I Really Thought....

...that once I had a laptop, I would be typing up so many more blog posts.  FAIL!

I really don't have any valid excuses, not that I suppose I have anything to apologize for, but you know how it goes.

Things I've been up to lately:

• made a divided basket for my brother and SIL, to go in their nursery (I'm not sure why I didn't take a photo of this!)  {my baby nephew should be making his entrance into this world in the next week or so}
• made two mitered corner baby blankets to stuff in the basket before I sent it 
• had a snow day:  According to the National Weather Service, the snowfall for my area was just over 7.5 inches.  I was grateful to have an extra day off of school.  Almost all of this snow is gone already, too, as it warmed up yesterday and today.  

• I went into Chicago and went to The Needle Shop.  I didn't make the trip by myself.  I stopped and picked up Emily and Emily.  It's a good thing they were monitoring my parking, or else I would have definitely parked in some sort of no parking area.  I didn't get us in any wrecks, so I guess it wasn't that bad.   We also went to a place called the Textile Discount Outlet.  That place was crazy!  I didn't take any photos, though.  It was a warehouse type building of multiple levels that was full of fabric (not quilting cottons, though) and all sorts of things.  We explored all of the levels, even the basement....    The printed fabrics below, I purchased at The Needle Shop, but the brown fabric on the left (Irish linen, according to the bolt label... although, who knows if that was accurate or not...) I purchased at TDO.  I think they charged me $7 for the whole yard of linen.  

• I made some pillowcases, just for fun.  The fabric is Bento Box by Illustration Ink for Robert Kaufman 

• Cooked these Crispy Parmesan Potato Puffs.  These turned out really tasty.  They are a bit time consuming, but it's easy work, so I'll definitely make them again.  

• Today, I wanted to do something simple... So, I made some mitered corner cloth napkins from a piece of fabric that I kept from all of the fabric I was given.  I threw them in the wash already, so I don't have a photo of the napkins, either.  I looked at a bunch of tutorials for making the mitered corner napkins, and tried to follow one of them, but ended up making up my own mash-up version.  They turned out nicely, so I may even write up a tutorial for what I ended up doing.  

What have you been up doing lately?