When I first started quilting, I wasn’t really concerned about scraps of fabric.  Unless it was a big piece (maybe close to a fat quarter) then I didn’t save the leftover fabric – I just threw it out.  ***GASP!!!***  I know all you experienced quilters and fabric hoarders are having a hard time believing it, but it is true.  I used to be a fabric waster.  I admit it.  Since then,  I have gradually started saving smaller and smaller pieces with hopes of one day making a scrappy quilt out of them.  However, I draw the line at about a 3” square.  If it’s smaller than that, I still usually toss it – I know I’ll never have the patience to do a postage stamp quilt so it’s pretty pointless to keep.  But I still feel bad just throwing them away!  So I decided to come up with a few ideas for the little scraps that I know I won’t sew into anything.

As most of you know, I am on the advisory board for the chapter of Alpha Phi at Florida Tech.  One of the girls who I advise is in charge of the new member education and experience and she approached me over the summer about an idea she had.  She wanted to give all the girls journals so that they could make notes or even use it like a diary.  Well it just so happened that I had just made a Journal Cover for myself so of course I volunteered to make some for the new girls – all 15 of them!  

Earlier this year I made a cute "under the sea" themed baby blanket and burp cloths for our good friends Carolyn & Josh and their daughter Makayla.  Recently, Carolyn mentioned that she'd like to have a small zippered bag for toys and books to take to and from daycare/babysitter and she'd love to have one that matched her stuff.  So of course I was happy to make her one :) 

For Ryan’s birthday this year, I knew I wouldn’t have time or energy to cook a big fancy dinner since we would be getting home from Alaska late Sunday night with his birthday the next day.  So when Broken Barrel announced they were having a beer dinner the week of his birthday I knew it would be perfect!

Saturday morning 8/10, I got up and went for a 3mile run with my mom and Joe and it was a really nice outing.  I had been lying in bed awake and finally decided to check my phone to see what time it was and my mom had JUST texted to see if I wanted to go for a run.  We went for a nice jog around a little pond and through a bird refuge.  I was very surprised at the bird refuge to find out that they have Sandhill Cranes just like we do in Florida!  They are a smaller subspecies there than what we have but they look almost identical otherwise.

I bet you thought I was done posting about Alaska since my last post talked about the end of the cruise, didn’t you?  Well I fooled you!  The cruise may have been over but the vacation was not, yay!  Wednesday 8/7 we disembarked the cruise ship and got on a bus to go to the McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge for a view of Mount McKinley.

Wow I can't believe I broke my streak of so many days without missing a blog post.  Anyways, I know I also missed Scrap Basket Sunday yesterday so I'll have to do some extra sewing on that project to make up for it.  Before we get too far into August, I want to wrap up my vacation pics and summary :)

Sunday 8/4 was another long day at port – we got to Skagway at 8am and had to be back on board around 8pm again.  We hadn’t made any plans so we were talking about what we wanted to do at our last port on the cruise.  We talked about going Salmon fishing but apparently it’s not as good in Skagway as it is in some of the other areas of Alaska.  We talked about doing a Jeep tour and a few other things but then we saw a tour where you go to Davidson Glacier and hike and kayak to the actual glacier.  Mom decided to splurge and take us to do that.  We had a couple hours to kill before the tour started and there wasn’t much in the town except for the obligatory jewelry and tourist shops so we found ourselves a trail.  The trail led up to a pretty lake called Dewey Lake.  We would have liked to go all the way around the lake but we didn’t have quite enough time so we just hiked to the lake, checked it out and headed back.

Friday 8/2 we arrived at Ketchikan around 7am but it was a short day in port – we had to be back on the boat by 2pm.  I had done a little research on Trip Advisor before we went and the Great Alaskan Lumberjack show got great reviews so we decided to do that and go to the Totem Bight State Park.  We didn’t get any amazing pics at the lumberjack show but it was pretty entertaining.  They had two teams and they would race each other to cut through logs using chainsaws, hand saws, etc.  They also did log-rolling where two guys get on a log and try to roll the log to make their opponent lose their balance and fall.  One of the guys ended up falling pretty hard…doing the splits…and he split his pants…LOL.  Talk about a rough day at work!

Yesterday my mom turned 50 (the big 5-0!) and rather than have a party, she wanted to take a family vacation.  For anyone who doesn’t personally know me or her: she’s a big traveler.  Ever since I was younger, her jobs have involved global or regional sales so she travels all over the world.  Consequentially, it’s hard to plan vacations to places that mom hasn’t been.  Even after years of travel, there was one place that really stood out to her that she hadn’t been: Alaska!

Today is Ryan's 32nd Birthday, wahoo!  Since we just got back from vacation (more on that soon), I didn't have time to do a whole lot for his birthday but I did do a couple cool things.  I packed his lunchbox but I'm assuming his friends will take him out to lunch so I only packed two things...breakfast...and...Fireballs!  For the past few weeks he's been checking every store we go in to see if they sell fireballs and no one seems to sell them anymore so I went on Amazon and got a big 3lb bag and filled his lunchbox with them, heehee.

I wanted to get him a coke and his favorite breakfast burrito but I just ran out of time so hopefully he'll find something tasty at work.  For tonight, we don't have any big dinner plans but Thursday we are going to a four course dinner and beer tasting at our local bar so I'll let you know about all the tasty food and beers we have later this week.  For presents, Ryan got a few cards with some birthday money, a new wallet, some new drill bits and I got him this pretty sweet clamping tool.  The video is pretty long but the first 30 seconds or so will give you an idea of all the cool things you can use it for.  Hope he likes it!