January Challenge via The Nest Effect

I resolved to become more organized this year and to help with that I am following Tiffany at The Nest Effect in her January Challenge: Assessing & Prioritizing Time. It was embarrassing, to say the least, to see how much time I wasted last week. Granted, school is not in session and therefore I am not getting any sub jobs, but really! There was an awful lot of TV and internet, not to mention the sleeping in.

(Don't look too carefully at the chart!)

But yesterday's post is supposedly the beginning of the answer. It is a printable of how I want to spend my time. I still want to enjoy playing on the internet and watching TV via Netflix, I just need to make sure it stays at the bottom of my priorities list. And exercising myself and the dog is becoming a must. The dog is healthy and in shape (unlike me) but he is bored. He used to go to play camp for dogs when I was working, and he got regular exercise and was wonderfully well behaved. Now that I'm not working, he stays at home with me and has begun chewing on everything in sight again. I've already repaired one set of holes in my duvet cover, and now I have to fix another.  I also want to read more and finish more crafts! (And since finishing the crafts is the point of this blog, it is a high priority.) Number one, of course, is spending  more time with my husband and family.

So while I'm rather embarrassed to have posted the earlier chart, I feel like the sun is beginning to peek through the clouds. There is hope for people like me. Tiffany says to check back on Wednesday for the next installment, so that's where you'll see me!

Here's to progress!

A Progress Post

Almost a year ago, my husband's granny went into the hospital for a quadruple by-pass surgery, and I pulled out an old UFO to work on in the waiting room.  I found the best distraction to be my Christmas cross-stitch pattern. When I pulled it out of the bag, it looked like this....

I know the angle is bad on the picture, but I was only a little over a quarter of the way finished with this pattern. In the hospital that day, I worked on the tree beside the house, and slowly made my way to the sky to the left of the completed house. As beautiful as the sky is, all of those half-cross stitches really got to me after a while. And then I moved to the trees. I thought they would be Bob Ross-worthy "happy little trees". He lied.

They were not happy, and neither was I.

Months later, I finished the trees, the house on the right and began working on the lower right quadrant. It was really neat watching everything coming together, seeing the people emerge out of the snowbanks, looking as though they really will finish lacing their ice skates and take off any minute now.

This is the piece as of last night. My original goal for this piece was to have it finished by the end of 2011. Clearly, that did not happen. But I do have less than one-sixth of the pattern to complete.

It's really exciting to see it coming together. At my current pace, I hope to have all the cross stitch completed by the end of the month, with the back-stitch and final details finished by the end of January. And now that DH has begun to cross stitch as well (I KNOW!!) we can each spend the evenings on the couch, enjoying Netflix and working on projects.

Here's to progress!!

Fingers Crossed

Remember how I said yesterday I was substituting in my local school system so that I was in the system when a job opened up.  Well, a job opened up. I turned in my application, and am now waiting to hear back. I've been working on a sample lesson plan I could take in to an interview. Seven years after graduating, I had completely forgotten all that was involved inwriting lesson plans, not to mention all the new rules relating to lesson plans...so basically I'm winging it. It's scary. So sadly, that's what I've been doing this week instead of any crafts. My plan is to be crafty this weekend. Fingers crossed. On both accounts.

#2 New Year's Resolution

Making sure to blog regularly is only one of my New Year's Resolutions. I have actually made three, and as far as I know, my husband has made two. We completely failing at one each, but doing great at the others. (He is trying to help out with the housework by loading and unloading the dishwasher every day.) I have been blogging (Yay!) and the other one I'm working on is becoming more organized in my mind and my house.

I thought that by not working regularly I would do great at keeping the house clean, the laundry done, and the crafts under control. I quit the nanny job at the end of July in order to  become a substitute for the local school system, getting my foot in the door so that when a teaching position opens up I have a better chance at getting it. So far, the subbing has been going great and I really enjoy it. But not having a regular schedule to keep to has turned me rather lazy. Sleeping in, enjoying our Netflix account, working on crafts occasionally. Cleaning in short, small burst that get thejob done, but don't really take for long. Organization is desperately needed.

Enter Pinterest. I love, love, LOVE Pinterest. Don't you? I have added so many new craft ideas to my list, it's crazy. But one of the best pins I've seen recently was for the Home Management Binder Printables on The Nest Effect. Most of her printables are no longer available for free download, although she sells them in her Etsy store. She is starting a new Organizing/Prioritizing challenge that I am following, and her newly posted items are available for  free. But for the others, they were relatively easy to duplicate in Microsoft Excel (they don't look nearly as cool as hers do, but they will serve the purpose. And that's what matters). I don't believe I will use all of her sections in my own management binder, but that's what is so neat about the binder: it's unique to each "home manager" and her personal needs.

So if organizing is on your list of To-Do's (or if you need ideas on what to put on your To-Do list!) check out Tiffany's prioritizing challenge or her home management binder system. Become a better "home manager" this year!!

Completed: Teapot Quilt

A few weeks after I began working on my husband's t-shirt quilt, I finished the hand-quilting on the very first quilt I pieced. Almost 10 years later, the small wall hanging was finally finished. I made my continuous bias binding, sat down in front of Netflix and began sewing. Four hours later, the quilt was finished.

Applique is still not one of my favorite techniques. But I do like this quilt. Looking at this picture, I realize it is not 100% complete. It is lacking 2 things: the hanging sleeve so it can actually hang on the wall, and the 13 buttons I dug out of my mom's sewing box for the knobs on the teapot lids (I didn't want to try to applique the tiny circles for the lids, thought I would make a small substitution.) Dang it! Although it is not Technically complete, I am still marking it as complete. Those two finishing touches will not take long, and now that I see them, I can add them to my weekend to-dos.

One less UFO in my world!

The DH's Christmas Quilt

My husband loves t-shirts. He also hates throwing things away. The end result? Piles of threadbare, hole-y, t-shirts with black armpits. (We also have piles of socks and boxers that fit this description, but that's for another battle, another post!) So two years ago, I began sneaking t-shirts out of the laundry. At first, it was one shirt every month or so, but last February, I amped up the sneaking and soon had a stack of his favorite t-shirts. And I knew just what I was going to do with them!

In July, I began slicing and dicing t-shirts. I also spent hours planning. In August, I began sewing. In September I became good friends with my seam ripper. During the month of October, I took a break. Then in November I panicked! Christmas was right around the corner! I wasn't finished. This realization was followed by a marathon sewing day. Then we were off to a local machine quilter. Have you figured it out yet?

Yup!! A t-shirt quilt was born. In order to get the layout correct, I had to add one of my own t-shirts (the Snoopy/rainbow) and bought one from the local Goodwill to fit the last remaing empty space (the game controller in the lower middle). Aside from that, this is 28 of his favorite t-shirts from his college and high school years. During the whole process, he realized only 3 of them were missing. All other "concerns" about missing t-shirts were smoothly deflected by my DENYING the existence of any missing shirts!

He loves it. It has replaced our tattered couch blanket, and all fuzzies love it. The big cat actually sat in the middle of the quilt the entire 12.5 hours it took me to sew the binding. DH actually had me put it on the bed Christmas evening, and we slept under two blankets that night. I am sitting under it even now. Soon I hope to finish hand-quilting my high school t-shirt quilt and begin planning my college t-shirt quilt. We will have plenty of warm, comforting quilts to remind us of days past, not stacks of t-shirts we can no longer wear cluttering up our closests!

New Year's Resolutions

We all make resolutions, promises to ourselves, each new year. Promises that we will do things differently, in such a way to make ourselves better people. And I know that I have said before that I am going to write here more often. But I'm saying it again. It's not that I am not working on craft projects, quite the contrary. It's more that I get caught up in the day to day activites of life, and frequently "veg" out in front of the TV at the end of the day. It's time to remember that during that quiet time in front of the TV, I can pick up the computer and log a quick post here.

Be aware, I may not always be posting on craft projects. As I look at the title of my blog, I am reminded that it is called "Married with UFOs", and so I may occaisonally post about the married life of this particular "crafter". It's hard to believe this is our 3rd married New Year's celebration, our 5th as a couple. We actually met at a New Year's party, hosted by the friend who would soon be my matron of honor, and who claims credit (or takes responsibility for!) our relationship.

Here's to new years, new resolutions, and married life! Happy New Year!