Hammocks, Ducks, and Projects

We are still loving life without bed! Getting rid of the beds has allowed us to have more living space in our 480sq. ft cabin, and an awesome night's rest...every night! 

Above...Reeve hiding from the camera...his weekend sleep in.

Stella is the last one out of the hammock in the morning.

I think we're going to have to clip the flight feathers on these gals. At first it was really funny....

the ducks flew on top of the van to escape the advances of our drake, Jemina (white blob on the right side of the photo below), but now it's just gross!! They crossed the line when they started to land on top of my car! Driving around town with a ton of duck dung and feathers is not very cool. Someone asked me if the kids were making mud pies on the top of my car. Now I put the kiddy pool, upside down, on the top of my car. 

At the 'Ulu Festival I bought a Hawaiian Quilt pattern for a pillow. The pattern is the 'Ulu (Breadfruit) pattern.

 I had some discount fabric pieces that I had bought at the discount fabric store in town. I could spend HOURS DAYS in this store, as the kids will attest. They often have great bargains on Hawaiian prints (small sizes around 1yd or less) for $1.50!! Traditionally Hawaiian quilts are made using a solid color for the print, however I did not have a solid color I wanted to use, so I improvised with the below pattern.

 Hopefully this project won't take me 2 years to finish! I do have "me" time in the morning after Tommy takes the boys to school and Stella is still asleep.

 Above Stella is showing me how she carries one of her stuffed animals on her back. Below is the 'Ulu tree that we purchased from the festival.

 I used an o'o bar to bust up the lava so that the plant could have some drainage and I could dig a hole deep enough to plant it. We had about 4" of soil here before I hit a lava bed.

 My third project of the week was a last minute birthday gift project. On Monday Reeve was invited to a birthday party for this Saturday.

 We decided on making her a messenger bag...inspired by a friend's blog post, and a tutorial blog post I found online. My friend used some khaki pants for the bag material, but, having given away all of unwanted clothes before our move, I had no spare pants.

 Inside there are two small pockets (as seen above). Reeve also wanted to give her one of his books to put in the bag (as shown in the nifty outside pocket).

 I started the project Wednesday...with no sewing machine, and no iron!

If I were to do this again I would definitely use a "jeans" weight material for the outside, or figure out how to use "interfacing" material. I would also use my sewing machine, as this took about 10 hours to sew by hand, and my stitches are not "Laura Ingalls Wilder" great. 

We also took some of the fabric and made a card. A fun project and I'm glad it's done!! A personal world record!