No time!

Lately I have not had a ton of time to work on my craft projects.  Life sometimes takes over all my fun!    I've had a lot of shifts that have pretty much taken over my whole day.  Disneyland, why must you take all my time away.

Even on my days off.   Yesterday I was back in the park for fun for a whole 16 hours!

My good friend Amber came into town with her two girlfriends from college to play with me in Disneyland.

We visited both Disneyland and California Adventure parks.  Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Roger Rabbit, California Screaming, Toy Story Midway Mania, Soarin' over California, The Little Mermaid, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones, Star Tours, The Disneyland Railroad, we did it all!

We closed California Adventure with World of Color which none of the other girls had seen.

And my favorite part of the night was VIP for Fantasmic.  What a View!  We finished off the night by flying over London in Peter Pan's flight.  Not a bad way to spend a day off! 

A bit of 4th of July

 When I have a day off I can work on projects all day long.  Even when there is no sunlight out anymore, which explains all the lousy pictures.

Around the 4th of July I made most of a quilt seen below.  Just looks like Americana doesn't it!

Last night I finished off the front of the quilt.  I figured about 9 inches square for each flag out work.  I added a little variety to the fabric for interest.  And when I ran out of one red, I substituted another!  I love the pinwheel pattern that appears only when I started sewing them together

After finishing the top of one project it led to starting another!  I saw these cute citrus coasters on Purl Bee.  Not to hard to make and fun at the same time.

How cute are these!  An orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit!  I glued the pieces together.  The website suggested to sew them together but that would have taken forever.  If they start coming apart, sewing it is!

Now time to piece together another flag quilt for a gift.  My goal to finish the flag quilts is next 4th of July.  I think that is reasonable!

Starting new projects when I should be finishing others

Why I do this to myself all the time, I will never know.  I have so many projects I could finish but I choose to start others.  At least I know it is still me working on these projects.  I'm doing something besides wasting my time on the internet all day.

The harlequin pillow is going well.  Hey look, a kind-of square corner!

 The front of the pillow is all done.  I really like the pink and purple, perfect for a little girl.  And even with my careful guestimation it is still a little short.

Add a border and it is the perfect size.  TaDa!  I need to hit up JoAnns for more fabric for the back.  I might even make another pillow and put it on Etsy.  Now if someone would buy something from me on Etsy it would be awesome!

Now to my pillow.  I'm going to try 4 colors and see how it goes.  I added the light green for some brightness.

All the pieces cut, now to lay the out.  I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do it so I made a couple options for myself.

Option 1 - Solids in one row and flowers in another

 Option 2 - I used purple as a base color

 Option 3- Solids on the diagonal and flowers on the diagonal

 After spreading them out and looking at them again I liked option 1 the best.  Here it is before it was sewn together.

 Half way there!

And all sewn together.  I think I'm going to try sewing a back pocket so I don't have to use a zipper this time. There is a first time for trying anything in the quilting world.

And here is the finished product.

Looks good, a little busy but after completely assembling it I like it even more.

And the back even has a little detail.  The pocket makes the form fit it even easier than the zipper.

Now what to work on... projects I should finish or those who suit me at the moment.  Only tomorrow will tell.

Back to work

Not only did I work 8 days a row, but now it is time to get back to my fun work.

I had a late start on the crafting day.  I went to the beach instead of starting the crafts early.

So 7pm rolls around and its finally time to start!  Tonight its all about the harlequin pillow.  To make my life easier and to not kill my wrist by cutting too many squares I always like to plan out my sizes.

Time to pick out the colors.  2 or 4 colors - 4 for me, 2 for another. This one is for me.  Might make a change or two in the colors but another pillow calls first.

The pillow I'm starting on is for my cousin who just visited California and loves pink.  I mean, LOVES pink.  I thought it would be nice to make her a little pillow for her bed for Christmas.  And she like purple too, but shiny pink is the best! 

 Cutting out the diamonds.  According to my math it will take about 21 diamonds for each side of the pillow.

Will this actually end up square?  I hope so! 

Well that is enough for one night.  Don't want to over exert myself on the start back after two weeks off!

Everyone comes to Disneyland!

Working at Disneyland has it's perks.  I have the good fortune to be able to bring in friends and family into the park.  About a month ago my mom came into town and we spent two fun filled days in the park!  We were successful on not getting to we on Splash Mountain.

Met Tinker Bell and Slivermist in pixie hollow.  Of course to get down to Pixie size we had to shrink a lot!

After a good day in Disneyland one must take a picture at the Mickey Floral before leaving!

Not too long after my Mom leaving my boyfriend came into town.  Of course before our trip to San Fransico, we had to stop at Disneyland!  We even met his favorite Princess Ariel.

The new gates for California Adventure were open and we had to go over there for the Lobster Nachos at the Cove bar.  Nothing says amazing like Lobster and nachos in the same meal.

 And there is nothing like meeting an old friend like Winnie the Pooh.

After dropping Sean off at the airport there was one more set of visitors coming in the next day.  My aunt Lissa and her son and granddaughter came into town.

The little one had never been to Disneyland and could barely sleep the night before due to all the excitement.  Can't say that I wasn't excited too.

Mary Poppins and Bert were amazing.  They were talking about how they did not get invited to the Royal Wedding but they did have a pretty decent view of all the people from the rooftops.

She met all of her favorite princesses and got to dance with her favorite, Princess Aurora.

She even met Minnie and Mickey Mouse and so many more too!  We did a lot of things in one day.

 We even went of on the new Little Mermaid ride too, it was one of her favorites.

At 6 year old she was able to spend almost 14 hours in Disneyland.  It was a great couple of weeks.  Now it is time to get back to working on projects.  That Rapunzel dress is calling me for the D23 Expo later this month.

Getting back to work

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind!  My boyfriend came into town for a week and we both went up to San Francisco for the first time.  About a 7 hour drive from Orange County, at least there were some things to look at along the way.

We drove over the Bay Bridge to get into San Francisco proper.

  We drove up and spent 3 days and 3 nights in a hotel on Lombard Street.

We got Irish Coffees at the Buena Vista once we checked into our hotel.  The Buena Vista is where the Irish Coffee got it's start in the US.

The next morning we headed over to Fisherman's Wharf, not a lot of fishermen but there was a lot of things to do!

There was a WWII battleship docked at one of the pier that we ventured around for a while.  The SS Jeremiah O'Brien still works to this day.  They were starting her up for a cruise the next day.

We ate lunch at the Boudin Bakery.  Fresh sourdough, there is nothing like it!

Pier 39, pure tourist trap!  Yuck!

After the wharf we headed over to the Golden Gate Bridge.  After walking for about an hour we had made it down and back.  What a windy walk!  Our hair proves how much wind there was.

The next day proved to be a good one.  The sun came out in San Fran.  Of course this was the day where we were planning to be outside more!  Our first stop of the day was at The Palace of the Arts.  What an amazing building.

The off to the Walt Disney family museum.  Too bad pictures were not allowed in there, otherwise I would have been in there for 6 hours instead of 3.

After learning more about Walt Disney we drove over to the Golden Gate park.  It was the weekend so we had to park in the parking garage.  Three hours, $16.  Ouch!  Our first stop there was the Japanese Tour Garden.  The tea house was great, but loud, I bet a winter day when kids are in school would be fantastic there!

Our final stop for the day was the California Academy of Science.  A planetarium, rainforest, living roof, and aquarium all in one stop.  There was a lot to see and do!

After the park we made one more stop along the ocean and walked all of the Embarcado.  Not much but resturants along the way but we did take the historic F-line back to the Warf.

Our final morning the sun was out again and we started our drive.  One more stop at the Golden Gate park to try and visit the Conservatory of Flower, which was closed on Mondays (boo!).  We also found a Rose Garden and a mini redwood forest.

On our way back to Orange County we took the Pacific Coast Highway down.  Along the way we found a lighthouse and had to stop to take more pictures and to stretch our legs!

Our next stop was Monterey Bay and we visited at the Aquarium there.  The best aquarium I have ever been to for sure!

After and amazing couple of days we stopped one more time along the coast to take another windy day picture.

What an amazing trip.  We did probably a week full of stuff only in 4 days.  I'm still exhausted just thinking about it!