Mini Vaca: Food, Family, and Dworshak

After a crazy, crazy, crazy [did I mention crazy?] spring Dustin and I were finally able to take some time off from work and hit the road.  Our destination?  Not a graduation, not a birthday, not a wedding.... a family CAMPING trip!

Now, I haven't been camping [other than an overnight trip] in about 12 years, give or take?  So it was easy to say that I was excited.  But I was even more excited about the company.  Dustin's cousin JT (along with his gorgeous wife, Kim, and beautiful children, Jake and Jenna) and Aunt Deb and Uncle Greg made the trip up from California, and the rest of the family made the time to make it happen (whether they lived in town, across the river, 30 minutes or 3 hours away).  It had been a few years since we had seen them, and all been together at one time, so this trip was long over due!

In no particular order, our vacation included:

FAZZARI'S pizza (okay, this one is first because it's the best pizza on the planet)

Rafting

Camping

The Candy Bowl

Cake

Puppy Surfing

Cupcakes

UFC fights

Broken flip flops

Lost driver's license, which led to...

A trip to the DMV

Pictures

Almost getting lost

Olympics

Mandarin Pine

Seeing FRIENDS!

Boats and Wave Runners

El Sombrero

Ping Pong

Campfires and S'MORES

LOTS of laundry
Swimming

Poopy Pants (don't worry, this was Max, not one of the adults)

Sleeping under the stars

Bandaids

Lost keys

Manis and Pedis

A Zebra!

Golf

Wrong roads

Glow sticks (an exploding one in the bunch, too)

Sunscreen

Bugspray

Tattoos! (Miss Jenna, 8 years old, was our pro tattoo artist)

The ER (twice...)
Volleyball

Finding a great book

Holey Board

...did I mention food?

And FAMILY  :)

All in all it was a great trip and I can't wait until we can all get together again!

My First [and possibly last] Rag Quilt

A friend of mine recently sold me one of her old sewing machines.  I was SO excited as I imagined all the wonderful things I would create.  No more shopping for clothes or blankets and decor... I could make my own!  [insert reality check]  After buying fabric for my first project I anxiously returned home and began cutting and laying out the pieces for my first home made dress!  A couple hours and a few curse words later I wadded up my failed attempt and shoved it in the guest room closet never to be seen again.  I also packed up the sewing machine and decided to put off any other projects for a while until the sewing machine decided to be cooperative. 

Eventually, the fabric store [and pinterest] got the best of me.  It sucked me in and made me buy lots and lots of beautiful black and white fabric for a rag quilt.  [See original post and tutorial here]

 

To begin the process, all fabric must be cut into squares.  Looking back, I REALLY wish I would have bought the pre-cut squares.  It would have made the process much, much, much faster!

Once all the squares were cut, the batting was cut to size, and I called a truce with my sewing machine.

Tada!!!  Beautiful fabric squares, complete with batting and stitching.

Laying out all of the squares was pretty fun.  Porter didn't appreciate his kitchen being bombarded by fabric squares that he was forbidden to touch.

Above is my completed layout.  I did make a couple last minute changes... but nothing too drastic. 

Then all the squares get sewn together row by row.

  

Once all the rows are completed, they must be sewn together, too. Then magically, your fabric, squares, batting, rows and sections form a rag quilt.... almost.

After you THINK that your rag quilt is done, it's really not.  You must take your quilt and cut little slits in all of the seams.  This is the [un]fun part that takes a really long time, BUT it is also the part that makes the quilt turn out beautifully and raggy(?) in the end.

After cutting all the edges and seams the quilt must be washed and dried a few times to get the desired effect on all the seams.  Once my quilt was COMPLETELY done [several weeks after I started] it didn't seem so terrible, and it actually turned out pretty well.  But next time I will 1) definitely buy pre-cut squares and 2) use bigger squares so that there are less pieces!  Thankfully, Porter and I still like it, just the way it is!