The Lilli Diary

Lilli has already had a very eventful Autumn season!. Last week she took on her second annual Halloween scavenger hunt at Grandma Z's house. Needless to say, she had quite a bit more enthusiasm than last year's hunt.

Lilli didn't get into the scavenging at 4 weeks old

 The Play-Doh was the first thing that she scavenged and she would have been quite content to sit there and squish it for the rest of the afternoon. However, Grammie had about a zillion other goodies for her to find. I think she had brain overload from all of the things she discovered hidden under pastel sheets of tissue paper. Here are some photos of the hunt:

Hello and happy Monday!
I am sorry if this post bores you since it's not directly about our fave lil' toddler but I simply must post it anyway. One of my best childhood friends is having a baby boy next month and her shower was on Saturday. This excites me mainly because she is my only friend that lives close by that is going to have a baby (playdates here we come!). I love to poke through crafty people's blogs and find the SIMPLEST project to attempt myself. I came across just the perfect project for Michelle's shower on a blog called greenappleorchard. It's a baby rag quilt! The full tutorial can be found here and believe me, it's simple. Here are some shots I took to remind me what I did:
 I cut my 3 kinds of fabric into 8x8 squares using a rotary cutter on my kitchen floor :)

I was starting to make some progress on this laborious step when in walked my little helper.

She got right to work by pulling everything out of the cupboard for me.

This is exactly what it looks like: an ENTIRE bag of Cheerios on the floor.

She sat there and munched on them for about 20 min. Hey, at least she was occupied :)

My 3 piles of 8x8 squares and my batting cut to 6x6

This is the step where I sewed the batting in between the fabric squares.

Next, I sewed the quilted squares together with a 1" seam allowance showing on one side.

Add caption

After snipping all the 1" seams, I washed and dried the quilt to create this rag look. There are supposed to be 8 rows of 6 but I botched it up and ended up with 7 rows of 6 (of course).

The front is the side with the ragging and the back side has hidden seams

All wrapped and ready for the shower!

I made a ton of mistakes but it was still such a fun project! What I love about the rag quilt is the more it gets washed the better it looks and feels. I have already been back to JoAnn's and painstakingly picked out the materials for 2 more! I won't mention the other handmade quilt at the baby shower that was perfect and gorgeous. So there. Just thought I would share this easy project and the link to the tutorial for anyone feeling crafty out there.

My FANTASTIC hubbs surprised me by whisking me away to Traverse City for the night to celebrate my birthday! I was so excited that before too long we were waving bye-bye to Lilli at my folks house and speeding off down the driveway. We stayed at Quality Inn and woke up to this view of Lake Michigan.

After enjoying our continental breakfast on Monday morning, we drove to Torch Lake to catch some fall colors! We have never seen such a clear lake in our lives! You may not be able to tell in the photo but the leaves encircling the lake were vibrant reds and oranges.

Here is a view of Lake Michigan with fantastic fall colors! We plan to own this bluff someday and sip coffee from our deck overlooking this view.

We drove up the coast gawking at all the gorgeous leaves and stopped in Petosky to ride our bikes along the coast. The finale of our color tour was the Tunnel of Trees on M-119 just past Petosky. I think the deer in the area know that it's the prettiest place to be and they were kind enough to let us snap some photos of them.

Our mini vacation ended with a bite to eat and some hot coffee at a quaint little place on the coast called Legs Inn. The building was built by Indians and has the best view from every table. We watched the sunset from our table and had that warm, blessed feeling as we enjoyed each others company. Thank you, Brent for such a perfect getaway!

Lilliana cautiously took her first steps into Daddy's arms just before her first birthday. I managed to capture the occasion on my camera! Needless to say, she is becoming a pro at cruising around by now but I thought I would share these precious moments with you! If anyone is interested in EXTENSIVE footage of Lilli, contact my Dad.... and I mean extensive! :)