Mini Forest Tree Quilt

It's been a loooooong time since I've been on here! But I wanted to hop on and share a quilt that I made that I've been getting lots of questions about on Instagram. That's where you can find me these days (@naturallymeg) but it would be easier to explain the details of this quilt over here.

I love how my Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt turned out! I really wanted it to look like pine trees in a snowy forest, so that is why all the trees are green and the white background. I used this tutorial for the tree blocks from Diary of a Quilter.

I cut my trees down to 3.5" x 5" so they ended up being pretty small blocks. I tried to make the trees as uniform as I could, but that was tricky since it is kind of a free style pattern. And yes, I wasted half of the fabric. The way that the pattern works you would end up with white trees and a green background too, but I just wanted the green trees. The thrifty girl in me died a little by throwing the other block pieces out, but I think it was worth it to get all green trees with a white background.

I picked about 12 different fabrics to make the trees. I think it was key to have a couple solid greens in there too, so there is a solid dark green and a solid lighter green that I had on every row. The rest of the fabrics were mostly dots and stripes that I had stashed away from other projects. For the white I used kona white solid fabric.

I ended up with 107 tree blocks and 75 blank white squares that I randomly placed so that it had a more foresty look. 182 blocks total with 14 blocks across and 13 rows going down. This still ended up being smaller than I wanted for a lap quilt  (48x58 was the finished size with just the trees) so I added a 6 1/2" white border on all sides of it. It ended up being the perfect size to cuddle on the couch with my kids during the winter, just like I envisioned!

I machine quilted it with a matchstick quilting pattern. I just sewed in the ditch straight down and then measured 1 1/2" over which was down the center of the trees starting in the middle of the quilt and going to the end. Once that was done I went back and sewed another line in the middle of those two seams to finish it off. Then I flipped the quilt and did the other side. I hope this makes sense. If not then check out this great tutorial on straight line quilting by Suzy Quilts.

I picked a super soft minky fabric for the back and a striped binding. I'm so happy with how it turned out!

Pumpkins...

About five years ago I saw some cute fabric pumpkins that had real stems on the top, and sort of fell in love with them. So I asked my family members if they would pick pumpkins to decorate that had nice long stems and save the stems for me. They were troopers and saved their old stems... and then life happened and I tucked them away in a bag and haven't even used them all this time.

For craft night with my sister in law's we made this awesome faux mercury glass pumpkin (the silver one below) and I wanted to put together a little pumpkin trio. I had the wooden/ stick one already and decided that it was time to make the fabric pumpkins!

I used this super easy tutorial for them, and hot glued the stem on. Oh man... is it possible to fall in love with a pumpkin? I'm so happy with how it turned out!

I pulled out all the pumpkin-y fabric that I had in my stash and made a few more. I like them best lined up on the window seal from biggest to smallest...

I had some other close up pictures but blogger isn't letting me upload them, so maybe some other time. But they turned out so fun! I have six stems left, and all of these have some sort of polka dot on them (guess I really like polka dots?), so I'm going to get some velvet and other textures for the rest of them. I'm glad that I've held onto these all this time... they were worth the wait.

Halloween...

Yes, I know it was already a week ago! But I wanted to share my cute boys in their Halloween costumes on here.

I may have made a bit of a mistake last year... that is that I bought Blue a costume out of a bag. Now there is nothing wrong with buying a costume out of a bag, other than I don't want him to think that every year he can just pick whatever costume he wants and I will buy it for him. That kind of takes the fun out of Halloween for me. So this year he found some cheaply made Ninja costume that he wanted for $20 and I said, "nope... sorry". I tried to explain that part of the fun of Halloween is to make our costumes and go on a search to find the things that we need for them! I showed him this blog post about the costumes she has made for her kids and when he laid eyes on Luke Skywalker it was all over! He HAD to be Luke... even though we have never watched the Star Wars movies. So Luke it was...

I followed Miss Sheena's tutorial on using a women's white sweatshirt for the tunic. Brilliant! I made the white pants out of an old bed sheet that we had laying around and the pouch out of some old tan chords that Blue wore to church forever and are too small now. We thrifted the belt for $1 at DI and borrowed the light saber from his cousin. The cowboy boots... well, that was his little touch ;).

I paid less than $7 to put this costume together. I love that!

And our little pumpkin boy had this hat put on his head enough that he finally got used to it and didn't care anymore. I had a long sleeved white onsie under his other onsie on Halloween because it was pretty chilly. I'm suddenly super bad at taking pictures of my kids or getting out my camera on days like this. So I re-dressed him up a few days later and took this picture. Someday I will get it all figured out!

It all started with a pumpkin hat...

Five years ago when Blue was one year old, I got this crazy idea that my boy needed a pumpkin hat to wear for Halloween. Not just any pumpkin hat, but one knit lovingly by his mama. I had no clue how to knit, but this desire for a pumpkin hat is what got me started. I bought a "teach yourself to knit" book, and spent lots of time on you tube, and managed to make a pumpkin hat for Blue to wear to our church party.

Not too bad for my first knitting project! He of course hated it and would barely leave it on long enough for me to snap these pictures.

Little did I know then while making this pumpkin hat what a huge blessing knitting would be in my life. Knitting is a very dear friend of mine... I can't even count the number of doctor's appointments I have sat and waited for that have allowed me a little knitting time. I've been able to make gifts for friends, booties, baby leg warmers, hats, cowls, scarfs... the list goes on. I was able to make some of the hats I wore while I had cancer to keep my poor head covered and warm, as well as hats for my friends who have also had cancer. The most sacred knitting project I have done was the little soft white blanket I knit for Clayton that I wrapped him in before we buried him. Something that kept my hands and mind busy for the days between his birth and burial. The only temporal thing I ever made for my son I was able to make with my two hands, running every fiber of that yarn through my fingers. Yes, knitting is a very dear friend to me.

As the wind has grown a bit colder and the leaves have been falling from the trees, I've found myself once again with a burning desire to knit my new baby a pumpkin hat to wear for Halloween. This is the first project I've encountered since having him, and I was able to finish it up just before the big day!

It's fun for me to look back on the first pumpkin hat I made and see how much my knitting has improved over these last five years. This hat was a bit trickier than the first (I used this pattern), but I love the way it turned out. I wanted to take some pictures of it with Baby G modeling his new hat, so I waited until he was in a super happy mood. He was all smiles and coo's one afternoon so I grabbed the hat and had my husband hold him outside to take a few pictures.

And this is what I got...

In case you are wondering... yes, he's totally glaring at me in this picture for making him wear a stupid pumpkin hat.

Seriously!! Ugh... he really does not like the hat! I'm not sure if it's too tight or he just doesn't like hats, but he was not happy with us. We took a little break and let him say hi to the ladies before we tried for more pictures.

No such luck (and he couldn't have cared less for the chickens)...

Back inside with the hat off, he's as happy as can be again.

Oh well! He's still wearing it for Halloween. Or at least until we get tired of him complaining about it. We tried again to have him wear the hat later that night and he did a little better. No smiles but at least he wasn't fussy about it.

Even if my sons don't fully appreciate the Halloween pumpkin hat, I'm sure grateful that I can make such things for them. And that this silly desire of mine has sparked such a fun and relaxing hobby for me.

Pallet flag...

I've been itching to work on another pallet wood project lately. I just love taking a pile of old wood like this...

And turning it into something pretty like this...

Here is my new July decoration! I've decided to make at least one new decoration for each holiday a year. That way it's not over kill but I can build up my holiday décor slowly but surely. It was pretty simple, paint the boards, nail them to a frame,  put some stars on, simple right?

Sheesh... those stars were nearly the end of this project. Lets just take a moment and look at these perfectly circular and evenly spaced stars shall we?

I had the hardest time figuring out how to do the stars like this. That Betsy Ross... she's my new hero for sewing those 13 stars on the first flag. I wanted to do it like the first original flag but almost gave up.

After thinking about it for a few weeks I decided that I really needed to find a projector so that I could just project the image and trace it on. As fate would have it, one Sunday afternoon we were taking a walk and our neighbor up the street had an old projector out on the curb. So I knocked on her door and asked about the projector. She said that they had never been able to get it to work and I was welcome to have it to see if we had better luck. So we took it home and Trent changed all the connections in it, and we ordered a new light bulb. We got it to turn on but it wouldn't focus on anything at all... so I was stumped.

Then one day I came home and found this lovely box sitting on my front steps.

Turns out this same neighbor had a son who had a projector that he was going to take to the DI and they brought it down to me. They said that it worked just fine but there was a mirror inside that had fallen off and needed to be put back in place. We put the mirror back where it belonged and now I have a beautiful, functional projector!!!

Look at this beautiful thing! I love this projector... oh the projects I could do with this thing. I love that it folds up nice and small to be put away, and that it's not too heavy to move around.

This projector was the answer to my Betsy Ross wanna be star problem. I just printed off the star template onto a transparency and projected it onto the flag and traced the stars with a paint pen. Then I hand painted in all the stars. I'm super happy with how it turned out! If anyone wants to make some pallet art (or a Betsy Ross flag...) let me know! Cause I have a projector!!

So here is a bit of a sad crafting story. My whole idea about making one new craft for each holiday a year went bad in a bad way.

Remember this wreath I made last year? Well, here is a picture of it last year...

And here it is this year...

I'm calling this one a Pinterest fail. I had read somewhere (on Pinterest of course) that you could take a pool noodle and duct tape it in a circle and use it for a wreath form. So that's what I did for the wreath, and as you can see it now looks like a saggy old bag. It's awful. I still totally hung it up on my door... because this was my July craft for last year dangit! But I need to fix it... it's bad. I just don't know if I really want to spend the time again.

So just a word of warning... plastic pool noodles sag and do not make good wreath forms! Just buy a real wreath okay!

Valentines...

I'm sticking to my guns about no resolutions this year... but that doesn't mean that I don't have goals I would like to accomplish. I really would like to do a better job at decorating for the holidays... no pressure though! Just one thing/month/holiday at a time and see how it goes, right?

I realized over Christmas that part of the reason I have a hard time decorating for holiday's is because I don't have a lot of flat surface space to decorate on. I really only have this one little window seal.

So I think I need to work on more flat spaces, but until then I will try to fill the window seal up!

I made this heart garland with the boy a few years ago. It's simply just felt hearts all sewn in a row.

We made a few conversation hearts (idea from here) to go by our hugs and kisses block that we have.

I try to plant paper whites in the winter. It's something that my mother in law did and so I try to do it to remind my husband of his mom. We had to go to 4 nurseries to find paper white bulbs this year, but we found some and they are beautiful!!

 The arrow print is from this lovely blog, and I love how simple it is. I know that my yellow honeycomb vase isn't very Valentine-y, but I love it anyway. Plus it matches the centers of my pretty flowers.

I've wanted to make this burlap banner ever since I spied it in the background here.  I think it turned out super cute!

Burlap + typewriter font + sweet little heart... love it!

I feel like I've redeemed myself a little bit from my failed Halloween attempts. It feels good in here right now...

Holiday salad...

I volunteered to bring salad to Thanksgiving this year. I love salad! I love making it, eating it... I guess you can say I'm kind of a salad snob. I came up with this combination last year for Christmas and made it again this year for Thanksgiving. It was just as wonderful as I remembered it! Which was good because there were lots of naughty Thanksgiving foods that could have covered my plate, but I tried to be good and ate a lot of this yummy salad instead.

Here's what's in it:
 - green leaf lettuce (my favorite kind to make salads with)
 - grilled asparagus
 - pomegranate seeds
 - blue cheese
 - candied almonds

The combination was pretty to look at and amazing! To candy the almonds I used about 1 cup of slivered almonds and 1/2 cup of brown sugar (brown sugar is supposedly low glycemic... I don't buy it. It's still sugar! But I did use it and pretended that it was okay to eat). Put those two things in a sauce pan over medium high heat. Stir until the sugar melts and coats the nuts. Make sure you watch them and stir the whole time... they can burn if left unattended. They will be a nice gooey brown. Then spread out over parchment paper and let dry. Break apart into salad.

** A little update on my new eating plan. It's going really great! I'm totally used to eating this way now. I don't feel hungry during the day anymore and I eat when I'm suppose to and eat things that are good for my body. Pretty great if you ask me! I'm kicking myself a little for going on about how the weight was "melting off my body". HA! Seriously, that's when it pretty much ended. I didn't lose another pound until a week ago and now I'm down 9 lbs total. Oh well... it's something right!

Thanksgiving was hard. I reserved my salad plate for the naughty foods and I did eat a few bites of mashed potatoes and gravy and two little delightful candied yams. They were so yummy, but I only let myself eat a little bit. Pie, was another story though. I told myself I could eat one piece of my mom's amazing lemon meringue pie which is my favorite in the whole world. Well... I at two pieces of lemon and one piece of chocolate pie! I know, so super naughty. Oh well. And then the next day I went to a going away party for my best friend who is moving and ate sushi. I was hoping they would have brown rice there for the sushi but they did not. So I totally ate white rice sushi which is a HUGE no no. Oh well. Now I'm back on track and feeling better about slipping last weekend. I feel better too confessing to all of you here. But I guess that's not too bad for 1 1/2 months of eating low glycemic right?

Thankful tree...

 This week for family night we made a Thankful tree. First off, we are not very good at doing family night. We can probably count on one hand the number of times that we've done that this year. It's hard when the three of us do just about everything together everyday... but we're trying to be better. This was the perfect activity for such a night though.

First I found some branches outside that had fallen down in the snowstorm. Then I cut little leaves out of some brown paper sacks. Then I cut little strips of fabric from my stash that were fallish colors to tie the leaves to the branches. This activity was free... which is my favorite kind!

We sat down and wrote out what we were each thankful for on our little leaves. The boy drew pictures since he can't write yet.

Then we tied them all up to the branches...

Not bad little tree, not bad.

We have some left over in little buckets by the tree in case we come up with some more in the next week that we want to add. My favorite are the boy's. Here he is thankful for our house, and snowmen...

Mom (melts my heart that he can spell out Mom).

Last but not least, bouncy balls.

Wolverine + Lumberjacks

Our boy wanted to be Wolverine so badly this year! I like to make his costume, but I was not going to attempt Wolverine with the blade hands and the muscles that he was requesting.

He really liked getting into character in these pictures...

This is what I got when I asked him to smile... silly kid.

I have not dressed up for Halloween since I got married, I'm pretty sure. But Trent's family likes to do a Halloween party every year and this is the first year that we've been able to go! So we dressed up. I wanted to push the easy button on this one because I just wasn't feeling it... so we went as lumberjacks. We already had hats, flannel shirts, a plastic toy ax. It was easy. But the night before we had this great idea to make yarn beards for our costumes. OH BOY!!! I have to say that making and wearing a yarn beard is one of the funnest things I've ever done! I'm being totally serious. I could not stop laughing thinking about wearing my beard.

Beard kisses... a little strange, yet so funny!

I loved watching people look at us and our ridiculous beards. I may have stared at a few drivers along the road until they looked at me so that I could see them laugh at my dumb beard. It was so much fun! Now I'm trying to figure out where else I can wear my beard...

Anyone want a beard? I'm going to make our boy one just in case we need all of us to have beards sometime. That could happen right?

Halloween fail...

I pretty much failed at decorating for Halloween this year. I had good intentions, but I've been so busy canning and harvesting the food we grew around here that I really did not put much effort into decorating.

The only new decoration I was able to make was my awesome wreath for the front door. I did this in mid September with my friend on a girls day and I love it!

We sprayed the branch wreath black and added some black birds (with red eyes) and a pretty bow. I looked around on Pinterest for a wreath that I wanted to make but didn't find any that I loved, so we came up with this! Take that Pinterest (just kidding... I really do love you).

I pulled out the bat garland that I made about 4 years ago...

Trent's aunt brought over some pumpkins that she grew in her garden this year.

And... that's it! I feel bad. I wish that I would have tried a little harder. Maybe in March or April I can work on some Halloween crafts since Fall seems to be super busy for me.

My little dude tried to help out. He colored several pictures that he hung around with magnets on anything metal. Here is one that I though was super cute.

Maybe next year I will be better...