everyone, I had a really great time. And the life-size Jenga game was the best. Here I am with a Jenga block. Why am I so happy?When I got home later that night, my Cooper was up crying with a cold, so I was lucky enough to spend some time comforting him until 2am. I say lucky because the next day and a half I wasn't going to see him at all. Since it was my birthday, when Cooper got up again at 4am, Jeff tended to the poor little thing. The baby ended up sleeping until about 10 so both Jeff and I got some extra zzzzzzz's too. Jeff brought my card to me in bed and inside it was tickets to see Cirque De Soliel up at Madison Square Garden in NYC. We'll walk around in the city after the show and probably have some dinner too. I'm excited!

I took off from work for a day all to myself. My husband took the baby down to his parents house for a sleepover. Jeff was in a golf tournament with his father and Jeff's mom had Cooper all to herself. After Jeff and Cooper left, I enjoyed some coffee and quite time with the dogs out on the front porch, cuddled under a blanket, breathing in the fresh Autumn air. I love the month of October. Then I got dressed and started trimming some trees. I've been working on a landscaping project for several weeks now and thought that my day off was the perfect time to get it finished. I installed a rain barrel a couple weeks ago and I need to put in a gravel garden path next to it and through the garden. In order to do this I had to bury a drain pipe that I attached to my rain downspout. Well, I was busy chopping away at some stubborn roots when I realized I had chopped right through our cable wire. Oops! Now, if you read my previous post about the rain barrel, you'd know that I also cut a critical wire for our sprinkler system. So my heart sank and I panicked for about a minute. Then I took a deep breath, laughed at myself, then went inside to call the cable guy. A few hours later, it was fixed. The guy said the line was bad anyway and he was surprised we hadn't had a lot of problems with it before. So now we have a new line and hopefully better service. Here you can see the new white cable wire. After the cable problem put a stop to my gardening project, I moved inside where I pulled out my Autumn decorations and put them up here and there while, at the same time, straightening up the house. See my mums and pumpkins? My sister came over later that night and she gave me the best present ever! It's a painting that she did just for me. It is a portrait of me holding Cooper and it is so darling, I can't stand it. I've been walking around the house looking for the perfect spot for it. Look how wonderful it is! You can read more about it on her blog. She also brought cards that my nephews made for me. Each of them feature pictures of me, with my glasses of course, and funny drawings of Cooper. The two of them are so creative. Jake drew a diaper on Cooper and Alex drew this adorable little tree with an acorn. Those little details are so funny to me. I love how stylin' I look with my red heart shirt and my kick ass boots. Tracy and I went to the movies that night to see Nights In Rodanthe....UGH!!! What a terrible movie. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that I hated as much as this one. It was utterly predictable, and amazing that two actors could act so poorly. It was so bad that we were laughing at the parts that were supposed to be all dramatic and mushy. At the end a few people actually clapped, so I made sure I boo'ed. We spent the ride home laughing about certain parts of the movie. I won't ruin it for anyone but I'll just say that I liked the preview so much better than the actual movie. We came back to my house, had a margarita, and watched Ugly Betty and Supernanny together. Then I read my Harry Potter book until I fell asleep. Ahhhhhhh, what a perfect day. Happy Birthday to me....it's a shame that they only come once a year. But then again, it's a good thing they only come once a year because I'd be 64 years old!

My Latest Project...

I've been sick with some kind of 48 hour bug the past two days, but luckily that has passed and I'm feeling great now! Here are some pictures of my latest project. I wanted to add some pizzaz to the big red couch in my living room, so with the artistic help of my sister, I made these great pillows. They're all made from natural-toned canvas. Each has a fabric backing of red & white striped fabric with an opening in the middle to insert pillow forms. One has a hand-painted letter "B" for my last name, of course, the other has just a "No. 3"...no real significance there, just that my sister painted it. The House Pillow, I designed myself, and I'm going to have my sister paint a number on it for me next time I see her. It has four windows that I made into photo frames by using clear plastic. I used the frames to display some old black & whites of my great grandmother, grandparents, and other relatives when they were young. The roof is red and white striped and the sky is baby blue with white polka dots to simulate clouds. The big red door is felt and has a tiny little vintage button as a door knob. Don't you love the awning over the door? That's so no one gets rained on while looking for their keys. I stitched the detail onto the shutters, door, and awning, which gives the pillow a kind of folk artsy feel. Anyway, I'm real proud of these so I wanted to show them off. Thanks for looking!

Family & Creativity

Good morning...actually, it's just after noon but it still feels like morning. I'm still in my PJs. We had a sleep over with my two nephews last night and their mom just picked them up. We had fun dressing up with Mr. Potato Head pieces. Cooper is down for a nap so I logged on for a quick blog entry.

I've been in a super creative mood lately and there are just so many ideas flying through my brain. I want to make so many things and there is just so little time in a day! I decided to re-organize a portion of my workspace recently, which has helped to spark some inspiration. There's something about seeing my ribbon all in a row that makes me feel good. I moved my cork board from it's old spot and hung it right over my ironing board so I'd be more likely to hang things from it. It's now my "inspriation board". Then I hung a favorite print of my sister's next to it. On the other side, closest to my cutting table, I hung a cool wrought iron planter box decoration I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics. It works well to hold my baby food and mason jars full of push pins, cutting tools, and various other things. Then, my favorite part of the re-org was hanging an old white shelf that I got at a yard sale YEARS ago. I wanted to hang it in a baby's room but when Coop came around, it didn't go with the theme really. I screwed two old curtain rod brackets to the bottom shelf so that I could hang all of my ribbon. They used to be in a shoe box all crowded and cramped and unorganized. Now they are in plain sight and I will be able to use them more easily. Lastly, I hung my thread spool holders on the wall instead of them taking up space on the table. Now I have more room to spread projects out while I'm sewing. That, my friends is my workspace upgrade. Ta-daaaaa!