I was hoping that I would have a finished quilt to post today, but alas, it didn’t happen. Here it is on paper:

My mom helped me pick fabric and pay for the fabric and cut the fabric and piece it together, and for the last month I have been quilting it. E V E R Y S Q U A R E I N C H. What was I thinking? I just can’t do anything the easy way. I’m swirly stippling this baby in its 108″x108″ enormity. My aching wrists are sure jealous of Amy’s mom’s quilting machine. Rolling and scrunching this king size beast into my Brother is doable– just barely.

It’s a wedding present for my brother. I hope he likes it. We’re on our way to Boise for the festivities, and to finish the quilt, and to see some real mountains, and to camp in those real mountains.

Oh, and the good news out in crafty bolg land is that Denyse Schmidt is coming out with a new book this fall! I’ve been dreaming of this since I bought my first issue of Martha Stewart Living that featured her back in like 1999. I’ve been studying her quilts (well, the tiny pictures of them I find on her website and in magazine articles) for years. It is a book that I simply must have.

I’m pretty proud of myself today. I braved a little fiber arts store and an art supply store today. With. Three. Kids. Three ANGELIC children. We had fun! They came when I called them and for the most part didn’t touch things they weren’t supposed to!! And Jonah didn’t scream. NOT ONCE!! I came home with a new sketch book and some rug hooking supplies. I stumbled on this yesterday and my mind has been flooded with ideas. Little quilts–why didn’t I think of that? It’s like drawing and painting with fabric and thread!! I have some friends who do rug hooking, so I’m excited to transform some sketches of my tress and back yard birds into little works of art.

Anyway, not too much drawing today, but all that’s required is some—and it doesn’t have to be good.

I’m drawing everyday. It doesn’t have to be good.

Brenna’s Primary lesson yesterday was about honesty. At the end of the lesson the kids just got to color and Brenna figured out how to write this all by herself. Yes, my four year old is a phonics genius!! And, she even put a period at the end of her sentance!!

(It’s supposed to say “I can be truthful for others.”)

This is a treasure.

I have more pictures to add. I took some on our good day on Friday, you know, the day I bathed all three of my children. Well, I felt so ambitious, and my kids were too clean, we had to make play dough for school. What mother in her right mind would make play dough for her freshly bathed children? I don’t know. I obviously wasn’t in my right mind, and now light blue (food coloring just isn’t potent enough to make anything other than grayish ugly light blue) salt dough is smashed into my dining area carpet. (Someday when we’re rich we will put tile down in the dining area. Carpet and eating toddlers or play dough playing are definitely not a good combination.) So, my good day got a little stressful…but then, while I was trying to clean up the salt dough mess, Jonah went to the bathroom by himself. Which was fine until he washed his hands and filled the sink up , and then tried to scrub it with half a roll of toilet paper. Wet toilet paper doesn’t have a whole lot of scrubbing power, but it sure is fun to watch it break up to little bits in the sink full of water, then pull the plug and watch it go down the drain–for awhile. Because eventually it stops going down the drain because it is completely clogged. Anyway, my day was pretty good until then. I didn’t take pictures of any of that, though. I just wanted to run away.

So we went outside and spread out some blankets under a tree and read a little bit of Wind in the Willows. The kids were being good, so I gave them suckers. I simply had to ruin the clean kid thing even further by letting Jonah drench himself in sticky slobber. (You have to click on this picture to get the full effect of the slobber. I mean, there is some slobber!)

Barry unclogged the sink. He can do anything.

We went for a pretty fall walk yesterday, so I have to include these pictures too.