I have fun things to share today: a finished project! Pics of another project in progress! Recipes! It’s been a productive couple of weeks for me, though is my living room still filled with boxes? Yes. Do we have an unassembled IKEA bookshelf and dresser lurking around? Yes. Stacks of art left to hang, a garage full of boxes that need to be inspected, and all kinds of strange objects sitting in strange places? Why yes, I do know there is a bottle of listerine sitting in the nursery for no good reason. One day I’ll get to it, but apparently not yet. I’ve been too busy with fun things, like this:

This is the baby quilt I made for our little one (I am at 27 weeks and counting!), out of some meltingly soft plain white flannel and some lovely vintage floral bed linens from Whimsie Dots on Etsy. The finished quilt is not quite one yard square, perfect for curling up during naptime or snuggling while we wake up. Instead of quilting each square I just did knots in the center of each square and at the intersections, which makes for a fluffier and softer overall feel. The best part is that I made it all in one evening, thanks in part to my new Olfa rotary cutter, but mainly thanks to the fact that I skipped using a separate fabric to bind the edges. Instead, I just sewed the layers together inside out and then flipped them through a gap in the seam, like a really flat pillow. It was much, much easier that way. Is there a name for this technique? If not, I would dub it Super Simple Lazy Quilter’s Savior Technique, that’s how much I loved it.

I also made some progress working on the baby cradle restoration project that I started way back in April. I came back to this project after letting the buying a house/moving interrupt my progress, and I was pleased to see the cradle was no worse the wear for sitting in my dad’s woodshop for a couple months. After some intense sanding, we determined that it was not going to be worth the effort to try to get the spindles completely paint-free (so they could be stained), so instead I opted to paint them white. Here I am getting to work:

And here is one side of the cradle finished with two coats of Acro Pure Miller Paint antique white (Acro Pure is Miller’s environmentally friendly, zero-VOC paint):

It was tricky to get the paint into every nook and valley of these spindles, especially as many have odd little holes and nicks (from tiny teeth? wee baby hammers?). Once they get a third coat of paint, these side pieces will be done! There are still the spindles from the head and foot of the crib to sand and paint, plus all the rails, legs and slats have to be prepped for a coat of stain or polyurethane to really make it shine. My dad is working on fashioning a new joint or splint to fix the broken leg, but I think it’s totally possible to finish it before the baby comes. Of course, there is still the not-quite-minor matter of making a little mattress and buying or making a set of linens and bumpers to make it safe for sleeping.

But first, let’s focus on finishing the actual crib, then I can geek out about fabrics. No, hang on, let me just try a quick fabric geek-out for this, what do you think about these large-repeat Kokka fabrics from Purl Soho?

(Okay, okay, I will wait before I get way ahead of things and find myself madly quilting fabrics and cursing thread tension right before I call the midwives…)

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The last thing I wanted to share was this awesome recipe for homemade granola that I tried yesterday. I got the recipe from a friend, who had adapted an Alton Brown recipe, and then I further adapted it to my own tastes. It was so delicious, I can’t believe how overly-sweetened and stale/sticky store-bought granola tastes in comparison. I could (and did!) eat this stuff with a spoon directly off the cookie sheet:

It is just oats, nuts and seeds tossed with maple syrup, vegetable oil, cinnamon, salt and brown sugar, and baked at 250 for an hour or so. Incredible simple and incredibly tasty. The hardest work is writing down all those little numbers on tags when you go to the bulk bins to buy everything. Try it, you won’t be sorry! (Click on the photo to visit my Flickr page, where you can find the full recipe.)

So that is what I’ve been up to lately. That, and tending to this rapidly growing baby in my belly, who likes to kick and squirm around right when I’m falling asleep, and who seems very soothed by my (ridiculously silly but lots of fun) aqua aerobics class twice a week, and whose adorable tiny face I can’t wait to cover in kisses, even if my September 21st due date seems alarmingly close.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend — crafty, flavorful, relaxing, filled with exactly the things it needs to be filled with. That’s the kind of weekend I’m looking forward to, too.