meredith, Author at Wait Til Your Father Gets Home

{Quilt Along Week 2: Cutting & Planning the Quilt}

May 22, 2013 by meredith · Leave a Comment

Some materials for this quilt were provided to me by OnlineFabricStore.net. They are a fabulous company to work with, and as always, all opinions are 100% my own!

So far, this quilting thing has been pretty easy! Granted, I haven’t done any actual sewing or quilting yet, but what I have done up to this point, I’ve done pretty well if I do say so myself. During the second week of the Quilt Along, hosted by Becoming Martha and Create.Craft.Love, I worked on cutting my fabric pieces and then planning out my quilt top.

Here again is most of my beautiful fabric. I love it even more after getting it all cut and pieced together, but I’m jumping ahead of myself here. Before I began to cut anything at all, I had a nice little afternoon of ironing. After ironing for what seemed like forever, I got out my brand new self healing cutting mat, acrylic rulers, and rotary cutter courtesy of my good friends at Online Fabric Store. I also jotted down a list of how many blocks I should have from my fat quarters and the small strips between them.

You’ll recall that this is the quilt I’m making.

To create the blocks in the middle, you need to cut 88 pieces of fabric measuring 4.5 inches by 7.5 inches. {You will be able to cut eight blocks out of each fat quarter.} The easiest way I can describe to cut your fabric is to cut 4.5 inch strips, then stack each strip {you’ll have four of them}, measure out 7.5 inches, and cut through the entire stack.

Your rotary cutter can handle it, trust me! You will get two 7.5 inch sections {through 4 layers of fabric = 8 blocks} out of this. There will be about 6 inches extra.

Soon, you’ll have a stack of pretty 4.5 inch by 7.5 inch rectangles for your quilt blocks!

To cut out the small rectangles between the larger blocks I needed 72 pieces measuring 1.5 inches by 4.5 inches. To do this, I cut 8 strips measuring 4.5 inches in width. Then I simply stacked all 8 pieces on top of each other and cut ten 1.5 inch sections.

Once I cut all the rectangles {both large and small}, came the intimidating part for me, cutting the sashing, borders, binding, and backing. For the quilt I’m making, I needed the following:

Borders – Cut (2) 6.25 inch by 87 inch pieces for the long edges. Cut (2) 6.25 inch by 67 inch pieces for the short edges.

Sashes – Cut (11) 4 inch by 55.5 inch pieces.

Backing - Cut your fabric exactly in half.

Binding – Cut (9) 2.5 inches by 42 inch strips.

I was so nervous because the strips were just so long, and I was afraid that I’d get crooked somewhere along the way. Luckily, I took my time and made straight cuts on the first try with no wasted fabric. Yes, I’m as shocked as you are my friends!

Below is all the fabric for my quilt, ready to be pieced together! For my borders, sashes, and backing, you’ll remember I’m using Michael Miller Dumb Dot in Charcoal from my friends at Online Fabric Store.

Before I could begin actually piecing my quilt, I needed to plan out my quilt top to format my rectangles how I wanted them to look.

I just started laying out my rows and began with the large rectangles. Each row will contain 7 large rectangles separated by 6 small rectangles. There will be 12 rows separated by a sash. {You will only use 84 out of the 88 large rectangles.}

I laid out the ENTIRE quilt top and moved rectangles around until I liked how it looked! *Note, the sashes will appear longer than the rectangle rows…that’s okay! Once you sew the rectangle row together, it will be the same length as the sashing!

Once I had it all laid out, I began to collect each row and kept them in order {so that piecing later on would be faster}.

I soon had a stack of rectangle rows, with sashing in between {going another direction}. I collected my smaller rectangles separately.

The next part of my quilting adventure involves piecing the top of my quilt. Stay tuned to see how that process goes for me!

I may be linking up at these parties!

About Meredith Hazel

Meredith is a stay at home mom and has been blogging since 2012. She started Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home as a creative outlet in between nap times for her little one. Wait 'Til Your Father gets home is a combination of crafting tutorials, DIY projects, recipes and, sharing some of life's journey along the way.

Filed Under: Baby, Quilting, Sewing Tagged With: baby, quilt along, quilting, sewing

{Nap Time Mommy Tip}

May 21, 2013 by meredith · Leave a Comment

Hello to all the friends and followers of Wait Til Your Father Gets Home. It’s so great to be here today! I’m Marilyn of 4 You With Love and like Meredith, I’m a Mommy blogger. However, my babies are “big babies”: my daughter just graduated from Ohio University, my older son is finishing up his 2nd year at Ohio University, and my yo{ungest son is finishing up his sophomore year in high school.

When I signed up to be a guest contributor here at Wait Til Your Father Gets Home, I was first thinking about sharing a recipe, craft tutorial, or knitting project but then I had an “A-HA” moment. I thought, “Meredith has a little one with one on the way so how about I share a ‘mommy tip’ with her readers”.

Okay, a little quiz first. What is the phrase that mom’s love and toddlers dislike with a passion? Would you like a hint? Okay, I’ll give you one. It happens in the afternoon usually soon after lunch. It’s….

Yes, the dreaded nap time. Now before I share my tip with you today, I’d like to give you a bit of background on my three kids.

My Youngest

He is 5.5 years younger than my daughter and 3.75 years younger than my older son. We live .75 miles from the elementary school which means my kids were “walkers”. So between my middle child going to preschool and my oldest in elementary school, my youngest never had the pleasure of taking naps. So, he just learned to pace himself, slow and steady, and he is that way to this day in everything he does.

My Middle Child

My older son has always LOVED sleeping and contrary to most babies & toddlers, he was not an early riser. He always slept in until 10:00 am and always LOVED his afternoon nap. And just like my youngest, he is this way to this day. Sleeping is one of his favorite past-times and he is truly not a morning person.

My Oldest

My daughter is my oldest and is one who lives her life to the fullest. She is also the one who sees potential and possibility at every turn: the optimist. As a toddler, she would wake up in the morning and even if it was raining cats and dogs, she would say, “let’s go Mommy, it’s a pretty day!”. This love of life meant that she hated naps because if she slept, she just might miss something. However, she lived her life so large that without a nap, from 4:00 on was miserable for her and everyone around her.

So, today I’d like to share with you how I got my beautiful daughter to take a nap EVERY afternoon without fights, tears, or struggles. I had a secret weapon and here it is.

Yup, this Playskool tape recorder. ”How does this get a child to nap?” you ask? It’s really simple.

I first determined that even if my daughter didn’t sleep, if she rested quietly for 45 minutes to 1 hour she would be recharged enough to last the rest of the day. Most of our kids (music) tapes were15-20 minutes in length so if she listened to a tape 3 times, she would have rested long enough.

So, every day at nap time, I would tuck my daughter in and tell her, “You don’t have to sleep but you have to rest with your eyes closed. Once you have listened to your tape three times, your rest is over and you can come downstairs.”

Well, you’ll never guess what happened every time. I would hear the tape play through one time. Then I would hear it play a second time and then……..complete silence for an hour or so! Then, I would hear the tape play through for a third time. My daughter had no idea that she had drifted off to sleep and I always had a “warning” that she would be up soon when I heard the music play that third time! A win-win for everyone!

Now, I know they don’t sell these tapes anymore but I would think you could burn a CD and create the same scenario for your little one.

Thanks for allowing me to visit today. I’d love for you to stop by 4 You With Love sometime. I have a Spa Day Saturday series where you’ll find some DIY spa recipes, you’ll find some free knitting patterns along with crafting and DIY tutorials and much more. In June I am also kicking off a spice party that a long with other things, includes monthly and seasonal spice giveaways! I hope to see you soon!

Thanks so much to Marilyn for that awesome tip! I might just have to try that with my toddler once naps become an issue for him {hoping they don’t, but you never know!}

About Meredith Hazel

Filed Under: Guest Posts Tagged With: baby, guest post, mommy tips, naptime, toddler

{Chocolate Dipped Caramel Pretzels}

May 20, 2013 by meredith · 8 Comments

I’m Ashley from Simply Designing and I am so excited to be guest posting today at Wait ‘Til Your Father Gets Home! I absolutely adore Meredith and am honored to be able to guest post on her blog today!

I am an interior designer turned craft/diy blogger! My passion for interior design grew into a love of creating and one day I just decided to start blogging about it! Kind of crazy, I know. But I love it.

From home decor, DIY projects, crafts and even some food, I create and show off things that are both FABULOUS and SIMPLE on my blog! And I’d love for you to come and visit me here.

Today I want to share with you a delicious dipped pretzels recipe: Chocolate Dipped Caramel Pretzels!

Salty + Sweet + Caramel = Divine in my opinion!

And the best part is that they are so easy to make too!

Caramel Chocolate Dipped Pretzels

You Will Need:
Pretzels
Kraft Caramels (or similar)
Chocolate Chips
Vegetable oil

Directions

Melt caramels according to package directions.
Dip approximately half of the pretzel into the caramel and let it set and harden on parchment paper (wax paper or foil works well too)
Melt chocolate chips with a little vegetable oil until smooth. (Check out my post on how to melt chocolate for dipping here.)
Dip pretzel into melted chocolate and allow to harden.

These are perfect to package up as gifts but are also a tasty treat that I couldn’t keep my family’s hands off!

Enjoy!

Thanks so much for letting me be here today Meredith! And thanks so much to all the Wait ‘Til Your Father Gets Home readers for stopping by to check out my post! If you have a moment I’d love for you to visit me on my blog at Simply Designing! You can also find me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+.

About Meredith Hazel

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Recipes Tagged With: caramel, chocolate, gift, guest post, pretzels, recipe, sweets

{Garden, Year Two}

May 17, 2013 by meredith · 3 Comments

After about two week’s time of getting our house painted {which finally included getting our front door painted} and then weekend after weekend of nonstop rain, me and my 35 week pregnant self FINALLY planted the veggies in our garden!

This is our second year having a vegetable garden, and I made some adjustments to last year’s plan.

Last year I didn’t exactly have a plan, but what I did have was way too much going on.

My handy husband made two raised garden beds on the side of our house. I wish I would have actually taken photos of the building process. From now on, when he’s building anything around the house, I promise to take pictures and share plans!

Last year I planted WAY TOO MUCH! The long list included tomatoes, cucumber, zuchinni, squash, peas, carrots, several herbs, cantaloupe strawberries, chives, garlic, green pepper, jalapeno, and corn. Plus I added some marigolds to either side of each bed {that got HUGE}!

See…way too much going on there! I could hardly get in there to pick veggies! And we soon realized that there were only certain ones we were actually eating.

This year, I made a lot of adjustments and only planted what I knew we’d eat.

Bed number one has two kinds of tomatoes {along the back} and two vertical rows, one of green pepper and the other zuchinni.

Bed number two has two more types of tomatoes {that still need tomato cages}, squash, and a row of green beans {planted as seeds} along the front of the bed. I need to put up some netting for the beans to attach and vine along soon.

I’m so glad I was finally able to get it all planted, now come on veggies, do your ‘thang and start growing! I’m ready to stop buying produce at the grocery store for awhile!

Do you plant a garden each year? Any tips or secrets to share for successful veggie growth?

I’ll be linking up at these parties!

About Meredith Hazel

Filed Under: Gardening Tagged With: garden, garden bed, gardening, vegetable garden, veggies

{Call for Guest Bloggers & Keep Calm & Link Up #41}

May 16, 2013 by meredith · 3 Comments

Over the next couple of weeks I’m planning on taking a little “time out” from my blog. I’ll still be around quite a bit, but I want to take some time to adjust to life with two little ones. I’ve got some fabulous bloggers already lined up with absolutely awesome crafts, projects, and recipes to keep all of my loyal readers entertained in my absence. I’m so excited to share their wonderful ideas with all of you {and very grateful that they’ve agreed to step up to the plate while I’m trying not to be a walking zombie running on zero sleep}.

There are a few more spots open from late May- early July, and I’d love to have some of YOU guest post on my blog. If you’re interested, please fill out the following application, and I’ll get back to you very soon {probably within a week or so}.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you!!

{And THANK YOU so much for understanding that a new mom needs a break every now and then!}

Now for our latest edition of Keep Calm & Link Up! Are you ready to show us what you’ve been up to this week? Before you do, let’s all take a peek at last week’s most clicked post…

This super cute Potted Garden Wall is from Gingerly Made – what a fun way to add color to your fence! This is on my to-do list now that spring is rolling around!

Now, onto this weeks party!