easter showers bring may... babies!

Over Easter, we traveled to my parents house for a fun whirlwind of a weekend. My in-laws even flew in to attend the baby shower that Aunt Ruthann and Kelsey planned for me! Saturday morning, we all got ready for the shower. My toes are a bit beyond my reach at the moment, so Kelsey helped me paint them "baby pink," a new nail polish color that Kathy gave me for Christmas. So perfect!

The shower was at a little tea room nearby. My lovely hostesses felt a lot of pressure to show off their crafting skills for me, and everything turned out amazing. Aunt Ruthann made an adorable diaper cake centerpiece and a batch of cute owl cookies as favors (with decorating help from Mom and Kelsey). We lunched on chicken salad, cucumber sandwiches, and lots of miniature desserts.

I loved having my family, in-laws, high school friends, and mom's friends all together. My cousin Jamie even brought baby Libby wearing the cardigan I made for her baby shower; the gray and pink coordinated perfectly with my shower theme!

Dan arrived towards the end of the shower and helped me open a mountain of gifts. We received so many practical and thoughtful items; we feel much better prepared to welcome our little girl now! She will certainly be a well-dressed baby.

After the shower, we rested for a bit and then drove to our little downtown area to enjoy the nice weather. We walked past the shops and then a short distance on the bike trail. We spotted a Cooper's Hawk perched in the trees right over the trail, but I couldn't get a good photo on my phone! Then we went back to my parents' house for dinner followed by toasty s'mores around the fire pit.

Sunday morning, we ate brunch and hunted for our Easter baskets before Mass. (It took me the longest to find mine, as usual. Forgot to look in the dryer!) It was so fun having our families together for a baby celebration and an Easter celebration!

a piem

Happy Pi Day! Very few things inspire poetry-writing in my analytically-minded brain. I admit to liking haikus, and I could abide the occasional homework assignment to write a hyper-structured poem like a sonnet. Rules, format, numbers... those are the parts of verse I like. So, I was pretty excited to learn today about the writing style called "Pilish," where the number of letters in each word corresponds to the digits of pi. (The first word has 3 letter, the second word has 1 letter, then 4 letters, and so on... forever.) Poems written in this style are called "piems." I love it! Here's my attempt, using the first 31 digits of pi, 3.141592653589793238462643383279.

See, a piem I wrote.
Exquisite in lovely verse.
How words combined represent numeric precision!
And to the engineer,
such poetry is seldom seen.
But pie outranks any pi sonnets, certainly.

Hope you enjoyed it. Now I'm off to enjoy a tasty slice of pie (featuring my homemade crust and Dan's signature bourbon apple pie filling)!

quilted pillow shams

Dan's been off at the movies the last two Saturdays for the Oscar Best Picture Showcase, which is why I have finished so many craft projects recently! Last weekend, I stitched these quilted pillow shams by following this tutorial from Purl Soho. The daybed has needed a fresh set of throw pillows for a while, and I love the simplicity of these quilted covers with the white ruched comforter.

Giant Bunny seems to be enjoying the new pillows with his new friend, a little rag doll we bought at the Al Sogno toy shop in Rome. (Kelsey, thank you for encouraging me to buy her... and for chipping in some Euros. She's so cute and will be well-loved here!)

I made two 26x26" covers quilted with white thread for the large feather pillow inserts which have been sitting naked and unloved on the daybed for about a year. The two standard sized shams are quilted with vertical lines of light blue thread that coordinates with the quatrefoil printed sheets. These pillows took about twice as long to sew as I expected, but I saved a bit of time using the single step bias binding method described in this tutorial by Wearing History.

I know, I know... white bedding in a nursery is going to be a mess. Fortunately, these covers are removable and washable! I used the envelope closure in the back as described in the tutorial but also added these little fabric ties. I stuffed each sham with two pillows for extra firmness, so the ties help keep the envelope gaps closed.

I wore myself out over the weekend! Friday evening, Dan went to a bourbon tasting with Nate and Brian, and Amanda cooked a delicious dinner for Karen (Brian's wife/designated driver) and me. Saturday, I sewed and cleaned and organized and could barely move by the end of the day. Then on Sunday, we went to brunch with our weekly trivia team (Nate, Amanda, Kierston, and Alan) as a mini farewell party for Kierston and Alan who are moving away in a few weeks. We will definitely miss seeing their adorable boys at trivia every week!