Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Have you ever had old jeans that were holy or didn't fit anymore? Did you not want to get rid of them because they were your absolute faves and you wanted to cherish the memories you'd made with them forever? Here's a solution:

***This story may include some fictional information due to the fact that I am not the main character, and just because, but you'll get the gist :)***

The story of this quilt starts some 7 years ago, if we had known what was really to come of all of these little denim squares we probably could have kept some kind of journal filled with experiences seen and made by these jeans. My sister Summer inspired the birth of this quilt. Long ago she determined that she would learn to be a better seamstress and make a quilt. Not wanting to spend money she excited herself about a recycled denim quilt! She began with a few pair of her own jeans she was ready to toss out, then asked my mom for any of the kids jeans she was getting rid of, at least one pair I'm sure coming from each of us kids, some coming from hand-me-downs, and some even from the DI. Before she knew it Summer had a box FULL of denim squares (and had even gone through the effort of cutting stuffing squares to layer each denim square with.) Summer's life got busy and the box of story filled demin squares nested in their box waiting to add to their next story...

Time went by, Summer traveled to other countries and in so doing met her fiance. Summer was married and moved to Logan, UT to start her family. Somehow, the hopeful denim squares continued to be a part of her belongings throughout all of her moves and life changes. Summer and her husband decided to start a family. They had a beautiful little girl and continued life in bliss. One day, when her daughter was about 3 years old, Summer came across a dusty box. Curiously she brushed away the dust bunnies and opened the lid. There, patiently waiting for her were her even, straight stacks of denim squares.

Summer smiled to herself, remembering the time and effort put into those squares and pondered the stories they had to tell. She immediately knew what to do. Summer called me and let me in on her plan. We were going to have to put the pedal to the metal (haha...) for the next four months in order to pull off the genious plan. We informed the rest of the sisters of our plan and got started right away. There was no time to waste! We got Ken out and made sure he was ready for the long haul. **Ken we couldn't have done this without you**

Fulfilling our plan involved many afternoons of togetherness as we pieced together this quilt of traveling pants, adding to their stories as we went.

We couldn't believe how many squares we had sewn together! And we often had to rearrange furniture...and not to mention vaccum after each gathering. (to this day we find denim string in couch cushions and other places!)

We couldn't have completed this project without the help of so many sisters and appreciate every moment that went into the process (Shantai was there too...but we don't have any pics of her)

Us sisters were so grateful for the frequent time we were able to spend with one another especially because we were doing it all for someone we love very much.

Me and Summer were so proud of Ken for only breaking a needle once in the excrutiating process. (excrutiating for him, not for us)

Of course Summer's daughter (Sky) was there for the making of this denim patchwork of stories. It can only continue to be a Sisterhood of Traveling Pants if future generations are included and get to enjoy it!

Obviously Sky enjoyed being a part of such a project and Summer was quite pleased that her box of squares had made it this far so that we could continue the traveling pants....

... by giving the quilt to our Mother for Mother's Day. This durable quilt of traveling pants I believe will live to see many generations and memories to come.

Love you mom and sisters!!

On a side note this is a cute baby quilt I made for a dear friend! I forgot to get a finished product picture, but it turned out super cute, and I think she liked it.

Taking a stab

So I'm back. I've decided to re-visit the blogger world after my 3-month recess. To be honest I haven't been completely absent, I still thoroughly enjoy reading all of your blogs, I've just been lazy in my creativity. Our lives have definitely NOT slowed down with the summer time as we thought it may! If anything it's much more busy! Luckily in a good way though. We've had a lot of fun thus far and plug our ears at the talk of school beginning in a months time! yikes! Because I'm playing catch up there are going to be some pretty random blog posts for a little bit, but it will let you know what we've been up to! To keep you interested if you haven't already lost hope in my blogging abilities, here are a couple of pictures from the July 5th Hyrum fireworks. Look forward to more great pics throughout the week!! (...I hope..keeping my fingers crossed for your sake :) )

ReCYcLe and ReDEsiGn

This post is for all of you that got excited about my recycle and redesign project :) For a depth humanities course I had to design an outfit out of recycled materials and then our class put on a fashion show on campus. The fashion show raised awareness about recycling as well as helped starving students by having admission to the fashion show cost a can of food per person. Over 800 people attended this year!!! ~The "model" and the "maker"~

~Shantel on the runway with other models~

My design was made from a $3 dress from D.I. as the base, arm-fulls of grocery sacks artistically stapled and cut to perfection ;).

and $3 worth of old vinyl records from the D.I. that I strategically tied together into a stunning train :) If you look closely, Shantel's jewelry and belt buckle are also made from vinyl records. This project turned out to be pretty fun when all was said and done! A lot more work than I thought it would be though...thank you husband for all of your help and support! The late nights drilling holes in records sure were memorable! hehe. And a big shout out to sis Shantel for being my model for the show, I got and 'A' :).

The runway story Shantel and I came up with to be read as she walked down the "T":

Vintage Vinyl

Come Sail Away in this vintage vinyl gown

That would make you a Juke Box Hero to any

Brown Dirt Cowboy.

Don't Stop Believin' that the records wouldn't stop

At the train. I have More than a Feeling that Shantel is sporting

A bowtie-record choker and vinyl bangles.

Good-bye Yellow Brick Road cause you'll be going

Over the Hills & Far Away in this gown at only six dollars!

This vinyl and plastic gown will definitely have you

Spinning Right Round, Round, Round on the dance floor

Cause It's Still Rock 'n Roll to Me.

Hoppy Easter!

Happy late Easter!! Couper and I realized we hadn't seen his family since the superbowl party (!!!) so decided Easter and conference definitely needed to be family time. Between school, work, and our calling this semester life has just swept us up and carried us away in a blur...it's been so busy! Conference/Easter weekend was the perfect time to relax, be spiritually uplifted and realize there is more to life than school ;). Unfortunately I've been the worst picture taker in the world and this is pretty much what we have from Easter.

It's tradition in my family to have the Easter bunny come on the friday night before Easter so that we can focus on the Atonement on Sunday morning, so the Easter bunny visited Couper and I in Logan on Friday night :). I...I mean the Easter bunny, wasn't quite as sneaky this year as last but there were still some fun surprises! :)

It's also tradition in my family to dye eggs for Easter. Couper and I didn't do it last year for some reason and I've been sad ever since :). So I told him I hoped his family was up to the task because we HAD to do it this year! ...Unfortunately the reason it's not much of a tradition in his family is because NO ONE likes boiled eggs!! (except Gregg :) ) Luckily they humored me anyway and Baylee and I had a fun time exploring our creative minds to see what kind of fun designs we could come up with. :) It was so much fun spending time with them!

Couper and I looked at our sunbeam lesson schedule wrong, so instead of teaching the Easter lesson the week before conference we were able to teach it today. I felt a little guilty not teaching the lesson before Easter, but I actually think it worked out better for the kids to teach it today because we were able to tell them how Easter wasn't actually all about the Easter Bunny ;). Among other things I used the story above to help tell the story of the first Easter (it's great for the little ones!). As most of you know we have quite the rambunctious little class of sunbeams and classtime needs to consist of multiple activities and object lessons in order to keep their attention and help them learn. I had had a hard time thinking of activities we could do that would keep the reverence of learning about the Atonement, and our classtime was cut short today. I decided I was just going to go for it, minus activities... It was amazing. Of course we had some normal distractions, but these kids were glued to me while I told them about why we really celebrate Easter. While Couper was helping them with a coloring activity at the end of the lesson I walked around the table to each of them individually and asked them why we REALLY celebrate Easter (rewarded with jellybeans of course). I was truly humbled by their answers, they had really been listening and whether they knew if before or not, they now know that Jesus Christ died on the cross to suffer for all of our sins that we may be saved. He was resurrected, and lives today, that we may live again. THANK YOU SUNBEAMS!

Spring??

I have a friend with a three year old daughter who in the month of March was forced to look out the window and see a blizzard after week of ..almost warm weather! She shook her head as she thoughtfully looked out the window and said "Silly spring, you turned to winter." Seriously mother nature, kind of a cruel trick to play on a three year learning about seasons!! :) I don't have pictures from April Fools, but after the first crazy snow storm covered cache valley and had practically melted away we woke up the morning of April fools to at least 6 inches on our cars and the ground...sigh.

-Good thing Couper is such a safe driver! He had to drive bus in all of the crazy weather!-

-sad to have to face the snow to attend appointment after appointment, study group after study group!!-

So, I don't think I'm superstitious. But, here we have our snow shovel on the front porch where it's been all winter. In the middle of March when temperatures reached 60 I thought to myself, "I need to get that shovel off the front porch! We won't be needing that until next year!" Day after day I thought that and we have had multiple snowy days since then...This last week I shook it free of water and dirt and placed it in a different location, and look what today looks like:

I appologize, it could quite be the presence of my snow shovel on the front porch that has been tempting mother nature to keep the white fluff coming our way. We'll see how my experiment pans out the next 2 months!!