Dabbing in Love: Celebrating 60 years

Earlier this fall my family got together to celebrate something magical: Love. Long-lasting, unconditional, wonderful love.

October 7, 2011 marked my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. Yup - they've put up with each other for over six decades. Not only have they put up with each other, they've done it with warmth and grace and have given their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren an incredible example to emulate and live up to.

So, to celebrate two of the most loving and wonderful people we all know, my dad, aunt and uncle worked together to put on a very fun anniversary party. We all got together for food and a good chat after church the weekend of their anniversary. It was such a blessing to see our family all together - well, as many of us who could make it. We got to hear great stories and laugh and eat some amazing food - courtesy of my dad and Uncle Dave who smoked some delicious pork and whipped up some amazing barbecue sauces.

Since most of use made it to the party, we took the opportunity to get a big family photo - this includes all of the children, most of the grand-children and a few "outlaws" in the form of spouses:

The afternoon reminded me of Christmas and Thanksgiving celebrations from when I was younger - when everyone would gather at Grandma & Grandpa's big house on Cedar Street and we'd all cram around the tables to enjoy delicious food and good conversation. Those are cherished memories - just like the love my amazing grandparents have shared for more than half a century. (Here's hoping we have many more fun family gatherings like this one!)

Until next time - happy dabbling!

Dabbling in Crafts: Blankets for charity

(Okay - so I have a little time and I'll use it to blog and procrastinate doing other things, you lucky readers, you!)

Back in October I whipped out 5 blankets for our United Way raffle at work. I was actually pretty excited to make them and tested out a new technique that saved me a slew of time and quite a bit of money on supplies.

Since the raffle was for everyone at work and not everyone has a baby or needs a baby blanket, I decided to make a few "adult" blankets in addition to a few baby blankets. It was actually a lot of fun to pick out all of the fabric and put them together.

I went without the ribbon edging this time - simply stitching the blankets together, turning them right-side out and then doing a second seam to give them a "finished" look. I think they turned out really well!

Here are the "adult" blankets - since we're in Madison, I made a Badgers blanket and a Packers blanket. I should've also put together a Brewers one - but JoAnn's was out of Brewers fleece. (They were still in the hunt for the World Series at the time and Brewers Fever was certainly catching!)

 

Now I REALLY want to make a Hawkeye blanket for our living room - just have to find the time & the money to do it!

Here are the baby blankets - I decided to make 3. One for a little boy, one for a little girl and one that could be used for either. These were a little harder to make because the minky material is pretty slippery and the baby-themed materials were stretchier than the fleece - but they really turned out quite nicely:

The little girl material is one of my favorites and I really do like the baby feet for blankets as well. Maybe I'll have to just buy a bolt of each and start whipping out blankets to have on hand. ;)

All in all, this design is super simple - each baby blanket took maybe 30 minutes and each adult blanket took roughly 1 hour. The hardest part was finding a place big enough to lay out the material and get it all cut to size! Hopefully that Hawkeye blanket will become a reality by the end of the year. I'm really excited to put it together! :)

Until next time - happy dabbling! :)

Dabbling in Life -- A promise to blog more

I'm terrible at blogging. I admit this. While this won't be a long post - what it will be is a vow to you, my (dedicated?) readers.

I promise I will get better and blog more.


But probably not today. I *do* have a list of blog posts I keep meaning to post and they *will* get done, I promise. But, for now, you'll just have to wait.

In the meantime - a list of reasons why I suck at blogging:
My laptop is super slow.
I get bored on the upstairs computer because I can't watch tv.
I get distracted by watching tv too often to remember to blog.
I've been (sort of) busy (mainly watching tv).
I've been making super boring meals and very few crafts.
I've gone back to "regular" eating instead of sticking to the Dukan (because I am weak-willed).
I am lazy. (This is probably the main reason why I've been sucking at the blogging).

Until then - happy dabbling. Get excited for my upcoming blogs. I'm sure they will be awesome. ;)