Easter Weekend

We had a fun, but very busy Easter weekend. Easter is always our "no travel" holiday. We like to have one holiday that doesn't require going back and forth between families. Plus, I always play in the Easter concert at church, so therefore I can't travel. :)

SO, in order to make life for my sister a little easier, my parents decided to come to Chicago and spend Easter with my sister's in-laws. Conveniently, we invited ourselves along! :)

My parents came up Saturday and we we got a little softball practice in.

It was cold out! Can you tell!!?

I hate wearing black on Easter, but I had to for the concert. Here we are at my sister's in-laws. They are so great! We've loved getting to know them and they've somewhat become our second set of in-laws...but locally! :)



LOL Dan's bro fell asleep amidst the chaos. Apparently this is a typical thing. haha.


Dan and Marcus wanted to take a picture while shaking their heads. Cute, boys.

After stuffing ourselves with gobs of delicious food, we came back to our apartment, got comfy, and lounged around. :)
HAPPY EASTER, everyone. It was a great weekend.

A Good Friday

Today was Good Friday. And it was very good. In honor of our Lord sacrificing himself on behalf of humanity, we are given this day to remember our Savior. Thank you, Jesus!

Since there was no school today, I tried to be productive. I knew I had lots I needed to do, but I also knew there was lots I wanted to do. Thankfully, I achieved both and had a very blessed, fun, relaxing, and productive day.

In the morning I met a friend for coffee. We got all caught up on our lives. I used to babysit for her when I was in college, and I'm grateful we've kept in touch over the years. It was great!

When I got home I looked through the scraps of material I got from freecycle and found these Christmas-y materials. It felt weird using them in April, but I had enough to make a little mini table runner. I think I would use it at Christmas time to put a centerpiece on or something.








After that, I attacked my research paper for my grad class. I got 3.5 pages done! I'm almost halfway done and I feel great about it.

So, since I felt so great about it, I began making a dress for a little girl. I don't know who it will be for because I don't know who it will fit! It looks like it would maybe fit a 3 or 4 year old, but it's hard to say. Anyway, this was just done with some freecycle fabric as well and I just wanted to practice using a pattern and messing around with adding details. I must say I copied the idea of sewing on the little flowers from a blog I constantly check: whatever. So, thank you, Meg, even though I've never met you, your work inspired me to get a sewing machine and see what creativity comes out! I've also spent hours looking at hand-made clothes on Etsy. Both sites are quite inspiring!





Thanks to the freecyclers who gave me the fabric (and sewing machine!) and thanks to the other creative sewers who gave me ideas!

First dibs gets the dress. Like I said, I don't know the size...but it certainly doesn't fit me. And I must say, it's not bad for my first try. I mean, if I had a daughter, I'd let her wear it in public!

I want my cake and I'll eat it too!

Monday night was supposed to be the Sox opener. We had a party planned with our pals, Ovi and Esti. Due to the snow in Chicago, the game was postponed. The party, however, wasn't. But, we decided that as true fans, it's okay if the game was delayed. We'll wait for you, Sox. Tuesday they played and won! They're playing right now...it's on the TV behind me, but it's not looking good for tonight. :( Oh well. 

Here is the angel food cake we ate at the party:

If any of you remember some of my past posts about Marcus rescuing some perfectly good cake from Deerfield's Bakery before it gets thrown out, then you won't be surprised that he brought this home yesterday. Apparently there were 3 or 4 cakes being dumped that customers never came to pick up. The guys at Marcus's work said they'd take them off the bakery's hands. Marcus got this one:

I don't know who Ansel is, but I'm glad his/her birthday occurred minus this cake. We ate some tonight as our celebration cake....we got the mortgage!!! :) The bank approved our loan!! :)

Now all we need is a job for me... :) Everything is still up in the air. As I keep telling people, it is 50/50. If I get a job, we'll go. If I don't, we'll stay...for another year. :)

Disclaimer:

By the time I finished typing this post, the Sox lost. :(

Saturday Fun

We had such an action packed weekend! Which you can probably tell by how much I'm posting lately! :)

Saturday was sooooooo good. We slept in until 11:15! We walked up to our fave place for brunch. We came back and Marcus worked in his shop and I sewed ALL afternoon...literally, until like 5:30.

Below are pictures of my accomplishment! I'm so excited. I love it! I made it from fabric I got from freecycle. I don't think the previous person used the two fabrics together, but I did! I'm taking orders! You are all getting this item for your birthday from now on, lol. Just kidding.

I'm proud of myself and thankful that Marcus pushed me on when I was getting frustrated. :)

Later that night, Marcus and his band had a show at a local coffee shop. They really did so great. And SURPRISE! His sisters, bro-in-law and nieces came!

At the end of the show, there was "one more song"....Zach, the lead singer, had written a song for his girlfriend and proposed at the end of it. Here is a pic of him after she said yes. So exciting! I knew about it ahead of time, so that was especially fun, lol. Congrats to Zach and Kaelee!!

This my 100th Post!

Last night we had a fun time with my sis and her hubby. Britt and Dan came over for some ice cream and games and we all had a blast! 

We had some Thin  Mint ice cream- complete with a thin mint on top!

We played some Scattergories...

Notice the lovely pose Marcus is making. He was being offended because we were all cracking up at something he said:

The letter was B and for "things found in a desk" he wrote BRUSH. For "something you wear" he wrote BRA. We were cracking up saying, "You wrote that there is a brush in your desk and that you wear a bra!?!?!?" 

He responded with, "I DO NOT have a desk!"

HAHAHA...there was no denial of the brush or the bra. We found it hilarious, but he was embarrassed. Too funny.

Dan is not much of a gamer, but he participated AND enjoyed himself with this one!

Sorry Britt, I CANNOT figure out how to get this pic right side up. Just tilt your head, folks. :)

I was posing for this one, but still, I had loads of fun.

On an unrelated topic, as of Thursday, my ankles were feeling tons better! I was no longer limping and was actually starting to see my little bony ankles through my skin since the swelling was down! Praise God! My two weeks of not working out is over, so this morning Marcus and I decided to enjoy the weather and walk up to our fave local restaurant, Rhapsody Cafe, for some yummy breakfast. Walking there and back was fine!! About 10 minutes after we got home and I was sitting down reading, lo and behold my ankles suddenly started throbbing. I guess going for a run is still out of the picture for awhile. :( So, I dealt with the pain and we went outside to play some catch...warming up for softball season, which is right around the corner! Hooray! 

More friends' babies and haircuts!

Today I went to visit another friend and her kids. It was so good to see them! I also cut my friend's hair. Seems to be the week for that! :)

Here is a picture of baby Allie. She is only three weeks old! So tiny and cute. I didn't get a picture of Maddie because I was too busy playing with her before she took her nap. :)

Thanks for lunch and the fun afternoon, Jennifer! You look great and I'm impressed with how un-exhausted you seem!! :) Love you and your girls, as always.

Hair Cutting Day!

I spent yesterday at the Hang family's house! It was fun, as always. I did a lot of hair chopping! All of the Hang ladies got a new 'do.

Here's Kayleigh with her hair all wet, ready to go.

I didn't have a good "after" shot of her, so I stole this one from Erica's blog. :)Erica was ready to chop off her luscious locks...it looks so cute! I also did not get a good shot of the back of her hair, I was too busy taking pics with her awesome camera to get any good ones on mine, lol.

Selah was actually first, my pics are out of order. She was so scared at first! It was adorable. Her first haircut!

I just trimmed it up and added some layers. Too adorable....again, even better pics are on Erica's blog, if you have access to it, go see!
Malachi did not get his haircut and this is how he felt about it:

Haha, he didn't care really. Here's a cute little story about this darling kid:
I was trying to get him to look up at the camera, so enticingly I kept whispering,
"Malachi...Malachi..."
He wouldn't look up. So, I went with this method:
"Malachi, look, Star Wars!"
He looked up. I snapped a picture. And me, being me, said, "April Fool's!" (It was April 1st) I got such a nasty look! It was priceless. I thought only girls could glare like that. Then, I asked him,
"Do you know what April Fool's is?" (assuming he didn't)
And he responded...
"Yes! It's when you say to someone, 'there's a spider on your back! APRIL FOOL'S!!!!"

LOL- he is one smart 4 year old.

Thanks for letting me spend a day with you, Hangs! I just love you all to pieces.

First Project

An overwhelmingly stressful trip to JoAnn Fabric................................. $42


Husband helping unpack bags and boxes of fabric from freecycle.com donors....... $0



First completed sewing project ....................................................PRICELESS!


Okay, so that project wasn't actually made from any of that freecycle fabric, but instead, from some pants I got in India! The bag is REALLY badly done, but at least it functions. It's my first project, what can I say? The seams are not straight and that fabric was really hard to work with, but I'm beginning to get the hang of threading my sewing machine- if that's how you say it. :)

If you've been over to my friend Erica's blog, you can see that I went ahead and gave it to her daughter. I have a feeling she'll be receiving many of my practice projects. :)