Baby Quilt for Bethany

Last week I made a baby quilt for my friend who's expecting her first baby in March. Beth and her husband are both close friends with The Chef. They went to college together at CU and we all go to church together now. Bethany is finishing her third year of medical school, and they decided to throw a baby into the mix to keep life interesting. She's my hero.

This is my first quilt I've completed start to finish without my mom's help. Although I did call Mom about ten times about the binding. (That's the thin border that "frames" the quilt) The binding was trickier than I thought, but I succeeded! Who says that a 1979 Singer sewing machine can't handle quilting? That little machine is sturdier than I am, and will probably be merrily sewing while I'm in a nursing home.

Anyway, here's some pictures of the quilt. It's Winnie the Pooh and bees... there's honeycomb on the front, and honeybees on the back. I thought it was cute. Everyone liked it, or at least that's what they said. They could have lied to be polite.

Bell Towers

Whenever I drive to work, the first thing I see of the university is all of these beautiful towers, bell towers and steeples that dot the campus. Aparently, one of the previous chancellor's of the University owned a copper mine, and so all of the roofs are copper. It's quite lovely. But recently with the dip in the economy and the soaring prices of copper, not quite as much copper is used in the architecture. The new parking garage doesn't have copper roofs like the others, but does have decorative copper panels on the sides of the building. Even private schools have to cut corners somewhere.

In the picture below, the bell tower in the front is right behind my office building, the Penrose Library. It is all that remains of another beautiful building on campus that was burned down twenty five years ago by an angry student who had received an F on a paper (or something like that). The tower in the background is the tower on top of the Ritchie Center... because all gyms and ice hockey rinks need a cathedralesque tower on top.

The Ritchie Center also holds the Coors Gym and sports venues. Nothing like having huge corporate sponsors put their names on educational buildings. But anyway, I recently had the opportunity to climb to the top of this tower and look out on Denver. It seems everything is always prettier when you're below something looking up, because once I was on top of the world (or at least this part of Denver) things didn't look so pretty.

By the way, the Penrose Library is the tan cubist building in the center of the above picture. It's the ugly building surrounded by the Ivy League brick wannabe buildings. (Sigh) Of course I have to work in the ugly building.

Scrappy Days...

Despite assurances from my husband in the contrary, some days I feel like a 57 year old woman trapped in the body of a twenty something. Maybe it was all those days in junior high and high school when I would go with my mom and grandma Marge to homemaker meetings, quilting clubs, library association meetings, etc. to "further my social experience." Maybe spending that much time with women at least twenty five years older than me made me grow up "old fashioned" or not modern in some way. Hmm...

But anyway, I've always loved to quilt. I love going to a craft or sewing store, picking out colors and finding a pattern that catches my eye. I love it! And I like the idea of creating something so spectacularly unique that no one will ever be able to duplicate it.

So last fall, just months ago when I wasn't overwhelmed by school, work, teaching, The Chef's culinary school, etc, I decided to make a baby quilt for my friend Amanda. This quilt combines Amanda and my dreams of this little boy being a future cowboy.




I love all the fabric! I want one too, for my future unborn children. Anyway... the next quilt I made was for my mother in law. I found a picture of a quilt like this online, it's antique and selling for over two grand. I thought it was interesting enough to copy, and I spent hours studying the quilt and designing my own pattern. Here it is... (note all the blocks are one inch... I think for a while I went temporarily insane).

The bottom picture is an image of the individual block. I made nine of these X's and then put them all together. It really was fun. I made another one just like this but blue for my other mother in law. I hope they love me more now. :)

27 Dresses...

So I really want to go see the new Katherine Heigl movie, 27 Dresses, about a woman who has been in 27 weddings but not her own. While I have been in my share of weddings, and I did in fact start panicking as I tried on bridesmaid dress number six that I would never in fact be a bride, it happened. My boyfriend wanted to be sure that I was going to say yes before he proposed, so he postponed asking me to the point that when The Chef did finally propose, I think I might have cut him off and shrieked "YES!" before he finished the question. But I am fuzzy about that, and since we have no proof, I am pleading that I was sweet and serene and patient, and he asked me to marry me, and I paused, collecting myself before I politely accepted. Whatever the proposal looked like, I am now indeed married to my prince. While a year and a half is not yet long enough for me to want to plan another wedding or start dreaming of what I'd done differently at our wedding, I do, in fact, dream of my dress quite a lot.

Yup... it's a gorgeous dress isn't it? I'll pretend I looked as good as the model in this picture, brides always look gorgeous, right? I always laughed at girls who drooled over their wedding dresses, or spent tons of money on their wedding dresses. After all you only get to wear the dress one time, right? As much as I silently scoffed at my friends, when it was my turn to wedding dress shop, I was scared. Nothing I tried on really cried "bride" to me. I went to five or six different stores over a period of two or three weeks. Nothing was working. And then, I found this dress. I never thought I'd want something like it, but once the salesclerk zipped up the back, I fell in love. And I do still dream about my dress a lot. I truely loved wearing the dress, and was so disappointed after the wedding was over and I knew I couldn't really get away with wearing the dress in public ever again. sigh.

I would like to thank all of the beautiful brides who prepared me for my wedding. I was a bridesmaid to them, and am so grateful none of my friends dressed me in a hideous southern belle hoop skirt or a lime green mini-skirt.
Amy W.
Stephanie S.
Lauren J.
Robin W.
Michelle L.
Jennifer N.
Joni S.
Sandra M.

Thank you all! And now, another view of the dress I'll never be able to wear again, but have stowed in a vacuum box in my parent's basement. (Although my dress wan't pink like this, but still equally pretty.)

Blustery Days

I spent my Christmas holidays on the ranch, and since it looked like this outside...


The Chef and I spent most of our time inside my parent's house, watching tv, drinking hot chocolate, and baking cookies... at the time it was blissful, and so so relaxing. But now, as I am in the crazy busy schedule of work, teaching, and being a student, I'm a bit depressed.

I'm depressed because it will be another eleven and a half months before I can go back and sit in that warm cozy house and do nothing. sniff.