Merry Christmas!

Smile Please! (Plus Book Giveaway Extended)

I love my family and I especially love these little boys. My mom came with my sister and her family to visit us. I had these three boys to myself for a day and it was crazy, funny and did I say crazy? One of my Thanksgiving traditions is to take a photograph of the boys at the holidays. I try and try and well, I try. Eventually I get a pretty good shot! Eventually!

Sadly, they had to go home a day early because of a family emergency. I have extended the book giveaways until next Sunday. I just can't focus on it right now. Let your friends know and good luck!

xo, L

1.1.11

Happy New Year!! Wow, last year sure went by so fast! I hope that you enjoyed your holidays! We had a crazy few weeks leading up to the holidays. We sent off our letters to Santa in town and then we relaxed for the rest of the holidays.

We played with Legos and did some crafting too. The kids and I decorated these fun houses. Big A decorated the one in front, Little A decorated the middle one and I decorated the pink one.

They were meant to be Magical Spring Houses since we didn't have time to make them until yesterday. However, the boys had other purposes for the houses. Here's Hagrid leaving his hotel.

The hospital for the bad guys is heavily guarded. 

The secondary hospital, the one that's used in case the first hospital is bombed, is so pretty.

Here's Indiana Jones' house. So colorful!

Alas, all of the silly fun must end because now it's back to serious fun and business again!

Tomorrow afternoon, join me when I visit my wonderful friend, Pat Sloan, on her radio show, Creative Talk Radio. We met a long time ago and she's energetic. We've been on a few blog hops together too.You can go and listen live and also get the podcast afterwards here. Check out her radio show page here for information on Creative Talk Radio. I will be offering a stack of fat quarters of my latest line, Hugs & Kisses, in a giveaway on her blog.  I'll be on from 4-4:30 p.m. Call us and join in on the fun!

I hope to hear from you tomorrow! xo, L

Fall-O-Ween

Do you remember the Holiday Quilt Designer Blog Hop last year? It was fun, wasn't it? Here's some great news!!! We're having a Fall-O-Ween Quilt Designer Blog Hop!! Are you excited? I am. It's going to be fun. I hope that you join us. This year we have 10 designers lined up to provide you with 10 great projects and 10 themed blogs. Help us spread the word!! Gudrun has a drawing going on now if you help us pass the word on to your friends via Facebook, Twitter, blogging, or whatever means you can think of!! 

I'm excited but I think that I have a zillion things going on at that particular time. Yikes! I'm teaching a class for the enrichment program at my kids' school, I'm going to debut one class that I'm doing for CraftEdu and there are other things that I have to keep under wraps right now. 

Meanwhile, a little boy celebrated his birthday. It falls at a really busy time but it's a special day for a special boy! Happy birthday!!

I have been a bad mommy because I haven't had the time to sit and do a scrapbook page for that day. The only way that I can keep up with all of this is to do a digital page. Cathy Zielske designed these simple pages for Designer Digitals. I just plop the pics and information in. So simple and so easy. I love storyboard type of digital art. I gave out some storyboard collages at Christmas last year.

I have to get busy like a bee now! Buzz! Buzz! xo, L

Summer Days Going Fast And A Giveaway Too!

I have heard that some of you have sent your kids back to school already. Yikes! Is it that time for us? We were just enjoying hockey and hanging out with our cousins in Toronto. Now it's time to buckle down. Oh, don't worry, we'll still have fun. It's the back-to-school paperwork that Mommy dreads.

Notice we have mostly all boy cousins except Miss Taylor. So the daddies took all of the boys out for some hockey time while the ladies stayed in, played cards and chatted. So relaxing but we are a competitive bunch when we play cards. So fun.

Now that we are getting back to school mode, what are we mommies going to do? I got to read this terrific book on professional knitwear design, The KNITGRRL Guide To Professional Knitwear Design. I love reading interviews. That was my very favorite part of the book. Some of the designers who were interviewed were quite frank and I appreciate that. The other parts of the book were good too! There's information on how to start your own designing business and how to use social media to benefit your business. Terrific read even if you are not in the industry. I have a copy for you to win. All you have to do is tell me what you'll be sewing, knitting, scrapbooking or crafting as soon as the kids are back in school. Drop me a note here or on Facebook. Contest closes this Sunday at midnight.

I can't wait to see what you're going to busy yourselves with this fall! xo, L

p.s. The giveaway is not just for mommies. All entries are welcome!

Special Things

How's your summer? It's going so fast! I think that I am having panic attacks because school will be back in session, and everything is going to be crazy, crazy, crazy. Plus, Quilt Market will be upon us again. Oh, dear! I have been doing designing stuff that I hope to show you in a few weeks and am working hard at putting it together. I have been mulling over changes and direction for a long time now. The ideas are coming together and I'll be getting my act together soon. I've also volunteered myself to teach some classes on re-purposing, knitting and scrapbooking/journaling at my kids' school for their enrichment program. I'm still in the planning stages of the classes but I'm hopeful and looking forward to the fun.

There's been so much activity around here! There was camp, summer rec, and many, many big special moments. My big guy just had a birthday!

Hubby and I celebrated a big anniversary!

My girlfriend Colleen celebrated a big birthday! Happy birthday!! My other girlfriend, Joanne, celebrated a big birthday too! Happy birthday, girls! It was a girls night out. I think that was special in itself!

My high school pal, Nancy and her family visited NJ. She and her hubby celebrated a bigger anniversary than mine and even got to kiss under the new statue in NYC the first day the statue was revealed!

         

There were everyday special moments too. Our visit to Pittsburgh to visit our friend Emily was a blast.

Catching our first fish was so fun too!

Now it's time to sit back, relax and blow some bubbles. Soon it will be back to school. Enjoy the rest of your summer. Fall is just around the corner and I'm sure that we'll make some more special memories.

xo, L

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! I hope that you enjoy this day with your dads. My husband's company just moved to new digs so I wanted to make something fun. The kids and I brain stormed and put together this fun set of photographs. The kids are finally at an age where they may look at the camera at the same time if I let them go through all of their goofiness first. Hence, the first two photos in the series. We printed them out and framed them. Then, I wouldn't leave things alone so I made him some bookmarks too! Easy peasy. Add a batch of brownies and breakfast in bed. We were all set.

Seriously, enjoy your day with your dad, grandfather, uncle, ...

I miss you, Dad! Love, L

Lazy Weekend

I'm not really having a lazy weekend. Don't let that title deceived you. It's more like a lazy morning and the rest will be busy but at a slower pace. I have lots of work to do! CraftEdu will be launching it's beta version April 30. Yikes! Are we seriously almost there already? I just signed off on a freebie quilt design for my new fabric line, Hugs and Kisses and am working on the next quilt for the next line, Bella Flora.

It is just nice to run into friends and have a little conversation while you're enjoying the morning sunshine. So relaxing.

Notice anything different? Little A just got glasses. I think that it was just his fate and our genes. Tell him it looks good, will you please?  This little guy wanted a cool looking pair or else he wasn't going to wear them. [Apparently, another classmate came to school wearing glasses the day he had his appointment and some boys had made fun of her. So, Little A was not sold on wearing them.]

I look around for inspiration even while fishing. Look at this beautiful web. I think that you could incorporate these lines in your next quilt while you are quilting.

Enjoy your weekend. xo, L

Gung Hey Fat Choy! Happy Valentine's too!

Happy Chinese New Year! It is the year of the tiger!

It is a great day to celebrate with family and friends. We had a wonderful celebration at our Chinese school last weekend. Three lions opened the ceremonies and every child in the school performed in a song or dance on stage. The show was followed by a yummy dinner!

xo, L

The A-Team. Awesome. Alluring. Aurifil.

It has been one crazy, crazy week. Not a lot of sewing but a lot of stuff happening. First, I am happy to be able to announce that I am on the A-Team, a team of designers invited by Alex Veronelli, Product Manager of Aurifil, to share his/her love of Aurifil threads. What's not to love?

The beautiful color range of the Aurifil line is unsurpassed by any other brand. Do you remember this quilt from last year? I tried to buy thread to be used for piecing and quilting and couldn't find color that matched the  colors in my Inspiration fabrics until I bought a few spools of Aurifil. No kidding.

Here's a sampling of the colors in the range of cotton Aurifil threads. Can we say oooooooh?

If you have visited my website in the past, you will have notice the gorgeous spools of Aurifil thread gracing my photos. 

I wrote a brief review of Aurifil threads here last year but I will post a full review on the website in the near future. I'll let you know when I have it up.

On the fabric front, I've been busy working on a couple of fabric lines. One line is pretty well finished. There's a teeny, tiny peek at the line if you squint and look at the drawings underneath the color chart above [sorry, that's all I can show you for now]. I am looking forward to showing this line in Minneapolis at Spring Market!

Oh, did I mention that we had two tae kwon do testings and one rank ceremony this week? I may need to take a vacation next week but there's an even bigger project that I need to tackle. Great job guys! I'm so proud of you.

Phew! That's a lot of news for today! See you. xo, L