Design Seeds

Have you discovered Design Seeds? I recently read about it over on Canoe Ridge Creations and had to check it out. Beware — it's crazy addictive. Each day, she posts a picture and the colors she takes from it, as design inspirations. Like this one, which I absolutely love:

Color Pier from Design Seeds

Or what about this one?

Tagged from Design Seeds

And this? Beautiful.

Papered color from Design Seeds

Um, you know how I feel about teal.

Sea Glass from Design Seeds

I'll admit, I love color and patterns, but I'm pretty conservative about combining them. I'm never very confident about my choices, but this site is wonderful because you can find just about any color combination you could possibly imagine (and many you couldn't), which gives me the ability to see it all together, and maybe, just maybe, the courage to try using it in real life. Like this one, which needs to be in something soon:

Crystal color from Design Seeds

Plus, there's a palette search option, so you can look up palettes based on color, season, collection, and palette type. I have a feeling this site is going to be a favorite for a long time. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Thankful Mondays #11

Each Monday, I'm writing about things I'm thankful for. This is week 11. Read more about it here. (And sorry for the lack of photos this week. It's been raining cats and dogs here, which doesn't make for ideal photo-taking weather.)

151. Easter (Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!)

152. starting to feel better

153. our local library

154. gym memberships

155. Easter dinner (probably my favorite holiday meal)

156. our bed

157. the Internet

158. the Mavs' win tonight!

159. Easter candy

160. the first ripe strawberry in our new container garden

161. girls' night

162. basements (especially after another scary weekend of storms)

163. that no one was killed or even seriously injured in the Good Friday tornadoes

164. Easter bunnies

165. my Album Leaf station on Pandora (perfect for work background music)

A bunny for Jesselyn

Most Saturday mornings, we talk to my in-laws and niece (who live in California) via Google video chat. One morning, we happened to mention there's a bunny named Penny who lives in our backyard. Ever since, Jesselyn has asked about Penny on a regular basis. Do we have pictures? Is she still there? How's she doing? Well, finally, in honor of Easter, here's a bunny for Jesselyn.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Thankful Mondays #10

Each Monday, I'm writing about things I'm thankful for. This is week ten. Read more about it here.

136.  my husband's cooking

137. dinner with friends
138. DVR

139. tres leches
140. having someone to confide in
141. This American Life
142. eating lunch outside
143. planting our new garden
144. a local, organic nursery to help us with #143

145. a dad and a husband to help me reel in the big one
146. Holy Week
147. the awesome, old movie theaters in our town
148. Zyrtec
149. good friends deciding not to move away
150. dim sum

My husband, the marathoner

This past Sunday, Matt ran his very first marathon, right here in St. Louis. It turned out to be a hot and humid day that made a very hard task even harder, but he finished in a great time and is already thinking about the next one. I was so happy to stand by and cheer him and several friends on. Congrats, love!

 The big start: 7 a.m.

Runners passing the 6-mile mark. When Matt passed, I was too busy holding up his sign to get a pic.

Our friend Stephanie finishing the half marathon. Another friend, Jennifer, also finished the half, and our friend Chris completed the full marathon along with Matt.

 Matt's almost there!

 The big finish!

 A proud moment.

 Fancy medal.

This is the sign I made for him. Helpful hint if you're in a similar situation: make a black sign. It completely stood out, and Matt had no trouble seeing it.

Birthdays and giveaways

First, happy birthday to me and my step-brother Patrick! I'm the big 2-8 (inching ever closer to 30...eek!), and he's 25. Here's to another great year for us both!

(That's us on the left.)

Second, I wanted to show everyone my awesome giveaway winnings. I enter giveaways on other sewing blogs all the time, but I never win. Sad. That is, until I finally did! A few weeks ago, I won a giveaway over on Kaelin's blog, The Plaid Scottie (it's really good, and I highly recommend you check her out if you haven't already). My package arrived last week, but I didn't have a chance to take a photo until today. Isn't it so cute??

It's a Ta Dot Rainbow fat quarter bundle from Michael Miller, and the colors make me smile just looking at them. Now to decide how to use them!

Thankful Mondays #9

Each Monday, I'm writing about things I'm thankful for. This is week nine. Read more about it here.

Photo courtesy of NCAA.com

121.  a National Championship for the Texas A&M Women's Basketball team! Whoop!

122. butter

123. our new grill (Matt's really thankful for this one.)
124. food and drinks with friends outside on a beautiful day

125. watching my husband run his first marathon this weekend!
126. finishing our taxes
127. having a CPA in the family (see #126)
128. Magritte

129. motorcycle trips with my dad
130. walks around the neighborhood
131. a soft bed
132. baking with a good friend
133. a relatively easy bathing-suit buying experience (see #135)

134. birthdays (happy birthday to me and my brother Patrick tomorrow!)
135. booking our trip to Mexico (see #133)

Thankful Mondays #8

Each Monday, I'm writing about things I'm thankful for. This is week eight. Read more about it here.

106. pink nail polish

107. a wonderful, relaxing weekend with the husband

108. licking the beater

109. Van Gogh
110. onions

111. family trips
112. clear, blue skies

113. that I attended Texas A&M (good luck in the Women's Basketball NCAA Championship, lady Aggies!)

114. fabric sales
115. getting some awesome deals at one of the Borders bookstores that's closing nearby (but sad it's closing)

116. striped socks
117. parties
118. when my sister calls from Dallas and says "Just tonight, we were saying, "I wish the Schunkes could be here for this."
119. falling asleep to the sound of rain

120. winning giveaways! (I enter a ton of giveaways on other sewing blogs and FINALLY won one this weekend. Thank you, Kaelin from The Plaid Scottie. I can't wait to get my bundle!)

Style Stitches Challenge 4: Beautiful Balance Checkbook Cover fabrics

Well, I'm feeling a bit better today, enough so that I actually think I'll get some sewing done this weekend. I've been so tired that I haven't even had the energy to sew (crazy!), and I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

I'm planning to start on something small — an early start on my April "bag" for the Style Stitches Challenge. This month is the Beautiful Balance Checkbook Cover.

The pattern calls for home dec fabric, so I chose two when they were on sale at Joann's a while back. Recognize the blue fabric? I liked it so much I got it in two colors.

I'll be honest, my checkbook generally floats naked in my purse, so I'll be happy to give it a pretty home. Hopefully, this will be a good project to ease us into the "intermediate" bags in the challenge.

Have a great weekend!

Thankful Mondays #7

Sorry for another slow week in blogland. I've still been feeling a bit under the weather lately (maybe it's the allergies or the weather that won't make up its mind to be spring), so I'm taking it pretty slow around here. Hopefully, things will pick up this week.

Anyway, as you know, each Monday, I'm writing about things I'm thankful for. This is week seven. Read more about it here.

91. how happy my husband gets when he's in the kitchen (especially using his new meat grinder to make sausages this weekend)

92. mani/pedis

93. my crazy family
94. Ben Folds
95. finding a new great take-out place just around the corner (Mai Lee, we love you!)

96. Texas
97. good pizza
98. windows in my office

99. Enchanted Rock
100. garlic
101. the first buds of spring
102. french berry lemonade from Trader Joe's

103. small tractors
104. our farmer's market returning in 6 weeks!

105. freshly picked apples, especially when they're picked with friends

WIP Wednesday #6

It's been a bit of a slow week around here. I've been feeling a little under the weather and without much energy for sewing (that's a phrase I never thought I'd say), but there's been a bit of progress, so let's get to it. (In case you've missed out, I'm following along with Freshly Pieced's W.I.P. (Work In Progress) Wednesday series as a good way for me (and you) to keep track of what's going on around here.)

Completed this week:
Blocks #3 and 4 of my Early Bird/Kitchen Window quilt

Apparently, I was thinking of Christmas when I put these together.

Happy cups!

The Kindle sleeve tutorial has been posted!

Style Stitches Challenge bag #3, the Origami Bag (I ended up just making one, instead of the set of six, but I love the way it turned out, and so do my ribbons.)

Started this week:
Nada

In progress:
Blocking the Early Bird/Kitchen Window quilt

I love those toasters.

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. And be sure to click on the button to check out other great WIPs for more inspiration!

Style Stitches Challenge 3: Origami Bag Done

I'll be honest — it was hard for me to get too excited about this month's Style Stitches Challenge bag: the Origami Bag Set. It's basically a set of six zipper bags in different sizes.

It seemed like kind of a throwaway because there are a gazillion zipper bag tutorials out there, and I didn't really see that AB was bringing much new to the plate here. Plus, I didn't really need a zipper bag, and I certainly didn't need six. Still, I hated to just skip the month, so I decided to make one in the medium size, stealing an idea from the book to use it to store ribbons.

 And here it is!

I used the same Cosmo Cricket Tailor Made fabrics I used on Stella's sewing machine cover, so they match in the sewing room. Plus, it seemed like a good opportunity to break them out again.

The pattern was pretty easy, and this was definitely a beginner bag. I did appreciate all the size options AB provided, and I'm sure that will come in handy in the future. My only real complaint was with how she has you insert the zipper. You have to sew it down to one exterior piece, then stitch over that with the lining, then repeat on the other side. That's four stitches to attach one zipper, which seems excessive. I much prefer the method Noodlehead uses in this tutorial and will do this instead in the future.

I am glad my ribbons have a cute home now. Don't you love that owl ribbon?

Note: This month, I'm only participating in My Craft Crap's challenge because JemJam required you to make all six bags.