Rarely when I make a baby quilt do I get to see the mother and baby open the package together.

This time was special. We traveled to Illinois this past weekend and I was delighted to present my friend, Kate, and her son Henry with a quilt I’d made for him. Henry is about 10 months old. It was so wonderful to finally meet him and so sweet to see him play peek-a-boo with the quilt.

The whole family—mom, dad and baby—loved the quilt and it was so special to be there to give them this gift.

This was a quilt of firsts for me.
It was my first Amy Butler quilt. I used Amy Butler’s “Nora’s Mid Mod 2 quilt” pattern for the front with a few modifications to the measurements and I used more kid-friendly fabrics. I love her designs and this one was quite easy to follow.

It was my first quilt using free-motion quilting. I did swirls along the green strips because of the size of the quilt it was about all I could handle. Someday I’ll try other patterns on a real quilt instead of my free-motion practice quilt.

I also learned a big lesson to buy a few extra spools of thread and also how to adjust my machine’s tension. This quilt had me going crazy a couple of times because the thread was pulling horribly on the back while the front looked beautiful. I finally played with the tension and in the end the back looked almost as wonderful as the front.

I quilted the Henry’s name into the quilt, something that I’ve always thought was so cool but until I learned how to free-motion quilt I never knew how to do.

It’s always bittersweet for me to give a quilt away but once I saw Henry and Kate’s faces I knew the quilt was well-loved.

We thought spring was here along with a taste of summer last week now we’re back to cold and rain. The flowers and gardening happening around our house make up for the cool and cloudy days.

Yesterday was the first Saturday in four weeks that I was not out in a garden in some fashion. We still have two vegetable gardens going this year with chard, onions, lettuce, beets and carrots that are already planted. On the front and back porch and basement are flowers, tomatoes and peppers waiting to be planted. The last two years I’ve planted everything on Memorial Day weekend and it’s looking like that is going to be another planting weekend.

Also in the back I’ve started a shade garden. Last year it had two hostas this year after splitting one of my hostas and splitting ones I’ve received from a couple of neighbors I now have about 19 hosta plants with some ajuga, Solomon’s Seal and a few ferns added to the mix. I bought a Guacamole hosta that I can’t wait to see full-grown.

While I wasn’t in the garden yesterday I was doing gardeny things like preparing terrariums (one of my new favorite things) for my mother and grandmother as Mother’s Day gifts.
We celebrated Mother’s Day a week late this year since my parents were on their three-week trip to Spain last weekend. Today I gave the terrariums to their respective recipients and the terrariums were well-loved.

Not much else is new around here. I’m preparing for summer reading at the library with a completely redesigned program for the kids. I’ve hired all of my volunteers and have orientation tomorrow. To promote summer reading for our library, we visit the elementary schools and the middle school. Last week, I asked a second grade teacher to video the story we told the elementary school kids. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Spring arrived last week and winter decided it wasn’t quite ready to loosen its grip on us just yet. Last week, we had 70 degree weather, I was in a skirt, t-shirt and sandals and yesterday…it snowed. As is usually the case in last March in Kansas. Heck, March in the midwest always seems to tease us with lovely spring-like weather only to remind us that it’s not quite spring…yet!
Our front yard has been lovely to come home to with brightly colored daffodils and crocus. For days on end, I would arrive home only to get the camera and rush out to take photos of the newly bloomed crocus. All of the hard work planting over 100 bulbs last fall has definitely paid off. It’s such a lovely surprise to see what color crocus pops up where since I didn’t keep track of what I planted where. I’m anxious to see what tulips come up in the next few weeks. Our little vegetable garden has started to grow, mostly in our basement. We have peppers, tomatoes started and lettuce in the garden outside. We’re paring back a bit from last year were we were overwhelmed with weeds. This year we’re starting more outside and allowing more space for the squash and lettuce in the garden.

Our other big project going on is we decided we’d had enough of the wallpaper in our bathroom. We moved into my late aunt’s house who had great taste. She was very into Asian decorating after having visited many countries in Asia but her style just isn’t our style. So we tried our hand at our first DIY home improvement project this weekend and stripped the wallpaper in the bathroom. It was a learning experience and we’re hoping to paint this weekend after we repair a few patches in the walls. We learned a lot this weekend for future projects, one very important one is that several trips to the hardware store should be expected. We also learned how to disconnect the light fixture on the wall. We’re shopping for a new light fixture since the old one we don’t even want to put back up. It was too unwieldy and we don’t want to have to take it down again.

Of course after we finished stripping the bathroom, we started talking about doing our office and bedroom. It will be a while but it hasn’t stopped me from picking up paint chips when we’re at the hardware stores.

Image from goodreads.com

Finally, I can’t end this post without telling you, as I’ve told nearly everyone I talk to, about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I read and listen to so many books that few affect me the way this book has. I feel I’m mildly obsessed with this book and I am having a hard time finding my next book. Usually when I listen to an audiobook, I listen to it during my commute and once in a while during lunch. With this book, I listened to it while I was fixing and eating breakfast and any other time I could find to listen. Rarely do I finish a 12 1/2 hour book in five days. I’ll let you read the description of the book and reviews as I don’t feel as though my review does it justice.

May spring be with us all soon. It’s been a long, hard winter.

Two posts in two weeks. *Gasp!* This week was long and short all at the same time. On Tuesday, we were blessed with the blizzard that hit the rest of the midwest. Total snowfall 10.5 inches. Both Tuesday and Wednesday, I had snow days home from work, thank goodness. Driving 15 miles to work would have been downright dangerous. Needless to say, Bryan worked both days though his library closed early on Tuesday and opened at noon on Wednesday.

Besides the blowing and the snowing sideways, the blizzard presented other reasons to watch the snow come down. About 3:30pm, the postman’s truck got stuck in a snowbank across the street from our house. About 4:30pm, we realized he was still there and hoped that someone would be there to rescue him soon. Bryan took some almonds out to him and to let him know if he needed to use the facilities, he could just knock on our door. About an hour later, he took us up on the offer and said he hoped that someone would be there soon. After nearly three hours, a truck arrived to pull the mail truck out of the snow. We’d received so much snow that the truck pulling the mail truck out was struggling on our street.

On my days home, I got a lot of quilting done. I’ve been working on this quilt since August and hope to have it off to the recipient soon as I have other projects to be started. I challenged myself this time with free-motion quilting. I did it along certain parts of the quilt and with the variegated thread, it looks really cool. Free-motion quilting definitely takes some practice and a larger sewing space.

I don’t read as many blogs as I used to but there are a few that I read, one in particular is Young House Love. They are all about re-purposing things you already have and we were so excited today to get this moved around in our basement. When my aunt put the addition on the house we live in about four years ago, these cabinets that had been in the “eat-in” area of the kitchen were moved down to the basement. During that time they have collected dust and been home to random items. Last spring after using two small tables for our seeds I decided I wanted to use these cabinets for seed-starting and garden tool storage. This morning, we put on our grubby clothes and decided that today we would finally get these cabinets moved. They used to sit side-by-side with a counter-top ledge but because of extra siding being stored in our basement, we had to set them up in this arrangement, which actually works out perfectly. (We don’t quite know what the odd pipe in the middle of the wall is about but it’s definitely not a lab despite its looks.) I’ve already moved all of my garden supplies and tools into the cabinets and am ready to start flower seeds and cold weather veggies next week. Now I can’t wait for spring!

Again sorry for the long time away. This winter has felt more brutal than those in years past for some reason. I feel like I’ve just been cold the last two months. I’m attributing it all to the fact that I’m 30 pounds lighter than I was last winter. All of the extra padding must have made a girl a bit warmer. We’ve had two big snow storms in the last three weeks with another forecast for this week. It seems as though the snow partially melts just in time for the next storm to head our way. The one coming this week sounds worse than the last two. Ugh!

We’ve been reading a lot this winter (what else is new), catching up on some Oscar contender movies and also enjoying our warm upstairs. Crafting is especially fun in the winter when our upstairs feels 10 degrees warmer than downstairs. Though I did knit a pair of mittens for dear L for Christmas. It was a fun pattern to knit and went quite quickly with the first mitten being done in the car on the way to Illinois for Thanksgiving.

As we’ve settled into our gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free diet for the last seven months we’ve made some great food. At Christmas, we received the best appliance known to man and woman — a Vitamix! After seeing one at CostCo over a year ago, I began to lust after one. We thought it would be a year before we could buy one but my parents were extremely generous and gave us one for Christmas. It has become the most used appliance in our kitchen, some days being used up to four times in one day. We’ve made our share of smoothies, soup, almond/cashew butter, salsa, marinara sauce and our favorite use – brown rice flour. We just throw three cups of brown rice in the dry container, flip the switch and in less than two minutes we have amazing brown rice flour.

A few weeks ago, we discovered Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book chock full of vegan and gluten-free recipes, including our new favorite pizza crust. After seven months of experimenting with chickpea flour for a pizza crust to less than thrilling reviews this cookbook has already paid for itself in the satisfaction of being able to make pizza at home again. And we don’t need to buy the brown rice flour.

I honestly don’t know where the time has gone these last few months. It seems like so long ago we were on the beaches of Connecticut but just the other day a dear friend was getting married in Connecticut and another a few weeks later in Kansas. September flew by but with lovely mild weather and now we’re enjoying the amazing colors of fall. We recently made a trip to the local cider mill, going through the corn maze and enjoying fresh cider. Mmm.

A few weeks ago there was the threat of frost so we madly picked every tomato on the vines. The milder weather in September definitely made up for the lack of tomatoes in August. We filled two large bags full of tomatoes and peppers. Then it didn’t freeze. Fortunately, the tomatoes have continued to grow and we’re still ripening tomatoes on the window sill. We’ve been more blessed with tomatoes than we ever thought we would be considering what a hot and dry summer we had.

In addition to tomatoes, the flowers in the gardens have continued to bloom with red, pink and orange flowers. It’s so lovely to come home to red gerbera daisies still blooming in the front and a swath of pink and orange in the back. Many of the orange cosmos that continue to bloom are self-seeded plants from two plants I planted in May.

Lately, I’ve been hoping that the reading of knitting blogs and the cooler weather will inspire me to knit but I haven’t had the knitting itch yet. Meanwhile, Bryan’s mittens from last winter just lack thumbs. He’s been kindly reminding me that he’ll need them when it gets cold.

Kundalini yoga has become my favorite form of relaxation and I’ve found myself doing it when I’m exhausted after work. I’ve noticed such a difference in my energy levels since I started the yoga practice-five, six and sometimes seven days a week.

I hope you’re all having a lovely fall and taking in all of the beautiful changes happening around us. I don’t remember the last time I so loved fall.

Our garden is growing quite well this summer. Though we think we overdid a bit by doubling the size of last year’s garden. Next year, we’ll plan out the gardens a bit differently. The tomatoes, squash, peppers and weeds are all growing quite nicely. Unfortunately, over a period of two weeks the weeds grew so much in our garden that you could barely see the pepper plants.

Garden sitters to the rescue who came out and weeded one of our gardens and gave us our garden back. Now we’re harvesting cherry tomatoes, Mariana tomatoes, Jimmy Nardello peppers (I love how curly they are) and Carmen peppers with Brandywine tomatoes perfect for picking tomorrow.

This has been a summer of new eating for us. Health issues have forced me completely revamp my diet. I can’t eat any processed foods of any kind – no processed flour, no sugar. It’s all whole foods for me along with some new finds such as sprouted beans and grains. It’s been a trial and sometimes I really miss chocolate, and it’s difficult when we go out to miss out on the bread or chips. I remind myself why I have to do this and know it could be worse because overall, things are well and I’m enjoying cherry tomatoes and peppers from our garden every morning with my scrambled eggs.