I used the same book as before, Quilts for Baby: Easy As ABC by Ursula Reikes, but a different pattern.

Again, I went to Joann’s again to buy my fabric. I tried to get some better fabric than the last quilt, I felt like the patterns in Jason Jr.’s quilt weren’t bold enough. These were the ones I came up with:

I usually like to use flannels or equivalent for the backing on the quilts, to give it a cozier feel. For this quilt I used thinner batting, so I was able to machine quilt it rather than having to do it by hand, so the process went by a LOT quicker! I still need work on the actual quilting parts, though. They still end up a bit crooked.

The finished product:

Can you spot which of the squares was put on upside down? :) Despite that error, the mom-to-be loved the quilt and I hope the baby girl will too, once she is old enough!

I went to JoAnn’s (my favorite craft store) and started in the books section. I ended up buying Quilts for Baby: Easy As ABC by Ursula Reikes. If you know a bit about sewing but nothing about quilting, like me, this is a great book to start with. It tells you everything you’ll need to quilt, and it has lots of simple starter quilts with very clear, easy to understand directions. Apparently the design I chose was one of the harder ones, but it didn’t feel like it with this book.

Fabrics I chose for the quilt.

I thought my sewing machine wouldn’t be able to handle machine quilting the blanket, so I ended up quilting it by hand! You can see here in the picture that I mis-cut the backer for the quilt, so I used some scraps I had to supplement the width.

Finally the quilt is done!

The quilting lines are a bit crooked, but that can be solved by using a quilting frame that I ended up buying after this project was finished. I was pretty satisfied with the outcome, especially for my first quilt, and eager to start the next one. :)

On Mother’s Day, the sibs and I went over to my mom and dad’s house for breakfast. I was dogsitting Chico at the time for Mike’s mom and dad, so I brought him, and Chris brought Lizzy over. After breakfast my dad let Lizzy and Chico out in the backyard to go potty. Chico darted for the bushes and emerged with a field mouse in his mouth. Before my dad could stop him, he ran inside the house and dropped the mouse at my feet. It was still alive and ran under the couch. Pandemonium ensues. We try to get the mouse out from under the couch, but to no avail. He has made his home under there. Eventually we send Chico in to try and scare the guy out, so we can throw him back in the backyard, but instead he catches the guy again and breaks his neck, and leaves him on the carpet and prances away proudly.

Happy mother’s day!

Emo Chico

Lizzy looks very apprehensive about Chico.

Awww.

Maz came over last night and helped us take pictures for our save the date postcards. Here are the results:

The plates have “Save the date January 17, 2009″ on them written in chocolate syrup. That was my original idea, hehe.

This is the one I ended up using.

After the inside ones, we went outside and took some pictures.

This one is trippy lol.

I really liked the outside ones, and I think I may still find a way to use those. Thanks to Maz for taking such awesome pictures. :)

So I’m a bit of a dork. I forgot to post the pictures I took of us on that beach in Santa Barbara and also pictures on the way to Davis going over the Golden Gate bridge, but rather than adding it to the post afterwards, I decided to just make another post. So here’s pictures of us on that beach (behind the cut).

Brittani climbed a slippery rock. After that some rocks fell down, it was a little scary!

Oh look, I was there too! You can see some of my serious sunburn, haha.

There’s the rickety bridge down to the water! The waves are lapping up all around it. Also you can see down the shoreline, pretty.

Countdown until this house falls into the ocean! Seriously! And people live in it!

The seaweed and fly infested beach.

Now time for some pictures on the way to Davis. We went over the Golden Gate Bridge to get there.

It was foggy when we first got on the bridge. Isn’t that creepy how the cables just disappear into the fog?

A couple of minutes later the fog cleared completely.

Massive!

The driver, yours truly.

Teresa, the map!

The photographer in the backseat!

See the rest of the pics from the trip on my Flickr.

UCSC was lovely, but we had to push through and continue on our journey! This time we needed to make the drive from Santa Cruz to San Francisco to say with Mirthala, my sister Teresa’s former roommate and bridesmaid. The drive was about 75.5 mi – about 1 hour 32 mins, and we got a later start than we anticipated. By the time we got there, around 5:30 PM, Mirthala was on her way to class from work, and wouldn’t be out until around 10PM. Teresa was on her flight to Oakland from Orange County, so Brittani and I decided to walk around the neighborhood. And what a neighborhood it is! Mirthala’s apartment is a block away from the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, and about two blocks from Haight&Ashbury! It was also close to several colleges, namely University of San Francisco. We walked there, but they wouldn’t let us use their bathroom, lol. So we found a Starbucks again and chilled there for a little bit. Eventually as the afternoon wore on, I got a little chilly in my shorts and t-shirt, so we made our way back to the car so I could get a sweatshirt and then we decided to wait for Teresa in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park and read our books.

Once she got there, we stowed her stuff in my car and hobbled with her over to Haight, as there was a restaurant there she wanted to take us to. I say hobbled, because the poor thing fractured a bone in her foot two weeks prior! Silly girl! We wanted to go to Cha Cha Cha!, but the wait was too long, so we ended up at a smaller Mexican restaurant next door. And we stayed there until they turned off the lights, subtly asking us to leave, I suppose! Ha ha! We started making our way back to Mirthala’s apartment when she called to let us know she was on her way. Perfect timing!

I do have a note about Haight, though. It is CRAWLING with homeless people! I felt like there was a homeless person at least in front of every store and on every corner. At one point, there was a couple of guys panhandling on a corner with an honest sign that read, “Need Drugs!” They asked us, “Hey, can you spare some change? That way we don’t need to kill someone’s children. AND YOU’RE SOMEONE’S CHILDREN!” And earlier that day at Golden Gate Park a homeless guy sat next to us on a bench. So, I can’t say that I felt completely safe there, haha. We got back to the apartment and Mirthala let us in and gave us some spare keys. Yay! We set up our stuff and stayed up talking for a while, and then crashed for the night.

The next morning we set out for a walking tour of University of California, Berkeley, the oldest UC of them all. This was by far the WORST of the walking tours. Not only was our group huge, but our guide didn’t know anything and she didn’t speak nearly loud enough for a tour of this size. I was disappointed because this is one of the schools I really want to apply to, and I didn’t get a really good feel for the campus. It is a very pretty campus though, and Berkeley is a really cute town. You should just get used to me saying that I didn’t take pictures of the campus, haha. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me at the time! Here are some website pictures:

Eventually I woke up and we made our way downtown again for the HP party. I’ll make another post on this later. :)

The next day, Saturday, Teresa, Brittani and I drove to Teresa and Mirthala’s alma mater, University of California, Davis for a walking tour. I really love Davis’ campus and the city, it just feels really close knit and everyone there was friendly and helpful, but unfortunately it’s really hot in the summer! Here are some pictures from the Davis website:

From one of his favorite movies, The Big Lebowski. After about an hour we rushed back to the apartment and I hopped in the shower to rinse off before going out that night with Teresa’s friends. Brittani decided to stay back at the apartment and catch up on her summer reading, which actually worked out better for us, because now we could go to bars! We had reservations for 8:00PM at Rose Pistola in North Beach, but we got there a little early, so we went over to a nearby pubs for some drinks. Dinner was excellent, I got the grilled calamari (so did Mirthala) and we all ordered a bottle of wine. After dinner we went to a couple more bars and pubs, and stopped by a restaurant at around midnight for some dessert. After that we headed back to the apartment, Keith and Emily took off immediately, but Eric came up for a chat. Brittani was already asleep and I crashed next to her. It was a very long day full of walking and I was exhausted!

About four hours later I had to wake up and get ready to get an early start on the road. We still weren’t sure how Brittani was going to get back to Big Bear (I certainly didn’t want to drive her all the way there!) so I left a little early so we could fit that in if need be. The drive from San Francisco to home was 434 mi – about 6 hours 47 mins long. Brittani, being the sweetie she is, summarized the first five chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and then proceeded to READ the book to me for the remainder of the drive! We stopped a couple times — once at a rest stop because I really needed to pee, haha, and another time to get lunch. The route I was on took us right through Burbank and Glendale (read: LA) so I was a bit apprehensive about the traffic I might hit (it makes no difference that it’s a Sunday afternoon!) but traffic wasn’t too bad, and we made it home around 3:00 PM. But first, we stopped at a Borders and I bought my own copy to read once we got home. :)

Overall, I feel like it was a really successful trip, and I’m super glad we went. I had an awesome time and I really liked spending time with my sister and my niece :)

So far since I’ve graduated college, I’ve set out fulfilling every post-grad stereotype out there: toyed with the idea of going to graduate school, gone on a backpacking trip through Europe (although it wasn’t too successful), and gone on a road trip (which was more successful). Usually it’s a cross-country road trip, but I just went through California and frankly, I think that’s enough! Here are some pictures and summary:

The goal of this trip was for my niece, Brittani, who is applying as an undergraduate this fall and for me, applying as a graduate, to check out different colleges throughout California and see how we like them.

We left on Wednesday, July 18, and our first stop was California State University, Northridge, a mere 76.3 mi – about 1 hour 28 mins from home. For those not familiar with the area, it’s in the San Fernando Valley right outside of Los Angeles. First though, we stopped at a supermarket and grabbed groceries. We decided to make our breakfasts and lunches in favor of saving some dough, and eating out for dinners. Once we got there, we caught a walking tour as it sauntered by and learned about the campus. Brittani is very interested in taking language classes and majoring in Deaf Studies, and Northridge has excellent programs for both. California State Universities only offer Master’s Programs, and I’m more interested in Ph.D. programs, so I didn’t get much out of it, but the campus is very nice. We forgot to take pictures (boo!) but here are some from their website:

The next day, Thursday, we woke up really early and got a head start to University of California, Santa Cruz. This was a much longer trek than our previous ones: 267 mi – about 4 hours 32 mins from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz. Again, we took the 101 most of the way, which was not as pretty as before, since it cut inland after a while and all I saw was farmland. I was also really really tired, so the boring drive did not help me stay awake! Eventually we stopped at a Starbucks for some help staying awake, haha. We also passed several Missions on this drive, I was kind of disappointed we couldn’t stop and take a look. However, Mission San Juan Capistrano is right near where I live, and I’ve been there before, and I think it’s the best preserved one out of all of them, so I don’t think I missed too much!

Finally we arrived around 11:30 AM, which was about an hour and a half early. Since we were so early, we tried (in vain) to find the bookstore, but ended up getting lost. The campus is HUGE, by the way. Our other campus tours were walking, this one was in a bus and we got off to walk around sometimes. But it was LONG. Brit and I didn’t each lunch beforehand, and after the tour we found the bookstore (Brittani got a sweatshirt), so we ended up not eating until around 3PM! Kill me, haha, I was starving!! Brittani took tons of pictures, I didn’t. Oops! The campus is not very far from the beach; in fact, you can see the ocean from several spots on campus. And the place is covered in trees! Redwoods, pine, etc. It’s a completely gorgeous campus, and I think that’s why Brittani ended up liking it the best. Anyway, here are some pictures of Santa Cruz (from their website):

Well, my neice’s baby shower is today, so I need to get off of my dead butt and clean up a little bit. Yes, my neice is having a baby. That will make me a great aunt at 21. Help!

See you all next week!

That’s me sipping my first legal margarita :)

That’s Mike and I. I’m opening presents from my mommy and daddy: two shirts, earrings and The Lady and the Tramp on DVD. :D

Yay mom and dad! Great presents. Also: your last child is 21! Finally!

My brother Chris and my brother in law Dustin!

My birthday flan!

But first, singing! This is what they sing to people at El Torito:

Estas son Las manañitas
que cantaba el Rey David.
Hoy por ser día de tu santo
te las cantamos así.
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday ponchita,
Happy Birthday to you!

Dustin did one of those loud laughs that Mexicans always do in Ranchero music, it was really funny.

My sister Teresa and Dustin.

Mike parents were there, they gave me a Coach purse, wallet, and keychain! :loveeye: So crazy about my Coach…

I’m proud of the photoshopping I did on this one :3

Yay! You can also view them at my Flickr!

I know we had to grow up sometime, but it feels like I’m not ready for it.