As some of you may remember, each Fall at Alpha Phi's Red Dress Gala they host an auction to raise money for heart health through the Alpha Phi Foundation.  My contribution to the auction is a tshirt quilt.  The first year I made a complete quilt from extra shirts the chapter had but we realized that if instead we auctioned a coupon/certificate for a quilt to be made from someone's shirts, then attendees who are members of other organizations could bid on it too!

Last year in 2014, I did a TON of races...but I never did get much faster.  Mostly I was using racing as a tool to force me to get back into a running or exercise routine.  And it did work, I like racing and the stress/fear that can come with it forces me to get off the couch and do something.  But I was looking at my times and realized that while I ran a 5k in 22:29 in college...I hadn't gotten below 25 minutes in over ten minutes.  I decided to sign up for a local running camp called Set Goals Not Limits.

Earlier this year I showed you the layout I made for Amanda's tshirt quilt.  Then around March or April I was able to do some of the cutting and interfacing and even got a lot done piecing the quilt top.  I was hoping to get it finished entirely in time for when she visited me at Fourth of July but I just didn't quite make it.  Anyways...here's some of the progress on the piecing.

Earlier this year, I received a weird email at work from a manager I had never met, asking for some seemingly random information.  I followed up and eventually I found out that my managers had nominated me for a Society of Women Engineers (SWE) award for Distinguished New Woman Engineer (7 years or less experience).  I didn't win the award but I was honored to be nominated.  I got to attend the awards banquet and meet other women in the Space Coast area with great technical achievements.

After I finished up the two quilts for Robin, it was on to a baby quilt for Stephanie.  Stephanie has twins, one boy and one girl, and wanted to make one quilt with both of their clothes in it.  I thought about the layout quite a bit and I decided to keep the shirts separate, "his and hers" style.  By making the blanket wider than it is tall, both kids could lay on it next to each other on their side of the blanket (while they're still little of course.  Here's to another cute kids blanket!!

Over the past few years we've perpetually had some roof leaks in our "office" that is attached to the master bedroom and has a flat roof.  Ryan has gone up there and fixed the leaks and re-sealed everything numerous times but it always eventually leaks again.  The roof is meant to be an area you can walk out on but it felt so spongy and soft like you might fall through so we knew we needed to make some repairs.  I'm not going to bore you with all the details but here's some fun pics of us ripping off old shingles and ply wood, cutting away and replacing rotted areas, rolling out a gigantic one-piece liner and putting on new shingles.  We're still not quite done with the details like trim boards and soffit but at least the major items are done and it's all sealed up.  Ryan put a ton of time into it and I helped quite a bit too!

I showed you the finished quilts for Robin's girls but I didn't show you how I repaired the blankies after I cut a square out of them...

Ok this one's going way back in time...it doesn't feel that long ago to me but this year has been flying by!  For Valentine's Day this year I wanted to make something fun for Ryan.  Anyone who knows my husband knows that he is a candy fiend!  I thought it would be fun to make him a wooden candy dispenser.  I saw some online that used a mason jar but I wanted to take it a step further...

Last time I showed you Robin's quilt, I had finished cutting all the shirts and was working on interfacing them.  I had cut squares out of the baby blankie but not replaced them.  Really, I had done most of the hard parts and then the sewing and quilting goes pretty quick!

Holy Cow!  I haven't posted in three months!!  And so much has happened since then, I can't believe I haven't gotten any of it posted on my blog.  Well over the next couple of weeks I'm going to start posting some of my adventures that I meant to write about before.  Some of them are a bit dated at this point but I'm sure you guys wouldn't mind seeing some pics i never shared and hearing what I've been up to in all this time with no blogging :)  More to come soon!!  And it looks like thanks to some Weebly changes my website banner and some other things don't really fit on the page quite right anymore...**sigh** always something to work on LOL.