MA!

Over two years later and I have finally finished and gotten my MA in International Education! My diploma came in the mail today and it finally feels official.. I'm done!!

I'd rather be camping..

Since we moved to the Great Pacific Northwest we have spent almost every spare weekend outside exploring our new stomping grounds. So far over the last six months we have been to:

Portland, Oregon (explored the weekend market)

Cannon Beach and the Oregon Coast (saw where they filmed The Goonies!)

Willamette Valley and Mt. Hood (saw the lodge where The Shining was filmed and played in the snow)

Mt. St. Helens Volcano (stopped by the visitor's center and a stroll around the lake)

Olympic National Park (where we went camping in the rain, in a rain forest)

Mt. Rainier (where I lost my camera, and snow banks taller than me in June!)

Cascades National Park (went on a magical sub-alpine hike with the wild flowers blooming)

Vancouver, British Columbia and Squamish BC (the week before the Stanley Cup Hockey riots)

Victoria, BC (The capital and victorian city)

Kayaking in the San Juan Islands (turns out Kimbrough and I are expert kayakers )

Crafty Projects that are made with a sewing machine and love.

Tommy made me a homemade teddy bear! Since we got the sewing machine for my birthday we have been thinking of creative projects to fill the cloudy Seattle days with and boom a few days later I got this totally homemade gift. The fabric is an old jacket from Goodwill that was washed an repurposed into the body material, the nose fabric is an old t-shirt that Tommy bought for our first date in Boone, and the eyes and nose pieces are from a discount fabric outlet. In total the bear cost next to nothing and yet is priceless...

That's what T-shirt Quilts are made for...

Four years in the making! Finally finished my t-shirt quilt after four-years of picking it up and putting it down for months, years at a time. Between a broken sewing machine, finishing college and graduate school, traveling around the world, and everything in between my t-shirt quilt constantly got put on hold. I started in 2007 when I knew I would be moving out of my college house and moving on. I had all these t-shirts that I didn't wear but couldn't stand the thought of throwing away. T-shirts that were either given to me from friends and family or home-made screen prints from my day's in graphics class in high school, or shirts I have collected from my travels. They all have a special place in my heart and a spot in my long-term memory bank. So yesterday when I put the final tag on that said handmade by Leah Charbonneau it felt like a big moment that took too long to come. I know it isn't perfect and I know it only holds value to me but it is something I can wrap up in and be reminded of the people and places that helped shape who I am. That's what a t-shirt quilt is made for.

A year already gone by? Thanks for the memories!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvQfUoSetvc

Moving again. Moved to Seattle this March and are moving again at the end of September. 6 months.