summer days

Excuse my mini absence from the blog world...nothing too terribly exciting has been going on lately, so I didn't want to bore my readers! :) I'm a lady in waiting anyways; waiting for Yann to come here in September, waiting to meet the baby girl I'm working on growing...

So, one thing I have been pretty prolific in is making stuff. Below you will see something I am very excited about: my first little quilt! yea! I have been wanting to learn how to quilt for so long and finally I made it happen by signing up for a class at this amazing local sewing shop. I'm the youngest customer who is into the quilting classes, but I love hanging out with all those cool, old quilter ladies. They remind me of my grandma out in California; they have so much great knowledge of crafting and hand making all kinds of things. My first quilt is not perfect, but I learned the technique anyways and it will be cute for the baby.

Also, I had this adorable fabric for a while and I decided to make a little dress and bloomers for the babe. I actually really like how it turned out and I want to make a few others in different variations. It took a while because I was figuring out how to use my new sewing machine, but after this project I am in love with my machine! It works so well and never causes any trouble...knock on wood!

Also, for those far away that requested some recent pics of me and my growin' belly here they are below. I am about 24 weeks now so I had my mom snap a few pictures in the backyard. I just bought that tank top at Express when I was visiting my good friend, Abby in Orlando. It's not meant to be a maternity shirt, but it does accommodate the bulge quite well, with the side gathering.

Anyway, I am off to North Carolina on Wednesday with the fam for a couple weeks. I will be up there celebrating my b-day and my father's 60th B-day. My aunts and grandma are coming all the way from California and I am so excited to see them!
So, to all my Asheville peeps...call me and let's hang out!

Little projects

So, I have a new baby that I didn't mention before and it's my new Baby Lock sewing machine. Yann got it for me a few months ago for our one year wedding anniversary. We bought it at this really amazing local sewing shop because to buy the same caliber machine in France would have been outrageously expensive. So, I shlepped the new machine back to France with me a few months ago, when I was visiting home. And at every single security check at the airport from here to there, I had to explain what it was and take it fully out of the bag to run it through the x-ray machines. So, let's just say, it was an annoying thing to drag across an ocean. I set it up in our apartment in France, ready to make my first stitches on a little curtain project I was going to do. I plugged it in and was so excited to try it out. I turned it on, the computer on it beeped, made a weird noise, then to my horror, went completely dead. Dead! My new machine, costing a small fortune for us, and never having been used!! Ahhh! I burst into emotional, pregnancy sobs for a half hour on the couch...poor Yann felt so bad for me and was trying to fix the machine. Basically, what happened was my electrical power converter for Europe shorted out and fried the sewing machine. France has different plugs and power currents than us, so we had always used these converters just fine, but the machine was too high a voltage for it to handle.

Long story short, Baby Lock has amazing warranties and fixed it for free. I had to pay 12$ shipping, that's it! So, I just got my Baby back last week and I had about a million projects piled up in line to get sewed. So, below is a little project I just finished. I dug these vintage doll bunk beds out of our attic. They were in my mother's room as a child and they were in mine too, until I decided, as a 5 year old, that I should climb onto the top bunk and snapped the frame. Anyways, they sat broken and unloved in our hot attic, until I got them out and decided to rehab them.

They were an outdated wood color, so my dad and I sanded them and applied some wood accents on the headboards & footboards, and then painted them. I just finished up my first quilting class, so I decided to practice making a particular quilt block, by making two little quilted coverlets for the beds. Oh my; the weird projects I do when I'm not employed! But I think they turned out cute and will be a staple in our little baby girl's room until she outgrows them or breaks them, as I did! The quilt colors kind of match the crib bedding set we got for her. I can just picture her as a toddler, tucking into bed her little dolls and stuffed animals.











So, other than projects, not too much else has been going on. We went out on the boat today, and I almost had a darn heat stroke. People, have you ever experienced the type of humid, hot, brain frying heat that is South Florida in the summer? If not, count yourself very blessed. Basically, living in Florida for a summer is akin to living in Antarctica during the winter. It is just too extremely painful and uncomfortable to go outside. The advantage of a Florida summer, over an arctic winter, is that at least from your air conditioned house you can look out the window and see bright sun, and cheerful green trees. I know, I'm sounding a little over dramatic here, but maybe it's just that I lived in Asheville so long, that I became accustomed to the summers there. In North Carolina, in the summers, if you do become hot, you just head to a cold, refreshing waterfall and dunk yourself. Also, the nights are cool enough to enjoy a stroll around the block or even a campfire. You can have a nice, productive garden too, where as in Florida, your delicate organic herbs and vegetables would all wither and die under the scorching heat. It is intense and I'm just trying to stay inside as much as I can. Although, I love summer and I love to be active and do things outdoors, it just is too much for me right now. So, inside I stay, with many fun sewing projects and books to read. I've got my knitting classes, and my first sweater is coming along pretty good. I've been trying to hit the gym a few times a week too, to get physically ready to have this baby.

What to do for the 4th this year?

I think this year, I'm going to need to sit out the 4th of July festivities. I see everybody around me making their firework viewing, BBQ, and beach plans but this time around I just am not feeling like celebrating. A few contributing factors are: the fact that I can't drink ice cold American beer, it's unbearably hot here in Florida, and also I think all the loud exploding noises would freak out the baby in utero. Apparently, from the books I'm reading she can hear pretty much everything around my belly, but more diluted, like being underwater. So, I think the crazy, drunken 4th of July revelers will have to party with out my presence this year. To be honest, the holiday was never one of my favorites and I blame growing up in Florida on this. I'm more of a Christmas and Thanksgiving girl. It was just always so hot growing up in Florida in the summers, that standing outside in the swampy, steamy evening heat and lighting off firecrackers in the driveway just wasn't so enticing. Plus, this year our barbeque is out of order and so we can't even grill! That should be a crime to have a broken grill in the summer! But I think this year a friend and I are going to buck the trend of viewing fireworks over the water and head to the refuge of a cool, dark, and deserted movie theatre and then grab some dinner. But please, go out and celebrate for me! Grill, Chill and be merry!


I think it's kind of funny that we ordered our nursery furniture and I have no idea where to put it when it gets delivered in August. I have my room here packed full and my parents' basement in North Carolina filled too. Yann doesn't come until September so I'm going to hold off on getting a place until then. Therefore, we have a household full of stuff, baby and other that needs to be moved somewhere, but no place to put it all yet. Hmmm, And to top that off, I am 'nesting' like crazy. Have you experienced this for yourself ever? I would assume it's a girl thing, and especially for expecting moms. I am so wanting a place of our own, with a cute little second bedroom to create a nursery. And wait until you see this furniture and bedding I found; very adorable, but not overly girly. I am thinking about chocolate browns and greens for her room. I owned a house in Asheville for a few years and I really fell in love with decorating it and making it my own space. First, I learned so much about renovation and house projects, but after the major work was done, I was able to get in there, and pick paint colors and decorate. I was really into, (because I had to be) decorating on the major cheap. Where I was in North Carolina there were tons of little thrift stores where you could find vintage treasures galore. I think the little old ladies running these stores had no idea what some of those things were worth. There was a Humane Society thrift store in Downtown Brevard that was my little secret for the summer I worked as a ceramics teacher at a girls camp. Oh, I got so many cool things there. But I think at this point, I've collected lots of stuff, and now I just need a place for it all! Well, although I'm already more than half way through this pregnancy, I still have some more time to figure out where we will end up.



Tomorrow, my dad and I are hopefully going to finish up and photograph this cute little project we've been working on. So, check back soon and Happy 4th of July! Here is a virtual cupcake for you...