200th Post!!!

Guess what today is….my 200th post! Whoohooo!

I can’t really believe that I’ve written 200 posts, 129 of them new designs since August 14th. It’s kinda crazy and amazing and wonderful all at the same time!

To celebrate, I woke up this morning wanting to get out of dodge so Josh and I packed up and drove to Asheville, NC, where we originally met at UNC-Asheville.

Fun Trip Back in Time

We like to go back to Asheville and see our old apartment and eat at some of the places we used to enjoy every week when we lived there.

Let’s say it straight – we’re foodies and most of the food in the town we eat in…well….it’d be nice if we weren’t born with functioning taste buds. Granted we’ve been able to find a few good restaurants, but you can’t eat at the same 3 places every week before it just gets dull.

One of the best places in Asheville was this awesome Thai restaurant next door to Earth Fare, an organic grocery store. I was all geared up to chow down on some seriously awesome spring rolls and spicy fried rice when I saw the “for lease” sign in the window.

Awwwww! I almost stamped my foot I was so disappointed. We went into the grocery store and I asked around and apparently the restaurant closed shop in a very shady way in the dead of night and with no warning. Weird…

So Josh and I changed gears and went to our other most-favorite-restaurant Taqueria Fast, a true, authentic Mexican restaurant where the best tacos, burritos, and quesadillas can be found.

Oh man! Even in the dead of winter with ice on the trees, my taste buds were tangoing very, very happily while I scarfed down half a burrito and 2 tacos. James obviously loved it too because he ate his WHOLE 8 inch quesadilla all by himself. I wasn’t even able to steal a quarter off his plate to sample myself.

Refueling Inspiration

After our wonderful lunch it started to snow and we drove to downtown to check out some art galleries. I’ve been feeling a little drained of inspiration and wanted to relax in front of some eye candy art for a little while today.

But often what you plan for is what you rarely get! We end up at the most awesome shoe store in the world: Tops Shoes and I was reminded that James really needed new shoes since he keeps chanting “too tight, too tight, too tight” every time I put his sneakers on.

I was suffering a bit of sticker shock at the prices (average $45 for kids shoes – geez, he will only wear them for maybe 4 months!) until I found the sale of buy one, get one for a penny more.

So practical me found him a pair that fit with loads of room to wear now and another pair that are a full size and a half too big for next year. Rock out!

Finding deals like that can really make my day, but I didn’t see anything in the sale area I liked and wasn’t ready to spend $100 on a pair of sandals when spring is still many months away. I’m just too plain practical I guess.

James was getting a bit stir crazy and I was worn out from shopping so we skipped the art galleries and instead hit up Josh’s favorite fish store: the Asheville Aquarium.

Beauty of Underwater Life

This place has gorgeous reef (saltwater) tanks set up all over the place, plus a coffee shop for those less fish enthusiastic souls like me.

While I was a bit disappointed to miss seeing new art, I did see some amazingly inspirational textures within the fish tanks in the store. Here’s some pocked coral:

And several pictures of a massive swirling anemone:

Isn’t that just beautiful? I can’t wait to try to create this texture in a filler design.

James did really good in the fish store because I gave him paper and pencil to draw with.

I’ve gotta remember that trick – whenever the wiggles get him and he can’t possibly sit still, a paper and pencil will root that kid to the spot for at least 10 minutes. Lucky!

We headed back for home after that and though the trip was a bit disappointing (no Thai, no art) I still FINALLY got the rough sketch for “My Cup Runneth Over” down.

This is going to be a small wall hanging that I’m planning to start drawing tonight. I thought of her way back in the summer while working on the painting of Release Your Light.

She’s spent a lot of time in the back of my mind, but lately I’ve been really feeling the itch to get this quilt made.

I never had a huge vision for how this quilt was supposed to look, only that it will contain colors I don’t normally use: blue, green, purple, and white, so it’s been really hard to get a design down for how everything should flow.

Moving Forward with My Cup Runneth Over

With this sketch done, I finally have a base to work with and design from.

I feel the need to make this quilt now because it’s basically a call to stop and reflect and appreciate everything around me. Sometimes it’s so hard when I’m working, working, working to some far goal to stop and see the wonderful world I live in with my awesome husband and terrific kid.

I realized the other night just how lucky and fortunate and blessed I am, and I really want to see a daily reminder of this on my wall, preferably the first thing that I see when I wake up in the morning.

Like I said, she’s supposed to be SMALL, like 36″ long by 24″ wide at most. The weird thing is when I get downstairs and start putting graph paper together these goddesses usually start to mutate and I end up with another 80″ quilt on my hands.

But I’m going to try hard to keep her small and I plan to film the whole process from start to finish. Unfortunately the design part usually won’t get picked up on camera (pencil marks are just too faint), but I will definitely share the creation of this quilt with you from start to finish.

More than anything else I want you to know, on this 200th day, how much I truly appreciate and love that you are here, reading about my day, sharing this quilting journey with me, giving me your gift of time and attention.

My cup is truly running over…

Leah Day

– On to the 300th post!

Would you like to see my other goddess quilt designs? Learn more about them in this post Goddess Quilt Journey.