Living fabulous

When is it not totally crazy in the Hannafin household? The past few weeks have been just been busy. Busy, busy, busy. When I’m not at work, I’m doing stuff with the family, what little free time has been used up with getting crap done around the house. Even Facebook has been a victim and I can quickly update that from my phone, that is when the twins are not playing a game on it. Granny has been in town for the past week and it’s been nice to have time to visit with her. We babysat the twins over the weekend while their parents went to a wedding in Napa. I love those little guys with all my heart but Jesus Christ on a cracker, they can suck up what little energy my body can create in a twenty-four hour period! But I am happy to be there when they need me. We also enjoyed a lovely visit with Courtney’s cousin and her son who is a year older than the twins. The three boys got along great, like they had known each other for years. They are all in their tattling phase right now, so there was a lot of “Elisabet he took my book. Elisabet he hit me. Elisabet he won’t play with me”. Ahh those special family moments.

Since there is nothing on TV and my in-laws don’t subscribe to any movie channels, I had time to read. I started reading The Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. If you haven’t been watching The Fabulous Beekman Boys on Planet Green you are missing out on some great television. The book provides a background on how Josh and Brent found the Beekman mansion and decided that they wanted to change their lives. I was truly touched and inspired by their story. It made me think more about how I want to change things in my life. If they can do it so can I! Of course I can’t drop everything and buy a farm, but I can make little changes such as building my garden.

The whole garden thing has been in the plans for a few months but in the horrible Arizona summer there isn’t much I can plant. I am cracking the whip on Courtney to get the beds made so I can be ready to plant next month. I have been researching what I would like to grow and what can grow in Arizona, it looks like I am going to go the heirloom vegetable route. Stuff that we eat now only better. I’m also working on a growing schedule so we can eventually can and freeze stuff to have during the hot summer. I’m actually excited to make my own pickles and can tomatoes. I used to do that with my Nana when I was kid, of course I hated it then. Maybe it will be something that I can pass down to Maggie and the twins some day.

The quilt has been basted and is ready to quilt but I haven’t had time to sit down to get it done. I started practicing free motion quilting on practice squares and I just don’t have the hang of it yet. I’m trying the stippling pattern, I keep trapping myself and crossing stitches. Practice, practice, practice. I’ll get the hang of it soon.

The other thing that has me a bit preoccupied…guess…Twilight: Eclipse! It’s simply amazing but did you think that I would say anything different? Ha ha ha. I’ve seen it five times now and I still cry at the same part of the movie. I can’t help it, seeing it on the big screen is exactly how I pictured it in my head. Waiting for fifteen hours to see was totally worth it, I can’t wait for Breaking Dawn!

ds

Progress

So there it is…my first quilt top. I have to take off the borders and square things up a bit. I have all next week, well except Tues & Wed, to get it done. I have another quilt in my head, read to burst out for all to see. More progress pics soon.

It feels like I’ve won the lottery

I didn’t want to say anything on here until everything was set in stone and it was a done deal. This past year I have been taking on more work at the day job, gradually increasing my technical skills and putting my name out there. All the hard work paid off and I got a promotion! And this promotion comes with a long overdue pay increase and bonus. This pay increase will make a HUGE dent in our lives. HUGE! No more ‘creative’ financing and most importantly…NO MORE SECOND JOB! The second job was just becoming a thorn in my side and I was just not having any fun anymore. It’s time to leave.

I am so excited at where I’m at in my job. I have always had faith in my company and I feel like I have been rewarded for hanging in there for tens long years. It wasn’t until I moved to the tech side of the company that I realized how much opportunity there was for me to grow. My boss and most importantly my team is encouraging me to grow. I am very lucky to have the support to learn from the ground up. For once I feel like part of the team. Which is huge for me, three years ago my team hated the idea of me.

Leaving he second job also means that I will have more time for my hobbies. I started working on the quilt top but I soon realized that I need a sewing machine with a walking foot. I tried the generic walking foot but it didn’t fit. So I’m now looking at new sewing machines. I will also be upgrading my Canon Rebel for a new Canon 7D, which I am really excited about. I plan on taking full advantage of my six weeks off from work to dive into all my creative impulses! This is going to be fun!

Crafty girl

I don’t know why but I when I have a long period between posts I feel like I need to apologize to my poor little blog for being MIA. Honestly, the second job has been kicking my ass and I am really feeling like my time there is coming to an end very soon. It feels like the job is interrupting my life and keeping me from doing the things I WANT to do. It’s just a bother to stop knitting, scrapbooking or whatever it is that I’m working on to get to work.

Lately I have been feeling the urge to be crafty, not just knitting or scrapbooking, but I want to sew. I want to sew quilts. About ten years ago I made a my first quilt top but never finished it because it seemed so overwhelming. It’s always bothered me that I never finished it. I recently pulled out a small quilt top that I made as part of a quilting class I took. I stared at it all day long, it’s not show worthy or anything but I was proud of the work I did. The other day I came across this amazing site and I was totally blown away at her quilts and craftsmanship. Aren’t they amazing?!! I was truly inspired to make another attempt at quilting.

I don’t know where I get this need to be crafty. Sewing, knitting, or scrapbooking it all makes me feel so good, like it’s something I should be doing all the time. I remember watching my grandmother sew clothes for my sister and I when we were kids, I never appreciated the hard work that went into them. It wasn’t stuff that all the other kids were wearing, but now I realize how much more special those clothes were. I look at my niece Maggie and I’m itching to make cute dresses for her.

So here it is….I will complete three quilts by year’s end. I don’t know how I’m going to get them done, but I will do it. There. Its out there and now I need to stay committed to the goal. I am hoping that with my upcoming sabbatical I will be able to get a good start on them. And I will blog about it, my journey through quilting. This is going to be fun.

Creative streak

Reilly

Sorry for the lack in posts this past week.  Courtney and I are still working though loosing Chase and with the holiday hustle and bustle time just flies by.

I made a little scrapbook for Trudy this year.  You can see the rest of the pages on TwoPeas.  I spend three days in major scrapbooking mode but it was well worth it I think.  I also made a little 8×8″ canvas panel for Jack and Peggy but I forgot to get a picture of it.  The plan I had was to make cute aprons for the girls but my sewing machine crapped out..so scrapbook gifts won.  I really tried to use the stuff that I had instead of buying more stuff.  Overall it went well, however I did need to buy some embellishments.  Paper was not an issue because I’ve got a TON of that!  I think I’ve finally found a way to organize my supplies better so to clear out some space I’m going to sell 90% of my stock at our garage sale in January.  Seriously, everything is pretty much going.  I’m finding that I gravitate to the same stuff all the time so there is no need for ten different shades of pink cardstock.  Patterned paper is also going with the exception of a couple of collections that I use all the time. There will be a bunch of Basic Grey and American Crafts collections up for sale,  so if you are in the market for scrapbooking supplies on the cheap keep checking back here for more details.

Well I’m headed out to the Container Store for a new laundry basket.  Love that store!

Cranberry Vanilla Coffee Cake

I saw this cake posted on Alexis Stewart’s blog and thought I would give it a whirl.

I made two cakes and they were amazing! Probably one of the best coffee cakes I’ve ever made. The recipe is from Gourmet.com.I re-wrote the recipe to make it a little less confusing, you can print a copy if you like, Cranberry Vanilla Coffee Cake. I also used an 8″x3″ cake pans, one with the removable bottom and one without. The removable bottom pan made it much easier to remove the cake after cooling.

from Gourmet.com 

in the oven

YUM!

YUM!

I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

Energized

I got four pages done last night which is a lot for me.  I normally have a hard time getting my ideas on to paper, but last night once I got going there was no stopping.  I haven’t scrapbooked since March and not since I started my meds.  I really felt energized and creative, I haven’t felt that in a really long time.  I posted the layouts on TwoPeas.  I still have more to scrap but of course now I’m distracted.  It doesn’t help that G4 is running a Heroes marathon today.

Fern and David are in town this week.  Tonight it’s dinner at the other Hannafin house, BBQ chicken, yum!  Phoenix is getting the leftovers from Dolly so it’s freaking hot and humid today.  So not fun but I guess that’s why we all have pools.  Pools don’t do much good when its this hot, it’s like swimming in bathwater.

I have SQL training next week which will get me away from the office for a few days.  Hopefully I can gasp the information and it sticks.  I really want to figure out if I’m cut out for programming.  The Cisco classes helped steer me in that direction.  What stinks though is that I let Snapper do all the work on our labs.  I really need to take the last two classes over or at least do all the labs so I can grasp the material.  I’m going to start taking on a bit more at work.  Hopefully, that will give me better ammo for a promotion next January.  The other path is project management.  Snapper thinks I’m perfect for that role, and he’s probably right, it is a natural progression for me.  The thought of having the success of a project hinge on me makes me ill.  That’s what what stressing me out in my last role.  If I made a mistake then someone might not get their bonus, and I hated that feeling.  I would much rather be told what needs to be done and get it done.  I do have project management training in two weeks, if anything it will help me have a better understanding of how things get done.

Have a safe weekend!

A yummy mistake

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These are the chewy chocolate cookies from Martha Stewart Cookies.  They are suppose to be rolled in sanding sugar but I didn’t have that so I used granulated instead.  Well during baking the sugar melted.  I don’t know why I didn’t see that coming.  I grabbed the Heidi Swapp chipboard and used the negative space as a template.  I think it turned out rather well and they are still really yummy.

A much needed creative weekend

I so needed a weekend to just be creative for scrapbooking and photography.  CKC was in town this weekend.  I didn’t go, but I went to a crop with Michele last night.  I got three layouts completed and two cards.  I was ready to call it quits by 1030pm.  I also spent Friday night scrapping a baby album for my good friend Amy.  Amy was also kind enough to model for some pictures for me today.  You can check them out here:  Amy.

I babysat the twins all day which was exhausting but so much fun.  They are growing so much!  I’ve got a big week at work..I’m off to bed!

Scrapbookers…

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For the scrapbookers out there, I’m going to put this huge lot of Foofala patterned 12×12 paper on eBay sometime this week.  There are over eighty sheets of paper in this lot with multiple sheets per pattern.  Leave me a comment if you are interested.