I have a bad habit of immersing myself in something so much that it becomes overwhelming.  In the last couple of months those things have been reading and quilting.  I absolutely love reading and for a while will read every waking moment, no exaggeration.  This is especially true if I'm reading a large book and just want to get through it like "A Dance Dragons" (book 5 from A Song of Ice and Fire).  It took me 4 months of reading from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed.  I'm a bit of a slow reader.  Well I ended the book back in February and have yet to pick up a new one.

Until now!  I've been holding onto this gem since I got it for my birthday and finally cracked it open last night.  I seriously can't wait to start reading again.  

After it I have a couple of others I inherited from my mother-in-law that I'll work on.  Then I plan to cash in on another birthday gift, a Barnes and Noble gift card to finally pick up the soft cover release of "And The Mountains Echoed" which comes out in June.  

Now if I can only get back into the swing of sewing to finally finish my burp cloths.  

With both quilts down and a couple other pieces out the door I started to think that I'm really getting good at this.  The quilts are a little on the difficult side and I'm not quite a pro at them yet.  BUT, after a little talking Babe and I agreed that selling some of my items might be something I should do.  For now I'm going to stick to burp cloths and may eventually move into nursing covers, car seat covers and cloth diapers.  Since it's something I've never done, I'm going to test some prices by selling them at work.  I'm thinking I might price them in the $6-10 range since they're much larger than the typical ones.  In the meantime, I need to get my machine serviced and make a good pattern I can stick to.  

P.S. This was accidentally left as a draft even though i meant to publish it 4/22.  Whoops.

I'm so excited today for many reasons.  Today is my Friday and I only have 2 1/2 hours left to go.  Thanks sis for scheduling your c-section on a Friday!  On that note, I'm also excited because we get to meet my newest nephew tomorrow morning.  Lots of prayers are being said today for my sister, the doctors and everyone else involved.  And just in time, I finished his little quilt.  

I'm not usually one to toot my own horn but I must say, this is by far my best work yet.  I love everything about this one. The colors are just perfect, the size is just right and the backing was such a cute find.  I can't wait to give it to them.  

Tomorrow morning I plan on waking up at 4:00 to take the hour and a half drive to Kaiser where my sister is delivering.  She's supposed to check in at 6:00 at which time my mom and I will be in charge of my older nephew the monkey.  The surgery is scheduled at 7:30 and should take ninety minutes as long as everything goes well.  If anyone is reading this, please keep my family in your prayers.  

Not to undercut the exhaustion my sister and brother-in-law will be feeling, but with such a tiring weekend ahead of me I really hope I can get to bed early tonight.  I still have some straightening up to do around the house also known as walking the house at a 5 year old's height to see if any Easter candy is lying around. It never fails, we always catch him already awake and eating from a box of Unco's stash.  Then lucky me, I had 3 dashboard lights come on while I was driving to work.  Which means I either have to trade cars with Babe for the day or get it handeled tonight after dinner.  I'm already tired thinking about it.  

This weekend was incredibly fun and exhausting all at the same time.  So much so that I went to bed at 8:30 last night at the ripe old age of 29.  So where to begin?

We didn't have any plans until 6:30 Saturday night so of course I felt like I could take on the world in that amount of time.  We drove to Home Depot to get a few different plants for this seasons veggie garden.  I'm still trying to find the right combination of edibles that doesn't require me to water or garden more than I know I'm capable of.  In the past I've planted far too many tomato plants which in turn overtake my 12' x 4' foot raised garden bed.  This year I'm sticking to one tomato plant, my Serrano chilies, cilantro, basil red and now yellow bell peppers and after this weekend added sweet and snacking peppers and stevia all for Babe.  I'm really hoping I've finally got it down this year and that I don't have to continue to make modifications.  

After the plants were all added and the grass watered I realized that the sprinklers were unnecessarily watering my driveway.  So instead of interrupting my husband during his much needed personal time, I grabbed a screw driver and fiddled around.  It took some time but I finally got them working exactly how they should.  Then I took a break indoors to do some laundry, clean the kitchen and to do some more quilting.  My top is all mapped out after this weekend and sometime this week I'll just have to piece it all together.  

I'm really excited about it now that I see how it's coming along.  Since there is no free motion quilting to this one, I'm hoping I can have it done in time for my visit with them next Monday.  Once it was all laid out, we went back outside to chop cut hammer some wood for a bonfire we were going to have at a friends house.  With just enough time to spare I put together some corn dip by birthday boy's request and we headed over to their house.  

I was originally really excited to be there and hang out with our friends and my godson.  That part was exactly what I was hoping for.  I quickly realized upon arrival that we were going to be the odd couple out.  We were the only couple within childbearing age that wasn't within 6 months of popping a kid out.  There were 5 other couples, three of them were pregnant and the other two had infants younger than 6 months old.  Inevitably the conversation went there and I had to do a little sidestepping to avoid the dreaded question "so what about you".  I couldn't take it this weekend.  Not from strangers and not when I've done my very best to be happy for everyone else around me.  Like a bum I ended up inside hiding out while everyone else had a blast.  Plus I was hoping while I was away my friend would say something for me instead of having to worry the question would come up again. I was genuinely tired from my afternoon though so I had a little bit of an excuse.

Sunday was just as hectic.  Since my brother-in-law was busy with his new baby and sick toddler this week, we didn't have a chance to properly celebrate his birthday.  So Sunday we all headed over there to spend the evening.  With the new baby around it's giving us aunties and uncles a chance to spend more quality time with our nephew.  So all afternoon we played baseball, climbed trees, swung on the swings, dug up worms, anything and everything to keep a three year old busy.  By the end of the night he had still outdone us and we ended up going home to sleep like babies.  

Now that the weekend's over I'm really looking forward to my bed all week.  That and a little Icy-Hot and Jacuzzi time for all the squatting I did this weekend.

The year of babies is well under way beginning with my niece being born just a few short days ago.  The very next day we found out Babe's cousin N will also be having a girl due August 16th.  But even before that, my sister has a planned cesarean on Friday, April 18th.  If all goes as planned we will be welcoming a new little boy to her family that day.  

In the meantime I plan on putting together the same meals that I did for my Babe's brother and wife as well as making another cute little baby quilt.  The plan for this one is to do a gray and baby blue chevron pattern on the top and back it with a cutie monster fabric I found at Joann's.  I just started on Sunday and don't have many pictures yet but here's a start.  

I'm a little more nervous this time around because there is no patterned fabric to hide my mistakes behind.  It's so much more geometrical than I'm used to and I'm really just hoping it turns out halfway decent.  I've already cut and sewn all the blocks.  Tonight I have to press the seams open and then plan out the top.  I'm going to be sad when I don't have anymore quilts to make though.

My niece NJF was born shortly after yesterday afternoons post and I couldn't be happier for my brother and sister-in-law.  Momma and baby are both doing well other than a little bit of blood pressure issues with my sister-in-law.  She was born weighing 7 lbs 1 oz and 21" little.  

The weekend leading up to her birth I was amped to finish her quilt finally which I did.  

Then I had a brilliant idea last week that I needed to make happen since we knew it was just a matter of time until she arrived.  I picked up some individual foil meal containers from the dollar store and set out to make 4 separate dinners for both mommy and daddy that they could reheat individually.  I don't consider myself a very good cook and have a hard time deviating from recipes.  So for the four dishes I chose:

1. Sautee chicken - sauteed onions and bell peppers mixed with chicken and wheat pasta.
2. Green chicken and cheese enchilada casserole - Pretty straight forward.  Stacked shredded chicken, corn tortillas and monterey jack cheese sauced with Las Palmas green enchilada sauce from the store.  I chose to do it casserole style simply because the corn tortillas fit perfectly in the little pans.
3. Chicken with snow peas - My modified version of Pioneer Woman's Beef with Snow Peas recipe. 
4. Baked penne in meat sauce - I should probably post the recipe to my meat sauce here one day but for now I'll just say that I've been craving this dish since I made it.  Aside from the meat sauce it had basil and ricotta cheese all topped with shredded mozzarella. 

I went shopping for all the ingredients, went to two hockey games and still got back in time to finish all four dishes (two servings each).  Hey when I want to prove babe wrong, I won't stop at anything.  

Now I must get going because it's almost time for me to rush over to the hospital and shower my niece with more love than she can dare handle.  

The weekends are definitely more exciting for me than the week.  I feel like I could just blog about Friday, Saturday and Sunday from Monday-Thursday and still have more to say.  Let's see if I can sum it all up in today's post.

Friday night was valentine's day and our yearly tradition is to picnic as I mentioned before.  This year we planned on having hot wings and beer from our favorite "wingery", Wingnuts.  Except when we got there to place our order, the place was far from packed out so instead we opted to eat-in and catch a movie across the street.  Our table was in a quiet little corner so we were still able to have the talk which went surprisingly well.  We decided together that we were both going to try to push for whatever tests necessary to figure out what's going on between us.  We're both still not comfortable with doing invasive and expensive procedures to become pregnant so for now IUI's (Intrauterine Insemination) and IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), if offered, are off the table.  We also discussed the possibility of adoption, what age, etc.  Really, the conversation just went really well.  It felt like for now we could control the uncontrollable.  

I woke up bright and early Saturday morning to get a quick haircut and the race off to my sister-in-law's house to help her sisters out with her baby shower.  Quick note about me, one of my biggest pet peeves is people who are habitually late.  It's just so rude.  Anyway, the shower came together with minutes to spare and everyone seemed pleased.  My sister/brother-in-law made out with a ton of cute outfits for their baby girl.  Since this is their second baby in 3 years, there wasn't much they needed.  

When it was over and after a little cleanup, I raced home to meet my husband for a hockey game.  We have season tickets to a local team and this was one of 3 games this weekend.  I knew it was going to be a busy weekend and I really didn't want to go to this particular game.  I had suggested he take my brother-in-law and nephew since the girls would all be winding down from the shower.  Nope he said, he wanted it to be a date night.  So when I called to ask how he wanted to do dinner, I found out that our date night turned into a trio with my father-in-law.  The rushing, the tons of things I wanted to get done, me running late, a massive migraine all coupled with them waiting out front for me when I pulled up made me lose it.  I was in a dress and sandals and had been up since 6:00 that morning for goodness sake.  I dropped my bags, told my husband I wasn't going and had a tantrum like a child.  Real mature. Once they left I grabbed a couple of extra strength ibuprofen and got working on the rest of my weekend plans.

So instead of going to the game I went to Joann's.  I decided years ago with my sister's little one that I would make all my newborn nephews and nieces a one of a kind quilt.  For the two new babies, I had been waiting for a check to come in from work before I started it.  Well they were finally released Friday with barely enough time to spare to make my nieces quilt.  For my niece I'm using pinks, purples and a little blue & green to make a triangle quilt like the one Elise made on her blog.  I was super excited because I was able to find a pretty hummingbird print to symbolize her Nona in heaven.  

For my nephew I'm planning on doing a baby blue and gray chevron quilt with little monsters on the back similar to those in Monsters Inc. (the theme of his nursery).  Since she's due in March and he in April I figured I'd start hers first. I'll try to get pictures of his soon though.

Sunday was a little better.  Babe and I spent the day relaxing, him playing video games and me cutting squares.  I'm using this tutorial to cut the triangles for both quilts.  I got all of my nieces cut already and started sewing some of them together.  Unfortunately I couldn't finish them last night because we had another hockey game to go to. Afterwards we did a craft beer run at Total Wine, went grocery shopping (I love when he goes with me) and vegged out the rest of the night.  

This week I'll probably try to get as much quilting done as possible while Babe has a video game to keep him busy. That way he won't notice I've lost track of hours upon hours in my sewing room.  Plus my birthday's on Thursday so I think I might be able to get away with it.