Quite the title! :) I just have so much stuff to talk about since I seem to have taken a little blogging break (again). I had such good intentions of blogging regularly this summer, but summer really took over and we have been trying to enjoy our new city as much as possible :) (Oh and that giveaway I mentioned in the title, well you will just have to read the whole post to find it all the way at the bottom :)

In between everything going on I haven’t found much time for crafting, but I did manage to finish Meg’s One Quilt block for the month of August…

I love the fabrics she chose (so jealous of that grey linen from Britex, I think I need a few yards of that one!) She wanted a little texture to her blocks, so I added some pintucks in the center of the block. (I am just loving pintucks right now… I think I might need to make a bag or something with some pintucks added as a detail.)

I have also been pretty busy lately working on a little something that I have had in the works for awhile… I was going to wait to mention it on my blog after I got my portfolio up and running, but I just couldn’t wait :) I have been working on starting my own portrait photography business. In fact I just did a Senior Portrait Session the other day and I thought I would share a few of my favorites from that… This session was so much fun, we laughed quite a bit! :)

If you are in the Seattle area and interested in an individual or family portrait session, feel free to email me at photography(at)charamichele(dot)com for more info. (Or if you know someone who might be interested, feel free to pass along my email :)

Now about that giveaway that I mentioned :) I just wanted to say thanks for all your lovely comments on my 300th post. I am so grateful to have this little space to blog and I am also thankful for all the wonderful friends I have met through blogging, including the ones I now know in person and those of you who live too far away for us to get together for a cup of coffee. As a little thank you, I have 2 stacks of 10 fat quarters in each stack to give away. Just leave a comment on this post by 10am Monday morning 10am Tuesday morning (extended because my Monday is starting to look like it is going to be a bit crazy busy) and I will draw 2 random names.

*Edited to say: The drawing is now closed. Thanks for all your lovely comments!*

I can hardly believe it but this is actually my 300th blog post! I had sort of planned that I would do something special for this post, but between family coming to visit and everything else going on this summer I haven’t had time to plan anything. So instead I am going to post a bunch of photos from the day trip we took over to Bainbridge Island on Friday. I am sure there will be a giveaway or something in the near future though to celebrate 300 posts, but just not today :)

If you ever get the chance to visit Bainbridge Island, visiting Esther’s Fabrics is an absolute must! :) Of course I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time here (I could have spent all day in this shop), so I think I might have to go back sometime in the near future…

After doing a little shopping, we walked around the town a little bit…

Friday was actually a pretty hot day for around this area, so we ended up at one of the beaches on Bainbride Island… It was a gorgeous spot for photo taking.

Looking in the window of a house for sale on the beach…

The outside of the house…

It is a very beautiful house in a beautiful location, it makes me wonder why anyone would want to sell it! I would just love to live in that house (well if it wasn’t totally impractical:)

After a bit of walking around on the beach, Ben and I set up a blanket overlooking the water and just sat for awhile while his family walked around some more… It was a great view, well until the waves crashed in and got our blanket soaked (luckily I grabbed my camera off the blanket just in time!). The spot & the view before…

Taking the ferry ride back to Seattle after a beautiful day on the island…

I am sure that anyone who lives around here has probably around made this day trip, but if you haven’t you should since it is just a beautiful place to visit. :)

Totally unrelated, but I wanted to say hi to anyone who is visiting from Molly’s post over at Momformation. Also if you have emailed me lately about the blog meet up or anything else, I am a bit behind on my emails (only about 100 unread emails in my inbox) & plan on getting back to you very soon! :) (I am also totally behind on replying to comments, but hope to catch up soon. In the meantime I should say that I do read every comment & appreciate every single one!)

These pillows have been sitting on my works in progress pile for a couple months now… (Apparently since the end of May actually according to this and this.) We have family coming to visit this week though, so I decided it was time to get these finished and onto our couch. The fronts are just slightly different (mostly because I didn’t actually have enough of the same linen for both pillows), but I love how it looks. They match this quilt, and all are now in our living room. (At some point I will take some photos of the whole room to post.)

The backs of the pillows are just a plain grey organic cotton, which is quite soft…

It does make me laugh a bit when I look back at that quilt post and realize that both the quilt and the pillows sat on my wip pile for quite awhile. At least both projects are finished finally :)

Onto a totally different subject… If you are a craft blogger and you live in the Seattle area (or feel like visiting for this:) on Saturday, September 6th I am arranging a little informal craft blog get together. It will just be getting together for a bit of coffee and chatting, but if you are at all interested send me an email (chara at charamichele dot com) and I can send you more details about location and time. It should be a lot of fun! :)

Oh and despite the fact that this week is promising to be a very busy one, I decided I just had to redecorate my entire blog with a new theme design (+ banner). So if you read this post in a feed reader, feel free to pop on over to my blog and take a look :)

I finished this quilt block just in time yesterday afternoon to send it out in the mail. It is actually going back to Illinois to the first blogger I ever met :) Dorie & Meg decided to start a little quilt along called One Quilt, with 12 of us ladies and they were sweet enough to invite me to participate. This month the block was for Dorie & I absolutely love the fabrics she picked! So much that I just couldn’t bring myself to add any other fabrics into the block… I actually had a few fabrics that I considered, but decided I just loved the 3 fabrics she picked too much. :) (Dorie you might have to tell me where you found that cute tree & squirrel fabric…)

Speaking of bloggers that I have met… I had a lovely morning yesterday meeting Joanna and her 3 little boys for a bit of blueberry picking! I had never been blueberry picking before, but had an absolutely wonderful time chatting with Joanna. I didn’t leave empty handed either, I picked enough blueberries so that Ben had a nice snack after work (blueberries are one of his favorite fruits…).

Joanna also brought me some beautiful fabric and this amazing hanger…

I had actually been thinking I really needed to find a pretty hanger for photographing shirts & other things sometimes and this is perfect! It makes me think about the Pacific Northwest every time I see it (which makes me think about how happy I am to live in such an amazing place:)

On Sunday I had a friend’s baby shower to attend, so last Wednesday (or was it Thursday) I picked out some fabric for the gift and waited until Friday (!) to actually sew up the gift. Very last minute, which I suppose went along with the project I picked to make since it was from Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. I spent most of Saturday sitting in my studio on my chair in the sunshine hand stitching the binding, which was not a terrible way to spend a Saturday. I think this might become my new baby shower gift, since I have a few more baby showers to attend in the near future (although I might try to make those a little less last minute :)