A walk in the park

I've been pretty distracted this week... Which isn't good for my blog... or keeping up with the housekeeping work.

Last Sunday, while playing with little Freyja, it got a little out of hand and she scratched my cornea. Fortunately it wasn't bad and I'm fully recovered, but it made for a rough start to the week.

And school started this week! For those of you who don't know, I'm studying for my advanced paralegal certificate... And reading 6 chapters on Medical Paralegal Law, it takes a lot of time.

Speaking of reading, I also broke out my Kindle again this week. I haven't used it in months and after using it 3 days straight, I can't seem to put it down...

I did manage to stop reading on Saturday for a little outing. First stop: Starbucks.

Anyone know what these cute little boxes hold?

Starbucks mini cupcakes.... I'd never seen them before and we just had to try them.

On the left, carrot cake for me and the right, chocolate peanut butter for the bf

After our Starbucks run, we took Freyja for a walk in our favorite park. It was a gorgeous day and surprisingly warm. 

It's really starting to feel like spring, even if there is no evidence of that in the plants.

Freyja had a blast, as always.

But she was one tired pooch when we got home.

And she really likes to cuddle up.

We also put the final coat of stain/poly on the new dining room table... I'm really hoping we can get it moved in sometime today.

And for dinner? It was so nice, we decided to do all of our cooking outside.

We just couldn't bring ourselves to go inside when it was so nice and warm.

Hope you all are having a great weekend!

Quilting until my fingers bleed...

Thank god we're on the mend and the snow is almost gone...

But I'm still inside today because I had a project I needed to get done (or at least mostly done today). Her shower is today and even though I can't be there, I wanted her to be able to see the "finished" product.

My cousin had a baby boy a few weeks ago. And because he was 5 weeks early (due the first week of April), I can't feel bad about finishing it up now...

So my day was filled with lots of seam ripping....

One major incident involving the quilt, the sewing machine and the table cloth....

(Yep, they're stitched together)

But the end product turned out pretty great:

They're big Seattle Seahawks fans, hence the fabric selection. And the back is Minky fabric, which is sooo soft, but a big pain to sew on.

I still have to hand-tack the corners, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. I've only made one quilt before and I had a lot of help from mom and grandmas.

And I really didn't think the pattern (which I designed) through, so when I went to put the blocks together, I had to get a little creative.

Freyja just laid on the fabric and batting. My bad for putting it in her little spot of sunshine.... So she decided to use her bed instead, poor thing.

Linking up to:

New dining set!

I've been spending a lot of time on craigslist/kijiji looking at new dining room tables and chairs. What we have now is fine:

Yep, that's a dog on the table.

But it's not something I want to have forever. So I found a set I liked and we drove an hour to get it.

That wouldn't be that big of a deal if we had a truck, but we drove home like this:

It's a good thing the bf and I have experience tying down sailboats, or this could have been a complete disaster...

We unpacked everything out of the car and here's what we came home with:

A dining room table w/ leaf

4 chairs

A hutch

Unfortunately, the table got a little damaged in the move... We were planning on refinishing the whole set anyway, so it's happening sooner rather than later.

We're not sure when the furniture is from, exactly (we think the 50's), but it all has these cool old tags still on it. I'm going to have to  do a little research on this, I think.

And we don't have room for the hutch downstairs... so we're leaving it upstairs for now until we're in a place that has more room... It will be replacing the rickety old bookshelf.

We started the refinishing work this weekend, starting with the leaf in case we seriously messed something up. And let me tell you, it was a lot of work. Whatever they used to seal tables when this was made, it works.

The leaf, after one coat

The bf hard at work

Still sanding, 45 minutes later

Even I did some of the work...

And after an hour and a half of sanding... We were finally done.

It's still a little wet here, but you get the effect. I'm just hoping we get some nicer days so we can get this table inside and use it!

And Freyja? She wasn't much help at all. 

She played fetch for about an hour...

And then decided it was nap time.

Linking up to: