Back with a Bang!

Yes, I know I've been noticeably absent lately.  It's been a crazy winter here on the Farmstead and I've been working on redoing my blog/website.  I was going to wait to post the recipes, etc that I have been doing until then - but it's taking longer than I expected. 

As always, you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter to get some mini updates.

I have a few new recipes to post this week, and will get them up.  I'm also working with a friend to start posting some crafting tutorials.  It's going to be a grand time!

Moving forward, I wanted to share a FUN event last week.

For Christmas I coordinated a Holiday Gift exchange at work.  The person I drew is a major Christmas Fan.  His entire cube at work had more decorations than my own home did last year.  I asked him if he collected anything in specific, and he said snowmen.

So, I put together my first Pieced quilt with appliqued designs as a wall hanging for him as a gift.  He loved it!

A week or so later, I was Window Shopping at Hancock Fabrics and noticed they had a "contest" section. They were partnering with Simplicty Patterns for a Holiday Contest.  They had 5 categories, 1 being crafts.  Since I had used one of their patterns as a template for the quilt, I entered the one picture I had of the quilt into the contest on a whim.

Last month, I received a call that I was one of the top 5 finalists in the country for my category.  Talk about being giddy that day.  I went to my co-worker and asked if I could borrow the quilt back to send in for final judging. Last week I got the phone call: I had won second place!

Yes, I'm extremely happy.  And I told my husbad that my prize winnings are MINE and will be invested back into my hobby. ;)

I'm sharing this for two reasons.  One, because I love to share good news in my life.  And two, embrace the things you love, put yourself out there and take risks.  Great things can happen!

Here's a picture of the quilt!