Kitchen Catch Up

So here's some of what happened since I last posted.

The floors got refinished in the entire downstairs.

Which meant that the furniture all got piled up in the family room, the only carpeted room. This picture is taken from the doorway because you couldn't get in to the room!

Then, finally, the cabinets went in.

Followed by the counter - Laurent Brown marble.  Yum.

Here's the sink and faucet.

And the almost entirely finished kitchen. The back splash is white.  The LED lights make it look blue in this night shot.  It doesn't look like that in person.

Next time, the rest of the story. . . Mina.

The Disaster Zone continues

The ceiling in the breakfast area and the kitchen were two different heights, so they both had to come down.  The good news is that the plumbing that had to be moved was more easily routed through the ceiling.   The water pressure in the bathroom is better now, too.  But there's also quite a mess in the laundry room now from streamlining the gas lines and moving the water lines,  which required putting some holes in the ceiling.

Electric is next, I think.  Then floors Thursday.

We also bought knobs for the cabinets today.

Day Two

Saturday they bricked up the window. We also went to tag our marble slab, which was an annoying and potentially more expensive trip. We'll see. Monday they take out the interior wall.

So far meals have included leftovers, Thai take out, BBQ lunch out, grilled hot dogs, and steak and potatoes on the grill.

Demolition Has Begun

The guys came today.  I think they got a lot done.  Tomorrow they are coming to brick up the window from the outside.

Making Progress - 31 weeks, 6 to go

The nursery has been patched and painted. 

Some sewing projects are done, like the pillow, a new dog bed, and the picture frames:



but not the curtains or crib skirt.  Once the curtain rods are hung, which can't happen until the guest room is cleaned out, which couldn't happen until the room was painted. then I can do those.  It's all starting to come together...

Atomic Cake

For LBK's birthday, he requested an Atomic Cake.  Apparently it's a Southside specialty.  I hadn't heard of it until earlier this year.  It's a 3 layer cake, one each of banana, chocolate and yellow cake, filled with pudding or ppastry cream, bananas, strawberries and whipped cream, then topped with more whipped cream.  It makes a huge cake.  I used Baking From My Home to Yours for the banana cake, the Fastest Fudge Cake for the chocolate layer, and got lazy and used a box mix for the yellow cake.  I had a box of chocolate pudding so I used that for both layers along with sliced strawberries and bananas.  We had two slices for dessert and I made him take the rest to work the next day where the boys promptly polished it off.

Color Wheel Quilt

The Color Wheel Quilt from Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts is finished and gifted.

New Baby Pics

I had another ultrasound.  The pictures aren't that great because baby was all folded in half with her feet crossed.  She is measuring right on target, though and everything else looked fine.

Shopping

I spent a lovely afternoon shopping and lunching with my lady friends. We had a delicious lunch at Prasino in La Grange.  It's an eco-friendly restaurant with green building practice and a focus on local, organic and sustainable food.  Most importantly, it was delicious.  We had 3 entrees, a dessert and a house-made soda.  I had the short rib tacos, which were generous in portion and very, very tasty.  My dining partners enjoyed the Margherita Wheat Flat bread, which had a very crispy flat bread layer and just the right amount of toppings, and the California Turkey Panini, which had a crispy and delicious addition of apple.  We shared the chocolate peanut butter gooey cake which was served with peanut butter ice cream.  It was plenty to share after a light lunch, but wouldn't be too large, heavy or rich for one person.  It was very well balanced, not too sweet or gooey.  I also had a very refreshing ginger lime house-made soda.

We visited two quilt shops after lunch, the Quilt Basket in Downer's Grove, and Pieceful Heart in Lisle.  Here are my purchases for the day:

These batiks are for a housewarming gift.  Much thanks to Donna for helping me pick them out.  Batiks don't come naturally to me.  I need to get some solids before I get started on it.

I only purchased one of these yesterday, the top left green print.  Eventually, these will be a Bento Box quilt, I think.

And a few random fat quarters, some flannel for baby pants, and larger piece to maybe back a baby quilt. 

Nursery Update

Wall colors are picked - the gray and the darkest orange.  Fabrics are ordered.  

Crib and dresser are here - in the living room for now.

The closet is getter fuller.

Here are a few of my favorites.

And I heard shower invitations, which could NOT be cuter, are being mailed this weekend.

Delivery Day!

Look what the nice UPS man brought us today. 

He even congratulated me, told me about his kids - who are about to graduate from college - and brought everything inside for me.  I didn't tell him, but I think I'll be seeing him again tomorrow. 


I also got a box from my mom that included a package from my sister, nephew and niece with some adorable clothes for the baby.

I especially love the onesie with the elephant, the white dress with the big flowers, and possibly my absolute favorite, the yellow daisies.

Nursery Fabrics

I left town for the weekend to go to the CMQG quilting retreat.  I left LBK with the stacks of fabrics we have been sorting through along with some paint chips.  I came home to this.

How smart was he to combine the Kate Spain prints with the Patricia Bravo fabrics?  I hadn't gotten over using "a line" together.  I think we're both happy with the results. The ones on the left will be for the curtains, pillows, fabric boxes and dust ruffle, along with some coordinating solids.  The ones on the right will be framed on the wall and possibly used as accents elsewhere.

I'm picking up paint swatches today. 

One step closer.

First Pictures

Here are the first pictures of our baby girl.

Another top done

Yesterday, I was frustrated with the templates not working for the Color Wheel quilt.  So I set it aside to regroup and pulled out the flying geese blocks that I had finished before Christmas.  They went together quickly into rows.  Unfortunately, I realized I managed to put together some of blocks backwards.  Oh well.  This is for me, and finished is better than perfect certainly applies.  I'm not taking apart and reassembling a bunch of blocks at this stage of the game.  It's such a busy top that I doubt anyone who is not a quilter looking closely will be able to tell anyways.  Today, I quickly assembled the rows.

Sorry it's not the greatest picture.  It's a bit of an odd size, 40x62.  Maybe some wide side borders and narrow top and bottom borders?

Original post on blocks here.  And here.  Was it really that long ago?

City Lot

This is the City Lot quilt from Cherri House's City Quilts.  We chose the Alexander Henry dot for the back first, then matched Kona solids using my swatch card for the front.  I quilted it using a similar free motion style to the one Oh Fransson used in her Tokyo Subway Map quilt.  It's a little crinklier than I might have wanted, but I am in love with this quilt and can not let it go!

Pieces Cut

Cutting the wedges for the wheel went faster than I thought it would.  Here they are all laid out. 

Snow Day

I'm spending most of my snow day quilting.  Yesterday, I finished the binding on a quilt that I decided to keep for myself.  So now I have to make another one to replace it.  I've been interested in making the color wheel quilt from Last Minute Patchwork for awhile. I also have an ever growing pile of scraps, including a box of small pieces FQ size and smaller that I bought from Elizabeth of Oh Fransson quite awhile ago.  I've used some of them, and have some set aside for other projects, but I thought this would be a great way to use them up.

The finished quilt is rather large, so I'm scaling it down about 20% to make a quilt that is about 40" square.  Assuming my math is correct, that is.  We'll find out.

I started by going through my scrap bin, drawers and bag and sorting possible fabrics by color.  You can see the template I scanned in, then reduced and printed out.  I occasionally compared scraps to the template to make sure they were big enough.

After creating my piles, I ironed everything that need it, which was pretty much everything, then laid it out neatly in its color group.  Next, I put every color group in the order I thought looked best, starting with pink and ending with the browns.  You need 52 wedges.  I had 55 in my finished layout, so I called in some help to weed a couple out.  This is the line up before weeding.

This afternoon, I'll cut the template and start cutting the wedges.

Kouign Amann

The first, and only time, I've seen this French pastry was at the eGullet Heartland gathering in Kansas City.  I headed back to the table for seconds, only to find that there were none.  It's buttery, crispy, sugary, flaky, chewy and caramelized all at once.  I tried to make them once before, but they didn't come out at all.  This time, I did much better.  As soon as I find some time to make a rough puff pastry from scratch with really good butter, I'll be making more.  As a shortcut version goes, though, these were pretty darn good.  I used all butter puff pastry from Trader Joe's and lots of sugar in the folds and turns.  Then I cut them into squares, folded up the corners and placed them in individual parchment lined tart pans to contain the sugar and butter and help them hold their shape. 

More on kouign amann here, and here

Original blueprints