A full report.

The first photo in my January 2009 photo album is of this:



These are the colors and the patterns that are the things of my January dreams. It's the source of my inspiration this month. I have no idea what it will all come to, but I could look at this particular pallet all day long. It's all fabric designed by Anna Maria Horner.

And for Christmas, Darin gifted me with her book. It's like the gift that keeps on giving to both of us. Chapter ONE was on how to organize your space, it caused me to do some serious introspection about my sewing space.




And to Darin's total delight inspired me to change it into this:

And after accomplishing such a feat, I was inspired to attempt my first project from her book, the Taxi Tote:





And yes, in Korea's ever vigilant attempt to win me over, one gloomy day at Happy Quilt, there I spotted an actual bolt of Anna Maria fabric. I'm continuing to contemplate buying the whole bolt. My line of thinking goes something like this; If I show the universe that I love it, by buying the whole bolt, more Anna Maria bolts will magically appear. Do you think I'm onto something?! Anyway, the Taxi Tote has come with me to church two Sundays in a row, and that's saying a lot for a tote bag of mine. Me and my totes are usually fair weather friends.

So I continued to sew in January...

Re-attempting the piped pillow tutorial with much greater success and less stress the second time around. Loved the seagull fabric from the Alexander Henry 2008 collection which is also starting to magically appear in Korea!


My second favorite fabric of 2009 the black, white and red ballerina print by Michael Miller. In a peasant dress by Anna Maria.


And another tiered skirt with a flower top. More springy, because winter can't last forever right?

Did you know out of our base in Korea there are flights that go to Hawaii? January is a bit of a rough month around here. Frequently as Darin heads out the door to work, I tell him, "If I'm not here when you get home, I probably went to Hawaii."

He replies back, "Oh yeah, what about the boys going to school?"

And I reply back, "Hmm?" (Like I didn't hear what he said. It's a funny joke every time I do it.)

But someday, and maybe sooner rather than later, I think I really will try to go to Hawaii. More to come on that in the future.

And in answer to the question, "Do you get the US holidays off in Korea?", let me just say that "Yes, we do. And we also get the Korea holidays off as well. Lots of great days off!"

So to celebrate MLK jr. Day, we went sledding. No, there is no snow here in Korea right now, but this sledding hill makes just enough to give us hours of good family fun:

And tomorrow will be the boys last day of school this week due to the Korean New Year celebration. It's one of those weekends when they advise that you not try to travel. So the question remains, what should we do? Hawaii maybe? (J/K Darin!)

And finally a package in the mail from Liz today! That always makes for a great day. The girls were hoping it was full of Barbies and Princess toys. Too bad it wasn't. In an attempt to make them forget that it was not full of toys, I let them spread the felt squares all around the living room....



And then to draw the activity out I told them to find items around the house that matched up with the color of square.



Little did I know that they have just enough of their father in them to make a simple game turn into a bit of a nightmare as Jane could NOT let well enough alone. Every square HAD to have items in an exact matching shade of the color square. Talk about kill joy. I was just trying to distract them, but then I had to fully engage to help them accomplish the task at hand, which wasn't a task at all, but just a game. Those Earnests are all the same, a bunch of perfectionist!! But in the end, each square had a matching item or four. And I now have a WHOLE lot of things to clean up. But, the girls loved it and are still out there playing with it right now. And Jane has requested that we leave it that way forever.

And yes, we push the grocery cart into our house to unload the groceries and packages. Ah, the joys of living in an apartment building!

In all seriousness, the felt squares will most likely be used to craft up some sort of birthday banner for the month of February. We have half of our birthdays during two days of February. So that definitely is giving us something to look forward to next month (other than going to Hawaii).

And with that, I'll wrap up our full report of the month of January so far.