Whitniffic Whatnots

I'm starting to feel like the odd one out. Not that that's a bad thing... but I'm losing all my carefree, fun-having friends to the world of parenthood! This time, it's one of my college buddies who got married last year. I was her wedding photographer, and she texted me earlier this summer asking how I felt about doing maternity photos (!). Of course, I'll try anything once... but no guarantees! The more important question I had was... boy or girl? I needed to get working on a baby gift! She and her husband hosted a cute little reveal party at their new house a few months ago, and the guests got to surprise the couple with the gender of the baby by attacking them with secret-colored silly string. It was pink! Notice the blue paper tie... she thought it was a boy! Of course, pink equals princess in this family (their wedding cake topper was Cinderella and Superman disguised as Prince Charming), so I already had a great theme to work with. What I ha

I'd been kind of avoiding working on this giraffe quilt because I wasn't quite sure what to do with it to finish it off. Then I realized that sometimes enough is enough! Why couldn't it be done? And so it was... Originally, I had wanted to free-motion quilt the spots onto the giraffe, but my machine doesn't work very good for free-motion quilting so I left it as a big ol' applique. I also played with the idea of adding a button for his eyeball, but it just looked weird.  Declaring the quilt officially complete, I squared up the edges and sewed the binding on. I screwed it up with too big of a seam allowance (been a while?)... but it actually worked out pretty well as an "invisible" binding. The quilt front itself just kind of ends, and the cute detail of the binding around the back adds a little something to the simplicity of the pattern.  I took a few pictures of the quilt (in the usual places) before washing it, but it seemed so stiff a

My husband's favorite cousin got married last weekend, and we wanted to give them something really unique because they're such a cool couple. When we visited their new old house, which is decorated in a beautiful, funky way, we had lots of fun leaving little messages on their vintage typewriter in the foyer. I liked the idea of keeping in the vintage style and typewriter font... so I decided to make them a weathered-looking old sign. I grabbed a couple old chunks of wood out of the scrap pile at work that had all sorts of screw holes and hammer marks in them... perfect! And free! I arranged them horizontally, then glued and screwed them together with small blocks on the back. No need to be perfect! It's supposed to look old and weathered and hand-made. The only thing I needed to buy for this project was a little can of stain; I decided to do grey, since I thought it would go well with the decor of their home. I had originally wanted to try one of the white base sta