Potholders!

As promised yesterday, here are the potholders I made for my exchange partner.

This is by far my favourite pattern for potholders. It works up quick and easy, it's thick and durable and it's pretty too! I made this set while watching Letters To Juliet, so two hours start to finish for a full set of potholders. Not too bad, if you ask me. :)

I wish I could share the pattern with you, but I got it from a book I no longer have. I can't remember what book it is, and for all I know I've changed the pattern since I first tried it, but copyright rule and all that make it impossible for me to share. :( If I ever come across it again, I'll be sure to link to the pattern for all of you.

Lookie What I Did!

About a week ago, I finished this lovely little doily called a Small Exchange Doily from Panda Crochet. Isn't it gorgeous?

I'll be mailing it off this weekend, when I finally have time to get to the post office to my exchange partner from my Ravelry group Crochet and Knit Exchange. (I know, not the most imaginative name, but it's straight and to the point and people can find it!)

If I have time tomorrow, I'll show you photo's of the potholders and 12" square I have ready to mail too. I'm very proud!

One of Those Weeks....

This past week is going to go down as one of those "What was I thinking?" times.

I will say, I love running a home daycare. It's perfect for my lifestyle. I'm able to be home for my own kids, I get to hold and play with babies that I can send home at the end of the day when they're getting fussy, and I get to make a bit of money at the same time. What could be better, right?

This week has been a bit of a challenge, though. It might have something to do with the fact that I only had one day off last week. But, I think it has more to do with the fact that being around so many babies, I'm getting sick.

Of course dealing with two one year olds that are both teething, one of which also has a horrible chest cold that I wouldn't be surprised if it has developed into pneumonia, plus a 1.5 year old that is sick and not sleeping at night so he's grumpy.

Add to that I'm catching their cold, and it's made for a very, very long week so far.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change anything, I love doing this. But, this week, I wouldn't complain if someone cancelled. Really, it wouldn't bother me at all. :)

Day 6 - The Muffin

I know, I know, this one is late. And not that good. But, I do have an excuse of sorts! As you may or may not know, I run a home daycare. Yesterday I had a very fussy, feverish and teething one year old who wouldn't let me do anything except hold him. So, this was the best I could do during his only 15 minute nap all day.  It might be  boring, but I'm proud of myself for finding the time to take it! :)

The Muffin
Yummy, delicious muffin, straight from the oven. Mmmmmm..... 

365 in 2011 Challenge

I found out about this challenge on January 2nd, so I was a bit late getting started but I am on a roll now!

If you're not familiar, the concept is simple. You take a photo every day and post it somewhere. There are plenty of groups and websites out there that you can use, or you can post on your blog. Right now, I'm posting to Shuttercal, Flickr, and a group on Ravelry. But what I really wanted was a place to have all my photo's together that was mine, I could customize the site as I wanted etc. Then I remembered. I have a blog! :)

So, I'm going to be using this blog to showcase my daily photo's. Some are good, some not so much. But this will be a great way to not only show off my pics, but also keep myself accountable to my blog which is really quite sorely neglected.

We're already on Day 6, so I'm going to put all the photo's to date in one post, then afterwards, each photo will have it's own day.

Without further ado, or chatting from me, here is what I have so far!

Day 1 - Peeping Tom
This is my tom cat, Tom, peeking at me from the top of the stairs.

Day Two - Sammy
My adorable chihuahua puppy, Sammy, taking a nap.

Day Three - Boo
A pensive kitty...

Day Four - He See's You When You're Sleeping.
The creepiest Santa decoration I've ever seen!

Day Five - Charlie and Caesar
I'm not very happy with how blue this shot turned out, but I love the action of Charlie jumping over Caesar.

And that get's us all up to date. I'll have a new photo for today to post later.

It's a lot of fun! If you enjoy taking photo's and would like to challenge yourself, this is a great way to do it. :)

Where The Heck Have I Been????

Well, as you can see, I haven't been blogging in a very long time. Why you ask? Because I opened a home daycare and now I'm overrun with kids! LOL!

Actually, it's not all that bad. I currently have two boys age 6 and 10 that I watch three times a week, from 6 am till school, then after school till around 8 pm. I also have three boys age 9 months, three years and 6 years that I watch full time, the older one being after school.

So, really, it's not all that bad, but they do keep me busy and away from the computer and more importantly the sewing machine! It's so sad, I haven't had a chance to touch my quilting in over a month. By the time the kids leave and I clean up, all I want to do is kick back and relax.

The one really great thing about that, though, is that I've been able to pick up on my crocheting again. I haven't been doing a lot up until lately but boy oh boy is my hook smoking now! I'm almost finished one granny square afghan that I'm making, I'm about 1/4 of the way through a Tumbling Blocks afghan and 1/3 of the way through a scrap Granny Stripe Afghan. I'm working like crazy to try to get some Christmas presents done.

I'm hoping to be able to keep up with my blog a bit (well, a lot!) better. Hopefully I'll be able to find even 5 minutes a day to stop by and say hello. :)

Friday Night (Afternoon) Sew In

Once again, I wasn't able to sew last night, which meant I had to do it in the afternoon instead. I had the boys last night, so I kind of had to be responsible and not leave them to their own devices. :)

But, I had an amazingly successful FNSI!

I completed my very first ever quilt! It's a mini quilt, but it's my first and I'm so very, very proud of it!!

It may not be perfect (and actually, it's really not! LOL!) but it's very, very special to me. :) There will never be another first quilt.

I also finished putting together the squares for The World's Ugliest Quilt. Avert your eyes, if you must. I completely understand.

Now, I need to add a border to it to square things up a bit, then quilt and bind it and it's done!

Lastly, I was able to sew up 6 sets of 6 strips

These will be sewn into tubes, then cut into 2.5 inch strips. Those strips will then be sewn together into squares like this

Which will then be sewn together to look something like this Scrappy Trips Around the World quilt. I'm making this one for hubby, hopefully for Christmas.

That's all I managed to get done, but I'm very proud.

I'm not sure how much more I'll manage to get done. I'm sick and miserable and I'm on the road all day today and have company all day tomorrow. So, I'm thinking the sewing machine won't be seeing much of me this weekend. :(

Have a fantastic day!