Rocky Mountain Raceway!

We took the kids to the raceway last night (Got a freebie pass for 2 adults in the mail & kids under 5 get in free, so it cost us $5 for Douglas to get in! My idea of a family night!)

Douglas and Drew got to try out some kids race cars… Both kept trying to find out how to turn them on! (Lucky for us they’re push start, or the kids would have driven off into the sunset -or parked cars, whichever came first..)

And they’re off! The kids happily sucking down some sugar while the cars race by…

Oops! First crash of the night! Yellow car and Orange car bonked into each other.. then Orange car bonked into the wall..damaging it enough to need a tow off the track.

Drew is very concerned about Orange car. There he goes hooked up to said tow truck!

Now on to the midget cars! They don’t look too small on the left, but check out the guys standing around the car getting a tow on the right! (little blob of blue and pink) Teenie! I think they just picked it up and set it on the tow bed! Ha ha ha...

Ahhh… now the funny cars (like my technical jargon?).. another wipeout, with a quick recovery.

About 2 hours into the racing, and Drew is getting bored. Imagine that? A 2 year old getting bored? Even with loud racing cars zooming around in front of him? Sheesh!

He’s decided to be goofy for a bit….

Love this picture on the left… one of those ‘candid’ moments that you sometimes catch. And then our monkey decided to prove his heritage by swinging on the stair rails for awhile…

Needles to say, once we had to start chasing Drew up and down the stairs, we packed it in and called it a night. Altogether we lasted about 3 hours. Dudley and I commented on how ‘preppy’ and overdressed we felt…. us with no tattoo's, tank tops, wife beaters, short shorts, cigarettes, or crooked teeth. It was definitely redneck-ville. But we had us some fun!

Vintage Sheet Baby Quilt

Dude's friend at work wife is pregnant with their first child. They are even more "hippy" than I am...inasmuch as they are not finding out the sex of the baby, will be using cloth diapers, etc.


They've decided to throw a baby shower, but have told everyone not to bring presents (??).


I of course decided that a baby quilt was in order, and it needed to be as gender-neutral as possible.


What better fabric to make it out of than my vintage sheet scraps from this quilt? Recycled fabric! Totally Hippy!


The whole quilt is made from the sheet scraps and 2 pieces of vintage fabric from my mother and grandmother.


The backing came from a king size comforter given to me along with a king size headboard and mattress that my parents now use.


The comforter had a big rip from one side to the middle, but there was quite a bit of usable fabric left. Perfect for a recycled fabric quilt!


I had fun quilting a different design into each border square. The center squares are wonky 9-patches, so I used wonky stars to quilt each of them with.


The pattern itself is adapted from Vickie Eapen's Wonky Nine-Patch Quilt out of Moda's new Fresh Fabric Treats book.


The original design has solid color squares for the border. My scraps weren't big enough for solid squares, so I adapted them to the 2 rectangles. Also, the sizing was cut down to 6"
squares for my quilt.


And here she/he is, all wrapped up with left-over binding and ready to present to the new-to-be parents! I love baby quilts!

Vintage Bread Box

I received an old wooden bread box from my neighbor awhile ago. I didn't remember to take a 'before' picture, but it looked a lot like the first image without the sunflower glass and wheat imprint at the top. (plain plexiglass instead)



It was at least 20 years old, and covered in grime.

So of course I had to cute-ify it!

First I pulled the plexiglass out and the hinged door off.

Then I cleaned the thing and painted it black.

After letting it dry, I distressed the paint, then brushed a dark stain on the distressed marks.

I also replaced the old nasty wooden knob with the cool iron red one.
The original hinges were actually good enough looking to keep.

For a month or so, it's been sitting on my counter with no glass or tin, serving as our bread box.

I tried looking for a sheet of tin to punch on, but had a hard time locating one. Home Depot and Lowe's just had sheet metal (too heavy and too expensive.. try $20 on up), and Michaels didn't have anything close.

I was at Lowe's build and grow with the kids a couple of weeks ago, and we walked down the heater isle to exit the store... duh! a flat piece of heater vent stuff! Big enough to make a magnet board for Dudley's office and enough left over for 2 bread box's (if I had another one to do!) And the cost? About $7. Not bad!

So, after searching the web for punched tin inspiration, I created this yesterday. I used a good ol' hammer and nail.

Not perfect, but not bad for a first attempt!

Much cuter on the counter now too...