Curtains

I finished up the curtains for the make stuff room. There wasn't enough color in there, so I picked colorful fabric for the curtains. hehe. They make me happy.

Paper Mache

I finally made it to a painting club meeting this summer. The project was to paint paper mache santas. I made my Santa over 4 years ago, along with a bunch of other things. I painted the Santa and two of the snowmen. I just have some Halloween themed ones to paint and then I can "close" out that project!!

Summer Stitching Club Quilt

I finished up my quilt project. I'm super happy with it. I still can't believe I did this by hand. Pretty darn cool. I can't wait for the fall one! There are more pictures on Flickr. Notice the invisible stitches in the binding on the back!! I actually did the blind hem stitch.

Summer Stitching Club

About 4 weeks ago I signed up for Wild Olive's Summer Stitching Club. I don't know why. I took an embroidery class two years ago and haven't really done much with it since. I am not really a fan of hand sewing, and I dislike cutting things out. This project has all of that. I wrangled a friend into doing with me, and that made a huge difference. We got all the hexagons cut out together and it was easy peasy with a rotary cutter.

The project has been a pleasant surprise. Each week I get a new embroidery pattern and it only takes an hour or so to do it. It's good practice, and they are so cute. I have actually enjoyed sewing the hexagons together. I think it's because things are small and it's easy to work on it for a short amount of time. I'm about a third of the way done with the project. I'm pretty happy that I challenged myself to take this on!

Crepe Dress

I took a 3 session dress of the month class at Stitch Lab, and made a super cute wrap around dress. It even has pockets. It's a pretty clever design, and was pretty easy to put together. My only complaint is that it's a tad big. I still don't seem to be able to pick the right size for a pattern. I'm sure I'll get better at that.

London Trip

I spend a wonderful week in London with my best friend from high school. We rented an apartment for the week....originally in the Whitechapel area, but got switched at the last minute to the uber swanky Knightsbridge area near Harrod's. Here's a link to photos.

London is not my favorite city, but I liked it more this time than I have on previous visits.

4/17--arrived in London. Super jetlagged, but managed to go to Picadilly to get my London Pass, and get some food before crashing. Nikki's flight was cancelled so she wouldn't arrive until the next day.

4/18--Day tour of Stonehenge, Lacock and Bath. We left London at 5:20 am. Yes...5:30 am!! We arrived at Stonehendge about 8am. This was a private viewing before Stonehenge opens and we were able to go in and around the stones, but under no circumstances could we touch the stones. It was amazing. Next we went to Lacock for a full English breakfast in an old pub and had about an hour total there. Last stop was Bath for a couple of hours. We had a tour of the baths, and then I also toured the abbey, which was amazing. Then back in London by about 5:30 pm. Nikki finally arrived about 6pm, and we had dinner and a few drinks that night.

4/19--London. We tried to queue for some day of tickets to a play Peter and Alice with Judi Dench, but didn't have any luck. We then went on a bus tour around London, and got off at the London Tower for a tour there. Queued again for return tickets to the play, and did manage to get tickets!! The play was amazing. I was in the 11th row and all the actors gave fantastic performances. Afterwards we had some drinks in Picadilly and then headed home.

4/20--London. We spent half the day in the Camden market. It's a mix of handcrafted goods and clothing stalls and stores. It was a crush of people, but pretty amazing too. I wound up buying a cute top, a sweater and a fitted winter coat. I also had an amazing gluten free crepe! :-D Next we went on a river cruise of the Thames. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. We had some drinks in at the flat and relaxed a bit.

4/21--Cardiff. We took the bus to Cardiff so we could go to the Dr. Who Experience. Unfortunately things did not work out us to spend any time exploring Cardiff or trying the local drink...Brains....beer! We hung out at a pub in London that night.

4/22--London. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral. We had lunch at Speedy's to bask in sharing the same space as Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. Got tickets for the London Eye, and then went over to Oxford St. for a little more shopping and then tea at Selfridges. We then went back for a late afternoon trip on the London Eye. That night we went out dancing until the wee hours.

4/23--London. We had a lovely full English breakfast, and then unfortunately had to leave to go home.

Kitchen Demo Day 73

My backsplash was put in while I was on vacation! I love it. The pictures don't quite do it justice, but the colors are fairly accurate.

The kitchen is about 98% done. I still need a couple of things done to the floor. So happy it's practically over!!