Birthday Presents

Graham gave me some really awesome presents for my birthday.  He asked what I wanted and I told him that I wanted fabric for my birthday, so I think he had it pretty easy.  My favorite fabric store (Birch Fabrics, better known online as Fabricworm) also happens to be just around the corner from his office in Paso Robles.  He has been working at home, so I wasn't sure that he was going to have the opportunity to get there before my birthday.  He scheduled an oil change at the dealership in Paso the week of my birthday, and he really had me convinced that he was busy with the oil change his whole lunch break.  I was sure that he hadn't had the chance to get me anything for my birthday, but Graham's too nice, he wouldn't do that :)

Of course, Graham went to my favorite fabric store and spoiled me.  Birch is a really awesome fabric store, and Graham is a really awesome husband.  He picked out three fat quarter bundles, as well as a gift certificate for me to spend any way that I wanted.

Last week, I dropped Graham off at the office as he was leaving for business trip, so I was able to go in and spend my gift certificate.  I spent almost an hour looking at all of the beautiful fabric they have.  I find it so hard to decide what I want when I go there because really I just want a few yards of everything so that I can make whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have to worry about using it all up.  I ended up getting two more fat quarter bundles, which Birch/Fabricworm does a wonderful job putting together.  I find the bundles so inspiring, I'm so excited to get sewing. 

I also picked up some yardage of a few other fabrics that I didn't want to leave behind.  I don't have plans for any of my fabric yet, but I'd love to get creative with some of my bundles and branch out with some sort of patchwork projects.  Probably not a quilt yet, but I'll work up to that.

It was a great birthday, although I still don't feel like I'm a quarter of a century old yet.  I'll post soon about our fun little birthday trip that we took the weekend after my actual birthday.

Photo of the Day (5.16.11)

Today's photo: I had a little photo shoot with some of my vintage Cracker Jack charms.  This is a little goat charm.  I have some plans to make some jewelry and maybe incorporate some of these silly charms.

Photo of the Day (5.13.11)

Today's photo: Crazy dead leaf colored moth in our doorway.  It was pretty interesting looking, not necessarily pretty, but definitely interesting.

Happy weekend everyone!

Photo of the Day (5.12.11)

Today (yesterday)'s photo: Tulip arrangement from when I was channeling my inner Martha Stewart.  Blogger was not working yesterday so two photos are going up today!

Photo of the Day (5.11.11)

Today's photo: Some decor from the party.  I will also post about my Martha Stewart pom poms shortly, as well as everything else that I have said I need to talk about.

Wedding Wednesday: Choosing the Setting

We spent quite some time searching for a wedding venue (mostly virtually) before we decided on the Dallidet Adobe.  Originally, we thought we wanted to do a barn wedding, but we also wanted to be near the coast.  We didn't want to get married in the north county, as it was going to be during the summer.  I thought Big Sur would be awesome, but guess what?  Big Sur is really expensive.  So that was just a dream.  We visited a few barns in Cayucos, that for one reason or another wouldn't work out.  I searched all over the internet to find a unique venue that suited us, but I wasn't finding it yet.  We thought of the "secret garden" that we had seen near Graham's condo, behind Scolari's Market in SLO.  We decided to check out their website, but it gave us the impression that they were no longer holding weddings there.  We decided to go look anyway, on one of the days that they were open to the public.  Turned out, they had just started holding weddings again, and it was the perfect setting for our wedding.  It just felt like us!

The Dallidet Adobe is an old adobe from the 1850's, owned by the SLO Historical Society, and surrounded by beautiful gardens in the middle of downtown San Luis Obispo.  We could never really tell what it was when we had passed by and just peered through the fence.  But it really is like a secret garden inside the fence and the perfect setting for a wedding.

Photo of the Day (5.10.11)

Today's photo: Rainbow Cake!  So for our birthdays I made a rainbow layer cake.  It was so exciting to cut into and see how it turned out after the hours of work I put into it.  It was also really fun to see everyone's reactions when they saw the inside. 

I have seen rainbow cakes floating around on various blogs and on Pinterest for a while.  I used those as my inspiration, but I will also post my "how-to" this week, in case anyone wants my version of it.

I probably should have cleaned the cake plate a little before taking a picture.  But this is real life, people wanted to eat cake!