easy mini purse album

i promised to follow-up with the images of my creation a few weeks ago and i have really been slacking. so i totally lifted this idea from HERE and i am so thrilled with the way the finished product turned out, and i LOOOOOVE having it handy when people ask to see pictures, it's so cute and tiny :)

one of my favorite pages below: used majority love, elsie daisy line (the one about pets)

so much has happened since i last wrote....i went camping (for the FIRST TIME!!!) for a weekend in the upper peninsula of michigan for what our friends dub "powell fest" and i had a blast! right on lake superior, beautiful views, yummy grilled corn and lots of cornhole and laughter :) and chloe loved it too! she was dirty as heck when we left...her white coat tinted an orangey-red from the iron deposits. the trip back was fun too-TONS of antique stores and flea markets with some super cool finds, but no room in the suv to fit it :(

making another addition to lisa's book club is dan brown's angels and demons. while i will admit, this book was a slow-mover in the beginning 150 pages or so (which usually IRKS me big time) i have to see it was *completely* worth it. this book totally took me by surprise (which i LOVE) more than once. if you read the davinci code and thought THAT was good, this is BETTER. BY A LANDSLIDE. so go read it!

anyone have a favorite summer read or just a great recommendation??

so many things to be excited about!

WOW. i just keep thinking it while i drool over this gal's new online store. and i just spent almost $200 on her new fabrics. yikes! but seriously, you must check it out, be you a sewer, quilter or scrapbooker, she's got something for everyone! and her store is just beautiful.

my grandma comes home today from boston! she's been gone for 2 months and i'm used to seeing her once a week, so i am excited to give her a big hug and hear all about her trip. oh yea...she's 82!

this upcoming weekend, scott and i are going camping with gobs of friends and it will be my first camping trip.....EVER. i am nervous, excited and and anxious all at the same time, but i think it will be a lot of fun-and we're taking chloe!!!

i made a cute purse scrapbook last week, got the idea from here. i highly recommend that everyone make one, it only took me an hour or so to print all the pictures and put it all together and the book only cost $3 from target! i'll post my version tomorrow once i take pictures.

today i had a short lil gmail chat with this gal-and she told me the package of goodies i won in her giveaway is on it's way to wisconsin from canada! yippee! LA is so sweet :)

and lastly, i am anxiously awaiting the opening of rachel's new vintage/flea finds shop. she has such a great eye for this stuff!

a recent etsy purchase from elsie:

happy monday everyone :)

things i love

i had so much fun making this, thanks for the link LA :) click to enlarge

4th of July weekend wrap-up

our holiday weekend was jam-packed full of activities and fun, first we went to summerfest (again) but this time just walk around the shop vendors and eat yummy food and listen to music. and i had my first charicature done! scott and i did it together and it turned out SO good!! the picture below you can see my face is already done and scott is getting drawn. i'll post the whole drawing tomorrow for laughs :)

then we went with scott's relatives to the germantown parade and we took chloe and she did so well, we even took a little family portrait :) after two days of activity, bbqs, fireworks and too many roasted cashews, we were exhausted!

and this is the finished wedding quilt i made for our friends who were married in may...i thought it was about time i posted it, you can see the beginning stages of the quilt here:

happy tuesday everyone :)

lisa's book club...

okay i know i stole that from oprah, but i couldn't think of anything original.

i love reading. getting lost in a book with my wild imagination and vivid imagery can hardly beat much else (well you know BESIDES sewing and scrapping) but still, one of my great loves.


throughout the summer, i will inevitably get a LOT of reading done, so why not share with you my great reads and hopefully we can have a little book chat :)


a great suspenseful, murder, detective, who-dunnit book that i finished this morning was:

this book was fantastic. ESPECIALLY the 2nd half, i couldn't stop turning pages, i had to keep reading and find out what was going to happen next (i love books that can evoke this!!) to the point where i promised scott i would stop reading at the bottom of the page and 4 pages later (lol) he is like, "i know you didnt just flip ANOTHER page!!!" haha...we had to be somewhere and i just kept reading, he isn't an angry person or anything :)

so enjoy if you decide to take me up on my book recommendation, and i'm open to book recommendations too!

what's your favorite summer read (past or present) ???

M.I.A

i have been soo M.I.A. recently but have plans to change that! i had the best day yesterday for so many reasons -which is awesome because the day before was a bummer :( but the icing on the cake was winning this gal's 2 year blog-aversary giveaway! i had a meeting last night at starbucks and afterwards i was checking my email and thought i'd see if LA had drawn the winner yet, so i put my earphones in my laptop (they always play the music REALLY loud at night so you can't hear) and what do you know?!?! she pulled my name!

totally.made.my.day.

i've been sewing again, i'm half way through a crib quilt which will be a beauty once it's finished, and i am aching to scrapboook soon, i have so many ideas that i want to create!!

and to be random, some of my recent favorite pics:

lol-my 23rd birthday party, you had to be there!

scott & i at a friend's wedding

my new favorite wedding pic from work!

arizona.

arizona was absolutely beautiful.
my flight home was cancelled due to the freak flash flooding WI was experiencing.
i met up with a favorite friend of my mine from many years ago who moved away.
and laughed. A LOT.
i tried sushi...and i LOVED it.
went to the funniest karaoke bar EVER.
i saw the grand canyon for the first time.
i looked for elk for over 40 miles. no luck. maybe next time.
scott and i are seriously thinking about packing up and moving there next spring.
arizona pictures to come!

i love this day.

i love this day.
today i turned 23.

and i actually *feel* like i got older.

i still get as excited as i did when i was a little kid for this day each year.

for some reason, my birthday is a BIG deal.
and i woke up to an absolutely beautiful day...70 degrees, sunshine, and a blossoming tree outside my window.

i got myself a few things (as a gift to myself...lol!) like this and this and am SO inspired!!

the table and chairs are finally finished and i have to pat myself on the back for how great the set turned out:

chloe had her surgery on wednesday for bob barker's sake, and though she was hurtin real bad when we first brought her home, she is back to her old self, trying to run and play against doctor's orders. she fills my heart with so much joy.

stopped by the fabric store to pick up more fabric since i ran out of it yesterday while working on the wedding quilt i posted about a while back. on my way home i drove past this OLD farm that i pass almost everyday on my way to scott's. it looks desserted, never any animals or people, the barn is run down and there are old tires in the fields, but today as i was coming up the hill, it took my breath away when i saw this:

so you see...i love this day.

scott has planned an "old school" birthday party for me tonight. Dinner just the two of us, then joining all our friends at the bowling alley for an old fashioned grade school bowling birthday party (only there will be beer involved). it will be fantastic and i can't wait. he is so wonderful to me.

i'm off to enjoy the sunshine :)

i'm out of hiding...

i know i've been m.i.a. lately, but for good reason! work has been busy with peak wedding season now in swing so i've been meeting with lots of brides and super awesome couples. i truly love my job.

i've also been busy with random projects (if i have an ounce of free time) and lots of family events (arrival of baby eden from china, the baptism of my goddaughter, friends in from green bay, and a brewers game squeezed into the mix).

i've been slowly working on refinishing an antique kitchen table and chairs and taking something really horrid and dated and turning into a cheerful modern dining set. here is what it looked like before

and now....

i stained the table a dark walnut and painted the chairs a fabulous paprika and am *in love* with how they turned out. i did recover the hideous seats with a fun imperfect bright stripe fabric with mustard yellows and plum colors but forgot to take a picture! once the table is sealed i will take a final picture of the whole set together and finished. but waaaay better than the original, right?!

i also wanted to recommend a book that i think everyone should read as it continually blows me away. i am about 100 pages from the end and i keep thinking about how sad i will be when i finish it! (i know, strange) the author of this book captures what it is to be a female growing up so well it's hard to believe it's written by a man!!!

well, off to continue working on my numerous unfinished projects (wedding quilt, work stuff, staining table legs and poly-ing entire table)! i think i might need to create myself a list and get things done this weekend LA-style!

how i know you love me

sometimes it's the littlest things that make me realize how much you really do love me.

• you gave me my own internet hook-up at your new townhouse because you know how ocd i am about checking my email for work ( i work from home)
• you think i'm still the most beautiful girl without makeup on and in your sweats
• you always kiss me goodnight
• you love my family
• you gave me my own nightstand! complete with tiny dish to hold my earrings, bobbypins,etc.
• you let me try new recipes out for you (so far they've all been good!)

just a few things that remind me of how lucky i really am to have found you.

an additional note: i had "The View" on in the background this morning while on my computer and Sarah Jessica Parker was the guest and she said something i've said myself. everyone should date the wrong people and appreciate the heartbreak because it only makes you appreciate and realize when you've found that one person you'd like to spend the better part of your life with. this is so true with scott and i. we met a year before we started dating and i dated a few people during that time and though they were some of the *worst* relationships i've ever been in, it makes me realize that i needed those bad relationships to make me see how wonderful a good man can really be. i continually remind myself how lucky i am to have scott.

what are some of the silly little reasons that make you realize how much someone loves you, or vice versa?

the brewers are back!

baseball season is in full swing again and scott and i celebrated by attending the brewers opening day game last friday and what a game indeed!! here's a cute pic i snapped of us as the game wrapped up. Notice the sweet sausage race hat that scott gave me :)

I also used the remainder of my saturday night to work on the final pages of my mini-book about scott and me. i love how this turned out...and i'm glad i eased myself back into scrapbooking with something small, not nearly as intimidating. here are the final pages to the book-still need to decorate the outside of the album though.....

i've taken up a new project to work on now that it's spring (or possibly an overload of late nights and hgtv)-refinishing an old kitchen table and chairs (4) and bring them back to life in a super cute and fun way! my inspiration comes a la' "FRIENDS"-my favorite show, my brother laughs at me because he knows whenever he visits there will be a dvd of friends playing somewhere in the house. but back to the subject! i plan on sanding the table and staining in a dark brown, and then painting the chairs a color-i'm thinking cranberry and reupholstering the fabrics in a really great dahlia upholstery fabric with great mustards and burnt orange flowers i saw at my local craft store. i'll try to remember to take before pics so you all can be amazed at the finished product lol!

it's raining horribly here today...rain makes me restless...tomorrow is predicted to be sunny...i could use some sunshine to snap me out of my blahs. it's late. must rest. need to save up my energy for table sanding tomorrow :)

i heart fabric

i logged some late night hours into "the sweatshop" last night, but i had no other choice....i find it really hard to tap into my creative flow during daylight! does anyone else feel that way??? or does the cheese stand alone? i've got tons of fabrics coming in, all of which are slowly enveloping the chair that they currently reside on, loads of unfinished projects, and new projects, so it seemed inevitable that i was going to be down there all night. let's just say i went to sleep when the sun was coming up and kids were getting on the school bus! lol...so i thought i'd share some of the fruits of my labor BUT blogger is being weird and not letting me upload my pics, so those will come when i'm able to upload, but until then...

just a sampling of my growing fabric stash-it's like a giant candy dish for the creative mind :)

i can breathe again

and what a relief! the worst part about being sick is not being able to breathe! after a very long 5 days of horrible cold, fevers, etc. i finally feel like myself again. work has been extremely busy-this week i have 11 meetings! yowza...hopefully all sales too! i really wanted to use this past weekend to work on new things for my etsy shop and to start preparing for craft shows this summer, but my cold wore me down so i didn't get much done. i will be shipping these yummy custom order pillow covers out today to christine:
so much to do today, but already i just want to take a nap...

• confirm meetings with brides
• mail rsvp for andrea's wedding
• troubleshoot computer session w/ san fran office
• feel guilty (only for a moment!) for buying the entire new emma line from love, elsie
• ship pillow orders from etsy (2)
• quick cell phone chat w/ scott to see how packing is going-moving in 1 week & only 10 minutes from my house!!!! (way better than the hour presently)
• meeting @ 6:00pm
• hopefully have enough energy for sewing & scrapbooking fun!

see...i told you i should just take a nap....that list is tiring in itself! happy tuesday :)

back to my roots

lol...after thinking, that title could easily be referring to the desperate need for a dye job! but alas, its referring to how great it felt to finally scrap again. it's been MONTHS! so i was feeling a bit intimidated, so i started small. i bought this cute maya road chipboard album to document me & scott's wonderful 8 months so far (truth be told-he wanted some scrapbook love!) using all my love,elsie goods i've been hoarding and some heidi swapp chipboard and queen &co sticky felt, i am loving the result. here's a few pages:

i got this all done in one night, before i came down with the nasty bug that's been floating around town. but the rest of time has been spent having coffee with brides and engaged couples talking wedding photography or sewing up these pretties for christina! i absolutely *loved* this fabric combination and will definitely use my scraps to their best potential, but i thought i'd share the love and let you all see the fruits of my labor :)

sorry for the semi-blurry picture! so what's everyone's plans for this weekend??? i'll be a busy gal this weekend and would love to live vicariously through your fun :)

just enjoying it while it lasts

so i'll start this post by knocking on wood, but i've been having a great few weeks. things with my etsy shop are doing well, i've been working on a fun custom order for christina of 5 pillows, and am in the process of researching craft fairs for the summer where fellow etsian sassystitchdesign and myself will be sharing a booth! i am incredibly excited :) once the pillows are finished, i will definitely be working on stocking up the shop again...i've playfully coined my sewing space "the sweatshop" due to the ridiculously long periods of time i spend sewing into the wee hours of the morning....yet i love every minute of it.

i also have to tell you guys about a great etsy purchase i made recently from handgrown pottery, etsy seller lgbrinkley. i can't stop gushing over this adorable lil dish. the colors and texture are so incredibly earthy and it's a perfect place to put your rings or earrings before bedtime. i'm actually most excited to use it for my wedding rings once i get married because it's the *perfect* size! (lol...clearly i get excited easily!) check out her shop-her stuff rocks! i'm thinking mother's day is right around the corner.... :)

(image courtesy of lgbrinkley)

the new job is working out great! i really believe in this company and everything it has to offer and it's a great way for me to get into the wedding industry. i've been a *very* busy girl.

i thought i'd leave you with a few pictures from this weekend's bowling night, and a recent picture of my lovely westie pup chloe-she's gotten 2 lbs bigger and a *lot* shaggier :) such a sweetheart....hope everyone has a great day!

super*productive

last night i spent 8 hours straight in a my craft space (it's nowhere near a studio...just a giant table with complete with sewing machine, cutting mat and *loads* of fabric stacked on the back of the couch with a great view of the tv where dreamgirls has been playing straight for like 2 weeks---it's the best music to sing to while sewing and crafting!) anyhoo....sewed til 4am yesterday morning and made 4 pillows, another pillow top, and am half finished with a quilt top. WHICH MEANS....lots of new pretties added to my etsy shop! yay! my goodies will also be featured in the etsy main showcase today which i am really excited about :)

in other great news...i am off to chicago this weekend for training for my new job! i will be working as a wedding photography consultant and i am *very* excited to be working in this industry.

valentine's day was awesome...scott made me this amazing photo montage dvd to music of our entire 7 months together and then we went out to this great authentic mexican restaurant for dinner and an amazing traditional mexican band. i also made scott's gift and made him a banana cream pie, his favorite which we had after we saw definitely, maybe (cute, but long). overall, a really *lovely* holiday.

i'll leave you with some new pretties!
*SOLD* kaleidoscope pom pom throw quilt

*SOLD* ultra mod quilted patchwork pillow

raspberry lemon quilted pillow

*SOLD*pink birdie quilted pillow

summer vacation quilted pillow

i love them as a grouping :)

and quilted patchwork greeting cards

it's been a while

i know it's been a while since i've posted last, but things have been pretty busy. lots of interviews, helping scott take care of the puppy over at his house as much as possible, and spending lots of time quilting. but i've made 3 quilts in the last month and have another big denyse schmidt quilt top (stay tuned of for the finished product) all assembled and sewn up just waiting for the backing/batting. so here's a lil taste of what i've been creating...as always, available for purchase in my shop!

i've been a busy little bee lately...

now that the holidays are over and i've been able to recuperate, i've been hard at work making new things for my shop! for starters, my parents gave me this *fantastic* gift to make sewing just that much more fun:

and look at what yummy things i've been able to whip up since! all items are for sale HERE.

patchwork log cabin pillow made of amy butler fabrics from the lotus line

whimsical fruit super absorbent kitchen towel made of alexander henry fabrics.

i've also got 2 more baby quilts nearly finished and ready to go into the shop within the next few days so check back within a few days for some sneak peeks :)

i'll leave you with a few fun pictures from my holiday weekend!

lookie what i got!

my fantastic boyfriend spoiled me with this *adorable* graduation/x-mas gift!!!

her name is chloe and she is a west highland terrier and is sooo sweet. i already love her so much!

now that i've graduated, i have more time for crafting while i job hunt. i've got quite a few projects started that i can't wait to finish and put in the shop so check back often for updates! i'm going to be trying a new craft too!! embroidery is really catching my eye these days. if you search it on flickr some really *amazing* stuff comes up and i'm really loving the younger, fresher look to embroidery. happy tuesday :)