Quilting, a new love found in 2009

As many of you know I picked up piece quilting this past year.  It is something I absolutely LOVE!  I'm afraid it might be one of those things my husband is scared of now : ).  Quilting isn't necessarily the cheapest, fastest, or easiest hobby I could have picked up.  And I started young!  Who knew you didn't have to be old and a grandma before quilting was even thought of?!

  I often have to answer Doug's question, "Well, why don't you finish this one first?"  Yep.  I admit I get a little OCD, its from my mother.  Once I decide to do one for someone I have to start it, even if I'm already working on several other projects.  Needless to say I'm a little head-over-heels when it comes to spending hours with some fabric and my sewing machine.

So here are some pictures of quilts I made in 2009:

     

This one I made for my brother Bryce and his wife Sonya.  It was my wedding gift to them.  It was my first real piece quilt and turned out so great!

      

This was a quick rag quilt for a baby shower I went to.  So fun, cute, and super fast!

     

This was one for my sister-in-law Becca and her husband Craig.  It was also a wedding gift.  It made great memories that won't be forgotten by anyone in the Hansen family.  Everyone put a stitch in somewhere!

This one I made for my sister-in-law Leslie.  It was a Christmas gift which still needs to be quilted! (anytime Leslie, anytime!)

This one I made for my Mother-in-law Cheryl.  It was so beautiful when I saw it online as a quilt block pattern, I just couldn't pass.  It was a Christmas gift, which also needs to be quilted : )

I had so much fun last year that I started early this year.  I am making my mom a quilt for her new office/guest bedroom.  They painted and have all new decor so she needs something new that will match.  My camera died and so I don't have pictures of it. I will post when I get some.

I am also working on a crib set for my sister-in-law Rachel.  We are so excited for them and I'm absolutely loving making this!  I've decided not to post any pictures because I don't want to spoil it.  I will post them when the whole thing is finished!

New Year Resolutions? Anyone?

Oh it is sad when I look at the calendar and realize January is gone and I haven't even been able to follow up on my New Year Resolutions for a month.  Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me?  I have to believe that I'm not the only one who finds themselves in this predicament.

Well and I suppose I can't be extremely hard on myself.  It's just not that easy to exercise when there is snow piled on the ground.  I just wish I could go out for a run or a bike ride.  Or that we could jump in the car and go rock climbing somewhere.  I'm just not that good at doing an all inside exercise program, its not so fun.  So if anyone has any suggestions for how they deal with this problem in the winter, please please let me know.  Then maybe I will feel more accomplished when it comes to New Year Resolutions.

Christmas in Nevada

This is the first year that Doug and I have spent Christmas with my family.  I was very happy to leave the cold weather behind for almost 2 weeks!  Yes snow is great on Christmas but.....you can only handle it for so long.  So we got to go down to Logandale and spend it in 50 degree weather.

All of my siblings were home except for Logan, who is on his mission in DC.  It was great to see my family!  We had fun playing games and just relaxing.  My favorite tradition is to have a big Christmas Eve dinner.  I just love having everyone around the table and the time we get to spend with each other.  Here is our big spread and of course our desert!  That is one big apple pie(definitely my favorite)!

      

I love being in my parents house around Christmas!  My Mom's decorations are amazing and Dad always has a huge fire blazing (even if its not that cold outside haha).  We bake and cook and cook and bake!  It seemed like most of our time was spent in the kitchen but I loved it!  One thing my Dad said while we were there was, "You know I would be fine just skipping presents and everything every year.  It's the most fun to just have my kids around and spending time with each other."  Amen Dad!  Thanks! You helped me find the true meaning of Christmas.  We enjoyed every minute of just being around our family!

Burley enjoyed presents after he realized he got something fun and new every time we started ripping the paper off of one.  After a while though he was more excited to rip the paper balls up that we were throwing into the garbage pile.  He got a very cute scarf and new bone from Mom and Dad Hansen, some very delicious treats from Mom and Dad Waite, and a new bed, rope toy, and of course new bones from us.  He was one happy dog!

     

The biggest project we undertook was making a massive gingerbread house.  I don't know why we decided to do it, maybe because I just like to be challenged and stressed, or maybe it was the fact that my brother thought we couldn't do it.  So we built this monster with the help of many hands.  It took so long we didn't even have it finished by the time we left.  So I guess we will save it and work on it again sometime who knows : ).

          

Oh I must give credit to Doug.  He was the amazing architect of the roof and without him I think I would have ruined the whole thing.  The singles we made out of ginger snaps.  We used just the head of a ginger bread man cookie cutter.  The two tone color is pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.  Funny thing is its because I burnt the first batch that we even got the idea to make the roof look so cool.  My sister made the windows look awesome, I again would've ruined them by myself.  We melted sugar for them and used tooth picks for the window pane look.  It is missing the deck railing, some landscaping work, and snow but at least the house was finished!

Christmas Tree Hunting!

Oh how I love Christmas!  And of course it is always a busy time of year so I am a little late in writing about it : ).  We started the season off a day or two after thanksgiving by going tree hunting!  We have cut down one tree in the past and it was a lot of fun so we thought we should do it again.  Believe me you should plan before you go!

We left a little later than we should have and so decided not to go very far.  We ended up having the choice of one kind of tree (and they weren't my favorite kind).  They were all very sparse or had two trunks.  Finally after hunting all over the side of the mountain we settled for one.  I think we kept trying to talk ourselves into how great it would look.  So we chopped it down and strapped it to the car.

When we got home, we measured it and found it was 12 1/2 feet tall.  Of course it was too tall!  So we had to cut the bottom half off, which by the way was the best part about the tree.  We were left with a little tree that had branches about every 2 feet.  Not my kind of Christmas tree : (.  It was too sad for me to even take a picture of so you will just have to imagine it.

Then we had a GREAT idea!  I'd heard all the stories about how Grandpa Boyer would always buy two not so great trees and use the branches off of one to make the other look fantastic.  He would drill holes and stick the branches in.  So we tried that with a couple branches from the bottom half of the tree......It looked good......but.....if you even breathed on them the wrong way they fell out!  I do not know how Grandpa Boyer could possibly have made a tree that they could decorate!

We soon decided that it was just not going to work to put extra branches in.  Now we were left with the problem of holes drilled in a poor tree that didn't have enough branches to cover them up.  Plus the fact that the tree was going to die ten times faster because we had drilled holes into it.  So our final decision was to just go buy one.  And here it is, the best tree we've ever had.

      

I learned many things about Christmas Tree Hunting:

1. Leave early enough to go somewhere with a variety of trees.

2. If you're trying to convince yourself that the tree will be ok....it most likely is not going to look as good when you get home : )  Every tree looks good on the mountain.

3. Grandpa Boyer had some secret way to make branches stick into the other tree. Without that secret you should not attempt to do it on your own.

4. Grandpa Boyer got the trees the day before Christmas eve and it was taken down the day after Christmas.  Fake branches will most likely die a lot quicker than the rest of the tree (Yes we only thought of this after we had put them in).

5.  Don't cut a tree down that you may not end up using, you feel really bad for cutting it down.  I'm sad I ended the poor trees life for no reason.

6. Cutting down your own tree will always be a wonderful experience and give you great memories!  It's not about the way the tree looks but about the time you spend with each other as a family : )!