Rainbow

It rained this evening at my house, on and off for about an hour or so.  After it was over, my MIL called to tell us there was a wonderful rainbow that went all across the sky.
I think she had a better view of it from her house but this is the view we got:

This is the view on our back deck.
Lovely, isn't it?

Crazy Week

Well, it's been a crazy week so far.  Actually, the whole summer has been weird.

First, I put this dark purple polish on my toes and I don't like it but I'm too lazy to take it off and redo them.

I think I've spent more time with my chiropractor than I've spent with my son.

It's been so HOT.  Even hotter than usual for Texas and we haven't even been going to the pool.  Because it's too HOT.  Although I have to say, I'd much rather be too hot than be cold.  I hate cold weather and I've already started buying sweaters for fall/winter.

I've been working on Christmas items for what seems like forever.  There all over my sewing room and non of them are finished.  What's up with that?

We have 2 1/2 weeks before school starts back for us, so my son and I were going to do all our major errands this week.  We have to buy uniforms, take them to the embroidery store to get the school logo put on, buy school supplies, get vaccines, and on and on and on.
But instead, my poor sweetie got some kind of stomach virus and was sick for the past 2 days.  He feels better today though.  YAY!

Ok, that's enough about my life and my whining. (and yes, I would like some cheese with my whine - and maybe some wine with my whine too)   
Let's talk about some crafting.
I showed off my piecework in this post about a table runner that I'm making my MIL for Christmas.  Here is the fabric I bought to do the stripes on the side and back.

It has all of the same colors in it that the jellyroll fabric had.  I could have also gotten a brown fabric that would have looked good but I thought it would be too dark.
Here is the piecework pic to compare.

I have the lining fleece in and I've started quilting the table runner.  When I get it finished, I'll be sure to post pics.
One thing I learned with this project, was that I need a walking foot.  I've got another pieced project started that I need to start quilting but I'm waiting for the new walking foot that I ordered from Amazon.

So, that's it for today.  Stay inside, drink lots of water and don't have a heat stroke. :)

Star Cake

I originally posted about this cake HERE.  This is my July 4th cake that I mentioned previously which I couldn't get the pictures to load.  Well, here they are.

This is the same cake but I just wanted to show off my fondant work.  This was the first time that I had ever tried to use fondant and I thought it came out pretty good. 
The cake is covered in buttercream icing (LOTS of buttercream) and then my sweet son and I cut out tons of red and blue stars in the fondant and randomly placed them all over the cake.


I also sprinkled on some glittery sugar and patriotic stars.


This is a great white cake recipe - though it is time consuming to make.  It tastes DELICIOUS!

Thanks to my sweet Hubby for finally getting the pictures to work. :)

EtsyMom Street Team Christmas in July Sale!!

The EtsyMom Street Team is participating in the Christmas in July Sale!  YAY!

My shop's not participating, mostly because I couldn't get myself together enough to do it.  So sad.  But there are tons of really great shops that ARE participating.  You can get all kinds of awesome stuff - baby stuff, jewelry, artwork, graphics, home decor, gifts for mom - anything your heart desires!  EtsyMom's make cool stuff!

Just click HERE to go to the EtsyMom team blog and see all the shops with sales.  Some have percentages off, some have free shipping, some have other great deals.

Happy Shopping!

Look what I made!

I've been trying to make a blog post for several days about this great looking July 4th cake that I made but for some reason, I can't post the pics.  I'm so frustrated by it that I just have to cuss! $#(%)#((%&#)9877124##

Okay, I feel better now.  Let's all just move past that.  It was really AWESOME though.

I bought this sweet jelly roll at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago.

I bought it to try this - a table runner, which I found in the Summer edition of Quilts and More magazine.

I wanted to make it for my MIL for Christmas.  It will be only my second ever quilting project.  The first one was about 20 years ago and it was a Christmas tree skirt which I made for myself and we still use it every year.  It's really cute.  Here's a pic of it around our tree a few years ago.  It was all hand sewn and hand quilted.  I'm not sure why I didn't use a sewing machine except that I think I felt like I was cheating if I didn't hand sew it.  I no longer feel that way :)

I have enough of the jelly roll left to make myself one too or I may use it for something else.

Anyhoo, I finished piecing the top together on Saturday.  I think it came out pretty good.  I made it about a foot longer than the instructions so that it would hang off the ends of my MIL's table.  The table in the pic is my table.  Her table is oval and smaller than mine so I think it will work well.
Now I just need to finish up the backing and then I'm going to quilt it with my machine.

I'll keep you updated :)

Magic Wand

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that I had won 2nd place in the EMCA (Etsy Mom Curator Award) contest for the EtsyMom team.  My prize came from AppleNAmos which is a store on etsy owned by a cool EtsyMom.  She sells wooden toys made for baby and children.  Such cute stuff!  Wish I had had some of her cool toys when my son was little.

My prize was a beautiful magic wand.  I told my son that it was a REAL magic wand.  He rolled his eyes at me and grunted.  He's so not fun.

Thanks AppleNAmos!  I love my magic wand!  Your shop is awesome!