Oh, Hello!

Well, it's been ages and ages since I've posted, and I feel pretty terrible about that.  Which is partly why it's been so long since I've posted.  You know how that goes, I hope.

Our Arizonaversary was the last week of June, Boo's first birthday was on the 4th of July, and the one year anniversary of my sister's cancer diagnosis was shortly after that.  It was kind of a lot to handle emotionally, as it turns out.  I had all these great blog posts written out in my head and every time I tried to sit down to write any of them...I just couldn't do it.  I think, at the one year mark, there was just too much I was still trying to process.

And then, it's just been kind of busy, too.  Which seems kind of insane because on any given day I'd be hard pressed to tell you anything useful that I'd done.  And yet, stuff has been getting done. ;)

So...I'll start working on some posts. :)

'Make Life' Hair Pillow

Once upon a time, I ordered my very first fabric jelly roll.  Make Life.  I loved it and had this vague plan of what I wanted to do with it to make something really nifty for my mom.  I started sewing things together (thank goodness, not cutting anything!) and very quickly realized that I wasn't feeling the project.  It was just kind of wrong.  So I put it aside.

Then my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and my mom and I discussed using the multi-color text fabric to make her something really awesome for her healing room.  It turned out that the colors she used in there worked perfectly to make something really pretty...but by then no one had any more of that fabric (who was willing to give it up without me signing over my firstborn), so I tried to figure out what else I could do.

When my sister started losing her hair and decided to shave her head, someone said something about a hair pillow.  I was given a little baggie with a handful of my sister's gorgeous auburn hair in it.  When it came time for clean-up, I bagged the rest as well.

Eventually, the Make Life hair pillow was born.

Front:


Back:

Quilting:


Finished!





Two issues with the finished project:

1 - I made it a little too large.  With the way the hair compressed, the finished pillow is plesantly squashy, but a little thin.

2 - The hair pokes out of the pillow!  I'd hoped that the quilting would prevent that, and it does to some extent, but I probably should have put another layer of fabric inside as another barrier.

Prickly or not, I'm thrilled that she really likes it. :)

Must. Find. Outlet.

The last few weeks (erm, months?) have been a tad bit hectic/stressful/busy/crazy.  Choose your descriptive.

Bug is doing well.  Or, well enough.  There have been a LOT of changes in his life in the last two months, so some days are better than others.  We've been in a little bit of a rough patch the last two or three days or so, but today was better.  Given that there has been the same amount of chance in my life, I can't say that I've been responding well to his freakouts - which isn't helping.

Boo is doing very well.  Getting big and strong.  She's outgrown her teeny little preemie outfits and is starting to wear "real" baby clothes.  She puts away a LOT of milk and has started to chub up.  Her thighs are getting thick and chunky. :)  (Funny to me...Bug's filling out, too, now that I'm making new-baby milk again.)

My sister is AMAZING.  She's four days post-op and her doctor says she's healing really, really quickly.  She's already got full range of motion back.  My sister is Superwoman.  Which I've always known but this has proved yet again.

Great news from her surgery, too.  The genetic testing showed that she doesn't have the marker.  Her lymph nodes were benign so the cancer hadn't spread.  They were able to get it all out of her and she might not eve have to do chemo.  Yay!

And we bought a condo. (Or, Mom bought a condo and we'll be living in it.)  We haven't closed yet and there's a tiny bit of work to be done (a/c doesn't work - yikes!), but it's really exciting to know that we'll have someplace to really call home soon.  Not that we haven't been comfortable at Mom's, but it'll be nice to have our own space again, and I'm sure they'll be glad to have less chaos in their lives when we're not on top of each other all the time.

So, all in all, things are ultimately going well.

And I haven't had an outlet for any stress at all.  (Because yelling at Bug does NOT count as an outlet!)  I neeeeed to do something creative.  And soon.

I've fallen behind in my bee blocks.   I've got a few starts there, but nothing worth showing yet.

I decided today that I needed to either sew or bake.  So I looked up bread recipes and might try a honey wheat yeast bread tomorrow.  And I got a bug to make a little dress for Boo, so I started on that this evening.  I'm patterning it as I go, so we'll see how that goes.

And I think we're going to (finally!) get library cards tomorrow.  I don't have any time at all to read, but I really need to have something on hand that I CAN read.  If that makes any sense.

Hopefully there will be pictures of something soon...

It Just Keeps Getting More Interesting Around Here

Yup.

Not really sure how else to explain (in a nutshell) how things have been going around here of late.

Bug is doing well, considering that his world was turned on it's head less than two months ago and things haven't really straightened out for him yet.  He's loving hanging out with his grandparents and his cousins and has more or less accepted Boo.  He doesn't really like it so much when she's nursing or if I'm holding her when he's really upset, but otherwise he's affectionate and loving and a really awesome big brother.

We're still looking for a permanent place to live.  It's nice being here with my mom and step-dad, but it would be nice to be in our own space, too.  (And I'm sure they'd like to have their space back!)  We've looked at so many houses and condos that makes the head spin.  We've seen some really awesome places...and some really frightening ones, too.  Hopefully we'll see THE place soon. :)

In other news...

My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer this past week.  Unfortunately, I can't say it came as a terrible surprise.  Well, strike that.  It WAS a terrible surprise, just not terribly surprising.  There's a bit of in the family, including our paternal grandfather.  (Which is where everyone in the medical community makes a knowing "Ohhhhh".)  She's being terribly brave and I have no doubt whatsoever that she's going to kick cancer in the ***.  She has a double mastectomy planned for next week.  I'm really glad that we're here, now.

And, the icing, my niece turned up today with what appears to be either shingles or chicken pox.  We've been over there for the last two days helping to paint my sister's healing room...so I'm pretty sure we're going to see the chicken pox here really soon.  I'm glad that Bug will get it out of the way so early, though I wish Boo were a little before she'd come into contact with it.  And I'm sad about the timing.  Bug's best friend is coming to visit from Texas next week.  They've been looking forward to it for weeks.  (As have Richard and I!  We miss our friends, too!)

Not much craftiness to talk about, I'm afraid.  Too much other stuff going on. ;)