Did You Enjoy Your Saturday?

Over at our house we had a bunch of children decide we needed a few Halloween decorations.





I made Elena a much needed church skirt this morning. It is not the best picture but the skirt turned out very cute.



I used this pattern.I made view A. Elena is too old for children's patterns (style wise that is) but too slender for the smallest adult size. I am not very good at adjusting patterns so I just made the smallest adult size and added thin elastic to help the waist fit better. I also added a skirt lining so Elena would not have to wear a separate slip. It is a pretty straight forward pattern. It took about three hours for me to make.I bet it will be faster now that I made one. I will definitely make her a few more skirts with this pattern.



This evening I made these two cute baby blankets. I have about a zillion of this type of blanket waiting to be made. Maybe not a zillion but quite a few. I think I will try to get a few more made tomorrow evening before I think about moving on to another project.




I saved the best for last...I just absolutely LOVE this sweet head of messy baby hair. I wish these years would never end...



Notice how my sweet baby has to eat around my sewing? It is not that uncommon for my sewing to monopolize the table like this. My precious Lids does not mind,though!

A Few Random Things

Joel has been enjoying hot chocolate season.


Two blankets I finished up this evening:

My Route 66 baby blanket



and my Wise Old Owl baby blanket



Here is a better picture of the circus baby blanket I made the other day.The circus panel is very unique,isn't it?

Stellar Kart at Higher Ground

Elena made a fun slideshow video this evening.It is of Stellar Kart when she saw them at Higher Ground this past August. Enjoy!!

Harvest of Friends Blog Party

I thought it would be fun to participate in Lynnette's Harvest of Friends Blog Party.

For those of you visiting my blog for the first time I will write a little about myself.

Here goes!

I love the Lord. I accepted Christ into my life when I was 13 years old at the lowest of one of the most difficult years in my life. My childhood and family life up until that point had been pretty sad. About the time I accepted Christ I had already tried killing myself and was down a path to being put in a halfway/treatment type home but the Lord intervened.Instead, my hunger for God grew very intense. In college I met a great group of fellow Christians who were just as passionate about God as I was and through the years since (with lots of ups and downs along the way) my relationship with God continues to grow.

I am now a wife of 16 years to a very sweet man. I met him at church in my early
20's. It was one of those love at first sight stories one reads about in books but it really happened to me.

We have 14 children whose ages range from 15 down to 21 months.We adopted six of our children from West Africa between Dec 2006 and Feb
2008. Our eight other children are our biological children.

My days are very busy schooling our kids along with all the other home type activities that go on...Lots of laundry,cleaning,cooking,as well as a good amount of fun and craziness.

I just love sewing, mostly quilts and baby items. I am a fabricaholic. I have more fabric than I could use in my lifetime but I still seem to need more.

That is my story in a nut shell.

Now on to my getting to know me questions!

1. What is your favorite thing to snack on while you're blogging?Dots,pretzels,and sipping diet pop.

2. What is one thing you wouldn't want to live without?My sewing machine!

3. Beach, Mountains or Farm? Where would you live if you had a choice?
I would choose a farm although living within view of the mountains seems very neat.

4. What's your least favorite chore/household duty?
I would say giving the little kids a bath and washing their hair,brushing their teeth,and cutting their nails. This is not exactly a household chore,though. Maybe cleaning the stove-top.

5. Who do people say you remind them of?
I do not remember anyone saying I resemble anyone in particular. Some people used to say my husband and I looked like we could be brother and sister.

6. Prefer parties and socializing or staying at home with the fam?
I prefer to stay at home.

7. What's your all time favorite movie?
Titanic. I cry every time the part comes on where the mom is telling her two little children a bedtime story while she herself knows they are all about to die.

8. Do you sleep in your make up or remove it like a good girl every night?
I do not really wear make-up but I am close to compulsive with my face washing and teeth brushing so I would definitely wash off my make-up before bed if I wore it.

9. Do you have a hidden talent or a deep desire to learn something that you've never had a chance to learn? What is it?
I would really like to learn how to use a spinning wheel.It seems so neat. I would also love to learn how to make a braided rug.

10. What's one strange thing you're really good at?
I do so many strange things but can not say am good at any of them!

11. What first attracted you to your spouse?
The thing that attracted me to my husband was that he was wearing his uncle's 1940's leather bomber jacket.I thought whoever that guy is wearing that jacket I want to marry him. He is so cool. We were both a little too shy to look each other directly in the face for months but when we did and I saw his eyes,I thought they were the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen.

12. What is something you love to smell?
My toddler Lily's neck.

13. Tell something about you that you know irritates people.
I ramble on and on to drive my point across. I 'tell' rather than ask my family to do things and I am very very easily distracted.I tend to whine,too.

14. When you have extra money (HA!) what's the first thing you think to do with it?
I spend it on fabric.

15. Are you a silent laugher or a loud laugher? What makes you laugh the hardest?
I think I am more of a silent laugher. I laugh the hardest with my husband. We can get pretty silly late at night. The show My Name is Earl makes my laugh out loud SO hard I start to cry. I have a very odd sense of humor.

16. Where is your favorite place to shop?
Any fabric store.

17. What's one thing you'd do more often if you had more time?
I would sit on the swing in our front porch drinking coffee talking with my kids or walk to the coffee shop in town with a few of my oldest children and I would like to just sew,sew,sew.

18. Are you a big spender or frugal?
More of a big spender.

19. Who is your favorite character of all time (from a movie or book)?
I just can not think of an all time favorite...the most recent character I enjoy is Micheal Murphy the Biblical archaeologist in Tim Lahaye's Babylon Rising series.

20. Would you want to be famous?
No,I would not want to be famous. I kind of like to blend in to the crowd but I wouldn't mind being singled out every once in a while.

Baby In Black

I decided to work on baby blankets the past few evening. I had two yards of black dot minkee type fabric so I thought I would use it to make four baby blankets. I have three finished and the fourth I will complete tomorrow. I have not come across many baby blankets with black in them and was not sure how they would turn out. I actually like them! They are very unconventional but fun.




You can not tell by this photo but this blanket is a vintage look circus theme panel that I added a striped border to. I found the circus fabric on clearance at Hancock fabrics for $2.95 a yard. There were two bolts of the fabric so I'm guessing it was not the most popular fabric around but it turned out well in this blanket. It is definitely a very unique blanket. The fourth blanket I will finish up tomorrow is a novelty route 66 fabric with the black minkee type backing fabric. These four blankets are definitely some of the most daring blankets I have made.



I have not posted much family news lately. There is always a lot of activity around here but I have been a little unmotivated to capture much for my blog.

I will mention a few cute things though. Grace is very much a daddy's girl not so much a mommy's girl. She has been from the first affectionate with Jeff and not so much with me. Lately, she has been spontaneously asking if she can hug me and saying she loves me. That has been very, very nice.

Lily has been a hoot. She forgets she is only 21 months old. She thinks she is five years old like Joel and Grace. Her newest thing is that she will round up her own clothes (usually two tops and no bottoms or a top and a sock )and a diaper then disappear into the bathroom to 'get dressed'. She gets as far as stripping down to her birthday suit but after that she can not figure out the rest so she sits naked on the bathroom floor talking to herself until I or a helpful sibling rescues her. She usually shuts the bathroom door and can not open it by herself. I bet she does this at least two or three times a day. She also learned the power of yelling "No!" to most everything she is asked to do.She is not fond of the results her "No!" gets her,though. She is also continuously asking " what's this" which sounds more like "wha dis?" to most everything around her. She is at a very fun age.


I found this secret code message that someone slipped under my bedroom door this morning. Well,it is not the original note. I recreated the note on paint. You will have to figure it out yourself to see who left it for me.

A Few More Quilts Quilted!

My Elena had been away for the weekend with our church youth group. I have been missing her. I am very glad she is back safe and sound!

I am exited that I quilted four more quilts this weekend. I have been on a quilting roll this past few weeks. It feels nice to get some of my waiting projects done. I can not decide if I should sandwich and quilt my three Christmas quilt tops that I made last year or make a few receiving blankets next. I have my more recent quilt tops that need quilting but I will wait on those for a bit.

Here are photos of my finished quilts. You will most likely recognize them. Now I just need to get motivated to list them on Etsy. I will at some point this week.





What do you think of this one? This one is a keeper. I had this grand plan on making a road quilt as a sort of blanket time thing for some of my younger kids to use during school time. I found this fun Cars fabric at Walmart. It is a very simple quilt so only took a few hours to make. I wonder if something like this would sell on Etsy? Anyway,some of the kids have been pretty exited for me to get this one finished.

Behind The Scenes

There is always a lot that goes on behind the scenes at a Frye birthday party! Here are a few fun pictures of what went on during Anya's birthday party...

Smile. Lily is taking your picture with the princess cell phone. She has quite the eye for photography.



Lily sitting on Odell's lap while Anya opens her gifts.



A lot is going on in this picture. It is sweet to see the big kids having fun with the little kids.



Elena took all of this in stride.

Happy 7th Birthday Anya!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET ANYA!!!!!





Anya is patient as Lily claims Anya's gifts for herself.




What cute Tinkerbell pj's Anya!! She really liked them. They fit just right.





Sweet Anya,you are so very loved by all of us!!!

What Do You Think?

I finished Anya's Tinkerbell birthday P.J's this evening. They turned out very cute! Nolan helped me place the applique patch on the pj top. He has a good eye for things like this. I'm pleased with how Anya's pj's turned out. I hope Anya will like them. I have enough extra fabric so I was thinking I could make a pair of polar socks and a simple square quilt but maybe I will save that idea for Christmas.

Two More Quilted

I finished quilting two more waiting quilts this evening. Do you remember these? They had to wait a while for me to get in the quilting mood. I will put binding on them and wash them tomorrow.




Next on my list is making a soon to be 7 year old Tinkerbell PJ's for her birthday this Thursday. I hope to get the pj's completed in the next few days.