Brotherly Love: The Luigi Quilt

Remember the stack of squares I showed you in May?  If not, I can't say that I blame you.  If so...thanks!  Well, what I didn't tell you at the time was that stack of squares was for both a Mario and a Luigi quilt.  I initially planned to keep the Mario quilt for myself and give the Luigi quilt as a Christmas present.  What I didn't know is that Ari would eventually claim the Mario quilt as his own, leaving me without the new quilt I was wanting.  He was so excited when it was finished and it looked so good in his room, I more than happy to let him use it.

I decided to keep the Luigi quilt for myself, and I ended up making the Link quilt to give as a Christmas present.  Even though I had all the squares cut for the Luigi quilt, I made the Link quilt and the Colts quilt first since I needed to have them finished before Christmas.  After those quilts were made, it took me some time to get motivated to finish Luigi.  Much to my surprise, once I finished the Luigi quilt Ari claimed it for himself, preferring to have it on his bed instead of Mario.  I gladly indulged the boy, and I ended up with my Mario quilt after all.  It's funny how things work out sometimes.

The Item Block

So, Ari walked into his room the other day to find an item block hovering in the air.

Naturally, he did what any red-blooded American boy would do when faced with the same situation.

He punched the bottom of it.  I mean, who wouldn't punch the bottom of it?  There could be so many amazing things inside.  Would it be a coin?  A super mushroom?  A 1-Up?  A star?  As it turns out, it wasn't any of those things, but he was quite pleased regardless.

It was our latest reward from Club Nintendo!  A figurine featuring Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, and a Goomba.  We registered enough games last year to reach platinum status with the club, which will probably never happen again since we registered four years worth of games to get there.  They sent this to us for free, and we didn't even have to use any of our reward "coins" to get it.  What a sweet deal, huh?  I can't think of a nicer reward, especially since Ari has it proudly displayed in his bedroom.

Super Mario Quilt

The Super Mario quilt is complete!  I am so happy with the way it turned out, too.  I love the colors, plus having a life-size quilted Mario is pretty cool.  It didn't take me as long to complete it as I thought it would, and it wasn't nearly as tedious as I was anticipating by using smaller squares. 

Even more happy to have the quilt completed is Ari, who had been asking me when it would be finished since I bought the fabric.  The night I finished it, I took it up to his room and covered him with it so he would be surprised when he woke up.  He was pretty thrilled the next morning.  It fits on his bed nicely, too.

Hmmm...maybe I should make a Princess Peach quilt for Emilie...

Super Mario Galaxy 2...May 23rd!

Mark your calendars!  The sequel to arguably the best game on the Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, will be hitting the shelves on May 23rd.  One month from today, in fact.

I just want to spread the word.  It's not like I'm excited or anything...

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YOSHI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the trailer:

Oh, Mario, you've come a long way since 1985.

Mario Quilt Design

I've come up with a design for my 8-bit Mario quilt. I'm very excited about making it.

I basically just took the image of Mario from the title screen of 'Super Mario Bros.' and zoomed in on it. I moved the green hill over a little bit because I wanted to some blue sky behind Mario in the quilt.

I'm still debating whether or not to go with an all blue background so Mario would stand out more. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. When it's done it should measure about about 6 feet by 4.5 feet. Now to buy the materials. Onward and upward!

Time for a Mario quilt?

I've been fighting the desire to make another quilt for myself, but I think now is the time to get started. Inspiration calls, and who am I not to listen? Don't get me wrong, I still love my R.E.M. quilt, I just want to make another. I would like to make a smaller quilt this time since my R.E.M. quilt is the size of a queen bed comforter. Inspiration struck when I was looking for ideas for Ari's Mario bedroom. I stumbled upon this pattern:

Ah-ha! A Mario quilt! How cool. I looked at Google images to see what other people have done, and there were quite a few Mario quilts out there. This has been in the back of my mind for some time and I am ready to get the ball rolling on it.

With Super Mario Bros. for the NES being an 8 bit video game, all the images are made with the combination of distinguishable different colored squares. Since quilting is basically cutting squares of fabric and sewing them together, I can use game images as a reference to do any design that I want. All I have to do is sew the different colored squares together to get the image that I am looking for. Easy, right?

I am still thinking about the different designs I can do, and narrowing them down will be a challenge. I don't know if I want to do one big Mario, or incorporate other characters or objects. The sky is the limit, it just depends on how many squares I want to cut. When looking for ideas, I came across this cross-stitch pattern:


As you can see, this design is just made up of little squares as well, so I could make it into a quilt. I really liked this design until I got to counting all the squares I would need. I did some math and found that I would need to cut 30,000 individual squares to complete the front of the quilt. A little bit more than I was bargaining for. Plus, it would be 200 squares wide, and 150 squares
tall. So, even if I cut 1/2 inch squares, it would still be as big as my R.E.M. quilt. In other words, not gonna happen.

So, my search continues for a pattern, and I'll most likely come up with one on my own. I'm looking forward to this new endeavor, though, and will post updates as my new project continues.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

I know there only a small percentage of you who look at my blog like to play Nintendo (hi Ari). But I just couldn't contain my excitement for this new game and I had to share.



New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be released this Christmas. This game is a throwback to the style of the original Super Mario Bros. and allows four players to play the game together for the first time! I know one thing that will be on my Christmas list the year.

Birthday Cakes in Review

Now that we decided we are going to have Emilie's birthday party at our house, it is time to start thinking about if we are going to have a theme, what decorations to have, and better yet, what kind of birthday cake to make.

We are still struggling with ideas, though we do have a few. I have discovered it's more difficult to find decorations for a girl's birthday, unless you want Dora or Disney Princesses. Maybe it was easier to do Ari's parties because it was easier for me to like at get excited about his party decor, and of course, the cakes. I have a feeling I'm going to have to get more creative for Emilie.

Here's a look at the cakes I have made for Ari's birthday parties so far...

For Ari's first birthday party, I made a Mickey Mouse cake. It was a butter cake with "snow white" icing. Obviously, I added black food coloring to the icing. Every one's mouths were blue after eating the cake, something I didn't consider. Oh well, it was all the name of fun.
For Ari's second birthday, he had a Dr. Seuss theme. The cake was based on the cake on the cover of the Dr. Seuss book Happy Birthday to You!. It was a just a white cake with vanilla icing. We had two parties for Ari that year, so I made a cake for each party. That's why I kept it so simple. I still think it turned out pretty good, though.

Which brings us to my favorite. For Ari's third birthday, we celebrated with a Super Mario Bros. theme. I made AB's Fudge Cake with chocolate icing. I made the cake to look like one of the blocks from the original Super Mario Bros. game for the NES. The pièce de résistance was the "Mario Party 8" logo that I modified to read "Ari Party" with the "3" taken from Super Mario Bros. 3. I was so proud of that, but I don't think anyone noticed without me pointing it out to them. I guess we needed more Nintendo fan boys at the party. Add the finishing touches of the Mario and Luigi figurines my mom got me for Christmas, and he had an awesome cake, if I do say so myself. Aside from the infamous Mario falling head first into the cake fiasco, the party went off without a hitch.

So, what will we do for Emilie? Only time will tell. I do know one thing for sure; she's going to have a tasty cake.