First Family Vacation

Over the Labor Day holiday, we took our first family vacation down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (of course!).  On our way down, we stopped in to visit our friends the Whites and their little girl Julia.  It's been a while since we have gotten a chance to visit with them and it was their first time meeting Colin.  Julia was happy to try to play with Colin, but he was mostly just taking it all in.  :)

After a short stay, we ventured further down to our final destination in Nags Head, NC.  It's crazy to think I have been coming here with him for the past 7 years (first trip in 2005 - egads!).  He proposed at The Marshes Lighthouse in Manteo and we got married on the beach in Nags Head.  Needless to say, I think it's fitting we decided to make this our first family vacation destination.

Our first day, we made it out to the beach in the late afternoon.  It's a good thing we did because during the rest of our stay, the waters were super rough and red flagged so it was our only opportunity for a dip. Colin was totally fascinated with the sound of the waves and kept turning around to face the water.

Rob and I decided we should probably stick his toes in the ocean to make it an official visit to the beach.  At 4.5 months, that seemed to be all that was needed.  Next year we might venture into the sound a little bit.

Colin didn't seem to mind the water at all even though it was cooler than his normal bath water.  It was still a lot warmer than what Rob and I are used to for ocean temps in May.  We could actually get in without waiting for body parts to go numb.  Ha!

Randomly, I found out that my high school friend Ryan and his wife Alina were also in the Outer Banks visiting at the same time, so we met up for lunch.  Alina is expecting in December, so they got some practical experience holding Colin.  :)  It was good to see them again.

Our friends had brought down their kayak to play around in the sound, so we took turns giving it a go.  I have never kayaked before, but I thought it was a lot of fun.

Rob had apparently been before, but it's been a while.  He still did really good and maneuvered pretty good around the water.

And finally, there was a beautiful sunset that happened on our last night there.  I had an important lesson in lenses and my new camera.  Going from AC to like 150% humidity causes fogging.  With the quick sunset, the lens never really cleared, but it kind of makes for an interesting affect.

Overall, it was a great vacation.  The ride home was a bit trying, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.  Here's hoping to many more family vacations to one of our favorite places on Earth.  :)

Colin's Quilt

I finally made the time to finish my son's first quilt not all that long ago.  It took a while with everything else I was doing, but he now has a place to play and drool on.  :) 

 I was having a hard time picking THE quilt pattern for him.  I really wanted a sailboat pattern, but the ones I found I wasn't happy with and so I ultimately settled on a pattern I had used for my friend's little girl.  I opted for frogs instead of butterflies this time, but it was still fun trying to pick out all of the fabric I was going to need.  You really need to have a clear vision of what you want your finished product to look like to pick good fabrics.  So far I'd like to think I have had pretty good luck.  :)

Over a couple of weeks I did all of the cutting and initial block making.  This quilt takes a few steps just to get to the image show below.  For each of those green-blue-white blocks, I had to sew two larger blocks into two smaller squares for each color combination (green-blue and blue-white) and divide them each time.  Then for the final assembly, sew the two different combinations together and split them once more to get the final block.  It's a lot of small steps, but if you find your groove it doesn't take too long.  

The easier pieces of the block are just the straight white blocks and even the motif centered blocks.  The motif centered (frogs) are a little tricky just to make sure you have enough fabric and can get the character centered how you want them.  This one was slightly easier than the butterflies, but still a bit tricky.

Once you get all 9 blocks together you get the one bigger block which becomes the true block you work into your pattern.  I alternated the pieced blocks with what are referred to as "snowball" blocks.  I guess someone thought that's what they looked like at one point.  In any case, once you get the lined up and sewn together, you start to see a fun larger pattern emerge.

The final top layer step is to add borders.  They really make the quilt come together and give it definition.  Once you get that part together, you can start to assemble the quilt with your top layer (quilted), the filling (typically cotton batting), and then your backing (typically a solid fabric).  This was the first quilt I decided to machine together, so it was a bit intense putting it through my machine.  But the good news is, I now know I can do it, and it gives it a somewhat professional look to it.

Quilting truly is a labor of love.  I am sure my little man is going to make all kinds of messes on this quilt, but I also know that it will be a keepsake no matter what shape it gets to be.  :)