getting civilized and sassy

Cora has gotten to be quite the sassy girl. Just look at this look she's giving me here. Although, how can you not have sass, when you have such an awesome hairstyle after your bath.On the other hand, she's also getting to be very civilized! We got another package in the mail today, this one from Auntie Aline. It had a bunch of fun things, including two very cute books, a fun wall decoration from Japan, and a Hello Kitty dining set. Thank you Auntie! We love it. (Really Cora does like it - don't believe this face here.)

So after opening the gifts, it was Cora's dinner time. I decided to see what she would do with the dishes, since we haven't really ventured there yet - she still drinks from a sippy cup and eats off the tray.
She loved drinking from the glass - she even started drinking one handed!

Just checking if there's anything left. Got confident enough to wave it around a bit.But wasn't so pleased when she got splashed with water.She also had a lot of fun eating out of a bowl with a spoon.Well, kind of.

In all, it wasn't nearly as big of a mess as I thought it would be. She didn't dump food or get it all over herself at all. Such a big girl.

Reading

Cora got a couple of cute books in the mail today from our old friends Brandon and Tonya! She really likes them. Thanks guys - so sweet. We miss the days when we lived right next to you - automatically spending every weekend night together and staying up til 4 am playing Risk (boys against girls, of course) while JT slept in our spare room. Hopefully we'll someday live closer together - and introduce our little girls who've never met!

Here's Cora enjoying one of the new books.

I'm so excited, Cora's actually starting to enjoy looking at books and being read to, instead of just always trying to eat them. (At least until she starts teething again.)

my first quilt!

We have been pretty busy around here. Ryan has been finishing up a ton of projects for school this week as well as studying for finals next week. He's been working hard and I'm so proud of him. I can't believe how fast this semester has gone. We are going to spend next weekend in Boise and then I am going to come home alone and leave him there for 6 weeks for a clinical affiliation. Cora and I will miss him so much! We will see him at Thanksgiving and probably at least one other weekend, but it takes too much gas for him to come home every weekend. At least he gets to stay with his sweet sister, and have fun with all his nephews and nieces. Still, I can't wait for December, when he's done.

Well I finally made a quilt! At least I'm calling it a quilt - there was no piecing involved but I basted it, machine quilted it, and even made my own binding! It's brown on one side and light purple on the other. The quilting is done in random diagonal lines in yellow, pink and blue thread. It was so easy with my new machine that has all kinds of quilting accessories! I'm pretty proud. I wanted to have it done for Cora's birthday, but she doesn't seem to mind that it was late. The first thing she did was spit up on it. After it went through the wash, (for the second time since finishing it last night,) she had fun playing peek-a-boo with it and dancing on it.

Living life on the edge - Cora thinks she's a big girl now that she can climb on the couch. It keeps us on our toes. (Speaking of toes, aren't Cora's little pink toes cute?)

Cora squeezed herself in between Ryan's legs then complained about being stuck. Silly girl.

Heads

Kind of gross, but I like them. The guy on the far right especially has a fungus problem. Hopefully they last through our wind, cold, and whatever else.

my newest craft endeavor

I was debating whether or not to post this one - since I posted very excitedly about my craft fair, which, embarrassingly, was pretty much a bust. But, what the hey. One of the craft blogs I read, SewMamaSew (for the full list, see my sidebar) is hosting a Scrap Busting tutorial contest. I'm not a craft blogger, and I've never written a tutorial before, but I've read plenty and I had a good idea for a project, courtesy of my mom, so I decided to make one on Flikr and submit it to the contest. I finished last night, and emailed it in.

It's not yet posted but they said they have a lot of entries, so to be patient. It should be up in a few days. If you'd like to check it out, you can find it here. I welcome comments and suggestions, if anyone takes the time to read through it. Wish me luck! Also, if you're interested, there are a ton of other great ideas on SewMamaSew.

*As luck would have it, there is a very similar idea that just got posted today! Dang. Oh well, it's not exactly the same, so hopefully mine will still go up. We'll just have to wait and see I guess.

Here is a preview of the project I made in my tutorial:
***Update - my tutorial was finally posted on SewMamaSew blog! There are a ton of entries so I don't think I'll win, but it's exciting nevertheless.

*****Second Update - the polls are open now for voting, til Thursday Oct 29th. Go here.

weekly update

Peek-a-boo!

Our friends returned this bassinet that they borrowed several months ago. We're not sure what to do with it, since we really don't have room for it anywhere but Cora was having fun rocking in it last night.

Above is a picture of me at about the same age as Cora. It's fun to look and compare.

Here are some of the projects I worked on this week. A no-knit scarf, some Christmas ornaments, a couple more bow holders/organizers for some special girls, and a reversible bag.

Our shrunken apple heads are getting to look pretty gross - and also growing mold, which is kind of nasty in an unintentional way. I think it's because I put them in the oven to dry, which is a nice warm place but probably keeps moisture in more than if they were out somewhere else. They may not make it to Halloween. I'll keep you posted.

CW, shrunken heads, and chocolate pudding

CW came to visit last weekend. We had a lot of fun and on Saturday we carved apple heads which are now shrinking in our oven. I'll post a pic of what they look like in a week or so after they shrink up some more. We also made some jack o'lantern pomanders.

Cora likes chocolate pudding.

this week's sewing

These are the projects I've made this week on my new machine! A quilted pot-holder, a rag doll, a reverse applique handprint turkey shirt, and a felt leaf garland.

Par-Tay!

Well we had Cora's birthday party tonight! It was pretty fun, with all her little friends. Here is the rainbow cake I made for her.

Here is everyone singing to Cora. She is very excited as you can see.

We've been working on the sharing thing.The cake was pretty yummy.
You can see in the background the rainbow garland I made from paint chips. Yay Uncle Christopher drove up from Provo! He's not in many photos because he took them.We also had a rainbow balloon swag. Thanks CW for blowing up all those balloons!
This is just a random cute pic of Cora this afternoon all dressed for the cold.

birthday girl!

I decided to make the birthday girl pancakes for breakfast! She liked them. (This is a face we have been seeing a lot of lately - not sure why exactly but it sure is funny.)
Playing during the day in her #1 birthday shirt I made for her using reverse applique.
She liked the presents we got her - a set of wood blocks and two fisher price "little people." Unwrapping was fun too.We are having a little party on Friday night when Uncle Christopher comes, so we just had a little cheesecake last night. Cora really liked it. She was pretty clean though, didn't even rub any in her hair!This is a bad pic of me this morning taking my cute "twins" out to Shawna's house. And here is Cora enjoying the present from Auntie Nicole that came in the mail today. She also likes the new Baby Einsteins from Auntie Katie. Thanks Nic and Kate! Meet Dolly. She has messy hair with split ends, and oddly skinny, long limbs. I stayed up late last night making her for Cora - a late birthday present. My second project on the new machine - such fun to use!