Sleeping Babies and Sweet Potatoes or The Good Things In Life

I'm having one of those rare and special moments right now in my house. It's quiet and peaceful and I don't have a headache. You guessed it -- Atticus isn't here!

Justin took him out to do errands and I'm home with Esme. It's awesome. I love it when he does this because I get to sit here and relax. The only downside is that sometimes my arm falls asleep.

I know I could put her down, but she's just so precious I can't do it. I want to enjoy this.

I also made one of my favorite things for lunch today. Here it is in all its glory.

Justin's not a big fan of sweet potatoes.¹ This has a good side and a bad side. Good side -- they're all mine!² Bad side -- I don't go to the effort very often since it's mostly just for me. I can hear you. You're saying it's pathetic that I see that as effort. Well, you can just -- you -- well -- okay, you're right.

1By that I mean that he loathes them.

2Unless Atticus gets back before I finish them all. And Esme gets some second hand, I suppose. No, not the way birds do it. You're gross for thinking that's what I meant.

Hummus, Bloodshed, and, Moda

Yesterday Justin, completely of his own accord and with absolutely no prompting from me, cleaned out the fridge! This is not the first time. He's starting to make me look bad here. It's kind of weird -- I think I can actually see everything that's in there just by looking. Look at how beautiful it is in there! Also, notice my hummus. You can see I'm very snooty. Also, since Justin gets credit for cleaning out the expired stuff, he also gets the blame for not wiping out the fridge. Don't look too carefully at the bottom shelf.

In other news, we finally got the paper cutter in the mail! By we I mean Balloons Made Art bought it for cutting business cards. It had great reviews on Amazon and now that we've used it we must agree -- it's pretty great. It obviously knows this, too. I mean, it's glowing red.¹ I've never seen a paper cutter with an aura before. This one looks like it's thinking about bloodshed. Good thing for us it's not the guillotine kind, right?

I got out the fabric I'm using for my next quilt today. I know -- it's a little early. I'm excited. I've decided that I'm not doing a postage stamp wall hanging yet like I was planning -- that can be my next project.² I'm going to use these gorgeous fabrics for a sweet circle quilt like this one. I'm nervous and really, really excited. I usually don't make quilts using only one line like this³, but I kinda don't want to pick out fabric right now. I know. I'm crazy.

1Though only on the box. I feel a little ripped off.

2You know, for after I finish the project I'm working on currently and this one I'm talking about now. I'm not obsessed, I promise.

3Garden Inspirations by Moda -- I got two layer cakes off of Ebay forever ago.

My best day in a long time!

Today has been a really excellent day for me! First, I got to go hang out with some friends and work on the quilt I posted anout yesterday -- two things I haven't done in months! It felt so good to just be with other adults I know and like without having to worry about being a parent. It felt so liberating!

I made a lot more progress on the quilts than I thought I would. I got all of the squares sewn and I hope to be able to press the seams tonight once Atticus is in bed.¹ I'll Wrap Esme up on my back and go. Speaking of ironing, I need to grab my board from Atticus' closet before he goes down.

After I got home I took the kids to the park and gave Justin a break.² While I was there a few friends from the neighborhood were there with their kids, so I got to spend even more time talking to adults! We stayed there for quite a while. It was cold, but with everyone bundled up it wasn't too bad. One nice thing about wearing Esme is that we get to share body heat that way.

This evening has been pretty good -- Atticus has been listening and Esme's been happy and/or sleeping most of the time. I was required to play the part of the red truck who was friends with the three-car-train³ for about an hour. Overall, this has been head and shoulders above probably every day since we moved here.

I didn't take any pictures today, but here's one I like:

125 minutes and counting . . .

2He'd had them for hours at that point and the pacifier was lost. Very rough. Turned out it was in the couch.

3Always an engaging and strenuous role.

Now I know where the refrigerator magnets have been disappearing to.

I haven't done any quilting at all since Esme¹ was born and it's been driving me crazy. I keep seeing really awesome projects online and they keep inspiring me to get my machine out and put the pedal to the carpet, but I haven't felt like I had the time. Now that a friend and I are getting together with no kids to hang out and do some sewing I finally had an excuse to work on something!

What I really wanted to do was just to forget about all of my old projects and start something new.² I can't bring myself to do it, though -- I've got to finish off one of those UFOs. So I picked a quilt I started about three years ago -- the oldest one that I have still unfinished, as a matter of fact. It was supposed to be a queen size quilt for myself, but it's been hiding in the back of my close fort too long and I kinda don't like it anymore. Plus, I don't want to quilt something that big.³ So I decided to make it two lap quilts, front and back, instead. Here's what it looks like at this stage. I think I may have laid out the blocks a little wrong. Not the end of the world.

It was from a pattern called Streak of Lightning that I found in a book. Unsurprisingly, it looked a lot better in the book.⁴ To get an idea of what it should have looked like, see this quilt here. I just really didn't have enough contrast between my lights and darks and I used several discount fabrics that I talked myself into and I ended up hating.⁵⁶

So wish me luck! I'm thinking I'll keep one and, if they turn out okay, I'll try to sell the other. I start work tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have some progress to report.

And one more thing: when I was taking pictures of the quilt, Atticus was desperate for me to photograph him as well.⁷ So here he is in all his unbridled glory. Do you still think he's astute and mysterious? Oh, and I know you're wondering -- that's a refrigerator letter magnet. I believe it's "L".

1Justin was worried about using our kids' names on the internet, so I'll be using their middle names. They sound even more mysterious and astute this way, don't you think?

2And that's not a bad thing. It's pretty much required if you want to be a quilter. It's like our secret handshake, but not at all. We don't all ramble this much. Also, I just made all that up. I've only ever been friends with one other quilter, so I have no idea what we as a conglomerate are like.

3That's why my second-oldest quilt isn't finished. I mean, seriously. I only have a standard machine! You would hate it if you tried it, I assure you.

4This happens to me way, way too often.

5Like that stupid lime green polka-dot one. Gross.

6Also, that was a really long run on sentence.

7You can't blame me that my pictures are lousy, by the way. These are taken indoors under glaring light. I can't cope with these conditions!