Five Shadows

Daughter # 1 and her hubby asked for his & her matching plaid bathrobes for Christmas.  My Dear Hubby and I did some on line searching for said matching plaid his & her bathrobes and came up short. Did I mention that flannel was also a requirement in the matching part of the his & her plaid bathrobes? Phew! What a list to try to accommodate!

Since the on-line search did not pan out, I up and said to Dear Hubby that I could make plaid matching his and her flannel bathrobes for the two. I  already had 6 pairs of flannel PJ bottoms in the making for my crew. So just how difficult would it be to find 12 yards of matching plaid flannel? A lot harder than I expected! I found out that our local Joann Fabrics flannel comes only  8 yards to a bolt. What is up with that!? And since it was now so close to Christmas, there was not two partial bolts of the same fabric to be had. Oh bother. I could go to the local quilt shop, but their flannel is expensive. I had already bought flannel there for the PJ bottoms when the shop held a BOGO for each yard of fabric purchased. It was their anniversary sale the first weekend in November. And a great sale it was! My only other option seemed to be to check out the local Hancock Fabrics store. Boy was I pleased when I found they carry bolts of flannel with 12 yards per bolt! And I was even more pleased when I found a bolt of green plaid! And then I learned they had  Simplicity patterns for one dollar each! I bought two of the same pattern so I didn’t have to trace anything. A his and a her pattern each! Now I just hoped I had the right plaid to make the couple happy with their homemade Christmas gifts.

Here they are wearing their PJ bottoms, matching green plaid bathrobes. Notice they are also wearing slippers – given to them by daughter # 2 who did not know what I was up to with making PJs or bathrobes!

Almost! Son #2 bought a house! Fixing it up before he moves in. He and his brother have refinished all the wood floors, three bedrooms, living and dining room. The duct work has been cleaned out. A new furnace will soon be installed. Kitchen needs cleaning up, and he will update the bath. Then I think he will be ready to move in.

Here is what I’ve been doing for the past many weeks! Helping my daughter prepare for her big day!

Janelle and her hubby Luke, my husband and me to their right and left, and then her extended family.

The bridal party.

The couple and the cake.

My three lovely daughters!

I’ve been quiet for a long time! No posting, but I have been enjoying everyone else’s blog! Thanks for all the inspiration & beauty I enjoy when visiting your blogs!

My time this Spring and Summer has in a large part, been consumed by helping my eldest daughter with preparations for her upcoming July 30th wedding. Janelle is a DIY-er and that means thrift store shopping and fabric shopping, and and and lots of running around town and out of town looking for just the right items! Plus she has found many things she wants on Etsy made by other DIY crafty gals. Some of which she bought and then further altered! (And she decided to open up her own Etsy account, which will be empty until after the wedding and honeymoon!)

Some photos for you:

Top photo of table setting at the shower. Bridesmaids set tables with gathered antique linens, luncheon plates and cups, antique cake stands and two or three tier dessert stands for the homemade food. Photo#2 Janelle and me. Photo#3 &4 bridal party.

This is what our garden looked like a week ago. We had an early morning sleet that did not damage the Spring flowers. And today it is in the 80s. What happened to Spring!?

White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

Toadshade Trillium (Trillium sessile)

budding White Trillium

Celandine Poppy

Dutchman’s-Breeches

Photos taken by my son, Noel.

ends with daughter turning 21!  We Schutts have 7 birthdays between Febuary 23 and April 13th. We celebrated our daughter Janelle’s birthday Monday night, a day early, as she had plans with friends the evening of her 21st birthday. Here are just a few pictures of the celebration.

Sorry to friends and family that a cropped out of this picture! I just wanted to zoom in on the birthday girl with her goofy smile!

Yummy Ginger ShortCake with fresh fruit and candles.

The blowing out of candles. (The picture singing was just too goofy to show!) We have here boy friend Luke B. Hall, sister Anna, friend Joel, Mom, Dad, and sister Charis round the birthday girl. Brothers Luke and Noel are present but not in picture.

There are also many of our extented family members celebrating in Feb – April. I think I have counted at least nine more of us celebrating birthdays during this time! So Happy Birthday to all of you!

I have a big ZERO completed for March for the One Project a Month. Oh well. But I have been working on other projects. That means sometime this year I’ll have several completed quilts. Maybe I should just plan a few small projects a month so as to have something completed to show when the end of the month rolls around!

The is a sneak peak of an idea I’m playing with for a quilt challenge. Three Creative Studios: Passage.

The are a few of the many blocks my daughter has sewn for a bed size quilt she is working on. She is being very diligent!

Of the seven Schutts there are 5 birthdays in March! 5 of us! Plus one in February and one in April! Tis busier around here now than at Christmas time! And we are a goofy bunch. So here are some pictures from my hubby’s birthday and mine.

The lighting of many candles for Hubby’s cake! It took four kids – with me on the side line giving instructions! And the eldest snapping the photos.

Goofy Hubby and the five kids behind him. Me snapping the photo this time. DH said you should have felt the heat coming off of all those candles!

Look at all that smoke coming off of those candles! Happy Birthday John! (March 4th)

And now my birthday – today – March 7th!

The goofiest of all photos! That’s me – who is very un-photogenic, but actually looking pretty good here! Sorry to the rest of the family who are looking …. well … poor.

And here I am (not so photogenic here) holding one of my wonderful gifts! This is a collage by Sarah Wyman, as seen in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. I love that magazine and LOVE Sarah’s art! I made up an Etsy wish list and DH bought this for me!

My middle daughter planned a wonderful meal for me using the cookbook Food to Live By, by Myra Goodman. She pulled some of her siblings in to help prepare the meal. We had Tuscan White Bean Stew, Spicy Chicken Lettuce Wraps, and Creamy Shells & Three Cheeses. Dessert was a chocolate cake from Whole Foods for the Whole Family. YUM!

After lunch we headed to a county park for some pre-spring walking. Lovely day to be outside! Son #1 was on the look out for a sign of Spring – and he found it in one of the first plants to stick it’s leafy head up through the ground with snow still on the ground in NE Indiana – - Skunk Cabbage!

The girls actually found several in a valley on the banks of a stream.  Here we are in the great out-of-doors. Goofiness!

Me with youngest daughter, Charis.

Me with daughter, Anna.

Me with daughter, Janelle.  That is snow in the background!!! (Wish you could see all the goofiness going on between each photo! We would need a video camera for that!)

Dear Husband, John.

Me with John.

Son, Noel. And once again son Luke has evaded the camera! (But Luke is in the photos at the top of the post, with sibling behind the parents!)

On New Year’s Day my two teen daughters woke up with the question, “What are we doing today?” I answered that they had the go-ahead to swap rooms. Youngest gets the room left vacant by an older sibling moving out. Next-in-line gets to move into the spare bedroom we have set up as a library/sewing room. Library moves into the room the girls are leaving, called the bunkbed room. It has two sets of built in bunkbeds, two built in desks and a built in dresser. Three closets, one a walk-in. I get just over half of the space in the bunkbed room as my sewing room! Should I call it my quilting studio?! The upside for me is my former sewing space was 6′ x 6′ in a 10′ x 16′ room, and it will be a 13′ x 13′ space in a room that is 13′ x 24′.  True it does have the disadvantage of two sets of built in bunkbeds. But hmmm. That could be more storage space, right?

Here is my former space.

There is usually a love-seat in front of the bookshelves full of fabric – but it moved with elder child moving out. So I just counted the 6′ x 6′ square of space of the white cabinet and desk that my sewing machine sits on.

Here is half of the vacant bunkbed room waiting for all the library stuff and my quilting stash!

There is a built-in dresser to the left of the desk and then the room is a mirror image of this photo. You are looking into the room from the doorway. At first I thought I’d set up the quilting in this right half of the room. But sons want this half for the computer desk. I get the other side of the room. I’m not showing my new space in all its disarray right now, but I will show the new set up once it is organized!

In traveling around in blog land, I’ve noticed that many ladies are digging out their unfinished works-in-progress WIP and making a last rush towards completing them before the New Year. I’ve been doing the same thing! But first, I have the yo-yo flowers finally all stitched in place on my Mom’s quilt.

This is a twin size quilt with the vine and flowers placed so they will be centered on the made bed. The vine circle looks small to me in the picture, but it does look nice on the bed. I just love the yo-yos! Can you see in the quilt where I left out the nine patch to leave a white back ground for the flower bunches? Once I completed the five planned yo-yo bunches, I decided to add the little bunches to the top and bottom of the vine circle.

And here is a picture of the “his” quilt for my Father, with out flowers. I used coordinating fabric for both quilts so they match, but aimed to make them ‘his’ and ‘hers’ quilts.