Week 9: A wedding gift

Ben's beautiful cousin Julie and her love Anthony were recently wed in JAMAICA! How cool is that?!?! Since we obviously didn't make it down for the nuptuals, I wanted to send a little something to say congratulations. (And I'm realllly hoping it arrived in the mail and I'm not ruining the surprise!) Eek!

 A very simple tablerunner in a zig-zag pattern using half-square triangles. I think it sort of looks like hearts too, which seems fitting for a wedding gift. There ended up being more "background" than I realized when I started out.

 The yellow and the green each have a bit of a pattern, giving it a little extra. I knew what I wanted to do as soon as I found the background fabric and then spent some time with my mama during the fabulous SuperBowl sale at Material Rewards finding just the right yellow and green.

 The back is from the Sunkissed line by Moda. Lots of bright, sunshine-y colors. Yellows, greens and oranges. It just seems happy. I also did my first fold-over binding where you just bring the back around and create the binding on the front. I think it turned out pretty well and will definitely be using that method in the future with smaller projects.

Here's a close-up of the back. More straight line quilting. Someday I'll learn to stipple and FMQ. Not today though! I should keep an eye out for a good class to take while I'm off work next year. Let me know if you hear of one!

In other news, I'm getting super excited about my first shows for Thirty-One. I'm now an official Independent Consultant and have FIVE, count 'em, FIVE parties scheduled. The first 3 fall under my 30 day mark, which is awesome because it'll help me earn the first level of incentives. The other two fall  under my 60 day mark, so I just have to get one more scheduled to get the second level of incentives. Then I'm taking a BREAK for baby and starting back up once things have settled down.

 My consultant kit full of goodies was delivered on the same day as the two boxes of products from my party. I gotta tell you, I was a little giddy with excitement.

 I'm a dork. Yes, I took a picture of the box. Why, you ask? Well, why not.

Here was the aftermath of going through all three boxes, sorting out everyone's items into individual bags, checking out all MY free stuff, and starting to work through the consultant kit. I promise, my living room no longer looks like this. But I do have tons of goodies to show people who are interested in Thirty-One and some cool new bags for myself!

Six more weeks until baby, and 5 more working at school. I'm glad the marking period ends right before Spring Break so I can get my own progress reports done and some things finished up. (I say that, why do I always act like MY plans are unbreakable?) I guess I should say I HOPE I'll be able to get my own reports done, etc.

Ben & Quinn just finished making a leprechaun trap for Quinn to take to Kindergarten for St. Patrick's Day. Ben suggested painting the rat trap green. I gave that the thumbs down so they had to start over. Poor guys.