Life is Sew Good

It's a Good Day

2012-02-07T11:43:00.003-07:00

It's always a good day when you receive a sweet package in the mail - wrapped up with ribbon and everything.

It's even sweeter when you unwrap the package to find a beautiful assortment of fat quarters! This is a bundle I won from The Intrepid Thread through Maureen Cracknell Handmade. I love this color palette And I already know what I'm going to make.

A Lil' Twister quilt! I love that quilt pattern. I wanted to make my daughter a quilt from that method, but she doesn't care for it, *gasp* - I didn't think there was anyone out there that didn't like that pattern! So, winning this set of fat quarters gives me the perfect excuse to try out that ruler :) I think the color combo will be perfect for that quilt. I might even add in a little more black, as there is one fabric with black circles, and I think it would be nice to even it out a bit or else it might stick out too much. There are three oranges, three turquoises and two grey and one grey with black. I'm thinking I will add another grey and two more black/whites.

I believe I told you about the wishing well contest our local bank had at Christmas time to encourage people to shop locally in our little town. We put our local receipts into a wishing well in the bank and they drew several winners, who were then awarded a bank check made out to the winner and the business the receipt was from - so you could spend the identical amount as the receipt you won with at that same store. I won a $65 check to our local quilt shop in that drawing. I don't think I ever blogged about it, but I used some of that credit to buy special rulers and notions I'd had my eye on, as well as a new quilt pattern to go along with one of the specialty rulers. The Lil Twister ruler was one of the things I bought. I still have about $20 credit at the quilt shop because there wasn't anything else I felt like I had to have, and I wanted to keep a credit so I could spend money there when I wanted to :) So maybe I'll try to rush down there after the daycare kids leave today and see what fabrics they have in blacks and greys. I seriously need to do some sewing!!

Productivity

2012-02-04T22:42:00.001-07:00

Okay, all those negative things I said about being frustrated that I can never get anything done ... I take it back. I'm feeling really productive at the moment. Over the last couple days, I've gotten a lot of things done.

I made baby food the same day I cut out all those bibs. This is the easy way to do it. I baked a dozen apples, then pealed back a section of the skin and spooned out the flesh of the apple.

It's easy to get all the good stuff out and you don't have to peel the apple, which is the part I hate doing.

The pulp then goes into a blender and then the pureed applesauce is poured into ice cube trays and frozen. Once it's frozen, I pop it out of the trays and put it in zip lock bags so I can take out as many cubes as I need for each feeding. Super easy, and super cheap.

Once I got started I figured I might as well make up everything - so there are a couple of cubes of blackberries we had left (I'm not sure he'll like those - they're pretty seedy) and a quart size bag of blueberries.

That was all done on Friday, with a busy day with the daycare kids. I also managed to do extra preschool crafts, and meet a parent who is new to town and is looking for daycare. The picture above was taken this evening, but I thought it was cute, so I wanted to share. He was sent to the chair tonight because he purposely knocked down a pile of towels his brother had just folded. I guess now we know why he was being ornery. This one keeps me on my toes, and is a good source of entertainment. Friday I was cutting up some fresh pears for lunch in the daycare and he got so excited when he saw them. He yelled, "Parents!" I just cracked up and shook my head. At least he likes all sorts of fresh fruits and veggies - even if he doesn't know their real names. :)

Now I'll share with you a huge project I managed to take on thanks to the little man in that picture. Our church building is pretty outdated. It needs a lot of work, and we just haven't gotten organized enough to tackle any of it. Well, the three year old decided to help motivate us when we were at teen group a week and a half ago.

He pulled half a sheet of this lovely green wallpaper off the nursery wall. The room in this picture is right next to the nursery, but the colors and wallpaper are the same in both rooms. Or at least they were.

This is that lovely wallpaper that has shiny gold in it. Can you see it in the pictures? This is really heavy wallpaper, and thankfully it came off cleanly in sheets. Once we saw what he had done, we just pealed it off the whole room - in about 3 minutes.

This is what the nursery looks like now. Better? I love the colors. They look bluer in the pictures than they are. The blues have a lot more green in them than they appear in the pictures.

The black section is my big idea. Me and my big ideas. I always manage to take a manageable task and make it ten times more time consuming. The black on this wall is magnetic primer. In other words, primer with metal in it. The wall is probably 10 feet or so. And I had the bright idea to paint a mural on it, so we can buy cute magnets for the kids to use on it. Of course being the one who thinks up the project tends to get you volunteered for the project too. I'm really not complaining though. I think it's a lot of fun. I can't wait to get it all done :) The plan is to have a construction site, farm, and water (lake or ocean), and maybe a train track running through the whole scene. We'll see how that all works out.

We also still need to touch up around the edges, paint all the trim, and the cubby storage unit. I'm hoping to get all that done by next Sunday, so the kids can be back in that room. Yeah. We'll see. After that, I'd like to do the room next to it, which is my SPARKS classroom (the one in the pictures). I'm thinking I'd like to use greens in there, and paint half a globe on the bottom section and children dressed in outfits from around the world just above the middle border strip, with words saying "Jesus loves the children of the world" curving above the earth. I forgot to mention that we're planning on putting a verse on the wall of the nursery too. Of course having those two rooms done will mean the other three classrooms really ought to be done. My husband has already come up with some ideas for his teen classroom, and the other two rooms will probably just get painted a solid color. So see how my "little" idea has sprouted into a whole yard full of dandelions? I guess this will be an ongoing project for quite some time.

This is another project I completed at the church tonight.

The bulletin board in the foyer usually only gets decorated at Christmas, and when it isn't decorated, it is covered with faded burlap. It really just needs to be recovered or something, but nobody really knows what to do with it. I agreed to decorate the church for Christmas, which again lead to me inheriting the job of decorating the foyer bulletin board year round. I enjoy doing that sort of thing, and again I'm really not complaining. Our pastor and his wife are in their 80's, and she has taken care of it all these years, so she is very happy to have someone else take over the task.

The center says "Love is" and each of the large red hearts has a phrase on it from I Corinthians 13 "Love is patient (long-suffering), love is kind," etc.

I'm not thrilled with the look. I had intended to use a silver wrapping paper for the background, but there wasn't enough. The only paper I had enough of was this red, which is a nice paper, but it makes the hearts disappear. If I had known I would be using that, I would have just used the pink and white hearts. Oh well. It's done now, and it isn't bad. The silver pen doesn't show up as well as I'd like either, but live and learn. Next time I'll stick with black.

Playing Cards & a Solution to My Frustration

2012-02-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tried to play cards while holding an octopus? If not, this ought to give you some idea how it might go.

As for my frustration yesterday about never being able to get it done, I finally decided that I just need to get over it and do the best I can. I need to think outside the box. So I strapped on the baby holder (the side sling I was wearing the other day), made a template out of a diet pepsi box, and used a pen to trace around it onto some flannel. I layered the fabrics right sides together so they are all ready to sew - no lining up when I get a minute to run these through the machine.

I've been needing to make some new bibs. The daycare requires a lot of them, and the old ones were looking horrible. We went out to dinner the other night and I couldn't find one I wanted to be seen in public with, so I knew it was time to do something about it. But like everything, it's been on my to-do list for months. Today I decided just to dive in.

The baby didn't care for being stuck in the side carrier while I was using both my hands rather than snuggling him, so after I cut the first few out one-handed, I switched him over to the Bumbo. Much better!

He even had a little entertainment on the side.

I ended up with 26 bibs cut and ready to sew. I wish I could say this would get us through the week so we could just wash them once a week, but it's not even close. We go through about twice that many in a week, especially if you figure in my two on the weekends. For super messy meals like spaghetti, I just put a shirt on each of them. I picked up a stack of about 20 at the thrift store for just that reason.

I've decided to change my approach to the whole "I can't seem to get anything done" issue. Instead of getting frustrated about not having time to do a whole project, I am going to look at each project in steps. For instance, I may not have time to complete the bibs, but I can cut them out while watching the kids play on the other side of the counter. At least I'm getting one step closer to completing things. Looking at it in steps rather than the whole project helps me feel like I *completed* something. I completed step 1. Now I'm free to move onto the next thing (assuming of course that I make a point eventually of getting back to this project to truly complete it lol).

So here the bibs sit, waiting to be chain stitched. I love chain stitching, don't you. I always feel like I'm so fast. I'm hoping I can get a chance to sew these during nap time, depending on whether everyone really sleeps. But if not, I'll try to sit down over the weekend and finish them up. Then I'm going to throw away all the grungy old ones!

2012-02-02T22:54:00.001-07:00

So I have like a bajillion toys for the daycare, and this is where they choose to play. Under the table.

I saw the cutest project on Pinterest that made a table into a playhouse - sewing the sides together to look like a little cottage. It's been on my to-do list for a couple of months. Problem is, my to-do list just keeps growing, and I never can seem to get done the things I have to get done. The have-to list is growing too... as is my frustration. I feel like I never have time to finish anything. I'm just always starting things and never finishing them. I counted 8 - yes EIGHT books that I have started and not finished just in the past month. (I did manage to finish three others.) But I really want and need to read the eight I started (all non-fiction). And then there is homeschool. I really need to sit down and plan the next month, but each day, I find myself running out of time before I get to it, and then winging it through the school day. It works, but it isn't ideal. It's like that with everything lately. I haven't even touched my sewing machine this year yet. That one's killing me. Anyway, "frustrated" pretty much sums up my attitude right now.

Okay, enough negativity for one post. This little clown has kept me entertained a lot lately.

He was showing me how big his mouth is. Yep. Comedy run amok around here. At least it helps me keep my sanity, so that even on days when I'm really frustrated by the fact that I'm getting nothing done, I have all these cute little reminders to be thankful for the interruptions and for the fact that my schedule is packed. I'm thankful for every one of them and wouldn't change a thing (unless someone would invent a pause button I could push and spend an hour of complete silence working on one of these things on my list - ha.)

Seven Months

2012-02-02T00:52:00.003-07:00

Well, the little man is seven months old now.

Isn't this just the sweetest thing a Mama can wake up to? He didn't even wake up with the flash.

He's doing much better than he was a couple of months ago. Doesn't he look chubby here?

He gained 11 ounces this month. That's excellent considering we've been worried about him not gaining weight for a couple of months now.

He had a doctor's visit today (well, technically yesterday as it's nearly 1 am now. The appointment was on the first).

He weighs 13 pounds, 3 ounces now. He started out at 9 pounds 11 ounces seven months ago, so we're not exactly packing on the pounds. But we're on the right track now.

The doctor was pleased with his progress - both in what he can do now, and his skin condition and the fact that he's gaining weight.

The doctor encouraged us to keep pushing the solid foods and to keep up what we've been doing, which for me means no eggs, dairy or nuts for as long as I nurse. He doesn't keep formula of any kind down, so nursing is the only option for now (not that I'd have it any other way). He still has some itchiness and a bit of a rash - especially on his scalp and back. The doctor said he is very happy with the improvement, but that if I wanted to, I could cut wheat from my diet as well. I've decided to try to at least limit my intake of wheat, but I probably won't do away with it entirely. We'll see.

My friend Mater went with us today. The doctor's office is in Jackson Hole, and there's always fun stuff to do. We ate lunch at Billy's - home of the giant burgers. They have an old fashioned horseshoe shaped counter with bar stools and you can watch the one cook manage to handle everyone's orders. He ate all of his, and most of the waffle fries too. Then we wandered through the art gallery next door. This child is an excellent artist - and that's not just a mother's opinion. He was so impressed with all the art, especially the bronze sculptures. I've got to get some clay now. He paid very close attention to the way the sculptures were created with little bits of clay pressed and molded with the fingers into place. Now he wants to do it. He came home and told his Dad he was going to do that, "and then I can sell my statue for $10,000!" Dream big, I say!!

On the line of funny sayings, he's been full of them lately. Tonight I mentioned to him that his oldest brother was going to be majoring in nursing (he's 21, in the Air Force and going to college). The 7 year old said, "WHAT!? Why would he want to be NURSING a baby?!?" He was also confused about family relations and wanted to know what made someone your cousin. I explained to him that my sister is his aunt and her husband is his uncle, which makes their baby (who is the same age as our baby) his cousin. He said, "Oh, I thought she was (our baby's) cousin." He didn't realize that all the brothers and sisters would have the same cousins. :) Kids are fun. All ages!

Peas, Inspections, and Doctor's Visits, Oh My!

2012-01-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

Okay everybody, let's take a little vote here, shall we? Who says "Oh yum, give me those peas on the right, in the baby food jar!!" Go ahead. Raise your hand. Yeah. Didn't think so. What color is that, anyway? And would YOU want to eat it? Anyway, our latest baby food making trial was ... you guessed it ... peas. As beautiful as those lovely homemade peas on the left are, the baby didn't like them. And for those of you wondering, no, he doesn't like the canned variety either. He ate the fresh ones, but kept wincing and shaking his head with shivers. Then after he was done, he kept trying to gag. Not while he was eating, but after he was finished. So we're going to lay off the peas for a little while and revisit those another time. I seem to remember the three year old had a similar response to them when he was little, and he loves peas now, so there is hope. I personally don't like peas either unless we're talking about snowpeas, which I love. Fickle, yes. I know.

So I've been kind of quiet around here lately. Sorry for that. We have had a lot going on. I had my annual inspection for the daycare today, which we passed without any problems. But that does take some time to get all the records in order and the house super-cleaned. Not that we don't clean on a regular basis, but you know what I mean. You just clean a little better when you know someone is going to be looking at everything closely. We had the health and sanitation inspection (surprise visit) last week, and it went very well too. Now we just have to wait for the fire marshall to show up, and we'll be good-to-go for another year. None of this is really nerve wracking or anything. It's just time consuming. And it makes that little voice in my head say, "No, you can't make that awesome felt heart bunting you saw on Pinterest. You need to print out all your updated records instead." So maybe soon I'll be able to cram in a little craft time. I'm actually working on something over at the church... thanks to a certain 3 year old of mine who thought it was high time to remove the 1960's era wallpaper from the nursery wall. Yup. I'll share some photos of that sometime soon too. I've really bitten off more than I can chew on this one folks. But I'll leave that story for another post.

Tomorrow the baby will be 7 months old. He has a checkup scheduled, so we'll be making the hour and a half drive to the doctor's office. Hopefully he's gained enough weight that we can stop being so concerned about it, and decrease the number of doctors visits. At $100+ a pop, we'll be glad to slip into the normal schedule of visits, especially if we can stop having to run all these pricy tests too. But really, we're very grateful to have access to good healthcare and a doctor who knows what he's doing. So I won't say a word of complaint about paying those bills. It was all certainly worth it! I do think he's gained a lot of weight, and definitely gotten taller. He's really coming out of his shell and he's a lot of fun. I'm thinking there must be something else that he is allergic to though. He's still very itchy and though most of the rash has disappeared, he still has it on his back and his scalp. It is showing up in more predictable places like you would expect eczema to though, so maybe it's just that rather than more allergies. But when the doctor suggested trying three different formulas especially designed for babies with allergies, it didn't go well. All three of them make him spit up a lot more - as in repeatedly until I'm sure he has lost as much as he had taken in. I don't know what to do about that other than make sure to keep nursing. Hopefully the doctor will have some idea. And hopefully it doesn't include cutting any more staples from my diet. I've done really well staying away from eggs, dairy and nuts. Not sure what I would eat if I had to cut wheat (which I don't expect to as he tested fine for that) or soy - which I'm thinking is the next likely target. There just aren't a lot of options for things like substitutes for dairy products that don't contain soy either. I guess I will find out tomorrow what the next plan is.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

2012-01-29T17:37:00.000-07:00

Wanna see a few of my favorite things?

Here you go - Thing 1 and Thing 2. Thank you Dr. Seuss. The seven year old loves that they both have "Thing" shirts and insisted on having a picture taken with them both dressed in them. But he wouldn't quit making goofy faces.

Here you can see the shirts a little better. Of course in reality the seven year old is "Thing 3" and the baby is "Thing 5." I guess Dr. Seuss came up a little short in his numbering...

And then there's this thing. He insisted on having his picture taken too. See the mixer shirt? He loves all things that have to do with mixers, since Daddy drives one. You should have seen how excited he was (he and all of the daycare kids) the day Daddy forgot his sunglasses and came by in the mixer to pick them up. He never does that, so this was the only time they've seen the mixer. I had two and three year olds jumping up and down all over the place by the time he left :)

Now here's an unconventional way to take a bath, right? He's my little water baby :)

The three year old has figured out how to get all the daycare kids to be his little servants. He sits in a big plastic toy tub with his blankie, and has all of them bring toys and push him around. One day this past week he spent most of the entire day in the bucket. But at least they were all having a good time.

The baby has been especially cheerful lately. His complexion is much better, but he still seems really itchy. So I'm wondering if there's still something else he is allergic to that we don't know about.

He's a lot of fun anymore. He waves to us, "talks" to us and winks - or makes blinky eyes at us. He's such a little flirt.

And he loves playing with his toys now too... especially the stuffed animals.

Oh, and he has been "hanging out" with me a lot lately. He's at that age where if he can see me he thinks I ought to be holding him. Makes it difficult to get anything done, or take care of the daycare. So I remembered this sling I picked up at a yard sale last summer. I know this isn't the conventional way to use it, but he likes being able to sit up and it holds him securely so. I have my hands free to work on whatever I need to get done, so we're both happy.

Why I LOVE Our Thrift Store

2012-01-20T16:42:00.001-07:00

This is why I love our thrift store. $1.65 - That's exactly how much it cost me to get these three reference books and a cute book about pigs. That's a savings of over $75! Can you believe that?!

These aren't the beginner dictionaries and encyclopedias either. See how fat they are?

There is a lot of great in-depth info in these. Just what I was needing for the next step up. The Lord always knows, and He always provides at just the right time!

While we're on the subject of homeschool, I thought I would throw this picture in. The skeleton is a puzzle that came with an anatomy book we bought at a yard sale this summer for a dollar. Compared to the dictionaries and encyclopedia, that was a fortune, lol.

We had a pretty good snowstorm over the last couple of days. Nothing out of the ordinary for Wyoming, but noteworthy because we haven't had any snow since before Christmas, which is very unusual. Today they called for 100% chance of snow. So of course it isn't snowing, and doesn't look like it will. I was surprised to hear the weathermen didn't even give themselves that 1% chance just in case. They ought to remember that saying about never betting on a sure thing...

Anyway, after school yesterday the boys (mine on the left, and one we watch after school on the right) made a snowman. I thought it was funny that they used four snowballs. But it's art, right? They can be as creative as they want!

The younger two keep us on our toes. The poor baby! He can't even lay on the floor without his 3 year old brother trying to smother him.

He's a pretty happy guy now that we've gotten his allergies figured out. I can't believe how much different he is now than he was a month ago. It's so worth it for me to have to be more careful about my eating habits. You would be surprised how many things dairy products and eggs are in. He's allergic to nuts too, so that's even more limiting. But like I said, I'm glad to do it for him. Besides, I'm winning in the exchange too. So far I've lost 10 pounds (since Dec. 21, when I found out about the allergies). That's a total of 18 pounds lost from my highest weight! I figured when I had to cut eggs, dairy and milk, I might as well add sugar to the list and ensure a change in me as well.

My next goal is to get on the treadmill 6 days a week, and to cut my consumption of sodas. I only drink caffeine free diet coke or pepsi, but that's all I drink. So it's going to be quite a radical change for me. I'm not trying to go completely off it, but at least have half of my liquid intake be from water each day. As far as the diet goals are concerned, I have fought my weight (and been the loser of the battle) my whole life. It occurred to me that I am turning 40 this year at the end of April, and I have to renew my driver's license. For once, I'd like to honestly be able to lower the weight listed on that card, and feel like I look better in the new photo than the old. I also thought about how people say the older you get, the harder it is to lose weight. It occurred to me (like a 2x4 hitting me in the forehead with a giant "duh" written over my head) that it would never be easier to lose weight than it is right now. Wow. That was profound, huh? So, I'm working on it. My goal is to have lost 40 pounds by my birthday, and losing 120 by the end of the year. That's a doable 10 pounds a month, or the recommended slow loss of 2.5 pounds per week. There will be no "before" pictures until I feel good about the "after" picture. And I doubt I will ever tell you what my top weight was. I'm adding a ticker to my sidebar to keep track of my progress. My debt tracker is so motivating that I figured a weight tracker would be too. Well, anyway, I hadn't intended to get into the weight discussion, but there it is. Wish me luck, and please pray for me! So far I haven't cheated at all, and it feels really good. I'm wondering how long I can keep it up :)

Loose Ends and New Beginnings

2012-01-13T15:06:00.001-07:00

This post is a little scattered. I'm trying to get caught up on my blogging, and I think this post should pretty much do it. So here goes. I was inspired by an ornament someone had pinned on Pinterest around Christmas time, and thought I'd give it a shot. The pin was a link to an etsy shop where someone had made ornaments with glitter footprints on them. I thought that would be super cute to try with the baby. The difference is that the ones on etsy were made with glitter stickers, and I was going to use glue and real glitter - and a squirmy baby. I used Mod Podge glue. I was worried that the Elmer's would crack and peel off eventually. And my tacky craft glue was all dried up (as usual). So I got out the Mod Podge, and painted it onto the baby's foot.

He wasn't sure what to make of that. He's incredibly ticklish - more ticklish than any other baby I've ever met. So that was the first obstacle.

The next problem was simple enough you would think I would have thought about it sooner. His foot was too big. Apparently the ones on the etsy ornament are not life-size. I had to turn it sideways and roll it. So his foot looks stretched out even longer than it is.

Not a real life-like footprint, eh? Oh well. I tried. I tried using his hand too, but that turned out even worse. Oh yeah. Then I spilled that super-fine glitter all over the place when I was trying to pour the leftovers back into the container. Me & glitter ... not such a good combination. One good thing came of the project though. I was reminded of how much I HATE glitter!

In other, completely unrelated news, the three year old has been sweet lately. He loves to read (or more accurately, be read to) and one night he was so tired that Daddy actually read him to sleep. You'd have to know our energetic little man to understand how noteworthy this is!

Aren't they sweet?

I mentioned the other day about the baby already being too spoiled to eat store-bought baby food. Can you blame him? I mean, have you ever actually tasted that stuff? So last week I cooked up some homemade baby food. Butternut Squash, Acorn Squash and Sweet Potatoes. These are the easiest things to do. I just baked the squash whole (I poked a few holes with a knife to let out steam). I baked one of each of the varieties of squash, and three sweet potatoes. I put all of them in a 9x13 and slow roasted them. Once they were soft, I pulled them out and let them cool enough for me to handle them. I pealed the skins off, removed the seeds from the squash, and one at a time blended them into a smooth puree. I had to add a little water to the sweet potatoes and acorn squash, but the butternut squash was juicy enough. Then they were spooned into ice cube trays and frozen.

Once they had frozen solid I took three gallon-sized bags and labeled them.

Then they went back into the freezer. I wish I had paid more attention to the exact price I paid for each of these things. I know the butternut squash was $2.12, and I would guess everything together was probably $5 or less. Each of these cubes is the same amount as a large jar (the ones that are about two and a half inches tall). So what I have here is about 66 jars worth of baby food. The organic ones I had recently bought were on sale for 85 cents a jar - so if I would have bought this many jars of premade baby food, it would have cost me $56.10!!! Certainly makes the time and effort (and mess) worth is. I just saved over $50! As I type this, I have a pan of apples baking in the oven. We bought a case of apples from my niece who was selling them for an FFA fundraiser so I have no idea what the cost per apple was (very cheap - we got a case of oranges and a case of apples for a total of $33). Even if I had purchased the most expensive apples I could find, I would still be saving tons of money. Not to mention, the baby loves this stuff!

I mean, really. Have you ever seen a seven year old beg to lick the spoon from the baby food jar, and then rave about how wonderful it was and ask for more? Yep. Didn't think so. And yet, here's the seven year old, who licked the spoon after every batch of baby food was made. Look out cookie dough, you've got competition!

Extra money in my pocket is what I am hoping for by the end of the year. My sister mentioned while we were in Colorado visiting them, that she uses a thermometer picture to motivate them to pay off their debts. She emailed me the template, but also mentioned that she has used coloring pages marked off in sections as well. She said seeing the form and coloring in the sections was very motivating to them, causing them to look for more money to put onto the debt. I knew I wanted to do the same thing, and when someone pinned kids coloring page printouts on Pinterest, I knew I wanted to use one of these. The hardest thing was counting all the spots. Then I divided our debt by that many spots and realized that each spot would be close to representing $25 of debt. This is all medical debt we acquired last year. I had already pre-paid my OBGYN before he was born, so that was not included here. But I had some potential complications before the birth (very high blood pressure), which required hospital tests. Then the birth was more expensive than anticipated because they had to keep him longer than they expected. I also had the epidural (well worth the money) after planning to go natural. Then the baby has had several health problems since he was born, so that all added up to extra tests (thing like a heart echo, two series of chest x-rays, followed by being on oxygen, tests for allergies, and so on.) I'm not worried about it though. I'm confident we can pay it all off this year, and hopefully also rid ourselves of several other debts. That's what my daycare income is for.

See this? This is one week after the picture above. So far we've paid off $650 worth of debt. And we're only halfway through January. I expect to be able to add even more to this before the end of the month. So it's manageable. I'm glad a put up the coloring page. It is very motivating and I can see that we really are getting somewhere. Now, I'm thinking of forgoing our weekly date night of a fancy steak dinner and staying home (or convincing my husband that burgers sound great ;) - any of you who know my husband will understand what a challenge that will be! I do have to say though, now that I can't have eggs, dairy or nuts, my urge to eat out has been seriously curbed. We live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, with no chain restaurants (with the exception of Subway). None of these places have websites or can tell you for sure what is in anything. And I have a real hard time trusting the baby's health to someone's word that there's no dairy in something. Not that I don't trust them. Just that I only feel absolutely sure when I can read ingredient lists for myself. Did you know even the French fries at McDonalds and Wendy's contain dairy products??? So it makes it a lot of work to eat out.

Star Wars Snowflakes

2012-01-12T18:56:00.001-07:00

My oldest son (21) is in the Air Force and wasn't able to join us for Christmas for the first time ever this year. It was sad, but at the same time, we are incredibly proud of him and know this is just a part of growing up. He had recently been stationed to a new base, so he didn't have a large group of friends who he could spend Christmas with. I was pretty sad about that. We didn't want him to feel like he was left out or forgotten at Christmas, so we sent him a care package full of wrapped gifts - mostly little things like gum and homemade peanut brittle, as well as a couple bigger gift cards. In the package I sent these snowflakes I made. They are Star Wars figures. Now I haven't even seen Star Wars, and can pretty much guarantee you I will die happily never having seen it. But he likes it, and that's what matters. And besides, it was fun to make the snowflakes. I found the idea on Pinterest, as well as the print outs, so all I had to do was cut away the grey parts. He liked them and now I'm going to make more (different characters) to send to him.

For those of you who care, this is Boba Fett...

Darth Vader (the only one I recognized).

And these are Clone troopers.

I wouldn't say these were easy to make - be sure you have a really sharp exacto knife if you try this, and good scissors that can cut through several layers of paper. After seeing these, my sweet husband picked up a fancy 13-piece precision knife set (like exacto knives, but with several different shaped blades) from Harbor Freight for me while he was out spending his Christmas cash in Colorado. Now I definitely have to make more of these! I'm wishing I had some more flimsy computer paper though. Mine is plenty stiff for this project.

2012-01-11T14:12:00.002-07:00

Between Christmas and New Year's we had a great vacation, going to my Mom's house in Colorado for the week. (I'm going to let the pictures do the talking for the most part here, with just a few comments.) The first thing our three year old found when he went in the door was this dog - a draft dodger for Mom's door. He figured it was just for him, and made friends right away. He stopped in the middle of playing with him to tell our 19 year old daughter "He's growin' FAST!"

He loved visiting his little cousin again - she is 5 months old now.

She seemed to enjoy having a new toy :) and lots of attention.

My sister turned 35 while we were there, so my daughter baked her a cake and decorated it with skittles... and lots of candles. :)

She had lots of help with the unwrapping.

I walked into the back bedroom one day and found my boys all lined up watching television.

So I added the baby to the pile and got a picture of all the important men in my life (minus the 21 year old, who is living on an Air Force base in California, and couldn't make the trip).

The babies got re-intruduced.

Mine wasn't so sure he wanted to share the limelight.

Of course there was lots of baby holding...

And we all figured out how to play Scrabble and Mancala on my daughter's new Nook color.

I bought a new camera - just a cheap, tiny little thing that will fit easily into my purse or pocket. The bigger one is too cumbersome to lug around all the time. And now I can take self-portraits again. The bigger one was awkward and impossible to take self portraits with unless I used both hands, which doesn't make for great pictures.

Sorry Uncle J. Had to include these :) Our seven year old was trying out the new camera and was giving very specific instructions on how to pose...

My daughter's one request was that we eat out at HuHot. I'm not sure what culture that is - Mongolian, maybe? Anyway, you go through a line and choose all the raw ingredients - putting everything into a bowl or two as you go...

Then you take it up to the big round cook surface and they cook it for you.

The line was pretty long to get your food cooked, but it's fun and tasty, so it's worth it.

We were seated right next to the line for the cooking, so we could visit while we were in line. Still, it took a good 20-25 minutes to go through the line and get back to the table. We had to do it in shifts too because of the babies, but in the end, everyone was full and happy :)

Of course we had to do a size comparison picture with the little ones, who are 30 days apart in age. Our son is about an inch longer and still weighs barely more than she does. But it's hard to tell.

Of course the three year old had to get in on the photo shoot :) It wasn't that long ago that he was this little!

We played several games. This is a card version of Trivial Pursuit that was really fun. I love Trivial Pursuit, but can't hardly get anyone to play it with me. The card version was easier because it moves faster, and you get multiple choice answers and can steal other players' wedges. Very fun. We played it all New Years Eve - up through midnight.

The next morning everyone was very tired, especially the kids. We got up to head to church, but the three year old was in a horrible mood so I ended up keeping him and the baby home. (When he gets like that, there's nothing we can do - just let him rest). We had planned to head out right after church, but the seven year old wasn't feeling very well, so we stayed long enough to watch the Bronco's game, then headed home after that. It was a great week (and thankfully an uneventful trip home. Everyone but me slept most of the way home.) I love our home here in the mountains, but I do wish we were closer to my family so we could get together more than a couple times a year...

6 months

2012-01-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

It seems that the more the months past, the worse I get at posting these updates on time. Oh well. The pictures were taken on the 2nd, because on his 6 month birthday (the first) we were traveling home from visiting family in Colorado for a week. That was such a wonderful time of visiting and relaxing! I'll post some pictures from that soon as well as a hodgepodge post about what I've been up to before and since. But for now, it's the half-year mark for our little man :)

This month has seen a lot of changes both for him and for me. If you've been reading along for very long, you know he's had some health problems. One of the worst problems has been with his skin. He's had a terrible rash since he was a couple months old, and his skin was ridiculously dry. (We do live in a very dry climate, but it was worse than I've ever seen.) We thought at first that the rash was eczema, but it just wouldn't go away and wasn't getting better, even with hydrocortozone cream. We had some tests done back on December 13, to try to figure out what the problem is. It turns out he is allergic to eggs, dairy and nuts. Since I'm nursing, that meant I had to make a major adjustment to my own diet. We have also switched to Eucerin lotion which has made a huge difference in his dry skin. I was amazed after I had only used it twice most of his dry skin issues were resolved. It's pricey, but well worth it. The other lotions we had tried (Curel, St. Ives, and Vasoline) weren't making an impact at all.

Another issue we've had is that he just isn't gaining weight. We're pretty sure it's a combination of problems - from the allergies, to the acid reflux, to a poor milk supply at times, and several little bouts with not feeling well. I run a licensed home daycare, so lots of germs come to our house, despite trying to keep everything sanitized. And it's also difficult to make myself stop and nurse on a rigid schedule, so my milk supply has suffered. This baby is very content and never really cries much. He would be perfectly happy waiting 5-7 hours to eat if I would let him. I'm trying to nurse him more like every 3 hours (except at night). So that has been a challenge.

We've seen a lot of changes this month - he's getting stronger and able to sit up (supported of course) a lot better than he was. He started eating solid foods (and is spoiled already and will only eat the homemade stuff - no jars for him!) Once we found out about the allergies, and I cut out all the eggs, dairy and nuts from my diet, his complexion has started to clear up, but more notably, his whole personality changed. He went from being complacent and lethargic to happy and more social. He tries to play with his toys now, which he never used to do, and visits and "talks" much more now. He's a whole new kid ;)

He's still not real mobile. He has been able to roll over from his belly to his back since before we came home from the hospital - when he was two days old. He can also roll from his back to his belly, but since he doesn't like to be on his belly, he rarely does that. He can support his weight on his legs, but doesn't like to stand, so he won't do that for very long either. He also hasn't tried scooting yet either. He's just very content to lay on his back all the time.

I'm trying to get him to spend more time each day on his belly on the floor, and also in the bouncer seat we got him for Christmas. I'm not sure what that thing is called, but he sits upright in it and can put his feet on the floor and practice standing up. He doesn't like to be in it for very long though, so we're still working on that one. Either way, I feel like he's really changing fast. He doesn't seem so little to me now. They do grow up fast!

Christmas Day 2011

2012-01-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas!

I know I'm a little late posting this (okay, I'm a lot late), but I wanted to post some pictures from Christmas so I could get them printed in our yearbook. So I'm going to be doing some catchup over the next couple days so I can order my printed blog book. Here is some of the fun from Christmas Day...

Since Christmas was on Sunday, we altered our schedule a bit by getting up and opening just our stocking presents, then getting dressed and heading to church. We opened everything else after church.

We always have a lot of presents in the stockings. My 19 year old daughter says the stockings are her favorite part, and insists on having the stocking gifts wrapped too. When I was growing up, the things in the stockings were not wrapped (which sounds much easier). I'm not sure when I first wrapped a present in her stocking, but since then I've had to wrap them. I'm a sucker for tradition and keeping the joy in Christmas by keeping things "the way they used to be."

Can you tell that the three year old had to test out every toy as he unwrapped it? I love that he is handling the "snake" with his gloves on!

I've never had a baby this age (almost 6 months) at Christmas, so I wasn't sure how much he would be able to do. He got this bouncer seat (which I picked up at the thrift store this summer) and several small toys all in his stocking. We only let him see the bouncer in the morning.

The bouncer was a big hit. This poor little guy has had so many medical issues, and we just found out that he is allergic to eggs, dairy, and nuts, which is probably the cause of most of the problems. Since I nurse, the food I was eating was causing problems for him. I had only been off those things for for 3 days, but it was as if he woke up out of a fog. He used to be complacent and lethargic, and wouldn't do much, but suddenly we have a bubbly, happy, active baby :)

The three year old just wanted to play. We had to coax him into unwrapping the next thing. He could easily have made his unwrapping last a month or more.

So here we are, all dressed up and ready for church. doesn't he just look so grown up in this outfit? Wish I had some khaki pants. Oh well.

Packed up and ready to head out.

When we got home, we lit the fire (hahaha - my daughter found a video of a fire burning on the internet, so we turned our tv into a fireplace). The boys couldn't get enough of it. Oh, and see the carseat in the chair? The baby fell asleep after church and napped in the carseat during the whole unwrapping event. Poor kid missed it all. I felt bad, but I knew he needed his sleep. He won't remember it anyway.

The three year old got his first pair of toe socks and had to try them on right away. He went to all the work to get them on (with a little help of course) then pulled them off right away. I don't think he liked having stuff between his toes.

The seven year old was thrilled to get several remote control items, including this Yamaha snowmachine from Bugga and Papa.

Like I said, the three year old insisted on taking every single item out of the wrapper or box and keeping it on the floor. We usually have everyone put their wrapping paper in a recycle box and their gifts in a separate box so we don't accidentally throw anything away. Well, that wasn't going to happen with this guy. He would throw a fit if we tried to clean up his toys. So it got pretty cluttered in his area of the floor.

My daughter is seriously into zebra stripes, so I got her some zebra striped duct tape.

She immediately made a ring.

My husband was spoiled this year. Our 21 year old son, who was away from us for the first time ever at Christmas (he's in the Air Force, stationed too far away to be with us) sent his Dad a gift certificate to Cabela's.

And when he mentioned that he was hungry (because the kids wanted to unwrap everything right after church instead of having lunch then) our daughter brought him a plate of peanut butter bon bons she had made as part of his gift.

Who would have thought anyone could get so excited about argyle tights?

Now this was funny. The three year old got Lightening McQueen slippers, and when he put them on, he scooted his feet all over the room and made car noises. My daughter commented that they were the perfect slippers to get him to teach him to moon walk.

The seven year old bought this little dog for the three year old. The dog came with a tag saying his name is Cooper, but since we had a daycare kid with that name, we altered it to Copper - which is one of the dogs from The Fox and the Hound.

He loved it and has been very attached to it ever since he got it.

Our daughter was pretty excited to get a Nook Color.

This was a pretty funny gift tag my sweet husband attached to one of the gifts he gave me :)

Here's another of the remote control vehicles. This one follows a laser beam, which you shoot onto the floor with a controller that looks like a gun. This little thing is zippy and can even flip over and keep going. It came with a ramp, which I guess is a good thing... other than the fact that it has led to the car being slammed into the wall repeatedly because of incorrect aiming...

Can you tell he was excited? Guess what's in this box. Binoculars, a range finder and a field dressing knife set. Yeah. Very cool. (Okay, so mainly cool for guys who hunt. I figured it out about the time I heard him say, "Oh cool - it's even got a gut hook!" yeah.) But I'm happy for him. It is something he has had his eye on for awhile now.

I bought him a full set of commentaries - H.A. Ironside commentaries, which came in a set of 27 or 28 books. He's wanted these for a long time too. My ornery daughter decided we ought to wrap each book individually... which we did... :)

So what's all this excitement about? Homemade Jerky and tootsie rolls from Papa and Bugga of course!

My daughter bought this cutting board for me at a craft fair she was working. It is made from scrap corian countertop, cut into the shape of a moose. I bought one that looked like a bear for my mother-in-law's birthday. I love that they are recycling the scrap ends of the countertop, which otherwise would have been thrown out.

Just as we had finished unwrapping everything, Papa and Bugga came by. The baby woke up while they were here, so we unwrapped his gifts with them.

I was surprised at how well he did, trying to grab everything. Like I said, I haven't had a baby this age at Christmas, and plus, he just woke up out of a fog, remember? He wasn't grabbing at things a week ago, and now he's really active and trying to get into everything. It was such a big change in such a short time.

This little truck is a cement mixer. And the little jacket he got has a mixer on it too. Dad drives a mixer, so we always try to buy them as gifts, but this year I could only find the one in the baby toys.

I was pretty excited to get some great sewing tools - including a travel iron I've been envying all over the web, and my first ever pair of Gingher scissors.

And aren't these birds just the sweetest things? I also got a very pretty mother's necklace with all my children's birthstones, and several other things. It was a good day, but not because of the presents. I'm so thankful that my family is all safe and healthy, and that our baby is on the mend. I'm grateful that my son returned safely from a tour in Iraq this year. I'm thankful that my husband and I love each other and have a solid marriage. And I'm thankful most of all that God sent us the best gift anyone could ever receive, his Son, Jesus Christ. I hope you all had a wonderful, Merry Christmas!

Nothing Like Waiting Until The Last Minute

2011-12-25T00:47:00.000-07:00

I'm tired. But it's done. I said I wasn't going to do it this year. I wasn't going to wait until Christmas eve to get everything done. But here I am, having waited until after five pm to even get started on this stocking. It's not like this baby just suddenly appeared. He's nearly six months old. You'd think I could have found an extra 30 minutes somewhere in those six months to put together a simple stocking. In fact, I knew he was on the way when I made everyone else's stockings last Christmas. So I cut out an extra lining and jeans sections from both the blue we used for the guys and the red we used for the girls. I wasn't sure what I would have at that point.

And since the pocket had to have the name embroidered on it as the first step in the sewing, I couldn't continue until we knew for sure the name. Anyway, it's done now, and filled with little rattles and toys. We didn't get him too much this year - only what could fit into the stocking, and I didn't wrap any of his presents. He can't open them anyway, so I figured he wouldn't care. He is getting a big bouncer/walker thing that I picked up this summer at the thrift store. I think he'll really like that.

Not to worry - he's still getting plenty. The stocking is really big. He could probably fit into it if I tried - except that the opening would be a little tight. I'll spare him the trauma of attempting it ;)

So here they are all together - seven stockings. The first on the bottom left is our oldest son, who is in the Air Force and won't be home with us for Christmas for the first time ever. It's hard having an empty stocking, but I wanted it to be out with the others.

We've done some other Christmas crafts. In the daycare I had the kids make reindeer out of hand and foot prints. These are the ones my three year old and seven year old made. There's another craft I want to show off too but it will have to wait until my oldest gets his Christmas packages opened. Don't want to ruin the surprise.

As is our tradition, we had a dinner tonight of snack foods - hot wings, barbecue little smokies, crackers, cheeses, summer sausages, olives, chips, and several goodies left over from our holiday baking. With the new diet restrictions of the baby, I had to only eat the meats and crackers, but it was good, and it was plenty. I'm still adjusting to the restrictions, but getting along well. The baby is responding very well. I don't know how scientific it is, but I feel like he is waking up out of a fog. He used to be so quiet and lethargic - even in the womb - and now he's so expressive and talkative. His skin is clearing up and he's always happy. I don't know if it's just a coincidence that the timing worked out this way or if the allergies really were causing him to be lethargic, but I feel like he is literally waking up out of a fog.

So like I said, I tend to procrastinate. I was determined to have all my wrapping done ahead of time too, but tonight I had to sit in the bedroom wrapping for about an hour while the rest of the family played Scrabble. This is our game of choice lately. I should have gotten everyone a dictionary of their own for Christmas. Everyone fights over the one we have now and the game takes a long time. I'll have to put that on my list.

So there you have it. The stockings are not hung by the chimney with care, because we don't have a chimney. But my daughter did find a video on the internet (over an hour long) of logs burning - and you can hear the crackle of the fire too - so we hooked up the HDMI cable and played it on the television. We're going to have that up and running while we open our presents tomorrow. The plan is to get up early enough to do stockings before church, then open the rest of the presents after church. We'll see. If I'm going to make it, I'm going to have to go to bed, as it's quarter to one am now. Told you I was tired! Good night, and Merry Christmas!!

19 Years and Counting

2011-12-22T00:24:00.002-07:00

Today my daughter is 19! I celebrated by making her a rose covered zebra cake. Makes perfect sense right? Ha. There is a tutorial on how to do the roses on i am baker's website. It's a very easy pattern, and also very forgiving, which made it even easier.

I think it came out beautifully (though it would have been better if I had used a much bigger star tip). My daughter thought it was awesome though, so that's what matters most to me ;)

The inside of the cake was supposed to look like zebra stripes.

It's a pretty cool effect anyway, which I found the idea for on Pinterest. Everyone thought it was cool anyway. It's basically a marble cake, but you pour a little of one flavor into the pan, then pour a little of the next flavor right in the center of the first batter, then continue adding alternating batter flavors, each time pouring directly into the center of the last one added. It was fun. I think it would have worked better if my white cake batter hadn't been considerably thicker than my dark chocolate batter. I'll definitely try this again sometime. It was a lot of fun.

My daughter only had a couple of presents to unwrap - one from Papa and Bugga (grandma), and one small one from us. She sells Premier Designs jewelry, so we got her a manequin to us during the shows, as well as several display boards and mirrors for her sale table. I wanted her to have them for all her holiday shows, so she got them early.

So I let her unwrap one that was intended for Christmas - a gift for her and her brother (the seven year old, not the three year old holding the cup in the picture below.) When I saw these CARS themed cocoa cups and hot cocoa mix, I couldn't resist. She has a major crush on Mater ;)

She had a lot of help celebrating her birthday. Since the last birthday was for our now three year old, he was pretty sure this was his birthday too.

See? He thought the cake and candles were for him, and everyone was singing for him. She doesn't mind sharing :) She's always telling him he is her favorite.

It was a pretty fun birthday!

I do have to add a little baby update in here. When we were at his normal 5 month checkup on the 13th, we found out that he isn't gaining as much weight as we had hoped, and his skin rash has still been really bothering him. So we had some blood tests done to see if he might be allergic to something in my diet. Turns out he is. He is definitely allergic to eggs and dairy, and had somewhat higher levels indicating a problem with nuts - not nearly as bad as the eggs and dairy, but still there. I've never had a child allergic to anything, so this is new territory for me. So until I'm done nursing, I'm off eggs, dairy and nuts.

It's a small price to pay though. He's well worth it! And if it helps him get over this terrible rash, and not be so itchy, then it's definitely worth the inconvenience. I had to include this picture too. He's trying to pick things up now and uses his hands more. He's a pretty quiet, complacent baby, and doesn't try to do a whole lot, so this is a big deal for him. Sure do love this little guy!!

Occupy Your Sewing Room Progress

2011-12-11T21:35:00.001-07:00

So, we've come to the end of the Occupy Your Sewing Room event. I didn't get to spend nearly as much time sewing and crafting as I had anticipated, but having a house full of little ones is a blessing too. There will be plenty of days to spend there when I am alone... but that's a forever long way off, since the youngest of my five children is 5 months old, we homeschool, and I run a licensed home daycare. So you can imagine how my sewing time is limited. Anyway, here's what I worked on...

I ran out and bought this lovely array of blues, silver/greys, and whites to make a tree skirt...

This one to be exact. I liked the colors in the original pattern, but thought blues and icy tones would be really pretty. Guess we'll see. I'm not planning on having this done for this year. I want to try my hand at needle turn applique, so I'm getting a jump on next year's tree skirt. HA. We've never had a tree skirt, so it's not like we're missing anything by me not getting it done in a rush.

For anyone who is curious, it's from this book, which is also where I got my pattern for the "Adore" wall hanging I did earlier this month.

So far I just have some of the cutting done. I did all of this today. I made the templates with a plastic material. I'm thinking there must be some better way to do this. Seems like a person could go through an awful lot of plastic on a project of any size. I may have to look into the freezer paper method. I've seen others use it, but without googling it, I really have no idea how it works or if it would make more sense.

I also managed to get all my non-applique pieces cut out. I'm hoping to get a chance to sew what I can tomorrow. Some of it will have to wait until I have the applique in place, but I want to try to get as far as possible before I forget which piece goes where.

Earlier this week I managed to do a little more crafting in my "sewing room." I'm taking the "Occupy" theme very liberally, and including craft projects that don't require sewing too. So here is my pom pom wreath...

And a trivet made with felt and glass decorative marbles...

And the flannel board toy cabinet cover.

And then I also made a nativity set for the kids to play with on the flannel board. It was meant to be an advent calendar, and has a panel to quilt for that purpose, but I thought the kids would enjoy having some pieces to play with on the new flannel board surface. I'm thinking panels will be a great way to create some awesome flannel board pieces, since they are so colorful and detailed. I'm going to make some of my own felt pieces too, but there are fun and easy.

So there you have it. That's all I managed to complete. I had higher hopes, but I'm not unhappy with what I got done, especially given the fact that we had three new daycare kids start this week, so things were busier than usual. I still need to get a stocking for the baby done, and I hope to make the boys some new flannel pajama pants (that's kind of a tradition with me for Christmas). Other than that, I'm not going to push it. There are a million unfinished projects I should be working on, but if it's a rush and makes me stress, it defeats the purpose, right? Anyway, hope everyone else got a lot accomplished. :)

5 Months!

2011-12-09T23:32:00.001-07:00

So I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had 5 month pictures to post. Well, here they finally are. He was five months on the 1st, so I'm a bit behind, but better late than never, right?

Most of the pictures were actually taken on the second. This one above was taken on his actual five month birthday, but you can see the sort of attitude he was in. All he would do was scowl and scream. He really just wanted to be snuggled all day, or sleep, and when he wasn't doing that, he just wasn't in the mood for pictures. That's pretty unusual for him. He's a very happy-go-lucky little guy, and is usually just full of smiles.

I'm so glad I came across the idea of taking a picture each month with a sign. I can't believe how much he changes each month. I know I say that every month, but it really is amazing. He now rolls over all over the place, and can scoot a bit. He hasn't quite figured out how to get his legs under him to get up to crawl, but he's getting close. He's getting a lot more hair too, but it's hard to see since it's so blonde.

He's all full of smiles, and likes to coo and "talk" to us. He's just sure we understand him. It's so cute. He'll flap his arms and wave to me to get my attention. He's all about Mama right now. If I'm in the room, he won't look at anything else.

He's very alert and watches everything around him.

It really wasn't warm enough for him to be without pants - what with it being December in Wyoming! - but I couldn't resist getting full pictures of this outfit. As soon as the photo shoot was over we put pants back on and a blanket over him too. It's been very cold here - well below zero for awhile there. Now we're back to single digits, so it's somewhat improved.

I get a lot of this tongue sticking out at me. Can you tell I was off to the side? I had to have my daughter take the pictures because he wouldn't smile for anyone but me, and didn't like when he could see the camera, but not me. Tricky.

He sits up pretty well on his own now - but only leaning on something (although in this picture he's about to tip over).

He's still sucking on his fingers too. Sometimes all of them, sometimes just one. He has even found his thumb on a couple of occasions, but definitely still prefers the first two fingers, and almost always just sucks his left hand. The eczema is improving, but you can see in the picture it's still a pretty big problem. This week (almost 2 weeks after these pictures) it seems pretty clear. We've just been bathing him a lot and slathering him in lotion. Occasionally we use hydrocortozone cream too, but the pediatrician advised us not to use it too much, so we've tried to be careful with that. We have a doctor's appointment this coming week, so we'll see what he advises then. I've considered taking him to a dermatologist, but I'm hoping this latest clearing up will continue and we won't have to.

Time to Trim the Tree!

2011-12-06T22:26:00.001-07:00

"Trim up the tree with Christmas stuff

Like bingle balls, and whofoo fluff

Trim up the town with goowho gums and bizilbix and wums."

Thank you, Dr. Seuss for sticking this in my head. Seriously, who thinks up this stuff, then successfully makes a career out of writing stories filled with made-up words? Well, other than Shakespeare, that is...

Anyway, if you haven't guessed it by now, tonight was our night to decorate our tree. It is our tradition to find and cut our own, but we went the easy route this year and just bought one. I had visions of us trying to pack a three year old and a five month old through the knee-deep snow, and then somehow manage to drag a tree back. These excursions of ours tend to take 2-3 hours and we hike a couple of miles in the process. So I figured if ever there was a good time to take the easy way out, this was it. HA.

Of course this is a big family event, so it's all hands on deck ...

The baby wasn't sure what to make of all this excitement, but he did really pay attention and seemed to enjoy it.

There was lots of sparkly stuff and lights to look at.

Of course we had the inevitable silliness...

From kids of all ages.

And the inevitable copying of bad examples...

But the tree got decorated, and that's what's important, right?

The three year old decided to take a break in the middle of the job. He was pretending that this giant lid to our ornament box was a boat, dancing around and singing, "rock the boat baby," and then grabbed a pillow and blanket and made himself comfortable. Must be one of those house boats, which you can fall asleep on. *wink*

The kids did all the decorating. I've never been one of those people whose tree could qualify for a magazine cover. What's the fun in that. Christmas is a time for the kids to have fun, so why get all uptight over something as inconsequential as decorating a tree?

Usually Dad strings the lights, then the kids go at it. My daughter (almost 19) discretely repositions a few of the decorations after the younger boys are in bed. She moves the breakable ornaments further up the tree - out of reach of the daycare kids and our own little helpers, and "fixes" the places where eight ornaments have been hung on the same branch. :)

Wanna know a secret? I don't enjoy decorating the tree on my own. It's too much work. And when I do it, it lacks the character it gets when the kids all have their hand in it. I would much rather take pictures and record the fun.

So at our house, everybody gets to participate. Even with the breakable stuff. We have one box of very special ornaments - things that mean a lot to us, which we keep out of the little ones' reach and hang up very high, but the rest is fair game. I buy all our extra ornaments on after Christmas sales, and I don't sweat it if one gets broken here and there. (None did tonight, by the way.)

This year the seven year old was especially interested in the outdoor decorations. It was already dark when we started trimming the tree, but that didn't stop him.

Don't these look yummy? I think I paid about 25 cents per three pack of reflective candies, and it was well worth it for the enjoyment he got out of making the outdoor decorating his job. :)

And I might add, tonight is another ridiculously cold night. It is warmer than yesterday though. Right now, we're right at zero degrees, so at least we're not negative yet! It is so cold here though that we can't drive anything into the ground. So all his decorating amounted to sticking things in the snowbank.

I put up these three signs earlier this week - Peace, Joy, and Noel, all purchased at the dollar store. We still have lights to put up outside, and some lighted sidewalk ornaments which also were purchased at end of year clearance sales. I bought way too much stuff last year. I thought we would be in our house by now, and that this place would be only the daycare space, but that didn't work out. So now I have twice the amount of stuff I need. I even had purchased a fake white tree and a bunch of candy colored ornaments (including gumdrop garland) to use for the daycare. Oh well. Anyway, none of the rest of us were anxious enough to put up outdoor lights and such in the cold weather, so that will have to be done another day.

So, we all enjoyed the fun. So now I leave you with a few happy baby pictures :)

I hope you're all enjoying the season as much as we are!

Occupying my Sewing Room This Week

2011-12-05T21:33:00.001-07:00

So this week is the great event "Occupy Your Sewing Room." See the top of my sidebar for the link to the main post. My sewing room happens to be in my dining room at the moment. The real one is in my garage, but as I mentioned in my last post, we've been well below zero lately, and the garage has no heat. So yeah. Not gonna be occupying that sewing room this week. And since I run a home daycare, it's not like I can just lock myself in a sewing room for a week (or even a day) anyway. But that doesn't mean I can't participate in the spirit of the event!

I actually accomplished a whole lot more than I expected to today. For instance, the wreath above. That was a project I found on Pinterest - covering a wreath with different sized white pom poms and some glitzy ones here and there. Fun and easy. The hardest part was finding bags of only white pom poms. The only place I found them was at Michaels - which is a three hour drive for me, and no, that was not the purpose of making that drive ;) One downside I hadn't thought of was that my door and my walls are white. So I'm not quite sure where to put it so it will show up well.

Then there was this trivet, which amounted to a bag of dollar store glass beads hot glued to a circle of felt. I'm planning on gluing a piece of cardboard under it for stability, but see above for the note on the subzero temperatures in our garage...

Okay, then there's this little masterpiece, which is the only one of today's projects requiring any actual sewing... and that was just for the center seam. This is a cover for our toy sorter.

Here's the sorter without the cover. Dad and I built this back in 2005. It's great for organizing toys, but the daycare kids (and my own, ahem) think it's great fun to get six boxes out at once and dump them on my floor. Ugh. So I dreamed up a solution.

I covered a piece of plywood with felt. My husband thought up the idea of attaching springs to the back of the board to hold it safely on the organizer.

The springs reach out like so...

And attach to screws on the inside frame of the cabinet. In hindsight, it would have been better the other way around. And we may still change it, because it is challenging to reach the screws to hook the springs on.

Either way, when it's hooked on, it fits snugly in place, assuring no little people will get squished by a falling board. If you pull the cover out, it looks like this picture. To unhook it, you just pull it out and reach in to unhook the springs.

So there you have it. No, this wasn't so much sewing, but I couldn't do much of that today. I had three new daycare kids start today, and that required all of my attention, and then some. If it weren't for nap time I wouldn't get anything done. This cover will save my sanity. Within the first five minutes of their arrival, the two year old had managed to pull out and dump six boxes of sorted toys ... which then needed to be resorted lol. It was kind of a long day.

My sweet husband was such a great help. He even worked on fixing (again) the $30 futon I dragged home this summer from a yard sale.

But I'm sure it was a cinch since he had help... er... maybe not ;) This one of mine is every bit as helpful as the daycare kid I mentioned above, and just as busy. Birds of a feather. Gotta love 'em!

Look what Santa (the Secret Swap one) brought me!

2011-12-05T21:07:00.001-07:00

Okay, so this little guy was already here ... not part of the swap - ha. He's all bundled up because it's been cold here. 7 below at the moment and it's only 9 pm. This morning was 14 below when I thought to check it after 9 am, so it was probably at least 10 degrees colder than that overnight. The baby is 5 months old now. I have 5 month pictures I need to post but will do that later. For now I wanted to show you something that really warmed my heart...

I have to tell you about a little (or not so little) box that came my way filled with all sorts of wonderful stuff :D

There were 9 packages in this box, all for me! This is my gift from the Secret Santa Swap. I haven't had time to do my detective work yet, but I know the box came from California, so that will help :)

My swap partner did an excellent job picking just the right things for me.

Lots of pricey gems in this box. I've had my eye on the Doodle Stitches book for quite some time. I foresee lots of fun stitching in my future :)

Then there's this wonderful fat quarter pack of French General fabric! Holy cow - this is awesome! I'm already dreaming of quilt patterns to use this on :)

Then there were a bunch of smaller goodies, to add to the fun. There is a little notebook, a cute Thanksgiving towel, caramels, Rolos, a vanilla candle and fingernail files...

And look at this adorable bird! Gotta be the cutest Christmas bird ever!

And here he is with his friend Mr. Snowman. These both will be great in my Christmas display ... which should go up this week ... hopefully. So whoever my swap partner is, they nailed it! And wow! I never dreamed I would get so much really really good stuff. This was certainly way over the recommended spending limit. Thank you! Thank you! Now I have to get my rear end in gear and get my box shipped out. Hopefully that will happen tomorrow. I have until the 10th, but that's coming up fast.

Christmas Quilt Show Entry

2011-12-02T10:27:00.007-07:00

SewCalGal is hosting the 2011 Christmas Quilt Show, and this is my entry. It's a simple wall hanging. If you like my project, would you consider, heading over to there and voting for me on Saturday or Sunday? You can even win a prize for voting.

Actually this is serving a dual purpose. Our local quilt store's contest this month was to take this challenge fabric and make something Christmas related.

I got the idea and pattern for the word and manger from this book. The book is full of really cute Nativity related projects.

Instead of making the letters out of fabric, I decided to embroider them. I think this came out really well and I'm hoping it's cute enough to win the local contest. The prize there is a $25 store credit, but everyone gets $5 just for entering, which definitely makes it worth trying. They gave us the fat eighth of the challenge fabric, and all the rest of my fabric was from my stash, so I figure I'm coming out ahead ;)

Catching up...

2011-12-01T08:30:00.009-07:00

It's been a busy week and I've neglected posting about all our excitement, so here's a quick glimpse at what we've been up to.

At my sewing machine... The patterened fabric at the top of this picture is the new challenge fabric for this month's contest at our local quilt shop. We were given fat eights of this fabric, with the only instructions being to make something Christmas related. I pulled the three solids from my stash, and have been working away on something super cute. I'm almost done with the project, and will try to reveal it today or tomorrow. I need to get it down to the shop right away, and I also want to use it as my entry in Sew Cal Gal's Christmas Quilt Show. I only need to sew the binding on and I'll be done.

We've played lots of family games, and had a lot of silliness around here. And did you notice, I cut all the guys' hair (well, except for the baby, who hardly has any.)

I love that we can enjoy our time together and not be distracted by television or electronics. The only electronics in this house are cell phones and two laptop computers - no video games, and we limit the time we're on the computer. We don't subscribe to television service, so there isn't the tendency to sit in front of the tv every night and vegetate. We do watch an occasional movie - always together, and only a couple times a month.

We had to take the seven year old to his doctor appointment in Idaho Falls Monday (we always go on Sunday and spend the night) so we did a lot of our Christmas shopping while we were there. One thing on my list that I didn't wait and wrap was a Bumbo for the baby. I don 't know if you've seen these or not, but they're the perfect little chair to help a little one sit up before they're really able to on their own. I picked up this one at a consignment shop (that's why I had to settle for this hideous purple color) and got the chair and tray for the same amount I would have paid for just the chair. It was more than I wanted to pay, but I definitely wanted one of these, so it was worth it.

I decided to give it to him right away because he needs it now, and because he isn't really going to care what he gets on Christmas anyway.

Thanksgiving day was spent at Bugga and Papa's, watching football and eating too much :)

It was a great, relaxing day.

We made a Butterfinger pie for the dinner. I found the recipe on Pinterest and had to give it a try. It is super easy - just a package of cream cheese, a container of coolwhip, and six Butterfinger candy bars, crushed and mixed together, then poured onto a graham cracker crust. The problem was that when we mixed the goop, it didn't taste very sweet. So we cured that by adding a can of sweetened condensed milk. Don't do that. If we had been patient, we would have figured out that the Butterfinger pieces melt into the goop and make it sweet. We ended up with disgustingly sweet pie. Nobody liked it very much. So if you make it, stick with the recipe - ha.

Over the break, the seven year old build a horse corral and stable. It was pretty intricate.

It even had hay :)

Remember how the three year old picked out new boots? Well, he wears them all. the. time. He even wears them over his footed sleepers - ha.

He was so excited to get the Cars 2 movie for his birthday. We watched it the night it arrived. When we watch movies, we play them on the laptop, connected to the big screen tv (which a neighbor gave us when he moved) with an HDMI cable. I guess he liked the closer view, because he stood and watched much of the movie on the computer instead of the tv. I thought it was pretty comical.

He talked to several people who wished him happy birthday. Do you like his "hands free" phone? Here he's talking to his oldest brother, who called to wish him happy birthday from his Air Force base in California.

So it's not that we haven't been doing anything. It's just that I've failed to blog about it. Today the plan is to finish the Christmas contest project that needs to be turned in, and to catch up on laundry. Oh, and of course to enjoy some more time with the kiddos. :)

More Birthday Goodies :)

2011-11-22T16:24:00.004-07:00

Our newly 3 year old was so excited when he opened the package his Grandma sent. He yelled, "CARS!"

And notice those sweet cowboy boots? I took him to The Cowboy Shop with some of the money he was given from Grandpa and he picked out these boots.

I liked the red and brown ones they had, but he kept saying, "NO red boots!" They didn't have the red ones in his size so I had him try on these for the size, and he just kept telling me, "These mine boots!" I had him look at several, then tried to say, "How about these boots?" and showed him the red ones again. But he was very insistent that he did NOT want the red boots. So black it is :)

While we were at the Cowboy Shop, I let him ride the horse. Remember these? You hardly see these anymore. At least I hardly ever see these. He did great until I put a quarter in it. HA. Then he was screaming, "I need you! I need you!" Aah, my brave little man...

He had a much better time examining the horse from the ground. :)

I got home to find the baby with a balloon attached to his foot. He really liked it though, and it wasn't tight, so I let it stay.

The Happiest Birthday Ever :)

2011-11-21T23:07:00.018-07:00

Yesterday was the most fun! Our two year old turned three, and you've never seen a happier kid :) We had such a fun day!

His sister made him this great "buggy cake" as he called it.

Ever since his seven year old brother started collecting insects for a homeschool project, he's been thrilled with bugs. He would touch them while the seven year old would scream and run away. He even squished spiders with his bare fingers. So we knew he would love this cake.

He was so excited! It was such fun to watch him :)

We showed him the cake first thing in the morning, but made him wait until evening for his party - cake, ice cream and presents with Bugga and Papa.

See his finger? He had just tried to touch one of the plastic bugs, and then jumped back and squealed.

He was so silly! This little character is so much fun every day. He just makes me smile all the time :)

We had a special lunch based on something I saw on Pinterest. We stuck uncooked spaghetti noodles through chunks of hot dogs, then boiled them.

Here they are all ready to go into the pot.

The rest of the hot dogs were cut to make octopus bodies, then thrown into the same pot.

I think together they look like octopus and jelly fish. Whatever you want to call them, the kids had a lot of fun eating them. One of our other daycare kids shares this birthday (except that he is a year younger). He wasn't so thrilled with the lunch. He pulled every piece of spaghetti out of his hot dogs and only ate the dogs. Normally he likes pasta, but he certainly wasn't thrilled with the combination ;) When I saw this project on Pinterest, I wondered if the pasta inside the dogs would cook. It was definitely al dente, but the kids liked it. I even specifically asked the seven year old about it, and he said it was great. But then, he was eating them pretty fast and I'm not sure he even noticed the texture. Hot dogs are not my thing, so I didn't try them.

I found these cool dump truck balloons at the dollar store the other day (in the town 100 miles away). I bought them and asked that they not be aired up, then took them to our local grocery store's gift shop to get helium in them today. What a fun idea. I could have just gotten him the balloons! I bought four, and gave the extra one to the daycare kid who shares his birthday, along with a regular balloon. His dad is a Caterpillar mechanic, so it seemed especially appropriate :)

He "drove" them around (after he figured out how to get ahold of them. That was a funny sight in itself.) He was going to "ride" one, but I stopped him just in time before he sat on it and popped it.

Papa brought him a stick horse and handed it to him when they walked through the door. He was so excited.

It took a long time before we could get him to put it down and stop riding it so he could open his presents.

It was kind of hard to open presents and hold the stick horse at the same time.

He had Papa help him open a taped box. I love how the baby looks in this picture. He's really paying attention to what Papa's doing.

Of course he got all sorts of fun stuff, including this Cat loader that came with a power tool wrench. You can take the whole thing apart and reassemble it, but he just thought it was a gun.

And he got a Bronco's football helmet to match his brother's. Good thing. Now they won't have to fight over the one. This kid loves helmets :) I missed getting a picture of him playing with the Zhu Zhu pet (a toy hamster that runs around and makes noises) that Papa and Bugga brought him. He's a little bit afraid of it, so he will push the button to make it go, then run all the way across the room, jump up on the couch, hide behind someone and laugh while he watches it. It was so funny!

He was so excited in this picture because he had blown out the candles all by himself. This is the first year that he wasn't afraid of them, and did the blowing all on his own ;) But then, I guess after his Dad's bonfire earlier this month, three little candles didn't seem all that intimidating.

A little chocolate cake and Rocky Road ice cream...

He was so proud of the mess he had made. But actually this is the cleanest he's ever looked after a birthday party :) He still insisted on taking a bath though. It was such a good, fun day! Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Cabinet Bulletin Board and Another Washcloth

2011-11-19T18:14:00.006-07:00

This is the inside of my baking cabinet door. It used to have our most often used recipes taped onto it. It had gotten to be quite a mess. Some of the recipes were ones we no longer use, but they were all taped onto each other so it was impossible to easily get them down.

I liked the idea of being able to put recipes up like that, keeping them out of the way but still easy to see. So when I saw this idea on Pinterest, I knew it was one I had to do. I just had to wait until I could get to Walmart (100 miles away). This was easily the simplest Pinterest project I've done yet. All I had to do was remove what I had taped up, apply the adhesive tape to the back of the corkboard squares, and press them into place. The cork board only cost $5 and some change, and I still have two more squares. I'm thinking they may go inside my craft cabinet door for ideas or patterns I'm going to need right away.

Much better, don't you think? Now I can pin up any recipe and put it away when done. And the best part was that I was able to complete this during the time it took my husband to shave this morning. Very quick and easy. My kind of project!

I've also been bitten by the crochet bug... again. This time I'm making up some washcloths (after being inspired yet again by Pinterest.) I bought a large cone of this color combo, and should be able to make several sets of these washcloths. I did this one in the car today while we drove to the next nearest town (well the next nearest with a population over 100 anyway), which is a 40 minute drive ... or longer when you're stuck behind a snowplow spitting gravel at your brand new windshield... We decided we weren't in such a big hurry that we wanted to chance getting a chip only 24 hours after replacing the windshield. Anyway, we went to a craft fair over there, then had lunch. Once we got home my husband took the older kids over to see his parents and I stayed home so the baby and 2 year old could nap. It's been a good, lazy, and surprisingly productive Saturday. :)

Out and About with my Little Man :)

2011-11-18T22:21:00.003-07:00

The littlest man and I got to hang out today. Not that we don't get to do that every day. But today we drove 100 miles to get our windshield replaced - just the baby and I. We had an hour and a half at the repair shop to visit and play.

I almost didn't go at all. We had to leave here by 6:30, and since the temperatures have been in the teens and twenties, I went out to start the truck so it could warm up. When I stepped onto the sidewalk I got a shock. I knew we had snow, but I was surprised by how deep it was. We had roughly 6 inches and it was snowing heavily. I went back inside, checked local webcams and decided it was only right here at home, so we went ahead. I had to shovel to uncover the truck, and to get everything loaded before we could leave. The roads were only bad for the first 30 miles though, and once we got to our destination, it was in the 40's and beautiful But by the time we came home, the bad weather had spread to most of the drive - at least 3/4 of the way home we were in snow and had slick roads - snow packed in some places and black ice most of the way. I saw two separate roll-over accidents that had occurred shortly before we went by, but thankfully we were safe. Tis the season...

While I was waiting on the windshield, this is what I accomplished. Another check off the Pinterest board! I actually started this yesterday, and worked on it a bit last evening. My daughter, seven year old and I, went to a local production of The King and I, which featured several of our good friends, including the leading lady, Anna. It was very well done. I heard a rumor that they're considering doing Fiddler on the Roof or The Wizard of Oz next (I hope they do Fiddler!). I might be tempted to try out for a small, non leading roll in one of those :) Anyway, I worked on this washcloth while waiting for the play to begin, and then again during intermission. We live in a very small western town, and we're very informal here, so I wasn't breaking any social rules or anything. I put the finishing stitches in it while waiting for the windshield to be installed. It would have gone a lot faster had the baby not been playing catch with the yarn. He must have thought I was teasing him. He kept giggling and grabbing the yarn and the washcloth. We had fun together anyway :)

Organizing my Sewing Projects, Baby Talk, & Cinnamon Roll Waffles

2011-11-17T08:11:00.009-07:00

I recently decided to commit to sew on the days I have an extra early daycare arrival - about 5:45 am - yikes. Not being a morning person, I have to keep moving or I will fall asleep. So it seemed like the perfect time to get in some sewing. Problem is, my sewing room is in the garage. And it's been COLD. We're talking temperatures in the teens this week. Where did fall go? I have one sewing machine I brought into the house. Not that we have room for one in the house, but if I didn't do that, I would literally never get to sew as my presence is always required in the daycare - even when they're napping. And there's never time in the evening. So back to the point. I tried to accomplish my new goal of sewing in the morning this week and found that I was constantly having to run back out to the garage for supplies, and that I couldn't find anything I was looking for. It's been a long time since I was able to sew out there and things have just gotten mixed around enough that it's impossible to walk out and pick up what I need. So yesterday I spent some time sorting and organizing (while wearing my heavy winter coat and gloves. How many of you have to clean your sewing room dressed like an Eskimo?

Anyway, this is what I ended up with. A big crate full of individually packaged projects - you're looking at a whopping 15 of them here. 15! 15 projects I am either in the middle of or have planned enough to have all the supplies for (well, I do need to pick up a couple things - buttons, black felt, etc.) Anyway, they're all packaged in a gallon zip lock bag and labeled. They have the extras - things like elastic to finish my small ironing board cover - tucked away in the bag with them, so hopefully I won't have to run back out to the garage at dark-thirty anymore. I really ought to include a spool of thread and a bobbin while I'm at it. Hmm. Gonna have to do that.

Some of the projects are quick and small. I need to make a cover for my small ironing board. The old one is nasty. I need to finish a stocking for the new baby. I made western stockings for the whole family last year, and had just found out I was expecting again, but wasn't telling anyone yet. So I just cut out an extra for a boy and an extra for a girl so it would be the same as everyone else had. Now I just need to run the pocket down to the embroidery shop and have his name put on it and I will be able to put it together. Some of the projects aren't so small. I have the makings of six quilts in this basket, with two more in the cupboard in the sewing room. They are in various stages of completion. Some just need to be quilted and others haven't even been started. Better get moving! At least now I have a designated time and an organized space. That's half the battle done already. I don't expect to finish many quilts right away. I've got Christmas sewing to do, and most of those projects aren't even in these bags.

In other news... Good morning! We're talking :) or at least we think we are. The baby has gotten very vocal lately. Mostly it's a crackly sounding "ah ah ah" but he gets so excited when we talk back to him. I'm sure he thinks we understand what he's trying to say :)

He also likes to chew on his blankets now. He's not attached to them or anything, but he definitely likes to play with them. Mostly it consists of throwing them on the floor while he's swinging :)

Here's a picture of the caterpillar onesie I made last week on the baby. I love it. The onesie is a 6 month size and it's big on him, so it should fit for quite awhile. I bought a package of four of them, so I need three more ideas, if you have any suggestions. I've seen a lot of freezer paper stenciled ones but I just can't imagine paint would be very comfortable. I'd really rather sew something on it. I'll have to think... or maybe google or pinterest can help.

He's really good at playing with his toys now too. His eye hand coordination has greatly improved. And he's all over the place when he plays on the floor. One minute he'll be laying this way, and the next he's turned completely around with his head where his feet were. He also rolls over both from belly to back (he did that several times two days after he was born, before we even left the hospital) and now from back to belly. He used to hate being on his belly, but now he's getting more used to it.

Well, here's my latest Pinterest project. Someone posted that you can make refrigerator cinnamon rolls on the waffle iron, so I figured I would give it a shot.

So the verdict is that yes, technically you can make them on the waffle iron. There are several problems though. Number one being that they stick to the waffle iron even when you spray it. Maybe it was the kind of rolls I bought - mine had a cinnamon sugar on the end of the rolls that just burnt and stuck fast.

They do look and smell wonderful. But they taste burnt because the sugar leaks onto the griddle and burns.

Oh yeah, and they're crazy messy. Those squares in the "waffles" hold pools of sugar and when you bite into them, you either have to eat it one square at a time, or it runs. I was so busy trying to keep it from dripping off the front of the roll that I didn't even notice the icing running out the back and down my hand. So if you make these, plan on eating them like a waffle ... with a fork. But overall, I wouldn't recommend them. Yes, you can make cinnamon rolls in a waffle iron, but my question is, why would you want to? Well, I guess there is the fact that they cook pretty quick. Oh well. It was worth a couple of bucks to give it a shot. On to the next project!

Diaper Pouch

2011-11-14T10:31:00.002-07:00

Here's my latest quick project. It's a pouch just big enough for two diapers and a slim to-go pack of wipes.

Remember how I made that extra infant car seat cover for the friend whose sister was expecting a baby? Well, she is a Miche representative, so instead of cash, I asked if she could pay me in merchandise :) I've wanted one of these purses for a long time. If you aren't familiar with them, the outside (pretty part) attaches magnetically to the inside bag, which has pockets and card organizers and such. That way, you can change the shell instead of having to move all your stuff if you want your purse to match your outfit. I've never cared about that, but I love the bags, and thought I could probably make some covers of my own too ;) Gotta think like a crafter, you know. Anyway, this is a huge bag, so I knew I wanted to be able to keep things somewhat organized. When I carry this big of a bag, I don't like to carry a diaper bag too. I figured when I'm out and about, I can keep the diaper bag in the car and just have the ability to do a quick diaper change in the purse.

So I made a simple fold-over pouch. It's the perfect size for a diaper for the baby and one for the two year old (hoping to not need those much longer) and the wipes.

My daughter shared a philosophy she learned from her jewelry sales business with me. Basically it's that you can't accomplish anything in your "spare time" because it will never get done. In other words, you have to plan to do things if you really want them done. I figure this is why I don't get much sewing done. I don't have one set time to work on stuff. So I decided to remedy that. I have one daycare kid who comes about 3 days per week at 5:45. I don't normally have any other kids until 7:45. If I don't work on something specific, I get really sleepy. So I'm now using that early morning time as my sewing time. The only trick is that I have her lay down and sleep until the next kid comes, and the sewing machine is near enough that full lighting would keep her awake. I'm still working on the solution to that problem. It's pretty hard to sew in the dark. But at least I'm getting some sewing done now!!

One other thing of note. I won again! This time I won the My Memories Suite scrapbooking software. I'm looking forward to playing with it. I really don't have a clue what it will be like, but I'm excited to get to find out.

Projects! and Inspiration

2011-11-13T16:58:00.006-07:00

So I actually have been accomplishing a little something...

I finished another of the Birdie Stitches blocks. I think this was from March, though I'm considering it April's. You know, "April showers bring May flowers" and the May block is full of flowers.

I also finished the November block. This one seems a little plain to me, but I'm sure it will be fine with the rest of them. I really want to add some leaves or pumpkins or something around their feet though. Might still do that. It might help disguise the fact that I traced my pattern on crooked (I'm assuming I did anyway, as the little bird doesn't line up with the base of the turkey.)

I am especially pleased with the feather in his headband though. I put together one thread of each - red, orange and yellow, then stitched the feather. I think it gave it a really nice effect, and I'm sure I'll use that technique again.

Then there's this little project. I added a button caterpillar onto a long sleeved onesie for the baby. I think it's adorable. I saw this project somewhere online and decided to make it. I've recently gotten into using Pinterest, and it is so inspiring! I'm definitely addicted to it. But I think it runs the risk of making me think I'm being creative, while really I'm only admiring the creativity of others. So I decided to try to do at least one project from Pinterest each week. This ought to be fairly easy. There are recipes too, so in a pinch I'll just do one of those :P But the point is, I'll be creating new things I otherwise wouldn't have. I figure that's a good thing.

As for this onesie, I used a technique I've heard about but never had a chance to try. Once I picked out all my buttons and had the layout as I wanted it, I used a glue stick to fix my buttons onto the onesie. Once it was dry, it was a breeze to stitch them down.

Brothers... Sweet, sweet brothers :)

Ahh, the two year old... He gave him kisses. Then kissed him right on the lips ;) I'm sure someday when he reads this in our family year book, he'll love me for recording that!

He does love his food too. Two-fisted lunch. :) He loves apples right now. He'll eat the whole thing except for the stem.

Must have had food on the brain. He's trying to feed the baby the plastic toy food.

Sorry for the Delay, I've Been Distracted

2011-11-11T09:24:00.018-07:00

So I've been a little distracted lately...

by this :) ....
and this ....

a little of this...

Oh, and this.

The house we've been trying to move for the past year has finally arrived... er, um, half of it has anyway. The other half won't be coming. It flipped over in Nebraska. Onto it's roof. Total destruction. Yep. So much for that idea. Actually it should all be good. For one thing, the accident was caused by wind, which means it ought to be covered by the transporter's insurance. For another thing the part that was destroyed was just bedrooms and a dining room, which would be easier and cheaper to rebuild, if we choose to rebuild it. The half that came has the kitchen and both bathrooms, along with half of the living room, and a family room. It's in rough shape, but it could be used if we need to. We have to wait and see how everything goes with the insurance. We may be able to just get a replacement home, or we may choose to just pay off some debt. We'll decide when we figure out what the settlement will be.

So, in my distracted state of mind I completely forgot to post four month old pictures, which should have been taken on the first. Instead, it was more like the 9th... or 10th. I don't honestly remember.

After I got the pictures loaded on the computer, I noticed how bad the spots are where he spit up. It didn't show up in real life. I thought about retaking the pictures, but figured this is how life really is, and it deserves documenting too. Truth in blogging, eh? Here's reality for you. Sometimes my baby spits up and doesn't keep his lovely little outfits clean. Shocker, huh? :)

I have a million pictures with his hand in his mouth, or in the way so the camera can't get a picture of his face. He's really into sucking his fingers right now. Two at a time. Any two, but never the thumb.

The two year old is so sweet with his little brother. He loves him dearly and plays with him constantly - always cuddling or snuggling, or saying, "I can hold him."

He loves to tickle the baby's toes.

He likes it when the baby kicks his face.

And he's very protective.

Oh yeah. And he always wants the camera so he can take a picture.

The baby is getting really good at grabbing the toys on his overhead play set, but he rarely tries to grab anything off the table, or away from me, and he has shown no interest in table food yet, which is fine for me. Our pediatrician says the nutrition is better just from nursing rather than through table food. In other words, he isn't missing anything by eating later than my other kids have. This one is definitely a kid of his own. Not following anyone elses trends yet.

I love this little hooded outfit on him. And that he likes to sleep on us. I am enjoying the cuddly part of babyhood :) I could hold him all day. But it's always nice when someone else wants to take a turn.

He loves taking baths, and is so relaxed I'm sure he would sleep there if we let him. He loves just to lay there and soak. Sometimes when he's wide awake he will kick and splash like crazy - I about need to change after bathing him, I get so wet. But lately we've been doing night time baths, and this is what he looks like. He doesn't mind submerging his ears, and he always turns toward his left side and sucks his fingers, but never turns so far as to drown himself. Pretty smart ;)

He scoots pretty good too. But usually he just turns over instead and pushes with his feet while laying on his back. He doesn't like to be on his belly unless someone is laying there with him, talking to him and encouraging him to play.

A Big Birthday :)

2011-11-05T10:37:00.006-06:00

Last night celebrated my husband's birthday.

The seven year old made a sign...

The 18 year old made a cake...

And the bowl full of candles made a bonfire ;)

The seven year old thought Dad ought to warm his hands over the "campfire" since the cake had a camping/fishing theme.

Surprisingly he was able to blow out all the candles with one breath. His dad (Papa to us) jokingly had ahold of our fire extinguisher, which is mounted on the wall to the right, just outside of the picture (it's a daycare requirement, but it was funny!).

See all the remaining smoke? Not sure how we managed to not set off the smoke alarms.

Our daughter thought it would be funny to add a Bible verse... "And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things." Genesis 24:1. This was ironically a verse that my husband had studied a couple nights before his birthday and had joked about.

It was a fun night. My husband's parents took us to dinner, along with his sister and her family.

He opened his presents after dinner at our house, then we had cake and ice cream.

He had a little help opening the presents from the two year old. His third birthday is later this month, so it was a good trial run for him ;)

Sewing Update and Party Prep

2011-11-03T00:03:00.002-06:00

I really have been accomplishing things, I promise :) This week I've been stealing a few minutes here and there to put together four patch blocks.

So far I have around 60 of them. They are going to 4 Patches 4 Hope, which is collecting blocks for comfort quilts, and donations for the American Cancer Society.

This is one of my favorite blocks. Butterflies symbolize hope to me. I love how beautiful and delicate they are.

I've also been sewing on patches. We lead the SPARKS club at our church, and I had several little Sparkies needing patches sewn on their vests, so I brought them all home. I was just adding the bottom patch on each vest.

And here's my latest win. It's a pincushion kit made from fabric in the new Delighted line. I actually won two of these from two different blogs, but so far I have only received one. The pincushion part gets glued into the bottle cap - which I think is a fun idea. I'm going to add a magnet to the back of it so it will stick on my sewing machine.

Winning must be contagious - or maybe we're just a lucky family ;) My daughter won this blanket at an open house we went to for our insurance agency last night.

It's really nice and very heavy. It has fur lining on one side and leather on the other. Not sure if it's genuine leather or not, but it's really nice either way.

This just cracks me up. This is how I found the seven year old the other night. He has a new football helmet and jersey he wears nonstop. (I've drawn the line at letting him accompany me to the grocery store wearing it.) Anyway, he was reading.

And now I've got to run. We're working on preparations for my husband's birthday party tonight. My 18 year old daughter made the cake. She's been planning it for more than a month.

The seven year old made a banner, and helped me pick out balloons too. Should be a fun time. His parents are taking us out to dinner, along with his sister and her family, then it's back here for cake and presents.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

2011-10-29T16:32:00.004-06:00

Amy's Creative Side is hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival and I thought it would be fun to participate. I've never done it before and it sounded interesting .... plus there are a bunch of cool prizes ;)

So my quilt entry is one I made for my oldest son, after he graduated homeschool and boot camp in the same year. I gave him this on Christmas morning.

It is twin sized, and It was made by making individual circles first, filling them with batting, quilting them with an "X" then sewing them together. (The dark blue was the back side and when it got sewn together that part was folded over to the front, making the design you see. Hope that makes sense.)

My daughter stayed up with me all night on Christmas Eve so we could finish this quilt in time for Christmas morning. We finished it at 5 am if I remember correctly. I will never do that again! :)

Creativity

2011-10-28T16:05:00.004-06:00

I finally took time to do more sewing. I made this placemat (actually a couple of them, but this is the only one finished so far.) It was a Sew-Along project from Sew Mama Sew. I need to pick up some more handkerchiefs to use as napkins with these. I think they are a fun touch. There was a pattern for coordinating napkins, but I like the handkerchief idea better. I briefly considered putting a small pants pocket on the right hand side in which to put a handkerchief napkin and silverware, but decided it would take away from the design. Besides the placemat really isn't big enough for that.

Anyway, I think it came out pretty well. Eventually I'm going to make somewhere around a dozen of them, to use when we have company. I've been hoarding western fabrics for a long time, and this just seemed like the perfect project to use them on. I'm hoping to make some Christmas ones that look like peppermint candies, and maybe some Thanksgiving ones that look like turkeys - you know, just for fun... in my spare time :) Honestly I probably won't get to the turkeys this year, but it is on my "someday" list :)

There are so many great project ideas available on the internet. I find that if I don't keep them in a specific place I will completely forget about them. So I have a folder on my computer for projects I want to do "someday" (several sub-folders too) and a file for projects to make people for Christmas. The ones that I'm about to do get printed out and placed in a 3-ring binder. The ones that make it to the binder are the ones that are likely to get done. When I did the placemats I had my daughter help me figure out fabrics and placement. She's pretty good at that sort of thing and it makes it something we can do together.

So we took the page with the cutting layout on it, inserted it into the plastic cover of the binder, and she used a wet erase marker to take notes on which fabric she wanted where. I love this method. It keeps the page from getting lost or wrinkled, I can stand the notebook up so I can see the page easily, and the wet erase marker is a bonus. Looks kind of like Algebra, don't you think? I think she had more fun with this than with Algebra though... I hope so anyway :)

Oh, and before I forget again, when I listed all my things I've won, I forgot to mention a $25 gift certificate for printables from Clean Mama. They are pages for compiling a home management notebook. :)

Fun Mail :)

2011-10-26T10:53:00.006-06:00

I've had a lot of fun going to the mailbox lately. Until a month or so ago I had never won anything from blog giveaways. Since then I've won several. Here are my latest...

This is a fat quarter bundle I won from Green Fairy Quilts. The fabric is Fiona's Fancy from Riley Blake.

Before it even arrived (in fact, the very day I found out I won it) my daughter laid claim to it. I try to make each of my kids a quilt when they graduate, so I owe her one, but she was never real clear on what she wanted. In fact she told me that she didn't love the quilted look, so I figured I would wait until she did (or until she had a place with a guest room). When she saw this, she loved it. She is planning on painting her bedroom green and brown, so these fabrics fit in perfectly, and the wild pattern is just her thing. She chose the Kaleidoscope pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew, which I wanted to make anyway :)

Then there's this little win. Okay, little isn't the word for it. This is 10 yards of Waverly Home Decorating Fabric... and I got to pick which fabrics I wanted from this line.

I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't quilting fabric or I probably just would have requested more yardage of just a couple of the fabrics, but it's all good!! This fabric sells at Joann's for $19.99 yard, making this prize worth about $200!

We all thought it was comical that this fabric arrived in a gigantic box :) As soon as we brought it in the door, my 2 year old yelled, "My boat!" His seven year old brother always makes large boxes into boats, cars, airplanes and such, and so it was funny that the two year old immediately laid claim to it :)

See how much too big this box was for the fabric?

Then there's this cute Hello Kitty metal lunchbox. This is one of the things I bought with the Old Navy gift card I won from Renee's site. The rest of what I got was all baby clothes I found on the clearance racks. I put this box on the shelf I have hanging by my bathroom sink for now. (If you look to the left you can see in the mirror what the side looks like.) It is destined for my sewing room when our other house gets here. In case you're new to the blog, we are in the process of moving our doublewide trailer from North Carolina to Wyoming. We'll see if it makes it. If it does, I get a sewing room - finally! and my daughter gets a paintable bedroom she doesn't have to share with her little brothers :) It is supposed to be on the road next week :)

Punkin' Pickin'

2011-10-25T11:39:00.033-06:00

Friday we went on a homeschool field trip with our county homeschool group. We drove about 3 hours to go to the nearest local pumpkin patch - in Riverton. In Wyoming, everything is very spread out - and we had to drive around a mountain range too.

Pumpkins take about 88 frost free days in a row in order to grow. We're doing good to get half that many here. Literally. We are above 7,200 feet elevation too, so that makes a big difference. Anyway, we made the drive, and took a daycare kid with us. We had a blast :)

My daughter was obsessed with finding the perfect, round pumpkin. She picked a really nice one, but then we decided we had too many so we didn't get it as it was one of the bigger ones and would have been more expensive. After we found out how little we had spent I wished we would have gotten this one too. But then, what good are they really? By the way, this patch had millions of pumpkins. See behind her? That was maybe one-sixth of the field.

They had these oddly shaped flat red pumpkins too. We got one of them because they were so strange. They also had gourds and squash of all varieties. We brought home an acorn squash and a butternut squash to cook, along with several gourds. They had Indian corn too, but we decided against getting any of that.

Of course each kid had to pick their very own pumpkin. And since we had gone such a long way to get one, I told the seven year old he could pick any one he wanted.

He picked one that was so heavy he had to roll it to the cart.

His two year old brother tried to follow suit. :)

It was a bit of a challenge to navigate the pumpkin patch with all the little ones. We had our two year old (who is almost three) and one of our daycare kids who is one (almost two) in the pumpkin cart on the way out.

Of course they got to get out and pick their very own pumpkins too. These are more their size!

But they spent a lot of time looking :) We weren't moving very fast at all... and that was perfectly fine with me. I figured if we were going to go all that way to get pumpkins, we would take our time and enjoy it :)

After we filled our cart with pumpkins, our two year old was pretty upset. He thought that was his wagon, and tried to throw the pumpkins and gourds out of it. Aah, two year olds :) Anyway, we finally convinced him it was okay, and he got to ride on the top of the stroller we had the baby seat in. (You're really not supposed to put a kid there, but we were pretty desperate by this point.)

See our cart full? All that, and everyone through the corn maze only cost us $22! We got the school discount rate by going with the homeschool group - otherwise just our three big pumpkins would have been $18.

We all got stamps on our hands to go through the corn maze. I'm not really sure why. There wasn't anyone there to check them. But it was a highlight for the seven year old.

The corn maze was... well, an adventure. I had never been in one, and it probably would have been very relaxing and enjoyable if we had known our stroller would have made it through there fine. We'll have to remember that for next year.

The baby wasn't a problem. He rode in my baby carrier the whole time and seemed to enjoy it. I finally figured out he could face outward (which he loves) as well as toward me (which he hates), so things worked out well.

This little man was our problem. Our two year old didn't want to cooperate at all. He didn't want to walk. He wanted to swing cornstalks around and pick up ears of corn.

And try to eat them...

This is how he went through pretty much the whole maze. My daughter carried all 35 pounds of him. Oh, and note the heavy jacket. It was much warmer there than we expected. She roasted. The one year old daycare kid (in the foreground) was wonderful. He walked the entire way - running most of it - and never complained. He was so good the entire time.

Before we finished, the two year old was very tired. So was my daughter :) Not sure why he was tired though, since he was carried the whole time ;)

You should have heard the cheers when our group finally located the exit!! It ONLY took us 1.5 hours! Yes an entire hour and a half wandering around a cornfield that couldn't have been bigger than two acres! Wow. It was very well done. But we did have a lot of fun :)

After the big walk, I got the kids together for a picture. We had planned to do this and had outfits picked out for everyone. But we should have done the pictures before we went through the maze. We didn't bother changing the seven year old, and the two year old refused to take his jacket off. Oh well.

About the time we finished with the corn maze there were buses pulling in. I think there ended up being six or seven of them (not all in the picture).

Yikes. It was like a swarm of locusts.

We hurried up and finished our kid pictures.

The daycare kid wanted to be in some of them too :)

After all that, we did a little shopping at Walmart, then headed to Lander to the city park. This is the most awesome park I think I've ever been to.

It has this whole little town that has stairs up on the back side of it, and the kids can stand on the balcony of the hotel or cross a bridge to the slides.

It even has a couple of climbing walls.

There is a "tot lot" playground fenced separately for the littler kids, which has a railroad theme to it. See the horse on the fence?

That was a maze puzzle that the kids can put their fingers into and trace through the puzzle (there are channels - not just paint) and these are all around the playground area.

The fences are lined with these tiles - made with concrete, with etchings in them and then painted to look old and faded. They were all original and hand created.

There were several benches for parents to sit at, as well as this cool table that had a tile checkerboard on it. How fun is that? I want one of these for our backyard - ha.

Needless to say, the kids had an amazing time playing here.

These two - can you believe it - share the same birthday, but are a year apart. The one on the right is our two year old. The other is our daycare kid who is one. They played together so well!

Not sure whose kid this is on the left, but my two year old is in the tunnel.

It was a challenge to get the seven year old to hold still long enough to get a picture. He had a great time playing with all his friends.

The two year old was most interested in running and playing with sticks. Typical boy!

The trees were the perfect golden yellow, and the park was full of them. We enjoyed our lunch and a long time playing before deciding we HAD to load everyone back up for the long ride home.

It was a fun day! We also stopped at a ghost town on the way home, but I'll leave that for another post. This is far too long already!

So I Might Have Gotten a Little Carried Away

2011-10-19T21:23:00.000-06:00

So while I was in Colorado, I had to check out the quilt stores. You know, because there are just SO MANY of them ... and I did have a legitimate list of things I needed to pick up.

The biggest thing I needed was some fabric to use to complete my Birdie Stitches quilt. There are only two more blocks before we will have the whole thing, and I didn't know what I wanted to use for the borders around each block, but I knew I wanted it to be colorful.

This is what I ended up with. I really love these colors with the stitching. The rolled one was a bolt end which I got on discount. It's more of a lime green than it looks in the picture. I found this fabric a The Sewing Circle in Fort Collins. This is a great shop I hadn't ever been to before. They have a lot of the more trendy fabrics, and good prices.

I had to pick up a little of this while I was there too :)

At Sweetheart Quilt Shop in Loveland, I found this cute quilt label panel.

And this was a fat quarter that I just really liked. No plans for it right now.

And then there was JoAnn's. Oh dear. They had their Christmas fabrics out - and I wanted to buy some of all of it. I loved this retro print and bought enough to make pillows for the couch. It reminded me of the feeling of Christmas when I was a kid. So many tv specials had that type of art or feel to it. Gotta love nostalgia.

I thought the fabric with the strings of lights coordinated well for that project.

So I did use some self control and only bought prints that went together. I'm thinking maybe a table runner or tree skirt with this fabric. Haven't really decided yet.

And this was such a reasonable price and I loved the print. I'm sure I'll think of something to do with it.

This is going to be another car seat cover that I'm planning on making to sell. Haven't decided whether to do an etsy shop or just sell on ebay. I've sold a lot in the past on ebay - especially 5-7 years ago, but not much since then. So I'll have to figure that out.

This is another set of fabrics I picked out to do the car seat covers. We'll see how it goes.

While I was at it, I picked up a new foot for my machine, which is open and allows me a better view of the lines on paper piecing patterns. That was a real problem with my other foot. I thought I had an open foot before but it isn't with my machine so I guess I didn't. Anyway it was under $5 so it's all good. Now maybe I can get back to work on the Farmer's Wife blocks. Maybe. I don't know why I put those off so much. Must be that they are requiring more brain power than I have to spare at the moment. Actually, I think it's just that they are time consuming, and I'm a little short on time these days.

So what do you think? Too much fabric? LOL. Much more than I intended to buy, that's for sure!

Sweet Little Cousins :)

2011-10-19T07:45:00.003-06:00

I've been in Colorado this week. My oldest son needed help moving to Cheyenne, Wyoming, so I took the opportunity to run down to visit my mom, and my sister and her husband and new baby.

I ended up staying a full week. The little cousins (who are just a month apart - he was born July 1 and she came on July 31) were so much more responsive and fun this time around.

There is still a pretty good difference in size, but they're getting closer. Most of that I think is due to how sick ours has been with pneumonia and feeding issues related to that. His little cousin has done a lot of growing, but she's just now the length he was when he was born, and she still doesn't weigh as much as he did at birth. That's amazing to me. She is 2 1/2 months old! There's a pretty big difference in the size of their feet, but this isn't a great picture of that. (The seven year old took the picture).

We were trying to get a good picture of the two of them together, but they were more interested in watching tv. Love the hand holding ;)

This picture reminds me of that famous portrait of the old farm couple, where they are standing there very solemn with a pitchfork. It's called American Gothic which you can see by clicking on that title. Anyway, I think they kind of resemble that couple (although that couple was actually a father/daughter, not husband/wife ... or cousins as the case is here).

They were being pretty sweet here. Problem was, ours (the boy) is getting really good at grabbing toys, and using his hands as weapons (see his scratched up head? It's not that we don't clip his fingernails. He just scratches so roughly that he does damage. And he has very dry skin and possibly eczema, so he wants to scratch it. He did all that scratching while riding in the car, and when we got home, his poor little head was covered in blood. Scared me to death. I've been putting socks on his hands in the car since then.) So while this picture looks sweet - and they were pretty sweet for awhile - he kept trying to hit her or grab at her. He was just playin' though. He gave her lots of smiles too.

Most of our pictures look like this - arms flailing, lots of movement, etc. They almost look like they were dancing or doing choreographed moves or something. It was a fun photo shoot :)

So about the oldest. He just recently switched from the Air Force Reserve to the active duty Air Force, and was supposed to report to Warren AFB in Cheyenne. The only problem was that nobody told them he would be reporting there, so when he arrived, they weren't expecting him, and didn't have a position for him. So he had to wait over the weekend to see where he was supposed to be, and found out he will now be going to Travis AFB in California - probably this week, but we're not sure. He will do that move on his own. He bought a nice new (used) car in Colorado, which I am envious of :P and I somehow forgot to get a picture of it. It's a beautiful Mercury Milan. Anyway, he's still waiting to hear when he's supposed to go. He wanted somewhere warmer, so that will definitely be warmer. My sister and I took the kids and went up to have lunch with him in Cheyenne on Monday and it was snowing there. Brrr. Of course it's cold here at home now too, but you'd expect that since we're over 7,200 feet elevation. Winter is coming fast!

Halfway Successful & Thread I Will Never Use Again

2011-10-12T14:21:00.005-06:00

Okay, so as I said in my last post, I had big sewing plans. I only got half of them done. Oh well. There's always tomorrow (do I sound like Scarlett O'Hara? ha). Anyway, I got the patches sewn on my son's uniforms - that was a must-do. And I got the October Birdie Stitches block embroidered. We had a big power outage last evening, and today I woke up with a horrible pain in my back/shoulder - one of those pinched nerves that makes it hurt to lift your arm ... or sneeze ... ouch!

I didn't take a picture of the uniforms. They're not all that exciting, and I'm sure you all have seen patches sewn on uniforms before - lol. So here's the October block.

The thread I used for the moon was a super-glossy 100% rayon thread. I saw it in Michael's when we were in Colorado visiting my Mom and sister over Labor Day weekend and thought it was beautiful. It was more expensive than the other thread, and they only had a very limited color selection so I only bought one skein in a buttery yellow color. I'm so glad I only bought one. This stuff is a nightmare to work with. It breaks easily, tangles easily, and separates when you don't want it to. Because it is slick, the individual threads won't cling together. I almost ripped out what I had started and went with something else because this was such a pain. I will never use this thread again!

I've finished a couple different blocks since I last blogged about them. I think this is the May block. I had a lot of fun picking out the bright colors for this one. Remember, I just found this project in August, so I've been working to catch up on all the blocks. The only ones I still have to do now are March and June. I completely changed June, as it was just text and I didn't want that. You'll have to wait to see that one. I'm going to do the March block first.

Here's a closer view.

This is the April block. I edited it to include the crosses, and I took the Easter eggs off the tree and the bird. The true reason for Easter just means too much to me to cheapen it with eggs and bunnies. (I wasn't offended by the other one, just didn't think it was for me.) I'm thinking I need to add something to the bird, but I'm not sure what. I don't want to put a cross on it ... too irreverent, it seems. Maybe I will add the Christian fish symbol to the bird's chest. I haven't decided. Nothing wrong with leaving it somber as it is.

Speaking of last night's power outage, we are in the middle of a mission's conference at church, and had our meeting last night by candle light with the help of a camp lantern. It was a neat service. The message was on having Christ's vision for the world - seeing people as He sees them. It wasn't planned that way, but it worked perfectly to have the power outage as emphasis. :)

Got Some Serious Stitchin to Get Done Today

2011-10-11T09:55:00.005-06:00

Today is going to be *sew* busy ... and I mean that quite literally.

First I have to sew some stripes on my oldest's uniforms. I've got a whole pile of those to do.

Then I have to reattach the pom pom the two year old violently severed from the oldest's hat. It's missing an ear/horn too, but I think that just adds to it's character ... and the son didn't think to save it. (That happened awhile back, through no fault of the two year old.)

After that, I need to quilt this baby quilt for my niece. I will be seeing them in a couple days and hope to take it to them then ... fingers crossed.

I need to finish the moon and stars of my Birdie Stitches October block. I should be able to get this done without too much trouble since I can do that while I'm nursing.

And if I happen to get all that done, I'm going to turn these fabrics into pumpkins. Hmm. That sounds sort of like what happened in Cinderella. Minus those dangerous glass heels. Which by the way, only a man could have thought of. UGH.

Speaking of men, here are two of my favorites :D They were having a little conversation.

And a little tickling.

Well, wish me luck. Somehow I need to get all that done, finish up the laundry, pack a suitcase for me and the baby, give the baby a bath, run some errands, nurse, etc. etc. I'll let you know how it goes ;)

Saturday

2011-10-09T15:50:00.001-06:00

Early fall snow doesn't stick around long. Poor snowman. Actually there's a funny story behind this. The 7 year old had worked all morning shoveling the sidewalk and our neighbor's driveway, then building a small snowman. I was nursing the baby when he told me to come see it, so by the time I got out there, it was a little slushy. I tried to get a picture of it, but he had to "fix just one thing" and the head fell off.

See the splattered snow to the left of the body? Well, if you look right next to his hand in the picture, you will see what is in the close-up of the first picture - a little snowman face. It landed that way when the head fell off. We thought that was pretty funny.

He rebuilt it so I could get a picture of it ;) Anyway, the snow really did stay around for more than a day, it was just that there was a lot of water run-off from the roof in this snow, so it was mushier than the stuff in the back yard. Anyway, he had a good time with it ;)

Saturday we went to a yard sale that was held inside a large, heated shed. I found this diaper bag there. At least I think that was what it was intended to be. If not, oh well. That's what it is now (I should say "for now." I'm sure I will use it for other things too). I love large bags, and I love this lime green color.

I also picked up this baby sling. It's not the typical lose-the-baby-in-the-bottom-of-a-sack kind of sling. It's more like a papoose carrier.

See, It has drawstring sides and an easily adjustable, yet still secure strap. Now to see if he likes riding in a sling... I also picked up a whole pile of good baby socks - the kind that actually stay on the feet - the kind I can't seem to find in a store anymore. It was a good sale.

While my husband and I went to the yard sale (he enjoys them too ;) our boys hung out with the 20 year old. We got back to find them engrossed in Robin Hood. We don't watch a lot of movies, and literally no television, so this was a treat for them.

Saturday's mail was good too. I finally received my winnings from the We Love French Knots give away. That was the first thing I had ever won. I thought it was taking a long time to arrive (the give-away was at the end of August) and had about given up on it. But then it arrived all the way from - Australia! The package shipped directly from the sponsor, and took awhile to get to America. But now I have some new threads and trims to try out. I'm going to have to come up with a project for these. I'm seriously considering opening an etsy shop and selling some embroidery patterns, so this has gotten my creative juices flowing ;)

Awhile back I also received my second win - a $25 gift card from Renee at Living Laughing and Loving. And now, I'm *patiently* - um, er, maybe anxiously would be a better adjective - awaiting my third win - a Sullivan's Edge ruler. This winning stuff can get addictive ;)

Now here's a project my daughter completed at the end of August - a car seat cover for my niece. This is the third one of these we've made - one for us, one for the niece, and one for someone who saw mine and wanted one for her sister. My daughter made this one all on her own. She's a pretty handy seamstress ;) even if she won't admit that she likes to sew.

The car seat cover is pink on the outside, blue on the inside, both fabrics from the Dilly Dally line. Isn't the niece just the cutest bundle of pink you've ever seen? I get to go see her again this week. My 20 year old is transferring to Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is reasonably close to my mom and sister and her family in Colorado, so I'm going to help him cart all his stuff down there, and then go spend some time with them. I'm looking forward to it, and hoping we don't see any more white stuff until I get back home!

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

2011-10-07T07:58:00.006-06:00

Well, so much for fall.
Yesterday it started snowing.

We only had a little, but it was coming down pretty hard. The seven year old got out his snow boots and started looking for his snow pants. I thought that was overkill.

Apparently I was wrong.

This morning we woke to find we have 6 1/2 inches.

Our roof.

Okay. So snow boots will be used today ;)

Okay, so clearly someone needs a lesson on how to properly wear a bow tie. lol

It kind of reminds me of Mickey Mouse ears :)

That's a little better.

Why is this picture noteworthy? It's because it was taken by my two year old. His sister was working on making crescent rolls. Did I mention the two year old LOVES bread? That's an understatement. He says he is going to be a "Tuck-og-a-fer." ;)

He took this one too. Not too bad. And he didn't even rock the camera back and forth to follow the movement of the swing like his seven year old brother does ;)

Pattern Testing, Thrifted Sheets, and More Books!

2011-10-06T14:07:00.006-06:00

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been test sewing a pattern for Karen Wilson. It's a fun dinosaur themed quilt, and I figured with all my boys I could use a good dinosaur quilt!

Her directions are easy to follow and the quilt worked up quickly, despite it taking me several days to complete. It would have been fast anyway, if I could have gotten three minutes in a row to myself! HA. Not in this house :) But even with just being able to work a few minutes here and there, the pattern came along nicely.

I especially love how detailed her directions are. She includes instructions on which direction to press the seams, so nothing is left to wonder about, and it all comes together beautifully in the end. I still have to quilt and bind mine, but I wanted to let you know about the pattern now, as she has the pattern listed in her etsy shop now.

Of course what post would be complete without some kid pictures? :)

This one cracks me up. I found the 2 year old eating his cereal this morning with a fork. Dry chocolate ball cereal. It wasn't working so well, as you might guess, and nobody is quite sure where he got the fork!

Today I made my weekly pilgrimage to the local thrift shop, as always, in search of books! Most of the books that catch my attention are children and young adult books. Since we started homeschooling, I can't get enough of books (ask anyone who has helped us move - HA). Today I came home with another 20 of them or so. I haven't counted. All for $3. One of them was one I've seen recommended, but never read. The book is "Bud, Not Buddy" by Christopher Paul Curtis. As soon as I got home, I was thumbing through it to see if it would be worth reading, when these two paragraphs caught my eye. I love this description of a library. I'm now really looking forward to reading the whole book. Here's the quote...

"As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you turned the pages. Then there was the smell of the cloth that covered the brand-new books, the books that made a splitting sound when you opened them. Then I could sniff the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes off the pages in little puffs when you're reading something or looking at some pictures, a kind of hypnotizing smell. I think it's that smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library. You'll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page powder coming up really slow and easy until it starts piling up on the person's eyelashes, weighing their eyes down so much that they stay down a little longer after each blink and finally making them so heavy that they just don't come back up at all."

- from Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

I found quite a few good sheets today too - only a dollar a piece! Now what to make them into? Most will probably back other quilts or become reusable grocery bags.

Our Town

2011-10-05T16:08:00.015-06:00

You see some interesting things in our little town. Horses going down the main street, for instance.

One of the local ranches was moving their herd of horses through town today, complete with a police escort.

Oh, and did I mention that the main street is also a main highway, with lots of traffic that has to go right through the center of town? And as you can see, we've got plenty of bars - just like a good old fashioned western town. Actually the town is very old fashioned - with false fronts on most of the buildings facing main street, and most of them authentically old. Unfortunately we have a high number of old western saloons/bars. Each of the bars in the photos above are around 100 years old. (That may not be old in New England, but it's old in "wild west" time.) In fact the Cowboy Bar was started by a member of Butch Cassidy's wild bunch. There's a very interesting article on the history of the bar here. Earlier this summer, the current owners decided to re-side the building, and in the process found old metal siding, covered with local cattle brands. They are in the process of preserving those brands now, and the article tells all about it.

Now here are some scenery shots from around here taken yesterday when I took the baby to the doctor. These were all taken on a 77 mile stretch of road - some on the way up in the morning and some coming home in the evening. It's a very pleasurable drive. I never get tired of this scenery.

A storm was brewing on the way home, which made for some spectacular lighting and clouds. The pictures don't even begin to do it justice.

Tonight the weather is chilly (low 40's at the moment) and we've had rain and wind all day. They are predicting snow tonight. I'll post pictures if we get it.

A Happy Coincidence

2011-10-05T05:32:00.011-06:00

Yesterday I had to take the baby up to see his doctor again. He got cleared of the pneumonia, and we went ahead with the shots he should have had a month ago, when he was too sick. Of course there are always several stops to make in town for things that are hard to come by in our little town, so I did some shopping. As it turned out, I needed buttons to replace some on my son's SPARKS vest, and some pumpkin-colored embroidery floss, so I stopped at the quilt store ;) While I was there I happened to overhear some customers saying there was a quilt show going on in town. Well, of course I had to go! Thankfully I rarely go anywhere without my camera :)

I'm so glad I did. So many amazing, beautiful, inspiring quilts. The show was called "Quilting in the Tetons" so several of the quilts had a western/Rocky Mountain feel to them. LOVE this elk quilt. It was done by a professional. The booklet given out with quilt info in it says this is called "Bull Elk Serenade," made by Sue Rasmussen, who has taught at Quilting in the Tetons before. This is the 25th and final year for the show. They are hoping to find someone younger to continue it though. Wish I had the time...

This is another of Sue's quilts, this one called, "Grizzly Bear."

Check out the detailed quilting!

Here's a fun quilt made by Didi Salvatierra. It's called "Barnyard Babes, " and the description says, "Fun chicken blocks designed by Mary Lou Weidman; original designs for top and bottom borders by Didi. Machine quilted in chicken wire design. Chicken coops have names of their residents (less likely to eat them if they have names!). Embellished with "straw," buttons, and beads." How fun!

I have to admit this sampler quilt is not my favorite (I do really like the middle left section that looks like borders on borders - I could do a whole quilt like that), but look at the bottom row. See the woman's face?

Now isn't that a fun, clever way to sign a quilt? HA. I wouldn't use a caricature either, as I think those are really hideous, but this us such a fun idea! And the words around it remind me of some signatures I have in an old autograph album my great uncle owned. Sayings like this were a common thing back in the early 1900's, which this quilt "feels" like - depression era fabrics and patterns that would have been popular then.

A group out of Casper, Wyoming brought several quilts using the "blended techniques" taught by Marsha McClosky at Quilting in the Tetons 2008. This was one of those, done by Shelley Landon, entitled "French Garden Party."

Here's a closer look at the center.

I was really drawn in by these flowers.

This was my overall favorite of the quilt show, and the one I voted on for fan favorite. (Actually I loved the elk just as much, but didn't want to vote for one professionally made.) This one is called "Bali Wedding Star" made by Barbara Walsh from a pattern designed by Judy Niemeyer. It contains more than 100 different fabrics. Wow. I love the look of this one, and have on my to-do list a double wedding ring quilt, but that seems boring now, compared to this one. I'm definitely going to have to get this pattern and eventually make this quilt!

I don't usually care for art quilts but this one really impressed me. It was fairly small - 20x30. It's called, "Evening Light: Arches National Park" and is made by Susan Madden.

The color is created with little scraps of fabric stacked one on top of another. The quilting is spectacular as well. Beautiful!

I thought this was another beautiful quilt. I love the blues and browns - those are my go-to colors. I also loved the pattern of this quilt. It has an interesting story too. The quilt is made up of three different state stars - Wyoming, Wisconsin and Ohio. It is a wedding quilt made for a couple named Travis and Christina. Travis is from Ohio, Christina from Wisconsin, and Wyoming is where they make their home together. The quilt was made by Travis's mother and her two sisters (Nora Brant, Mary Lou Dungan, and Ellie Monroe). Turquoise is the bride's favorite color (and mine ;) ). Anyway, the back side is the interesting part...

According to the description, Travis proposed to Christina on a scrabble board :) Gotta love that. So his mom included their names and wedding info on the back in a scrabble pattern. Don't you just love that? And if you look close, you will see the date of the wedding is this upcoming Saturday! Definitely a memorable quilt. I loved this because I already have in the works (plans and fabric purchased) the idea to do a crossword quilt wall hanging with our family names on it. Too fun!

Now this one just amazes me. This is all done by hand in reverse applique by Pat Hitchcock. She has entitled it, "A Little Closer to Insanity." I think it is stunning! Reminds me of a Dear Jane. The description says, "This quilt has 196 - 4 1/2x4 1/2 inch blocks. All the blocks and borders are done by hand in reverse applique. The patterns are in a book: Dutch Treat by Judy Garden. It is a great carry along project, BUT also very time consuming. It took about a year to complete."

Isn't it just amazing? Such tiny little pieces - but I'm guessing reverse applique would actually be easier to do in this size than actual piecing. Still, ridiculously intense work!

This is called a "One Patch Wonder." There must have been a class on this one because there were three of these quilts at the show (all different color schemes) and two at the quilt store. Somehow I missed getting the number in this photo, so I don't know who made it :(

I love the graphic look to this quilt. Kind of like a kaleidoscope. The colors the quilter chose are perfect for the effect. It was made by Judy Larson.

This one reminds me of a Farmer's Wife quilt, which I am currently working on. It's even set on point with the same kind of sashing I'm planning on using. I checked the book when I was standing there to see if it was one, and it isn't, but somehow I missed getting the number, so I don't know what it is :(

This one also reminded me of the Farmer's Wife. It's actually a very cool concept. It's called "Old Maid's Puzzle." Each block in the quilt has a mate, except for the Old Maid's Puzzle block - so clever! Anyway, I'll have to see if I can find all the matches when I have time ;) (You know me and all my spare time - ha).

Anyway, I greatly enjoyed getting to go to the show. I had the baby in one hand and the camera around my neck, and in the other hand. I didn't get to take as much time as I would have liked. It would have been nice to get to read about each quilt as I walked through, but most of them I just read once I got home. I love that they gave us a booklet with all the info in it. And, I signed up for a drawing too, so hopefully I'll win that :) My luck seems to be changing (even though I don't believe in luck) I've won two other give-aways since I posted about my first win. One was a $25 gift certificate for Old Navy, and the other was a Sullivan's Edge ruler - the rotary cutting ruler that sharpens your blade as you cut!

3 Months

2011-10-02T00:13:00.005-06:00

This month has gone by so quickly, and yet it seems like the 2 month mark was so long ago. Thinking back, I realized that the 2 month pictures were taken when our little man was having his heart echo. It seems like that happened a long time ago, and yet it seems like October sure got here fast. This month has been full of medications and oxygen and tons of appointments an hour and a half away - sometimes twice a week. Lets hope this next month is a little less eventful :)

More Birdie Stitches Blocks & Another Car Seat Cover

2011-09-27T23:06:00.001-06:00

So I bet you thought with my Dad here, I probably didn't get time for any sewing, right? Well, you would be wrong. I actually had a very productive week - especially with the hand sewing.

I had started the January block for the Birdie Stitches BOM before he got here, and I managed to finish it early in the week. I used all blues and grey and one light tan for the legs, noses and arms. It is much prettier in person.

Then I did the August block, finishing it all in one day. I picked it because there wasn't too much involved in it and I wanted to be able to focus on visiting. I started and finished it all in the same day I finished the January block. We spent a lot of time sitting and visiting, so I worked on these while we visited. We also spent a lot of time playing pinochle, and I seem to have lost my touch ... if I ever had the touch - ha. Anyway, we had a great time, regardless of the score... though Grandpa ought to be able to say he had a great time, and the score was great too - I think he won nearly every hand we played!

Today I've just finished the February block. I started this one right after the August block, so I'm done in less than a week - about 4 days really, and there was quite a bit to do on this one. Now I'll have to pick my next block, and pick out all my colors so I'll be ready to keep going. But before that, I've got a lap quilt to put together. I'm pattern testing for a blog friend and can't share the specific project until she lists it for sale. I like the colors I've chosen and think I can probably get the top done this week. That's my goal anyway.

The only machine sewing I did was to put together a car seat cover like the one I made before. I was asked to make one by a friend who saw mine and wanted to give one to her sister who is due to have a baby next month. I was given free reign on what fabric to choose (that was a mixed blessing. I love to pick fabric, but I had never met her, and knew absolutely nothing about her sense of style. Hope she likes it, but then I think this was a pretty safe choice.)

This is the third car seat cover we've made. My daughter made one for my sister. Hers is made out of pink and blue Dilly Dally fabric - pink on the outside, blue on the inside - big loopy flowers. Very cute fabric. It would be cute to do a whole nursery in it. I don't know how we managed to miss getting a picture before we gave it away. Maybe I can talk my sister into sending us a picture ;)

Our Make-Up Photo Shoot

2011-09-27T10:00:00.000-06:00

Remember last week I posted pictures my daughter had taken of everyone else at the lake? These are more of the same, but this time I was the photographer and we got pictures of the baby and my daughter, who missed out on the photo shoot last week. Enjoy!

Oh, and for those who think we're raising a miracle baby, the baby is not sitting up on his own yet (he's not quite 3 months old yet). All the pictures have cleverly hidden support - me or my daughter - holding onto him :)

Helping make footprints :P

I wish I was this photogenic!