Can you believe we are already over a quarter of the way through the year?? I feel like just yesterday we were at Nate & Kayla’s New Year’s party but I guess that was quite a while ago.  Before you know it summer will be upon us!  At the beginning of the year I set some goals for myself and I promised to report how I’ve been doing on them so here’s the first quarterly overview.  How are your new year’s goals or resolutions going?

I just realized it's been almost a week since I last blogged - I guess since I was sick (caught a cold from my husband) I didn't get to work on any cool projects so I didn't have anything to blog about.

Thursday, we left work a little early and headed to Orlando to the airport to catch our flight.  We were running a little late so we were worried we might miss it but then when we got there the flight ended up being delayed for an hour.  Normally I would have been glad that it got delayed a little so we didn't have to rush through security...but we had a connection in Houston and our total layover was only an hour.  So as we took off from Orlando it seemed pretty unlikely that we would be able to make our flight.  But the pilots made up some of the time in the air and we landed at 8:30pm for our 9:05pm flight.  We were prepared to make a run for it when Ryan looked online to see what gate it was leaving from when he found out they had cancelled the flight instead!  

Remember when I posted about my grand plans to redo our bedroom/bathroom/closet/office?  (http://www.quiltedaffair.com/1/post/2013/01/master-suite-remodeling.html)  Well I'm sad to say that we haven't made much progress towards saving up for it.  Until we get the credit cards paid off, the only savings we have budgeted is towards our emergency savings account.  Saving for the Master Suite remodel happens if we come in under our weekly budget - whatever extra is left goes towards the master suite.  Sadly, we've only saved $40 so far, LOL.  I think we probably won't get much saved up until after the credit cards are paid off and we can actually dedicate a good chunk towards it each morning.

Additionally, I had assumed we would keep the flat roof over the office that is there now.  See the white square on the picture below?  The room that will eventually be the bathroom was an addition onto the original house and they put a flat roof on it.

So I was trying to figure out how to hang up all my quilting tools and notions and I saw a picture someone posted using a crib rail and I really liked it.

After I finished my cute little framed canvas/quote, it was clear I needed to finish the decor on the top of the bookshelf.  I had the hardest time finding a lamp I liked and the ones I did find were SOO expensive.  I was hoping for under $20 but after about ten different stores, I finally just picked one up at Bed Bath & Beyond for $40 that was close to what I wanted.  It wasn't  exactly what I wanted though so I decided to modify it.  Note: if you're going to modify a brand new lamp (or anything), make sure you check to see if it's working BEFORE you do any modifying because you won't be able to return it (fortunately I remembered).  Here's the lamp i got:

This year, I've had several friends and family all asking me the same question.  They say 
"I decided I want to start sewing and I don't have a huge budget.  What sewing machine should I get?"

Well, after typing up the same email about five times, I figured other people might want to know what I think as well.  This is going to be kind of lengthy so feel free to come back tomorrow if you're not interested in getting a sewing machine.  Please keep in mind that I am in no way a sewing expert, I am not affiliated with any dealers or brands and everyone has their own preferences and their own experiences with different machines and brands.

Like I said before, I wanted to do some reorganizing and decorating in my quilt room and the upstairs in general.  In the quilt room, I needed to get rid of anything not functional and make what I kept look prettier.  I like my room pretty and orderly - I can't sew or work on anything if it's messy - it drives me insane.  

But anyways, one project at a time.  I was planning on getting some new bookshelves or cubbies and I knew I would want some piece of art or decoration above them.  I saw this on Pinterest and decided I wanted to do a sewing or crafting quote for the wall similar to the one they had made.

I’m not sure if it’s from the quilt expo, or pinterest or seeing other people’s homes decorated so nicely but I suddenly got the urge to reorganize and finish decorating the quilt room, landing and guest room.  First thing I did was to spend a little time in each area and sketch out what I think I want to change so I can actually start changing things – it’s hard to start decorating anything if you don’t know what you want it to look like.