My new obsession

So the crafting that I've MOST been excited about (and by excited I mean newly obsessed with) is quilting. My friend Brittany talked me into taking an 8 week quilting class with her on Tuesday nights.  I was surprised and overwhelmed at the expenses and work that would need to go into this new hobby at the first class, but have now become quite enthralled with quilting.  I love picking out fabrics and finding quilt patterns that I like and seeing it come together!  My first quilt has been what I have named the cupcake quilt.
You see, once upon a time when I was doing some shopping for a friend's baby shower, I came across this outfit:

Isn't it so freaking adorable?! And so totally me.  I am a cupcake kinda gal.  So I bought it for myself with the hopes that someday we will have our own lil cupcake. 

So when quilting class started and I needed to think of a theme for my baby quilt to make (I wasn't gonna start out on a big quilt so baby quilt made sense to me), cupcake theme was an obvious choice to me!
So I picked out some fabric....

 And started cutting....

 And started sewing.... (this is called chain sewing... you just sew one piece after the other so it makes a long chain of pieces that you snip apart)

 And sewing....

 And mapping out....

 And sewing some more...

 Until I reached this point this morning!

Um, isn't this the cutest freaking thing you've ever seen!?!  I am very happy with how it's turning out.  I still have a border to put around the whole thing, then I need to do the backing, batting, and binding to finish it off.
My lil cupcake is gonna be one lucky lady!

Gettin my crafty on

I know there's been a lag in blog posts lately, but it's because I've been busy being so crafty!  I've been getting my crafty on and it's been so much fun.

Dustin's sister Nicole came into town with her boyfriend last week so in preparation for our guests, I've been working on getting our 2nd bedroom cleared out and ready. We decided to move our bookcase that we use for food storage into our dining room because 1) we wanted the room in the 2nd bedroom and 2) it makes sense to have it closer to the kitchen with all the food we keep on it.  The only problem is that it was so ugly.  Just plain, boring, tan ugliness.  I couldn't display something like that in my dining room where people would see it!  So we did a food storage book case make over!

The ugly bland bookcase in the beginning....

 Starting the make over....

 Fully painted.....

 And finished! (Don't mind the blobs of modge podge here and there that are still drying when this picture was taken...)

Now it's stocked with food and organized so it looks presentable to anyone who comes into our home.  Plus, our 2nd bedroom is freed up for more crafting, guests to visit, or a future nursery someday.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Because we left for Utah on December 17th, we celebrated Christmas at our home on December 16th, just like the Dunphy family from Modern Family. Only we didn't have an express Christmas, we had a normal one :) Santa Claus came to town and we were able to open presents and stockings and enjoy the day together. We packed up that day in preparation for our flight on Saturday.
My family picked us up at the airport in SLC, then we went to the Grand America to check out the giant gingerbread candy house. We were going to check out the lights at temple square, but no one really felt like it, so we skipped out and went to dinner at Zupas in Draper instead.
It was fun to have almost everyone together including....
Elder Dallin Jack!! He returned from his mission in Tokyo Japan on December 21st, just in time for Christmas celebrations!
I always thought it was so wonderful to have our families so close together cuz that meant we could spend the holidays with both families, but this trip I felt the stress of trying to get equal amounts of time in with both families. We spent Christmas eve with the Creer clan in a big family party complete with Christmas ham, white elephant gifts, and hot chocolate chugging. Dustin's grandparents brought HUGE white elephant gifts and Dustin and I agreed that we would be the ones to end up with them, just cuz we were the only ones who wouldn't be able to bring them home on a plane. And guess what.... we were right! Check out my sweet new fireplace cover.... that is currently residing at my parent's house.Dustin's gift he ended up with is a Nutcracker set for the 12 days of Christmas. It was actually pretty cute, but is also hanging out with Cowboy Santa and his posse of snowmen.
Christmas day we spent with the Jack fam complete with stockings from Santa, Christmas sugar plum ring, opening lots of presents, Christmas sacrament meeting with the home ward, and a Roast Beast dinner.
The day after Christmas, Dustin and I headed up to East Canyon with the Creers for a couple days. Now our normal December trip to East Canyon is filled with lots of hot cocoa, sledding, and building snow igloo slides. This year there was NO snow, so we spent the vacation playing a lot of Just Dance 3 and Michael Jackson dancing on the Wii, watching movies, and shooting guns. I shot a gun for the first time in my life! At first we thought I was slightly retarded, but then realized I'm really just left eye dominant and needed to shoot left handed. And then I was a bull-eye every time. Okay, not every time, but I think I'm a pretty decent shot for a beginner!
After East Canyon we spent some more time with the Jacks, celebrating my Momma's birthday, introducing them to Just Dance 3, and lots of Carcassonne.
New Years Eve was spent playing, that's right, Just Dance 3! with the Creers. We saw The Muppets with the Creer clan, which was cute, but not as AMAZING as I was hoping. Then we had a dance off, Ticket to Ride Germany, Uno, and a countdown with bubbly to 2012.
New Years day brought a missionary homecoming talk by recently returned Elder Dallin Jack at an early 9 AM. He gave a great talk and it was fun to have family over for the afternoon. We love our Jack family and we don't always get to see them!
The rest of our time in Utah was trying to spend as much time as we could with family and friends. Of course I had to visit Roberts Crafts with it's store closing 75% off sales and was super excited to get 21 items for $21 including tax! We flew back to Portland on January 6th and were happy to see our apartment and car untouched while we were gone for 3 weeks. The day after we got back, we were sure to stop by Target to pick up our own copy of Just Dance 3 on the wii. It was so great to be with family and back in Utah for so long because we probably won't get to spend that much time with them for a while, if ever!
The holidays were very happy and the Christmas was very merry! As busy as December always is, it really is the most wonderful time of the year when you get to spend it with family!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

3 posts in 3 days! Don't worry, this won't become the norm. I've just been working on my lesson in relief society for this Sunday and need a break, especially because next week I will be writing a talk for sacrament meeting. Holy cow, this ward is going to be so sick of me, but then we'll be leaving for 3 weeks, so I guess they'll get over it in that time.

Plus, I needed to blog because I'm excited for Christmas! Our house is decorated and ready for Santa to visit! Which is awesome cuz he will be to our house in 2 weeks exactly! That's one of the many perks of going home for the holidays- that we get to celebrate Christmas more than once.

So to share in my excitement, here is a little project I made that is now displaying on my piano. Hope you like it as much as I do! Thank you Buddy the Elf for helping it look a lot like Christmas!