enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

around here & adventure bound.

This week seemed to drag on and on as all weeks before vacations tend to do.

Paul and I are taking a red-eye flight tonight to the east coast. One of my good friends from college is getting married on Sunday in DC and I'm gearing up for our first major girlfriend reunion since my own wedding (over two years ago!). So excited to see all of them and almost as excited for college football. Can't believe we'll get to watch our opening game together. It's like a college football miracle.

We'll be tourists in DC for the week and Paul will be interviewing for a residency program while we're there. The following weekend we'll be in Iowa celebrating my cousin's wedding and then the week after that, we head down to San Diego for another round of interviews for Paul. September is like a world-tour of places we've lived together and might end up moving back to. I can't believe how quickly time is flying.

I have some fun posts set to go (how to get serious about creative work! a polka-dot style post!) while I'm vacationing and will be checking in with photos from the adventure for sure... but please keep in mind I will surely be slow responding to emails and comments over the next few weeks.

Have a good one!

photo thoughts - I'll be starting my third 2012 Project Life album when we get home! Doesn't that plant look like the one in Wall.E? Yes, a good portion of my suitcase is dedicated to the reunion tees I had printed up.

material 13 of 27 / fabric into a triangle quilt.

Hands down, this is my favorite project so far. Quilts are awesome. There are so many steps, but if you break it down each one is easy enough. And the errors somehow make them more charming. I am totally hooked on smaller size quilts (this is my third quilt, but first that's smaller than a queen) and have already decided I'll be giving them as Christmas presents this year (get excited, Mom & Steph!). I also might be making us seven more between now and then. We'll see.

When I last shared, I had a quilt top ready to roll. The next step was to sandwich it (navy backing, cotton batting in the middle and triangles on top) into an acutal quilt and begin my favorite part, machine stitching it all together.

I don't have any special tools (like a walking foot) for quilting on a machine and so my technique is just to manhandle it all through that tiny space. After machine stitching a much larger quilt, this one was a dream to do and I was excited to try something fancier and actually create a pattern on the backside.

I decided to stitch diagonal lines from one side to the other where the triangles met on their longest sides. Because I wanted it to be even, this meant two lines - one down each side of the seam.

I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out but I love the effect. The top is neat and clean and the back (despite some wonky lines) looks complete.

I'm happy I went with a dark color for the backing and the green thread pops just enough.

The last step was hand-stitching the binding into place (so the seam is completely invisible). A striped binding is why I wanted to do this project in the first place, and I think it helps "modernize" all the floral patterns on the front.

Yes, this is for sure, one of my favorite projects.

I have been sharing peeks on Instagram and got a few requests for a full quilting tutorial. I am going to try and get one together for this exact quilt in the next few weeks. If you are anxious to get started though, I learned everything I know about quilting from Denyse Schmidt's Quilts.

Sweet. Keep an eye out for that how-to post.

This is project 13 of 27. I am attempting to complete 27 craft projects using 27 different materials before I turn 28 on 02.22.13. You can follow my progress here on the blog or on pinterest. Birthday challenges are my favorite. You can see the 26 Projects I completed while 26 here and the 27 materials I have used so far here.

40 pizzas / buffalo chicken.

pizza no. 10 : buffalo chicken.

occasion : it's Wednesday (again).

crust : our whole wheat usual. I promise I'll be trying out more crusts and different cooking methods at some point turing this pizza adventure! Right now, while things have been so busy, it's made more sense to just use what I know and let the experimentation be in the toppings. :)

sauce : a cream sauce similar to this but we didn't add parm to the sauce (there was plenty of other cheese on this pizza). To get the "buffalo chicken" flavor, we added several tablespoons of Frank's red hot right into the sauce.

cheese : mozzarella & crumbled bleu cheese!

toppings : grilled chicken & extra Frank's red hot sauce. (I just liberally tossed it all over the pizza.)

thoughts : fun fact - buffalo chicken wings are my favorite appetizer. Preferably ordered at a dive bar during happy hour. The goal here was to try and get some of that same flavor on a pizza and the results were... pretty good! Basically, we liked it, but we think there is room for improvement. Paul thinks it might be better if we had skipped adding the hot sauce into the cream base and just added it on top. He also thinks we should have added bleu cheese to the cream sauce. I'll keep you posted.

the big questions : how do you take care of yourself?

My friend, Tiffany, asked me to share today on a "Big Question" topic. She asks, "How do you take care of yourself? Tell the truth."

I took a minute to jot down everything that came to mind and quickly realized I was just going with the basics. After I thought about it some more, though, I realized that the basics are really the most important part. If you stack all those basics on top of each other, they make up a full picture.

Since I went to college (and started in a sense "taking care of myself"), I have made little changes and little choices everyday. Some changes were not healthy. Some choices were poor decisions. But over time I learned and tweaked and strengthened. I look one step forward and two steps back dozens of times, but ultimately developed a set of basics that keep me feeling good, both physically and mentally. Now that I know how I work and what works best, I focus (everyday) to maintain.

From a physical standpoint, outdoor running, real food, bar method, green(er) skincare & TRX (I'd love to share more on this workout routine soon!) absolutely work for me. I learned in college that counting calories and food tracking do not work for me. Turns out, I am a bit too obsessive for that sort of "dieting." I have also recently realized that leaving the house to go to the gym does not work. Stepping outside to run or doing TRX in the house fits into my days much better.

From a mental standpoint, I rely heavily on goals (obviously) for personal motivation & scheduled downtime for creative recovery. My parents have said that when I was younger, I would go to a two hour birthday party and come home and need at least four hours of self-imposed quiet time in my room until I was back to "normal." I guess I am still the same and greatly crave a balance between extroverted and introverted activities.

I think "taking care of yourself" is one of the most important things you (& I) can do for the people around us. It's sort of like on an airplane when they recommend you put your own mask on before you assist others. Without the mask, you might not make it. And if you don't make it, the people who are counting on you, certainly are not going to make it.

I want to be here - not just "alive here", but "happy, healthy, open & engaged here". I want to be here for Paul. I want to be here for my future little ones. I want to be here for my business. For those reasons, taking time to "take care" is huge priority for me. I realize that there are thousands of things in my future that I cannot control. But this - putting in effort today for self-care - I can.

Today I’m participating in Tiffany Moore’s Big Questions extravaganza. She believes in asking the Big Questions - the kind that help you decipher your (actual) dreams — and (actually) do ‘em. Find out who else is answering The Big Questions and how you can win your own Big Question session here.

piecing it together.

When I last shared, I had a pile of triangles...

On Thursday, I turned those triangles into squares.

A giant pile of squares.

That evening, I trimmed the threads and ironed the seam of each square flat.

And then on Friday, I laid out 9 rows of 11 squares (my table is small - so it was just six at a time...)

I took care to create a "random" pattern where no two sides of the same fabric were allowed to touch.

Next, I sewed the squares together to create rows.

And then laid out my rows again to re-establish my pattern. (And realized I had messed up thanks to the "only being able to see six rows at a time" issue.)

But, I decided to keep moving right along and pinned my rows together and sewed and sewed until...

...TA-DA, on Sunday, a quilt top was born!

Next I'll be (machine) sewing the quilt top, batting and navy back together. I picked a lime green thread that is perfect for the job. I have to plan it out a bit, but my tentative plan is to sew diagonal lines over the whole thing...