Jo – Page 9 – Jo McVey Photography

Chevron Quilt {Free Pattern}

I love chevron. Many a curtain or pillow in my house is, or at one time has been made out of chevron fabric. And I’m sure many of you remember the Chevron Baby Blanket I crocheted for my son. So it’s only natural that my second quilt would be a chevron quilt. (I guess I never blogged about my first quilt. I’ll do that in the next few days.) This quilt was relatively easy to make, thanks to the pattern calling for fabric strips instead of triangles. And since I quilted it by just stitching 1/4 inch from each seam, I had it finished in about 2 weeks. It probably would have taken less time, but you know……I’m a mom. I don’t have much free time these days. 🙂

I picked up two fat quarter bundles (5 fat quarters in each pack) with coordinating aqua and silver fabric from Hobby Lobby, as well as some plain white fabric for the background. I still needed 3 more coordinating fabrics to make the quilt the size I wanted, and luckily I had some fabric in my stash that matched perfectly.

**Here is the free pdf pattern I used.**

Once I had all my fabric cut and the blocks sewn together, I arranged the rows in an ombre´ pattern (light to dark).

Then I sewed my blocks into rows. For this pattern, your rows are diagonal instead of horizontal or vertical.

Then I sewed my rows together.

I was so happy when my quilt top was completely sewn together!

Then it was time to make my quilt sandwich and baste the three layers together. That’s a lot of safety pins!

As I mentioned before, I quilted the quilt (ha!) by stitching 1/4″ from each of the seams to accentuate the chevron pattern….and because it was easier and less time consuming than free motion quilting.

Lastly, my favorite part of quilt making — hand sewing the binding. This is the part where I can just sit and relax watching TV with my hubby, while mindlessly sewing.

I love the way it turned out, and I’ve gotten so many compliments on it. And it’s HUGE! So my hubby and I can easily snuggle under it together.

I chose a cute aqua and white polka dot fabric for the backing.

As I was taking photos, our cat, Lacey, decided the quilt would make a nice soft place to lay. Silly kitty!

Here’s the full view of the quilt. I really struggled with where to put that dark aqua stripe. And even now, I’m not sure it’s in the right spot, but there’s nothing I can do about it now!

Another regular photo bomber is my son, Grayson. See his arm? Right as I was taking this picture, he jumped over and said, “CHEESE!!!”

So, of course, I took his picture. Little cutie pie. He loves these jammies, btw. He calls them his “baby jammies” because they’re the onesie kind that babies wear. He’s standing in front of my new love. I picked up this beautiful, handmade, rustic table on my local Varage Sale page yesterday. I think Joanna Gaines would approve. My new motto for home decor is, “If I couldn’t see it on an episode of Fixer Upper, then it doesn’t belong in my house.”

Well, I hope you enjoy this free pattern, and please let me know if you have any questions!

Before and After

Besides God and my family, photography is my biggest passion. I picked up my first DSLR camera in 2011 — a Canon Rebel XTi that I bought, along with some lenses, from my extremely talented sister-in-law and wedding photographer, Stacey Pentland. Seriously, she’s amazing. I would know. She photographed my wedding in 2011, and if you’re getting married in the Bay Area in California, you should definitely consider hiring her to capture your wedding. You won’t be disappointed! I know I wasn’t!

Anyway, I’ve since upgraded to a Canon EOS 5D Mark III and have tried to learn as much as I can about photography and editing in the past 4+ years. I am mostly self-taught, and my only education has come from some online video tutorials.

My favorite part of photography is post production, or editing the photos. I love taking a mediocre, or even sometimes a horrible, seemingly unsalvageable photo, and turning it into something amazing. (Although I try my best to get it as close to perfect straight out of the camera as I can.) I always start my editing process in Lightroom, and then change over to Photoshop. I would say I do about 10% in LR and 90% in PS.

So, without further ado, I wanted to show you some of my favorite before and afters.

This photo was taken at a local pumpkin patch, and the sky was so beautiful that evening. It was getting pretty dark, and I knew that if I set my camera to expose for the subjects (Grayson and me) so that we’d be bright enough, it would blow out the sky and make it just a bright white, instead of showing any of the beautiful pink clouds. So I exposed for the sky and hoped that I could fix it later. Thankfully, I was able to.

Here’s another fun one. I had to expand the floor, delete the cable, make the floor a darker, warmer color, among other things. This photo turned into one of my favorite photos I have ever taken, and it was even featured on Greater Than Gatsby’s Facebook page!

This was a shot I took of our boys playing on the beach in St. Augustine during our vacation this past summer. The lighting was just perfect, and the sky was beautiful, but I underexposed just a bit to make sure I didn’t blow out any part of the sky or beach. I love how it turned out.

This one was quite a challenge. I don’t typically shoot families in my studio. Normally it’s just newborns and babies one year old and younger. The reason for that is because I don’t have any backdrops big enough for more than one person at a time. Trust me, I want to by ALL the backdrops! But at the moment, I can’t justify spending the money when I’m only doing about 8-10 sessions a year. (I’m taking this time to focus on raising my two crazy boys while they’re young and not in school). Normally when I take my parent shots, I have them standing in front of my tan wall, which acts as a backdrop. But for this photo, I had them sitting down so that they would all be on the same level. I must have a lot of confidence in myself to think that I could pull this off, when I looked at the back of the camera and thought, “Yah, I got the shot.”

And of course, a before and after post wouldn’t be complete without a composite of my two crazy, hilarious, lovable boys. Rarely do I ever get a good shot of them both at the same time. So more often than not, I have to swap out heads, bodies, you name it. Anyway, this was their official Christmas picture that I took for the calendar I make every year for their grandparents and us. This was “December.” As you can see, Grayson was not cooperating while sitting next to Oliver, so I had to take his photo separately and then swap his body into the photo with Oliver. These boys make me work, I tell ya!

Anyway, that’s my fun little before and after post for today. I wasn’t sure if this would be my last post of 2015 or my first post of 2016 since we’re nearing midnight, but it looks like 2015 it is! I wish you all a very Happy New Year! Stay safe and take lots of pictures!!!

Giada’s Shrimp and Rice

Holy Moly! Do you know how long it’s been since I posted a recipe on here? I’ll tell ya! Over two years!!! That’s right. My last food post was this soup recipe from September 11, 2013. Which is delicious, btw. If you’re in the mood for some amazing and easy potato soup, that is the recipe for you! I guess having two kids within two years put my recipe sharing on the back burner (no pun intended).

Anyway, on to this delicious recipe from Giada De Laurentiis. I first saw this recipe, which she calls Nonna Luna’s Rice, while watching her cooking show “Giada At Home” on the Food Network. I immediately knew that I wanted to try it, and I just so happened to have all the ingredients at home, so as soon as the episode was over, I made what can only be described as shrimp and lemon heaven. I think this is my favorite shrimp recipe to date, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

Side note: Since I was the only one eating this dish for lunch, I halved this recipe.

Here’s what you’ll need:

4oz (1 stick) butter, divided
2 cups long grain rice
3 1/2 cups chicken stock (or broth)
2 tsp salt
1 garlic clove
2 lbs medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 cup lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
1 Tbsp hot sauce
1 cup heavy whipping cream
salt & pepper (to taste)

Start by melting half of the butter in a non-stick saucepan over medium low heat.

Once the butter is completely melted, pour in the rice.

Shout out to The Pioneer Woman for these adorable measuring cups you’ll see me use throughout this post. If you want some of your own, head on over to your nearest Walmart, or you can find them HERE on their website.

Stir the butter into the rice and let it toast for a couple minutes. Make sure you stir it frequently so it doesn’t burn on the bottom.

Then, pour in the chicken stock. Refer to your the package your rice came in for the cooking instructions. But in case you don’t know how to make rice, or you don’t have the packaging anymore, I typically will bring the rice to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and cover the pot until the all the liquid is absorbed. This is for regular, long grain rice. NOT instant rice. I know that most (if not all) of you know how to make rice, but just in case there is a beginner out there, I wanted to be sure to make this as fool proof as possible.

While I was making this recipe, my boys were eating lunch, and when they saw me taking pictures, they started saying “CHEESE!!!!” So, of course, I had to take a couple pictures of them, too. 🙂 (Don’t mind the messy table. Just keeping it real!)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…..

When your rice is about half way done cooking, start on the shrimp. I waited until my rice was half way done, because shrimp cooks SO fast, that if you have to wait for your rice to finish cooking, your shrimp will either be cold (if you removed it from the pan) or so tough and rubbery that it won’t be enjoyable. So do yourself a favor and wait until your rice has about 5-7 minutes left of cooking time.

Melt the rest of the butter in a non stick pan over medium heat, and throw your garlic clove in there. You could also mince your garlic, but I decided to just use the whole clove to infuse the garlic flavor into the butter without having pieces of garlic in the dish. Stir it around for 1-2 minutes, or until it starts to produce it’s wonderful aroma. You know what I’m talking about.

If you used the whole clove like me, you can remove it at this time.

Another shout out to The Pioneer Woman for this super cute skillet! Butterfly and all (it even has butterflies on the bottom of the pan)! And it just so happens to be in my favorite color — aqua! Here’s the link if you want one for yourself.