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First Soccer Game

September 13, 2010 by Tsoniki Leave a Comment

Over the weekend my kids played in their first soccer games of the season! Alice moved up to playing with seven people on the team, Jake up to five. I’ve been entertaining JW and reading during practice, so I wonder if they are starting to teach Jake’s age group positions yet? He did mention they now have defenders, so maybe they are.

Alice is such a powerful defender – she can go at a ball and kick it about halfway back across the field. I was a few minutes late to her first game because the kids games overlapped. But I was walking by right when she was playing left defender and she ran up and kicked the ball back to the halfway point of the field!

My Dollar Store Bulletin Board

August 23, 2010 by Tsoniki 1 Comment

Heather over at Dollar Store Crafts posts awesome crafts that are created by things from the dollar store. Other then being a fantastic idea in general, I was inspired. Check out my version of the bungee cord bulletin board. It’s for my 7 year old son, his room is currently being decorated for the school year! Or rather, it’s being fixed up for him to enjoy.

After the picture was taken, I moved the red cord to be vertical. There is a larger empty space between the blue and red vertical cords now.

What I used:

thumbtacks (I had a box in my office supplies)
mini bungee cords – pack of 5 for $1 at the Dollar Tree
bulletin board – purchased by his Grandma, I’m sure it was part of a back to school sale.

This is such a simple way to make the bulletin board just a bit more fun looking!

Crafty Portland

August 17, 2010 by Tsoniki 1 Comment

After the baby shower I attended last weekend, I was able to spend a few hours exploring Portland!

First off I emailed Sister Diane over at Crafty Pod, asking if she had any recommendations for where I could stop, what would be a “must see” while I was there. She sent me the links to four stores and Powell’s.

Sister Diane recommended Josephine’s Dry Goods, Button Emporium, Knit Purl, and the Museum of Craft. JW and I took the Amtrak down to Oregon but once we were in Portland we rented a car. I didn’t mention that I’d have a car, so she mentioned places that were close to the station.

I knew there was a google map of crafty stores in Portland, and after a quick google search I found it at DIYAlert, click on the “Google Map of Crafty Portland.” (Created by Sister Diane a few years ago!)

I wasn’t thinking clearly and ended up trying to stay in a small area of town. After finding out that a few stores were closed on Monday (Button Emporium!), I ended up stopping at one quilt shop (who had a HUGE selection of Japanese fabric), Pendleton and Powell’s.

Pendleton is awesome. I love the blankets, I’ve started buying one of the sets of dishes for myself and I really love the fabric selection they have. At this particular Pendleton’s, they have huge bins of scraps for sale very cheap. You can buy a HUGE bag of zippers for a dollar, bags of scraps for a few dollars or purchase fabric from huge rolls.

I spent a few minutes going through the scrap bin when one woman brought me a cart to stick JW in. He’s a happy guy so he was smiling and flirting with her. She threw a blanket down and put him in the cart, along with a hippo. He lasted in there for several minutes while I went through the bins a bit more and walked around looking at the fabric. Once he was done being in there, we finished up and went to the quilt shop.

Of course I would be somewhere with no way of getting large items back home. A block away from the quilt shop was an awesome looking thrift store with great furniture outside. I didn’t even stop as I didn’t want to be even more tempted!

The quilt shop had one o the largest selections of Japanese fabric I’ve seen in one space. Even on the shop hop we went on this summer, no store had that much. Japanese fabric can tend to be more expensive as well. And for the first time, probably ever!, I couldn’t think of a project I needed to get fabric for!

But Powell’s…was hands down THE best place ever. Ever. It is huge and wonderful and you could spend hours in there. I was in there for just under an hour and hadn’t even seen all that I felt I needed to see. I ended up looking in the children’s section for a few minutes then going to the quilting section. I was in the store for so long, I had to rush the rest of the time to get to the train station before the train left. JW and I lucked out, we were sitting in our seats a few minutes before it left. All sweaty and out of breath from running, but at least the train isn’t like the airplane, we showed up about 20 minutes before it was time to leave and were still allowed on.

I can’t wait to get back to Portland!

Anchor Baby Quilt

August 16, 2010 by Tsoniki Leave a Comment

Last weekend I attended a baby shower for a friend of mine, she and her husband are expecting their first child in a few months. They aren’t finding out if the baby is a boy or girl so I decided to make a gender neutral baby quilt.

I used six colors, white on white and a print. The colors were either batiks or color on color as well. I used red, green striped, yellow polka dot and orange strips in the backing and also for the binding. (All you quilters – you use the Clover bias tape tool right? This is an awesome product!!!)

I also learned freezer paper applique for this quilt! It is a lot easier then I thought it would be. I’ve never done any applique before so learning this really put my mind at ease.

I did the freezer paper applique technique on the four anchors because she loves anchors. An anchor is her sorority’s symbol, then add to that her husband is in the Navy so it gave her even more reason to like anchors.

You can’t see too closely in the photo, but the four anchors are quilted by outlining each anchor and also outlining the block. The rest of the quilt has a meandering pattern.