It's a Jungle Out There Baby Quilt

Bittersweet.

Sweet-I was so happy to make this baby quilt for Derek and Tina's baby boy (due in October.)

Bitter-the reminder that Derek and Tina will be leaving the first week in August for Beaufort, South Carolina...Derek's new duty-station.

Well, here we are. The end of July. Sigh. Derek and Tina will only be here about two more weeks. :( Jake is used to Derek being gone. He has been deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan five times since 2001. However, this is different. But, I digress.....

For Baby Cooper's quilt, I chose to use Hoffman's "It's a Jungle Out There" fabric line. They actually have three versions: one featuring primary colors, one using neutral tones, and the one I used. :)





Hoffman has a free pattern on their website that I tweaked slightly for this quilt. I will be honest. It turned out a little too busy for my tastes. If I were to do it again, I would probably use more solids within the quilt to add more definition. Maybe????
I decided to use this as the backing fabric because elephants (especially cartoon ones) make me ridiculously happy.





Well, I hope that Baby Cooper enjoys snuggling, drooling, and crawling all over this quilt. <3 <3 <3

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Sunkissed Sherbet

Yes, this post is brought to you with a side of "catch-up." As per usual, no?

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that I had completed my first donation to Kaitlyn's Promise.

Well, I finished my second donation about a month ago and was able to send it off for donation, as well.

I finished most of the quilt top of this quilt while at our Idyllwild Cabin Fever Quilters' Retreat. I loved how easy this was and it really came out pretty nicely. I plan on making some similar quilts to use up some of my fabric rolls, that truly seem to be over-taking me.

For this quilt, I used Moda's Sunkissed line. Love it. It reminds me of sherbet with its oranges and greens, thus the name: Sunkissed Sherbet.
I used a stacked coin idea, but combined it with a bargello technique that I had recently used. I really liked the outcome.



The backing fabric is from the same line and is super-cute.


Another thing that I loved about this line is the "dictionary" entries that were incorporated into the fabric. I used one of these as the binding, as you can (kind of) see in this close-up.


This quilt, along with the Letters to Paris quilt, were both raffled to benefit the Kaitlyn's Promise Memorial Scholarship Fund.
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A Night of Favorites....

Ok, I am behind again. I have a few quilts to post, but before that I wanted to share my night of favorites.
Recently, I got to share a night with my favorite guy: my husband, Rene. We went out to celebrate our anniversary. :)
My favorite guy made reservations at what is now my new favorite restaurant: Paon Restaurant and Wine Bar in Carlsbad, California.
I love this place! The location is fantastic (downtown Carlsbad), the ambiance is perfect, and the food was scrumptious. (Rene had the veal sweet breads with smoked pancetta, braised endive, and black truffle sauce. I can't remember what he had for the main dish, but I had the provencal herb-crusted colorado rack of lamb with porcini mushrooms, red plums, spinach, and potato puree. Rene had to finish it off for me.)
Now for my last favorite....
I have a new favorite wine that I thought I would share with my wine-loving friends.

It is delicious. We liked it so much that we had to go to the wine bar to bring a few bottles home. :)
Happy anniversary, sweetheart. Thank you for making my life perfect and our future bright! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

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