Not Nothing

So! I know it's been several days since I posted, but I haven't been doing nothing! I haven't been quilting, or really cooking much...

But I did make a bag! The one I was planning to make a few weeks ago. I bought this super cute fabric...

It's trees and panda bears. A little cutsey, but small print so not immediately tagged that way. :P I tried for about 5 min to turn the photo, sigh, but I can't so it. I know Andrew would tell me I should ask him, but he is currently...

Playing Halo with Nate. :) Nate is a great friend and helped Andrew out for several hours today with the business. I wish we could pay him so we could hire him! He's interested in the business, loves working with Andrew and volunteers his time, even though he's in school! He came over for dinner. :) I like to leave Andrew to his guy time when he gets it, because he gets it so rarely! I don't want to interrupt his relaxing, he needs it.

Anyway, back to my little bag. I started it while I was at Brett's on Wednesday. We had...4+ hours of "quilting". She'd been up super early working (at Starbucks, opening shift is early!) so she puttered around with fabric and designs and I worked on this bag while we watched Sense and Sensibility. :) Oh Jane Austin! 

I finished the bag today. After a few snaffoos (I sewed the interfacing to the wrong side and then couldn't figure out how to attach the lining to the outside...so I ended up hand sewing the top...haha. Oh following directions! I'm not great at it. :P

The bag is bigger than I was expecting. I guess I should have been able to tell by the dimensions, but for some reason I never can tell how wide 18 in will scale down to when I have it all sewed. It's good for carrying around all my stuff when I have food/book, etc. And yes, those are lemons in there. Different days find very strang things thrown into my purse!

Did I ever show you this little guy? He is my first attempt at cross-stitching. He's a truffle from the Dessert of the Month club in Jan. I received Feb's dessert on the first, but have not had much motivation to go buy embroidery floss. Sigh. Oh well. He IS cute, though!

Tonight I made baked bbq chicken, cheesy scalloped potatoes and sauteed zucchini/carrots/onion. One of the little girls from the Montessori gave me two chocolate cookies for Valentines Day today, and they were SUPER good. And of course I wanted to make more. So I tried this recipe for Flourless Chocolate Brownie Cookies. Great idea in theory...but they didn't come off the pan in the shape of cookies, and they were too sweet, even for me (oh you should see the size of my sweet tooth!). They taste like chocolate chips rolled in powdered sugar. Unfortunately they'll sit on the counter and I'll eat them anyway...

Also this week I spent about...12? 15? hours working on a New Zealand album on Shutterfly. I was inspired by the sale they were having (40% off! plus a promo for free shipping if you spend over $30, which I was going to!). Our wedding album turned out really great. I don't think I'd spend full price on them (this one was originally going to be $70, plus tax and shipping!), but with the sales that they have, it's totally worth it! And I can work on them any time and just order them when the sales come around. Anyway, we went to NZ over a year ago, and I haven't even worked on my physical album in about 4 months, so I didn't know how long it would take me to make a NZ one. So I got a little obsessed with finishing. And I ordered it last night! It is going to be so fun! And with all discounts, it cost $45! 12x12 album with 30 pages! Love it. (also, we had credit from a gift card, so I only had to spend $25 yesterday!)

My friend Alyssa is planning on doing one a year after doing her "First Year" albums for her two boys. I thought that was a really good idea. Especially on Shutterfly, when you can add photos and work on the book whenever you want and then just order when it is done. So I'm trying to take more photos. :) Especially of friends and family and every day things, not just the trips. We have a great life and I love looking back on everything we've done together! I just love being married.