enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

weekend links / 80.

before we get rolling ... giveaway winners! Thank you so much to the 1200 of you who entered to win the rainbow fabric! Randomorg.com picked:

Sarah who at 5:31AM on 8/25 said "Fingers crossed!"

Michelle Kelly who at 11:53 AM on 8/25 said "your quilt rocks!!"

Pheobe G who at 11:06 AM on 8/27 said "Love this so much! I'm inspired to tackle this for my first quilting project. I've been wanting to start quilting for awhile! So I'm entering!!"

If that's you, email me elise.blahaATgmail.com to claim your fabric. :)

and now some favorites from around the web this week...

this was insane. Taylor, Justin, I LOVE you. But to see Smelly Cat preformed live with my college girlfriends who watched every single Friends episode with me at least 10 times was just unreal.

a serious plea for the flamingo and taco emojis.

random, but I saw three really great pieces of advice on IG this week: from @ohhappyday on doing what makes you happy, from @thetinytwig on saving kid art and from @jengotch on pushing through failure.

cool update to the Instagram platform.

and Joy the Baker on making Instagram beautiful and bearable. (okay, that's enough IG.)

such inspiring photos of clay (and a great "maker" behind the scenes).

tough to look at this kitchen and not say "wow."

"Don’t send yourself into shock by immediately 'doing things.' Let yourself actually wake up." - how to be a morning person.

finally, a video game I can get behind.

the evolution of magazine covers.

I just want to get my sh*t together...or maybe I don't.

beautiful cement planters.

of course there's been a boom in the Birkenstock repair business.

And from me: I was honored to be on the Little Yellow Couch Podcast this week talking about style.

week in the life album progress.

I realized last night I'm not going to get this album finished by the end of this week but I wanted to share an update since I said I would. I snapped these photos outside since the light was fading, apologies that they came out sort of strange.

I took SO FEW photos. Maybe 20 on the "good" days and closer to six on the other days. It is what it is. Monday was the best with photos and so that day is pretty much done.

I am relying heavily on the cards from the kit to help fill the space.

That's sort of fun though. I'm glad to do some journaling again and the thoughts are the stuff that's easier to forget for me.

I'm also tucking in little bits from our week like business cards and the band-aids Ellerie's obsessed with.

The rainbow quilt is getting a decent focus, mostly because I was taking so many photos of it ;)

And any excuse to print more candid photos is a win. As you can see - lots of blank space to still fill in and I would love to add more embellishments. For the most part, the writing is all done, I just need to commit and get the photos all printed out.  

It's a busy season, but I am glad I am taking the time for this project. If you're interested in Week in the Life, you can learn more here!

9 books our toddler loves.

When Ellerie was nine months old, I shared nine books we were loving.

It's crazy to think back on that time. Now, my two year old READS me the books. Based half on memory, half on pictures, she says the words as she turns the pages and my heart grows seven or eight sizes.

All of the books we loved then we still enjoy today and they remain in heavy rotation. There are some new favorites on the shelf though too. These are the ones she likes to listen to or play along with and they are the ones that I like to read, usually because they have great "flow" and are fun to say.

Zoom - fun rhymes, cute illustrations and of course...colors!

Mommy Hugs - probably the simplest book on this list, but so sweet. We hug each page.

Little Blue Truck - the best message, fun animal sounds and SUCH a great rhythm to say. The companion book is good too.

How Hippo Says Hello - simple and fun!

Wheels on the Bus - a great book version of her favorite song.

Mix It Up! - she's getting this one more and more which is so fun for me.

The Paper Bag Princess - Ellerie loves this one and I LOVE that she loves it.

Eight Silly Monkeys - she likes to act this one out which is a little intense.

Dear Zoo - a classic and a favorite.

There are so many it's hard to pick just nine, but these are the ones we reach for over and over again (this week). I'd love to hear what your kiddos love(d).

*links are affiliate

around here.

around here I am really hoping to get my Week in the Life album complete and on the blog by Friday at some point (most likely that will not be 5AM). This is one of those projects that I need to finish quickly or I'll lose steam. I didn't take nearly as many photos as I would have hoped. I'm most inclined to blame the heat for this, but really I think it's because Ellerie's at sort of a tough age for me to be like "hold on from this sweet moment while I set my camera up and use the timer." When she was tiny it was easier. I imagine when she's a bit old and "gets" what I'm doing it might be easier again. But right now, she's pretty engaged and it's hard to break away from that to pick up the camera.

around here the Braxton Hicks contractions have arrived in full force. I don't remember this at all from my first pregnancy so it's a bit different. Makes me hopeful that I'll actually go into labor this time around, but considering I'm only 30 weeks today, I hope the little lady sits tight for awhile.

around here the park is our best friend. Ellerie is at the stage where she is happy to play on everything and can almost handle it by herself. I am already imagining our fall and winter when the new baby will be content to sit (or sleep, or nurse?) and Ellerie will be able to run out some energy. So grateful for the local parks and so grateful for my brother who captured the above photos of her last weekend - one pig tail and all.

around here I am still slooooooowly making my way through Cutting for Stone. I feel like at the end of September I'll have read just one book and that will be it. But in other book news, I got to be a lucky recipient of a press copy of Lovable Livable Home, the new book from John and Sherry Petersik. My job has a few perks but getting cool free books definitely tops that list.

around here I got a video recorded that goes into more detail on some of the "extra features" of the Get To Work Book®. There is no right or wrong way to use the book but if you feel like you want to get some extra mileage from it or just want to hear a bit more, it might be worth a watch. It's the second video down on this page.

around here I am thrilled to have gotten all my photos off my phone and into Google Photo. It's a total gamechanger (made even better by the fact that it's free). Besides the great news that I'm not going to get that dreaded "out of storage" message this fall when I am taking another 600 photos a day of the new baby, everything backs up instantly (when I am connected to a wireless network). No more emailing photos to myself or using airdrop. I just open Google Photos on my computer and boom, there they are - for use on the blog or as the case was this week, my WITL album. You can read more about this here. Beth's explanation is great.

around here I want to thank you for your support this year. There has been a lot going on and I am learning how to handle it all. Safe to say that some days I do better than others and many days I make mistakes. I'm working on it always.

around here I'm headed up to LA to see Taylor Swift in concert with some college girlfriends!

around here on the podcast I'm chatting with Samantha Shepard and Amber Housley in another episode about marketing your small business. This chat in particular was a good one; I love when there are concrete tips. Subscribe or stream here.

super simple rainbow quilt.

Safe to say this is the EASIEST quilt I've ever completed. Highly recommend if you are new to quilting and looking for something high-impact and fun to start with. The hardest part was actually picking out the colored fabrics, but because I love a rainbow, that was the most fun part too.

I bought 1/3 yard of 36 different colors. This was not the most economical way to go about it, but I was very picky about my colors and so I couldn't just buy a bundle of rainbow fat quarters. I do, however, have enough fabric to make four rainbow quilts, so if you were going to make a bunch to give as gifts or something, this would be ideal. (I'm going to give away three of the stacks of fabric so three of you can make a similar quilt - details at the end of this post.)

I cut the fabric into squares that were 10x10 inches using a cutting mat, ruler and rotary trimmer. After a million triangle quilts, cutting squares (especially this large) was so easy and enjoyable.

I laid it all out to be sure I had the order right. I wanted to go red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple horizontally and then have it fade from darkest to lightest vertically. I sewed each rainbow together so I had six strips of six squares each and then ironed my creases open and pinned it together. Because there were so few corners to line up, this one actually came together pretty neatly.

I screwed up a bit and cut my backing fabric too small. I went with a white extra wide cotton backing but didn't quite give myself enough wiggle room and over the course of sewing all those lines, it shifted a bit which meant I had to lose some of the front to even it out (you'll notice that the darkest red square in particular is smaller than the others). This sort of thing always bothers me at the time, but I know from experience that months (or even days) from now when we're actually using the quilt, it's not the sort of thing I'll notice or worry about.

To give it a bit of dimension, I quilted tons of horizontal lines across the surface. The thread on the top is white and then I alternated the color in the bobbin so the thread on the backing was multi-colored in a rainbow. It's VERY subtle. Too subtle to be worth it, I'd say. In photos it looks particularly lame. In person you can kind of see, but you really have to look for the color change. If I did it again I would probably just use all one color or even just white.

The finished quilt is about 55x55 inches though it will shrink a bit when I wash it. I bound it in gray stripe but black and white stripe would have looked awesome too.

Overall - it's one of my top ten favorite projects. I'm taking Ellerie to the park tonight for a picnic to break it in.

And now! The giveaway! As mentioned, I have enough fabric for four quilt tops and I only made one. So I have THREE stacks of rainbow squares that are already cut to 10x10 inches. You'd need your own batting, binding and backing fabric but you'd be at least partway there if you won. Please leave a comment if you're interested. I'll draw three winners by the weekend and will ship anywhere.

GIVEAWAY CLOSED, drawing winners now and will announce Saturday AM.