Pillows for Kristen...Ombre, Ruffles, Pintuck and Chevron

This is my friend Kristen. She is awesome. I met her at church soon after I moved to Boston. She was new too, we bonded over adjusting to our new lives in a place that was so different from where we both came from. 

Kristen had just bought her first house, it was around 100 years old. It needed some work and her and her husband had their hands full of projects. She needed a quicker pick me up and I needed a good distraction from my life so I made her some pillows. She told me what she wanted. We risked life and limb to go to an awesome fabric store in a ghetto part of town. It was so worth it. We spent around $25 on fabric and notions and this is what I made for her...

Ombre, Ruffles, Pintuck...

and Chevron...

I love taking random fabric and turning into something useful and pretty.

I had no patterns for any of the pillows. Kristen sent me some pictures of what she was thinking and then I had to use my brain. Three of them were pretty easy to figure out...the Chevron one, not so much. It's hard to find Chevron fabric that has the exact colors that you want so I decided to make my own fabric...I like a challenge and this proved to be a worthy one. I took pictures of the process so I can make a tutorial one of these days...today is not that day. But here are a few pictures of the process... 

Ta-Da!

 And there you have it...some pretty cool homemade pillows. That ruffle pillow was tedious and the Chevron fabric and pillow was a beast, they were both a ton of work but so worth it. Kristen traded me pillows for family pictures. She is a fantastic photographer. She took some amazing pictures for me and I will post those next.

Spukies!

Spukies was a pizza place in our neighborhood. It's pronounced "spuckeys", but we always called it "spookies". Aric and I had a constant debate over who made the best pizza, Regina's or Spukies. I loved my Regina's but Aric got the kids on his side so we ended up at Spukies more than I liked... 

Every time we drove by it we had to say "SPOOKIES!" fast and in a high pitched voice. Aric started the tradition and we did it Every. Single. Time. We drove by it at least four times a day since it was on the way to Maya and Eden's schools.

Well they have this gum ball machine and the kids would always beg for us to give them a quarter so they could try to get the black gum ball and win a free slice a pizza. I told them that it was just a waste of money because no one would ever win it. Wouldn't you know it, on our very last meal at Spukies Eden got the black gum ball and I was proven wrong. I still can't believe she got that darn thing!

Here she is enjoying her free slice. Eating it like a true Bostonian...folded in half.

Thanks for the memories Spukies!

This is what fall in New England looks like...

Fall is a fabulous season, only second to summer in my book. A New England fall can take your breath away...here are some pictures of a gorgeous fall afternoon we spent just a couples miles from our apartment.

I ran by this area as part of one of my running routes. I knew it was a must see with the family before we had to leave...

You can't take the city out of these hills...nice graffiti huh.

Aric is taking the road less traveled and making me nervous...

Eden wanted to leave her mark so she wrote her name a rock, with a rock...

 It was so fun to watch the kids playing in the leaves...

This is my favorite picture I took of Maya. She was waiting for a leaf to fall...

She caught it!

This is my favorite picture I took of Eden. She is sitting patiently waiting for the wind to blow a leaf of a tree so that she could catch it.

This was the leaf she was waiting for...it never fell.

And this is my favorite picture of C...

It was a perfect fall day and we enjoyed every minute of it...I will remember it always.

Breath Taken

Candlepin Bowling

As the days got closer to us leaving we wanted to have one last get together with some of our Boston buddies. We decided to go candlestick bowling. What you've never heard of candlestick bowling? Well that's probably because you aren't from the Northeast. There are only a handful of candlestick bowling alley's in the Boston area and thanks to Groupon we got a screaming deal on a couple of lanes for a couple of hours.

The main difference between candlestick bowling and regular bowling is that the ball is smaller and there is only one size and weight. Then the pins are tall and skinny and there are 12 pins you have to knock down.

Maya and Eden had fun helping Kruz get his ball down the alley...

Jerrica was awesome. That's what happens when you are born and raised with candlestick bowling.

Maya took this game very seriously. It was fun to watch her play.

Rich was pretty good. His Washington farm boy raising somehow prepared him for this game....

Or maybe it was just his candlestick bowling fashion sense that pushed him over the top.

Camden loved it! Anything with a ball and any sort of throwing or knocking down is right up his alley.

The only problem was that he didn't quite have the speed needed to get the ball all the way down the lane at a reasonable time. So this is what he would do while he waited for his ball...

The little kids balls didn't always quite make it to the end of the alley so Aric had to get them...

It was Kristen's idea to do this little outing and I'm so glad she planted the seeds. 

We had so much fun!

Oh I love this picture of Julian! I miss this little man so much...his smile melts my heart.

These little guys were more excited about the pizza, soda and bouncy balls...

Maya and Cherise

There was more monkey-ing around going on then actual bowling but it was so fun! I'm pretty sure the other bowlers were happy when our two hours was up.

I LOVE this picture! It totally captures how much fun we all had...

I'm normally pretty horrible at bowling but I had hope for this candlestick business, but that hope didn't really end up working out for me. My form was pretty sweet though...

Aric of course had fun kicking our trashes...

It's not fair that this guy can do anything well the first time he tries it...so annoying! I had to give him a big kick on his way down the lane.

I love bowling shoes! The look of them anyway, I always have to get past the whole "how many feet have been in these things before mine"...So Gross!

I hate goodbyes so we just pretended that this was a fun night out instead of our last get together :(

We had so much fun and I 'm so glad I have these pictures to remind me.