Baby Shower Gift

I'm a firm believer in shopping from a registry for baby showers, but I also have a new love of making things from pretty fabric!

This past weekend I attended a shower for a friend expecting a sweet baby girl.  For me, making things with pretty flowers and pinks and purples is double fun in a house full of boys.  I found my inspiration, and loosely followed a tutorial, found here on Cluck Cluck Sew.

I've been buying up cheap clearance fabric for a few months - so, luckily, I had everything I needed on hand.  I used, roughly, two yards of fabric (a print for the top - flowers, and a print for the inside - big polka dots).  I also used scraps of yellow to make the straps that attach to the carrying handle.

My Polka dot fabric was a bit smaller than the flowers, so I used it as a template to cut the top fabric down to size - first I rounded out the edges as seen here.

Then I placed the two fabrics right side together and sewed around the edges - leaving a hole to turn it right side out.  Once turned right side out I pressed it and sewed all the way around the edge with  1/4 " seem allowance closing the hole up.  I placed the piece on top of my car sear, as the tutorial suggested, to decide where the handle straps should be placed.

I then pinned them on and sewed them on. (Note - I used super strong glue to attach the velcro to the straps because my thread kept breaking).

In the end - this is what I got!

I was pretty proud of myself - and I think the mom to be appreciated the hand made effort.

*Sorry for the poor picture quality - we're computerless and I haven't been able to upload any "real" pictures yet!

Dirty Jobs

Dirty jobs sometimes pay off. Paul found this gem in the trash on route today. No lid, but still a score.
You see, our oldest is named Mason and the ones that say "Perfect Mason" sum up how we feel about him quite nicely (even though he's quickly approaching the five year mark and pressing our patience more and more every day!)

The picture of Mason was taken this past weekend while at the MSU v. Alaska (Go Green!) Hockey game - Where he announced he would one day play - before moving on to play for Detroit.  It's good to have goals!

What comes first

The chicken or the egg?
For us- it was the chicken. We bought our first egg layers in the spring of 2011. We got a variety: 3 barred rocks,  3 easter eggers, and 2 black asterlorp. We were under the impression they were all hens. To our surprise we ended up with two roosters {1 barred rock, 1 easter egger}.
It took about four months for the girls to start producing - resulting in fresh delicious eggs like these.

This little piggy...

Went to the freezer :-) 
Today we picked up a pig we had processed at a "mom and pop" meat processor. We didnt raise the pig - this time - but bought it from a local farmer. If you've never had farm fresh pork, you're missing out! 
This is the third time we've purchased a live pig for processing, and havent purchased any kind of pork product at the grocery store in nearly three years. I love that we know where our meat is coming from, that it's not loaded with hormones and who knows what else. I also love the money we save. 
We had the pig processed into a variety of the following: chops, steaks, ham slices, whole ham, bacon {mmmmm, bacon}, sausage, roasts and ribs. Broken down we paid $2.58/lb. You can't beat that price. This should be the last pig we purchase though because hubby plans on raising our own pigs this spring. Stay tuned for more details on that hobby farming adventure!

Testing the Waters

I'm working on setting up this blog - for a few reasons:
One - Log all of my {failed} attempts at recreating something awesome that I find on Pinterest.
Two - Keeping track of my hobby farmer of a husband, Paul, and his shinnanigans. Because I'm sure you're curious. Admit it. You are.
Three - Sharing funny kid stories - because life can't be just about quilts and chickens {can it?}.