lovin' Lucy

I just can't even express how much 

I am loving

having a longarm.

Sometimes I'll be in the middle of quilting

and just feel 

This!

This is what I was made for.

In the first few days after buying Lucy,

I had several moments of 

"What have we done?!"

and

"I just wasted almost $2000!"

but then Tyler replaced the wheels

(which we sort of expected he'd need to do)

and I bought a Towa gauge

and got in a little more practice

and

I started having so.much.fun.

I quickly figured out 

that I would better retain my improvements

if I could quilt fairly regularly.

But I couldn't quite figure out how to 

piece lots of quilt tops

in order to practice quilting

at least once every week to ten days.

Then, some Instagram friends

lovingly and generously sent me some of their tops

to practice on,

and assured me that they would cherish any imperfections

(of which I had assured them 

there would be plenty!)

I will always be so grateful for those women.

Their faith in me,

and their graciousness towards me

allowed me to increase my skills

so much more rapidly

than if I were 'going it alone'.

When I didn't have anything to quilt 

and it'd been a week or so,

I'd throw a yard of fabric on the frame

and just play.

(I've amassed quite a stack of quilts to be bound)

My quilting went from

passable

to decent

to actually kinda good.

And Lucy and I were loving every bit of the learning.

Well. I was anyways,

and I can only assume from Luc's wonderful compliance

that she's lovin it too.

I still love piecing quilt tops,

but man,

I'm loving quilting them more than I ever expected. 

life in the fast lane (not)

What I didn't tell you in my last post

was

shortly after I took that picture,

I went in the old house

 through what had been the doorway to the LEM

(and before that - the kitchen window)

and then exited

with my arms full.

I misjudged quite how deep of a step down it was

and with no hands available to grab onto the opening

 to help ease my way down,

I ended up sort of falling out of the house,

landed hard on my foot (on unlevel ground)

and tore my dadgum meniscus in my right knee.

You might remember

 I had a slight tear in my meniscus several years ago

and only went to the doctor 

when I had to

use my hands to move my leg

to move my foot from the gas pedal to the brake

while driving.

Or that I went months after injuring my achilles

before going to the doctor.

I didn't even wait 24 hours before going this time.

know what this means??

This means
that the LEM will soon be moved over
and attached to the new house.
Wooohooo!!

halloween octopalooza

Lily and Lexi made and hung these decorations in the middle of the night Wednesday
so we'd wake up to them on Halloween.
There were also little ghosties in our coffee cups. Sweet, sweet girls 💗

Jeremiah, Josiah, and Lily dressed up for Octopalooza

at church on Sunday.

Jeremiah went as The Invisible Man

Josiah was Flat Stanley

interestingly, the invisible man cast a very visible shadow ;-)

and Lily (who made her entire costume herself!) 

dressed up as Maleficent.

(Daddy surprised her and Lexi 

and took them to see the first showing

of the movie on the night it was released 💗)

She made the horns by shaping tinfoil, then adding paper mache'
Taylee sweetly came over and did Lil's makeup

the cape she made from a fitted sheet, and the skirt from a matching pillowcase

 Here she is with Jeremiah

heehee

For the Fall Festival, 

Lexi was a Pop Star

(we'd ordered rainbow-striped over-the-knee socks

that matched her ukulele case candy bag,

but they still haven't arrived😠

She made the earrings after Dad freaked out about her first choice of large hoop earrings.
Then she decided that they were way better than the hoops :-)

 

the jacket was a 50% thrift shop find, and we added some clearance (and a few not on clearance) sparkly patches

Lily was (obviously) a scarecrow,

Lily made this costume by herself, too
except for the 5 hr cornrows straw hair - that was my contribution ;-)

Josiah was a tourist from the nineties

and Jeremiah was

-well-

I'm not entirely sure 😂

Tyler dressed as he's dressed for Halloween

for the past several years,

a farmer.

I do love that man!!              

Brandon and Taylee

were Flynn Rider and Rapunzel

I made his vest out of a $4 long-sleeved turtleneck shirt
and buckles that he made with a 3D printer,
and his bag from a $2 and 50 cent vinyl remnant from JoAnns

The annual buy back the candy Halloween Candy Sale

is already set up

and we've made plans to go to Scott and Jackie's next year.

XO

windows and wall arts

For my birthday a few weeks ago,

Tyler put up window trim in the dining and living rooms

(He did such a good job)

I love it!!

We still need to caulk and paint the final coat,

but it looks sooo much nicer.

(Ignore the mess in that little nook. We do...
It will one day be a desk and shelves)

I'd been waiting for trim to hang anything on the walls.

(had to make sure everything would be perfectly centered,

 ya know)

Now it feels even more like home

💗

hiking cedar falls

So.

I might have been a tad hasty

in saying that it was already winter.

We did have a couple of cold days,

but we've also had some really lovely autumn days too,

and Friday was one of them.

Tyler was going to be off work,

so I had suggested maybe we take a short trip out to Natural Dam

for some nature therapy,

but we decided to drive 2 hours

east to Petite Jean instead,

and hike down to the base of Cedar Falls.

We've had a decent amount of rain lately,

so I figured the water would be flowing pretty good.

It wasn't.

But 

it was still worth the hike down.

(The hike back up liked to kill me though)

Everyone was sore 

by the time we made it back up the huge mountain

but it was good to spend a day together out in God's beautiful creation.

And it truly was 

a perfect fall day.