A Wedding Quilt

 My brother-in-law recently married and he is the last of my husband's siblings to do so. I had a brilliant idea, maybe crazy too, to create a big quilt for my brother and his fiancee for their wedding day. I started designing the quilt in January, before they announced their engagement in February, and collected different fabrics that reflected their likes and hobbies. Music is a big part of their lives and so there is music note fabric in a few of the squares. This was a longer undertaking that involved 4 months of work and my sewing machine parked on my kitchen table the whole time.

There are 12 inch half square triangle blocks on the whole thing and a 6 inch border around it. There's 7 blocks across and 8 blocks down. I made it for a queen bed with a nice drop on the sides. Only four color palates, but they look great in the diagonal. And there is black flannel on the back. She gets cold toes all the time.

Piecing the top was ok, but getting those half square triangles straight can be challenging when they're so big. This time I wanted to try spray basting, instead of locating 600 safety pins and hoping I don't put wrinkles in the fabric. I really like the 505 spray basting! You spray it on the batting, just in case it could do something odd to your fabric. But you have time to lift and reposition  your fabric to get it smooth. It really does stay put while quilting. I put safety pins along the border of the top as an extra precaution and to keep the fabric nicer on the edges. The spray basting doesn't gum up or slow down your needle and will release the tack when washed, but will not completely wash out..hence sprayed on the batting.

I have a regular sized sewing machine that has some quilting accessories like the detachable quilting table and some useful sewing feet, but shoving a queen to king sized quilt through the arm of a regular machine is no small feat! Good thing I only do straight line quilting on that machine. Every time I had to sew a new line, my hubby would unfold it and refold it along the seam or drawn quilt line so that it sits balanced in my lap and the one side will fit under the machine. Then, he would sit on the other side of the table and pull the fabric through smoothly so I don't get muscle cramps in my arm and shoulders. That took a couple weeks of just quilting the lines.

I did want to put an applique in the corner to emphasize their love of music, and did a satin stitch all the way around the notes. Then I tried my hand at free motion quilting around those notes. It's not my favorite, or I just need more practice. Don't look too closely at it.

I hope they like it and use it well.

P&G Bounty Advanced Paper Towels and Magic Erasers Review

It's time for a product review! Cleaning may not be everyone's favorite pastime, but it's one of those necessary evils. I was asked to review Proctor & Gamble products that are available at Costco from Smiley360. The P&G bag was the freebie, but I had to buy my own product to review.

We did buy the Bounty Advanced paper towels and the Magic Erasers. I did not purchase the Tide Pods or the Downy Unstoppables, as we are very sensitive to perfumes and fragrances as a family. (And I secretly want to slap anyone that uses too much perfume in the first place.)

Last year we bought a house and still have a lot of things that are one the 'clean and repair it' list. Our blinds in the master bathroom  were kinda moldy and showing rust. I've been after my husband for months to clean those.

So we put our new cleaning products to the test. After trying out a towel or two and a cut up magic eraser, my hubby found the right combo on how to get the blinds clean. First he used a Clorox wipe on the slats. You have to have something with a cleaning solution in it to cut through the grime. A wet towel won't help much, no matter who manufactured it.

Then he used the magic eraser to follow up on the harder to scrub off dirt and stains. Here is a before picture with brown spots on the edges.

Then he used light pressure to take them off with the magic eraser. Don't scrub too hard or the finish will come off the metal slats.

Then he had a routine with the paper towels. He said after the Clorox wipe and magic eraser. He wiped down the slat with a damp towel to pick up any floating dirt, and then dried it with a dry paper towel.

After two hours of cleaning each filthy slat..they were visibly clean!

There was still some deep embedded grime on the blinds, but we didn't want the paint on the slats to scratch off like the ones in the kitchen that someone cleaned too hard. (We didn't do it!)

I use magic erasers all the time to clean deep seated dirt in just about everything. They also clean crayon off Grandma's kitchen table when a nephew felt a little artistic. The paper towels are thicker than their normal brand, and we didn't go through that many on this cleaning project. Which is a good thing!

Vitafusion Adult Gummy Vitamins

Through Smiley360, I received Vitafusion Adult Gummy Vitamins for free in exchange for my review. Opinions are definitely mine.

I tried the Beauty Sleep ones first since it was bedtime when I finally opened my box. They tasted like Cherry-Vanilla, exactly like the bottle says. It contains 3mg of melatonin to support sleep. Definitely take them before bed, because they will make you sleepy within the 30-60 minutes. I don't remember when I fell asleep, but it was a little faster than normal. I do remember still tossing and turning though. So, no, you're not going to sleep like a log.

The Hair, Skin and Nails gummies taste like raspberry. We'll see if they help keep my nails from chipping and the rest looking better than usual. 

I decided not to try the Relaxed Mood vitamins that contain L-Theanine, to avoid a possible drug interaction with my blood pressure medication. Always check drug interactions with what you take for health; both doctor prescribed medications and over-the-counter medications and supplements. 

Edit 4/30/16

So, I only take the Beauty Sleep vitamins when my brain won't shut off before bed, and I'm thinking of a million things that definitely can wait 'til morning. It's the perfect thing to help shut the thinking off. Any other time, I'm good and fall asleep like normal with out them.

The Hair, Skin & Nails gummies are just a multi-vitamin with extra Vitamin A, C and Biotin that supports above features. I can't tell if they're supporting anything extra, because my hair, skin and nails always start to look better in the spring after we get out of the dry winter around here in Utah. After a while I just forget to take them. 

I did find that the Hair, Skin and Nails gummies have this odd texture with little pieces of gelatin that didn't seem to get fully dissolved. Sometimes like the chewier skin that forms on Jello. It could be something in the multi-vitamin formula that doesn't make the solution as smooth. But hey, if you think you're not getting enough vitamins everyday and your hair, skin and nails look horrible year round, give them a try. They're better than some giant horse pill vitamins.

Update 6/5/19 I revisited the Vitafusion Hair Skin & Nails gummies in a new post here.

Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt 2016

It's bunny boxes for Easter! I didn't buy anything new for this project. I used what I had. I saw many projects on Pintrest using the Stampin' Up! Curvy Keepsakes Box die and turning it into a bunch of creature for the season. So why not bunnies?

I used the mini heart punch from the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack for the adorable little bunny nose. Drew on the face with a black pigma pen and used A Heartfelt Creations stamp and die set that are long retired. They were individual lily petals that I thought looks like the inside of an ear.

Not shown is the back where I cut a cotton ball in half and glued it on for the fluffy little cotton tail. Of course we filled them with lots of yummy chocolate treats.

These boxes hold a lot of treats inside. They're bigger than you think they are. The fun part was making 65 of them for the egg hunt. I enlisted my husband's family to help assemble them. I think they appreciate all the effort it takes to make a large orders of crafts.

We hung them from our fruit trees with colorful bakers twine. It looks like a curtain of cute bunny fruit.

The kids came around and pointed at which bunny they wanted and we cut them down to land in their Easter baskets. Moms thought they were adorable and made sure they told their visiting family that we make the treat containers every year.

Relief Society Birthday Gift Bags -- Year 2

Yeah, my ward Relief Society asked me to help make the birthday gifts, again. Here we have these adorable fabric mini totes!

The pattern for these fabric bags is from All People Quilt designed by Monica Solorio-Snow of Happy Zombie. You can get 4 bags from two fabric fat quarters and a couple yards of 3/8" ribbon.

I had a good time making these bags, and I'm still not finished. I had to cut fabric for 140 bags. Quilters cotton is best, but almost any cotton is best. Don't make the same mistake I did and cut 2 sets of fabric the wrong width and have to dive into my own stash and see what I could salvage. Auuggghhh!

You will need to press the horizontal seams, just like in quilting. After that, pressing doesn't much matter. I didn't hand stitch the inside seam closed as the instructions suggest, I just did a narrow top stitch to close up the end on my machine. It's on the inside, no one looks that close.

The Relief Society essentials that went in the bag were, a travel-pack of tissues, lip balm and mints. My birthday isn't until May, so I don't have mine, yet. 

Kon-Mari Update 2

No picture today, but that pile in the guest room is growing!

We went through the craft supplies...the rubber stamps, punches, dies, paper, glues, embellishments, yarns, beads and so on.

I got all of my stamps in the same place again and all the paper is put away in the same place too. Everything else is pared down and I know what's in them now.

We need to keep going on the fabric, games, ponies and kitchen supplies. We're hoping to meet the deadline of the 19th for the yard sale, so far so good.

Update: Ok, so we had our yard sale and hubby and I made over $350 at our yard sale, plus another $150 on eBay for the items that were worth more online than a yard sale. I may not have a place for everything yet, but I do use what I have left. :)

Kon-Mari Tidying Up Update

Last post was a book review of Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Well, here would be the updates of what my husband and I did since then.

This would be our closet where is has all of mine and my husband's clothes, including our winter clothes and jackets. They all fit in the closet! And it's not a walk-in closet either.

It's our sock drawer, scarves, loungewear and my husband's idea of folding his pants and shorts. At least he did purge the drawer. They're all pretty and you can see what is in your drawers at first glance because of the folding method Kondo suggested. I'm not showing you our underwear drawers, you get the idea.

Our bookshelf looks much better and you  can tell what is behind the front stacks or easily move them. Our cookbooks are in a different spot, but those were reduced too. Can you tell what we like to read?

This pile is what we're getting rid of, and that's mostly just the clothes and books. There's a few other items too, but we're not even to the miscellaneous (Komono) section yet. We do have a deadline of Sept 19 to get it all done for our huge neighborhood yard sale. Might as well get some money off of it before the rest goes to the thrift store.