Currently / 6.25.18

We had quite the weekend! We had friends over for dinner on Friday, ran errands and went to the pool on Saturday, and topped it all off with a trip to Palm Beach at Moody Gardens in Galveston yesterday. This is the third year we’ve gone, and it’s fun every time — they have a really good mix of water slides and lazy river and wave pool that are perfect for smaller kids. (They also have one larger water slide that Emma is now tall enough to ride!) The only real downside is being out in the full sun smack in the middle of the day. We put on sunscreen twice and probably should have done it three times, as each girl ended up a little red right under their eyes and me on the back of my neck. I’m always careful around their eyes because I don’t want to get sunscreen IN their eyes.

I left my phone in a locker so I don’t have a single picture except for this one taken on the way home. Jose and I were in the Starbucks drive-thru and the girls were absolutely conked out in the back seat after our morning/early afternoon of fun. Emma falls asleep in the car pretty regularly even at almost 6 years old, but Charlotte is really not much of a car napper so you KNOW she was tired. Ha!

—

I’m currently in limbo on a couple sewing projects that I haven’t been able to start yet, but in the meantime I’m continuing to tackle UFOs. Last night I finished putting together all my barn quilt blocks from last year! I love it! I use solid fabrics regularly, but I usually prefer to mix them with prints — which means it’s actually pretty rare for me to make a quilt that is ONLY solids like this one.

I considered several different options for setting these 12 blocks, but when I saw this Instagram post I was immediately sold. (It’s this year’s Robert Kaufman block of the month.) I like how the white sashing ties into the bit of white in each block, since having that bit of white each month was a conscious decision on my part. I like that there aren’t any cornerstones, because I didn’t want to add additional detail that might draw attention away from the blocks themselves. And I like that the white/gray combo is quiet and calm so that the bright colors of the blocks really shine.

—

I’m 95% certain that I’ll be going to QuiltCon next year, so I’m gearing up to register for a few classes tomorrow. After my first QuiltCon experience in February, one of my takeaways was that the next time around I wanted to do more classes. The lineup of instructors is always good, and it’s an opportunity to take classes with people and on topics that I probably wouldn’t be able to otherwise. I’ve narrowed my selection down to 3 classes — 2 full days and one half day. This past year I took 2 half day classes and felt like I had plenty of room for more, but I’m a bit concerned that 2.5 days might be too much. It would mean that Thursday will be my only “free” day to take my time enjoying the show and vendors. Hmm. But I really, really want to take these 3 classes!

—

I went back to the periodontist on Friday morning for the two-week followup from my gum surgery. It hadn’t quite been two weeks — I wasn’t originally scheduled until tomorrow — but late last week the sutures had started rubbing against the inside of my lip in a really annoying way. I thought I was going to get the sutures removed at this appointment, but it turns out they stay in for 8 weeks. EIGHT WEEKS. That is a long time. Ugh. Fortunately she was able to trim the ends, and that fixed the issue, at least for now.

Sigh. Dental stuff. Yuck.

—