Happy birthday, ladies!

March 28th marked the official one-year anniversary of when we got the chickens!  That means they turned one about a week before that.  Since we don't know exactly when their birthday is, we celebrated on Saturday, and by celebrate, I mean we made a delicious chicken dinner. ;)  Not with our chickens, though!  All five of our chickens are alive and well - here's proof:

These two loud-mouths are the sassiest of the five:

And this is what those troublemakers looked like a year ago:

Our fluffy little chicks are all grown up!

My first quilt

Quilting has always seemed far too difficult and intimidating to attempt, but the ladies I work with encouraged me to try.  One of the girls put a quilt together for her son in just a couple days!  She brought it in to show us and I finally got to see what the back of a quilt top looks like.  That sneak peek was really the tipping point for me because it made me realize, "Oh, that's how you put all those tiny pieces together!  I can do that!"

I chose a pattern that used different sized squares that looked pretty but that I thought would go together fairly easily.  I didn't want to mess with triangles or crazy shapes on my first attempt at quilting.  I thought about what color scheme I wanted, and I decided to use my polka dot sheets as inspiration.  The dots are purple, pink, lime green, Tarheel blue, teal, and navy.  I also got a solid teal quilted bedspread for Christmas.  My mom and I spent a couple hours at the store matching up colors and prints, and we came up with the perfect combination of fabrics.  When we got home, I realized the fabric I had made my dog's blanket and pillowcase out of matched my quilt perfectly!  So I used some of the scraps to make binding for the edges of the quilt and it really pulls the whole room together.  Here are the sheets, bedspread, and quilt:

Here's Paisley being forced to pose with all the matching blankets and pillows:

Now everything on the bed matches and I love it!

Mission accomplished.

Cute as a Button Earrings

The chickens have been doing great this winter, so there's not much to report about them.  My dog apparently really likes chicken poo, but I'll spare you the details about that.  Instead, I thought I would show you my most recent crafty thing that I just love!

For months, I've been working at a fabric store, and occasionally customers will come in looking for button cover kits.  "They're down on the notions aisle, hanging up on the right."  That's the most I ever really paid attention to them.  Why would I need to cover buttons?  But then I found out that I NEED to cover buttons!  Why?  Because they make the cutest earrings ever!  Proof:

So if you want to make some, go to the notions aisle of your fabric store and pick the size button you want.  I don't like very big earrings, so I chose the smallest size available, which is about half an inch wide.  It really helps if you read the instructions on the back of the button cover kit FIRST, which I did not do and it was really confusing.  Trying to hold all the pieces together and pop the back of the button on by hand is impossible.

Here's what the process looks like:

Once you've covered two buttons, get some wire cutters and some needle nose pliers and cut the button loop off the back.

Then hot glue an earring back to the spot where the button loop used to be.  Flip the buttons over and say, "Ohmygod, they're SO cute!"  Now you can wear them.  No really, that's it.

There are so many different fabrics and colors you can choose.  You can make the pair of earrings exactly the same like those purple ones, or you can make them different like the teal ones, as long as they still go well together.

Tip: If you're weird about germs like me and you like to wash new earrings before you wear them, I would suggest washing the earring backs before you hot glue them to the buttons.  It's going to be a lot harder to wash the studs and not get the fabric wet once the whole thing is put together.  Not that it would damage the fabric, but who wants to wear soggy earrings?