A couple weeks before Addi's quilt was due, I was getting really frustrated with how unorganized my fabric was - spilling over and impossible to see what I might already have.  So I pulled it all out and started organizing it but I quickly realized that it was going to take way more time than I had that weekend.  The problem was that when I pulled all that junk out of the cabinets...suddenly it cluttered the entire upstairs and i had no room to work on Addi's quilt!  I cleared enough space to piece the top but once i was ready to put it on the quilting frame there was no way I could even get to the quilting frame.  So I was left with two choices: either finish reorganizing and putting everything away...OR...stuff it in a closet or the cabinets, basically hide it.  I had so much stuff I couldn't even figure out where to hide it so I was pretty much forced to finish the job and put it all away.  LOL.

So let's start with why I was so frustrated with my fabric...

So, after we just talked about how to eat to lose weight…LOL…let’s talk about how to make a delicious ice cream cake, yay!!  A couple weeks ago, my boss threw a little surprise pizza lunch for me and another guy who reached our 5 year mark at Piper and my boss also brought ice cream cake.  I hadn’t eaten ice cream cake in so long and it reminded me that I had been wanting to try to make my own ice cream cake using my ice cream maker and a springform pan.  I realized that I hadn’t figured out what I was bringing to the book club so I figured, why not?  Let’s make an ice cream cake!

I didn’t have a whole lot of time since I was making it on a work night after bootcamp so I decided to cheat and use a box of brownie mix in the pantry.  I mixed up the brownies and poured them into an extra tall (4” tall) 9” diameter spring-form pan.  If you haven’t used a spring-form pan before, they are pretty neat.  The sides and bottom of the pan are two separate pieces and the “side” piece has a latch that lets you expand or close it.  This way you can bake something in the pan, then unlatch the side of the pan and pop it open.

About a month ago, a few friends decided that we should start a book club – I immediately agreed of course, I L-O-V-E to read.  I think I like to read so much because when I was a kid I got “grounded” a lot and there wasn’t much else you could do besides read.  Parents – ground your kids, it promotes reading, LOL.  We weren’t sure exactly how many people would join the book club or how it would work so we decided that to get started, we should choose who would host the first meeting at their house and then that person would select the book.  At each meeting we’d decide on the next host and book and a tentative date.  For the first meeting, Kayla agreed to be the host and she selected a book titled “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield.

Prior to bootcamp, I always had a really hard time understanding how to figure out how many calories I should be eating.  How much do I adjust it for if I am trying to maintain my current weight?  Or to lose 1lb a week?  Well, when I started bootcamp, Bonnie provided a lot more information that has been very helpful and I thought I would share it with you.  I also did some internet research on my own to validate what she had sent me and everything checks out.

After my last sneak peak, I had finished sewing the large sections of squares and I needed to make the center section with the letter A.  For Aubrey's quilt, I had done a big curly A.

Ok so we talked about the trailer some before but it's been consuming a lot of time lately and is getting close to done so I thought I'd share some more.  Here's where we left off last time:

Trailer bought on Craigslist: $350
New Axles to replace rusty ones: $880
New wheels after finding out the old ones didn't work w/ the new axles: $375
Total Cost: $1605

After getting all that put together, Ryan was ready to try to get the boat loaded onto it.  So he drove the boat through the creek to a nearby park with a boat ramp and I drove his truck and the trailer there (I was a little nervous since i'd never driven his truck or the trailer but it was fine).

We weren't sure exactly how far we'd have to back the truck in or how easily the boat would pull up on it.  But we took a guess and Ryan started driving the boat up onto the trailer.  Unfortunately, we couldn't pull the boat all the way onto the trailer - it looked like the bunks were in the right spot but the front of the boat wasn't going to clear the winch and post.  Ryan tried to do some adjusting of the winch location while we were at the dock but it was getting dark pretty quickly.  Eventually we agreed he would have to do some work on it at home and come back the next day.

Ryan always asks me "When are you going to make something for us?"  And he's right, I spend so much time making things for other people and I almost never make anything for myself or our home.  So, I've decided that from now on I will try to alternate: One project for a customer or friend/family member and then one project for us.  I have a lot of projects to do for gifts or customers this summer so I will probably have to do mostly small projects for myself in between them but I want to start thinking about one project that I am determined to accomplish this year.  Recovering our patio furniture and making furniture covers.  

Our patio furniture is in great shape but the cushions could use a little help.  I never ended up getting patio covers to protect them and I didn't spray them with any protectant or anything.  Considering they have been outside with no protection from sun or rain for almost 4 years, I'd say they've done pretty well.  But i bet if I recover them and make covers to protect them when we aren't using them, they would probably stay looking great for as long as we have them!

Here's why i want to recover them, you can see how the fabric is starting to rip as it is just disintegrating:

During the first bootcamp that I did, I switched us to the Team Beachbody diet that we had done in the past.  The intent was to be on that diet for just the four weeks of bootcamp to help us drop some weight and then we could go to a normal cooking routine to “maintain”.  We did really well for the first three weeks and I’d say “ok” for the last week of bootcamp. I decided to do another bootcamp that started two weeks later but I hadn’t made any decisions regarding our nutrition.

You know that old saying “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.  Well boy-oh-boy did we fail at eating healthy over those two weeks.  We had pizza, Chinese, Mexican, junk food, coca cola…and the list goes on.  It wasn’t a cheat meal, it was a cheat 2 weeks.  When I started the second bootcamp (still in progress), I had lost the 1lb of muscle I gained in the first bootcamp and gained back 1/2lb of fat.  Yikes!

If you saw my facebook post, then you know that I'm a little behind on making my niece Addi's quilt for her 2nd birthday.  I had been procrastinating as usual, partly because I needed to cut out a million bajillion squares and partially because I am just a procrastinator sometimes.  I should have been working on it instead of making that design wall (two weeks ago) but i figured I could pretty much do it in one weekend and decided to wait until the week before the party to do most of the work.  But between my work's Crawfish Boil and our 8hr extravaganza to buy a new truck (see my last post), I ended up with almost no time to work on it.  I felt so bad about not getting it done, sigh.  Oh well, good thing she's only two so she won't mind, LOL.  Anyways, we went to her birthday party this past weekend (empty handed of course) and when we came back I did get a little more work done.  I don't have the whole top done yet but I wanted to share a little sneak peak with you.  Hope this brightens your week!

Here's all the squares cut and ready to be sewn together:

I have been wanting to write a new blog post for a week now but I just couldn't decide.  The only thing that's been on my mind lately is our spending and budget which may not be very exciting to anyone else.  But guess what?  it's my blog and I can blog about whatever I want.  And maybe after a blog post I'll be able to move on and get back to more fun and exciting things :)

Earlier this year, we finally fully combined our finances to try to join forces and pay down all our debt.  We had quite a bit of credit card debt so we were going to mostly focus on paying those down.  We set budgets that were strict but accounted for just about everything we normally spend money on: regular bills, birthday/christmas/wedding/baby gifts, insurance & registration, Halloween party, travel, pet expenses, etc.  We also each have our weekly allowances to spend on eating out or whatever we want.  The plan was to finish paying off the credit cards by the end of this year and have made a pretty good dent in the vehicle amounts too and then within about 2 years from now, have no car payments, no boat payments and no credit card debt.  That would leave us with a lot more in our monthly budgets to save up for things we want to do, put towards 401k accounts, pay down our mortgage or whatever else we wanted to use it for (kids maybe?).