friday - family portraits

as a photographer, i often get asked if i practice what i preach when it comes to actually printing photos instead of just leaving them on my wall.  the answer is a big fat YES!
my bedroom wall is currently decked out with photos from my best friend's wedding as well as various disneyland trips.  our family photos in the living room were beyond needing updated, so i got the idea to pool my siblings together this year for christmas and gift our parents updated family photos.  obviously, we'll be getting a new updated one come april with aileen's wedding, but in the meantime it was nice to have something other than picture people 2009.  i hired ann keen, a photographer in auburn that i also went to sierra will back when i got my first degree there (also in 2009.  must be a theme).  we went to a park out in auburn a few days before christmas, and here's a peek at some of the photos.
yes, they are actually printed and in frames... problem is, we realized how bad the wall to be repainted!  so things are currently at a stand still while we debate the paint and also collect more frames to get rid of the old broken ones :)  here's the wall we are working on redoing:
we are learning the entire living room may have to be arranged.
though, i can't let that completely happen until i am done cross stitching.  i need that lamp there!
all photos in this post except for the ones above are copyright of ann keen @ annkeenphotography.com consider this your public service announcement of hiring a professional photographer AND having the photos printed :) anyways, here are some of our faces!
aw look at us all pretending to like each other.
party hardy, everyone.
it's friday!

the weekend

this past weekend was a pretty busy one.
at least it feels like it was.
i finished a cross stitch - yay!
i didn't do any sewing - boo...
i had lunch with some old dance friends - yay!
and i learned some sad news - boo.
saturday morning it was posted that my dear child hood best friend's mom passed away that morning.  while i don't exactly know all the circumstances, it still hurts my heart regardless.  growing up, there were three houses i was generally at.  mine, elyse's or jessica's.  jessica's mom jennifer was wonderful, and always very welcoming.  i know i spent many friday nights at their home watching sabrina the teenage witch at their house, jumping on the trampoline, or playing in their back yard.
i remember jennifer's chocolate chip cookies so very well, and that ONE time we ate dinner barbarian style.
it. was. amazing.
i used to pop in every so often on mondays when i had time to kill driving from natomas to carmichael between work & ballet class, and she was always welcoming to let me in and chat for a bit.
while i hadn't seen the family in years, and (still) have plans to visit jessica & her little family in new york, i was looking forward to potentially seeing jennifer & randy at aileen's wedding this april.
my heart goes out to jess, kyle, liz & randy in this tough time.
i know i was lucky to have their mom as "secondary" one to me growing up.
until we meet again, jennifer.

fitness friday

i'm realizing how boring these posts are to type up.
and how HARD it is to find photos for them within a week - particularly because i take all my own photos, and sweaty work out photos are no bueno.
SO with that said...
i'm going to shake up fridays.
they won't always be about fitness.
they might be about food.
they might be about random favorite things.
they might just be about fabric.
i'll ideally post about fitness once a month or so, until i get in a good rotation of 3-5 things i want to always post about on fridays (generally using the letter "F" as a key factor, for my pre-k alliteration brain to have a laugh)
so in the mean time...
i worked out 4 out of 5 days this week (meetings this morning threw that groove off)
ate pretty well this week - only 2 sodas so far since sunday.
just to add some visual.  here's a work out "selfie" i had to take, as well as a quote for my challenge group.
now i'm literally running out the door for work again. happy friday!

the weekend

the teacher in me is cheering, because on a normal monday, i would be 3 hours in to work right now.
but this weekend, has been a three day one!
i wish i could say i spent time kicking back and relaxing all the time (well, i did sleep in) there is little time and SO much to do!  here's a few things that have been going down this weekend.
craftiness
i don't have much sewing on my plate right now, but i self appointed myself to have a ridiculous amount of cross stitching to do.  aileen's bridal shower is currently planned to have a science/fandom theme to it, and since she already had a few previous cross stitches that i did (bazinga & star trek related) i thought i would add a few more to the bunch.  i've already completed a lord of the rings one, and currently in the works have: star wars, princess bride & parks & rec.  i'm still on the hunt for a good dr. who one, since that is what her fiance is in to.  while i'm not going to post the whole front with all the details on it (yet), check out the invitations i had holly design for the shower!  they just came on friday and then got dropped in the mail to go off to the bazillion people on the list. no kidding.  i sent her an idea i saw off of etsy, and she executed it perfectly.  as i was taking the cards to the post office, i realized the only thing it was lacking was a fat orange cat to be 100% representative of aileen.  well, he might just have to show up in other places.  like probably all the day of wedding preparation photos...
as well as aileen's bridal shower, i am in the disney mini quilt swap on instagram, and currently planning out my quilt project.  i have an idea of what i want to do, but just need to solidify it to establish what fabric i need.  if i get that figured out today, then i'll likely be hitting up one fabric store or another this afternoon/evening to pull it all together.  i do have a few "extras" planned for my partner, which i am excited about doing as well.  lisa hooked me up with the sew together bag pattern, and i am very excited to try it out for this swap!
partiness
yesterday, we celebrated melissa & jared's engagement at her parents house!  i'll be a bridesmaid in their october wedding, so all the fun is about to get rolling now that the year has kicked off!  they're getting married at the note to self: bring real camera to upcoming events.
even if it is just my outdated d80.
or suffer with the wrath of using phone pictures off of facebook for blogging purposes.

those of you with a day off like me, enjoy your monday!
those of you at work... only 4 more days until the weekend!

fitness friday

look!  it's a thing two weeks in a row!
and i actually got it posted on friday this time.
week 2 of the challenge group has gone by, and so far i'm still alive.
i have done better at some of my goals for sure, but still missing a good amount of food i usually ate (oh taco bell...)
i didn't bullet point this as well as i did last week, so here goes memory attempts.
monday i worked out after i got off work and then gave in to the urges of jimboys for dinner.
CLEARLY not under the "clean eating"category, but it happened.
i did resist ordering the extra flour tortilla...  baby steps, people.
21ish oz of soda, no refills.
tuesday another after work work out.
bought some zucchini to use my new vegetti on at some point.
erika and i went out to dinner that night, and had boudin's (chili bread bowl. yum.  no soda) and also got pink berry (tart flavor, all fruit toppings)
wednesday dance class work out.
used the vegetti for the first time (as seen above) and lived to tell the tale.
i am not a fan of zucchini at all, but cooked like this with a little spaghetti sauce, WAY more tolerable.
thursday i almost didn't work out, but i made myself do a basic abs and stretch work out on the turbo fire dvd i have,  it was rough while i was doing it, but didn't wake up sore.  must need to go harder.  had another round of pasta, because i had a third zucchini left.  and then i ate popcorn and regretted it almost immediately.
friday clearly, the day is just beginning, but i already did a work out on the turbo fire dvd.  i am certain i will drink i cup of soda (likely from panera) with lunch today, and i will resist the 99 cent pastry.  even though i love chocolate chip cookies.  i have purchased some cliff bars, which so far aren't terrible.  i'm not sure where they fall on the scale of nutrition and proper eating choices, but i am also pretty sure there could be way worse things.  like an actual chocolate chip cookie from panera.  dinner... i have no clue.  i didn't get a chance to prep anything, and i work until 7 tonight.  so hopefully, i don't give in to my usual friday desires.  i do have some medicore taquitos left from last week, so if all else fails, there are those.  i REALLY wanted chicken tortilla soup last night,  so i'll probably hunt up a recipe for that in the near future.
happy friday!

science ribbon star quilt

along side amy's lion king quilt, this was another great feat of 2015 quilts.
i had this quilt planned for awhile, because my mom and i had picked up the fabric for my physics majoring sister when we first saw the set in store, but never thought i would have to seriously get down to business on it at any specific point in time.  then, aileen got engaged and set her wedding date for april of 2016...  this was clearly a quilt that was planned to be for HER and not to be gifted as a "shared" item since it was a smaller sized quilt, so i had to get the ball rolling, and quick.  between september when she got engaged, and the sunday before thanksgiving, this quilt took up the entirety of my existence.  it was just supposed to be a simple twin sized quilt, but apparently the dimensions guide i found on pinterest for block numbers was either off... or well... i don't know what else. because this is what it turned out to be...
yes, this "twin sized" quilt ended up needing one of my queen sized battings, and that was almost not enough for it either.  that row you see on the back?  yeah, that was supposed to be on the front.  when i first started cutting pieces out, i had 6 prints and was planning to do 9 of each.  that plan was quickly changed when i could only get 6 blocks out of each so my mom ran to beverly's the following week and picked up a few more of the science prints.  there were multiple trips in the future when i ran out of the solid colors once or twice.  they saw me a lot during those months, but in the end, it was worth it!
at first, i had the green as one of the "ribbons" that wrap around the printed block, but since there were SO many different shades of green in them, i thought it would be better to keep the more neutral colors (gray & white) touching the block, and the green as the background. it totally helps the blocks "pop" a bit more.  as you can see now a little better in the close up, i scattered the different blocks all over instead of having them in rows of the same print.
much like her ruffle apron, i used polka dots in there as a print to border off the quilt without being too "in your face" with additional colors.
i used a 4" wide ruler to chalk line the quilting lines, and used a walking foot on my janome dc2010.  at first, i safety pin basted everything and started stitching from there.  i got about two thirds down the first side, and then saw how completely awful the back was wrinkling.  that was the saturday before we were leaving.  i pulled out everything at 2am, and went to bed.  sunday, i swept the driveway and prepared to spray baste.  i got the batting attatched to the back, and ran out of basting spray.  ran to beverley's, no luck.  ran to joann's, found it, but had left my phone at home so i was without coupon.  luckily, i found one in a shopping cart, checked out and ran back home to continue on my endeavor.  i was back on track to quilting, and managed to get it all back together and completed by sunday evening.  the binding was attached and pinned to hand sew as we trekked to idaho the following day.  it took me from reno, nevada to idaho falls, idaho to get the binding done. it kept me warm in the car, that's for sure!
since i decided to make it 6x8 on the front instead of 6x9, that's the bottom row that got added to the backing so it didn't go completely to waste.  i found this great atom print in the clearance section of beverly's to use for the back and it worked perfectly.  the row on the back aligned with the third row from the top on the front.
better closeup for the atom print fabric.
and yet another name tag!  i don't know what i'll do if i ever run out.  haha
and there you have it!  one mega science-y quilt that is now residing in idaho at college.
for the tutorial on the ribbon star block, head on over to freshly pieced :)

andrew's birthday quilt - the great fabric search

meet andrew.
some of you are already familiar with this cool kid from previous posts, my facebook timeline and instagram photos, but others haven't been so lucky yet.
if there is one thing that andrew and i share, it is our love for disneyland (and disney in general)
i like to spoil andrew sometimes.
at one point in time, high school musical was his favorite thing.
i took him to build a bear to stuff a bear.
there was another time i took him to disney on ice to see high school musical on ice with jenny and erika.
oh.  and we wore matching t-shirts too.
and had a photo shoot at my old work.
now, andrew's big thing is frozen.
i've made him some pillowcases and pajama shorts from olaf fabric for the past few birthdays.
but for this year's birthday, i want to plan something big for him.  and that's where you followers come in!  i'm creating a disney/pixar "i-spy" style quilt for andrew, and i'm on the hunt for fabric of all sorts of animated disney cotton prints!  i have a good chunk of more modern/current selections of characters, but i'm looking for some more uncommon ones, or things i might not have just yet.  i have at least a quarter of a yard of each fabric if you see anything you might like drop me a line and we can make a swap happen!  below are the fabric cuts that i have, as well as the quantity per movie.  some of the following are multiple cuts from the same fabric in order to get different characters in the mix.  oh, and my block sizes are 6 1/2" pre washed :)
fabrics
inside out - 6

snow white - 3
lion king - 3
cars - 11
planes - 2
the good dinosaur - 2
tinkerbelle - 2
peter pan - 1
jake and the neverland pirates - 1
101 dalmatians - 2
lady and the tramp - 1
aristocats (marie) - 2
phineas & ferb - 1
high school musical - 1
this is the only "non animated" one i intend to include, due to andrew's past high school musical interest :)
villains - 4
bambi - 2
dumbo - 1
the jungle book - 1
nightmare before christmas - 2
big hero 6 - 3
winnie the pooh - 5
finding nemo - 5
monsters inc/university - 1
toy story - 14
frozen - 12
mickey & friends - 13
the little mermaid - 3
aladdin - 2
sleeping beauty - 2
princess & the frog - 1
beauty and the beast - 3
cinderella - 4
tangled - 2
as you can see, i'm very top heavy on toy story (my favorite), frozen (his/everybody and their mother's favorite), and mickey & friends fabrics.  there are a few fabrics i have that i might not include (jake & the neverland pirates) as well as trying to keep some of the pink-ness down to a minimum.  anything animated disney/pixar is greatly appreciated!  feel free to drop a comment below if you think you might have something to blend with this collection and if you'd want to trade for a chunk of something you see if the mix!