I plead the 5th

I am considering asking no, begging my sister's mother-in-law to adopt my husband and become my mother-in-law too. Because of her I acquired a lovely (to only me, apparently) set of salad spoons. Why nobody else likes them, I'll never know. And contrary to what she says, they were a gift. Oh wait ... she was the one who said they were a gift! That's all I can say about it for now and in fact, I may just invoke my 5th amendment rights.

I love them:

In One Hour

In one hour, it will be Lucy's birthday.

I imagine we would have told her at lunch today to enjoy her last day of being five.

I imagine she'd be giddy with excitement, pigtails dancing as she skipped up Nanny's walk.

In one hour, my sister will face the 6th anniversary of her only daughter's birth.

It will be the 6th time she's done it without Lucy.

No candles will be blown out by our little girl.

No wishes made.

No "Heavy, heavy hangs over..."

There will be no Lucy.

It breaks my heart.

So much time has gone on since Lucy came and left.

So many babies born.

Cousins, brothers.

But still we miss her.

We'll always miss her.

Our Ladybug.

(Megan, June 2009)

Arches

All of my life I've wanted to go to Arches National Park in Utah. Last Friday I finally made it. My dream is the Delicate Arch hike, but unfortunately I had neither my good shoes nor my inhailer. We had to take an easier hike. Next time, Delicate!

North and South Windows

My family sitting under the North Window

Looking up at the North Window from behind and below.

My daughter & husband walking towards Turret Arch

The six of us sitting under Turret Arch with North & South Windows in the background.

flower

When the Aprils of my childhood would roll around, the kids (mostly boys) in my school class would usually begin chanting:

Spring has sprung

The grass has risen

Two more months

Till we're out of prison!

I made this flower on a request and wonder why I never thought of them before. I love it and am nearly finished with a second, purple one. Yay flowers! Yay spring!

crocheting again

Yesterday I felt well enough to crochet again! Yay! So I made a shoulder bag. And! another use for remnants. My supply is getting low. I might need to go get some more.

My head still hurts some, but I think I'll survive.

lil rabbit

This afternoon I made this little bunny for my mom out of flannel,

fluff, a couple buttons, some cotton yarn and a little bit of felt.

We had an enjoyable dinner with family.

eggs

we colored eggs today in anticipation of a furry little friend coming to visit during the night.

happy easter!

simple banner tutorial

I got the idea to make this from my clever and crafty sister. She had made one, but because I didn't take a picture of hers, I just had to sort of guess how to do it. Not too complicated though.

Because I'm all about what's easy, I cut fabric squares that were 8.5 inches (so I could just use a piece of printer paper for my pattern).

Simple enough. I cut my paper into a square, folded it in half and made the triangle edges meet in the middle. For the cut, I lined up the edge of the ruler with the pattern. (did you notice I didn't cut this piece of fabric into a square first? Oops)

And then I cut the other side. My original plan was to make 16 triangle wedges in four different patterns. But in the end I made 20 because I liked another pattern so much I couldn't leave it out.

I wanted the fronts and backs to be different, so I could have options in decorating. One side is more fun (my favorite), the other more formal. I lined the center of each triangle with white cotton, hoping to keep the opposite pattern from being seen through the others. Worked on some, but not all.

Because it is unnecessary to sew all three edges, I didn't. I left the short side undone. It will be in the binding anyway.

After I finished sewing the triangles, I joined them all together using 2 packages of double fold bias tape across the tops.

It really could not have been more simple. And what a great use for my remnants!

Oh now I remember, I wasn't going to post this until I could get to the craft store for more felt to cut out letters for such phrases as, "Happy birthday" "Congratulations" "Welcome" and "No belly rubbin'!" that can be attached using small pins. Oh well.

I want to have a party.

a felt book

Because I'm pretty sure we have the most awesome pediatrician around, I made a felt book. He really is amazing. I had a whole post listing all of the wonderful things we love about him, but it didn't work right, everything kept messing up. So, because I'm on day 3 of a migraine, you'll just have to take my word for it.

I've been wanting to do something for his family for a while now. When I saw a felt book on my friend Kalleen's blog (At Second Street) I knew that was it.

After finishing the tic-tac-toe page I started with the people but didn't really like making them, so I abandoned them for a while to make a sea. I don't know what made me think of it, but I seriously love it. Behind the waves are pockets to hold fish, seaweed, clouds, etc.

In his family they have four children, 2 girls and 2 boys. They recently adopted their baby from Ethiopia.

I realize he probably isn't going to want to play with a felt book much, but I know his kids, and I figured they would like it.

love

My brother and his wife welcomed their fourth child, third daughter, in January. While at Hobby Lobby a month ago I found a sweet little iron-on that said it was for babies. I bought it and a pink onesie.


It read "loved" - perfect, I thought. Except no matter what I did I couldn't get the iron-on to transfer (and for once in my life I even followed directions!). Then I started thinking that if I were to finally get it to stick, how secure would it be? What if the little dots came off and made it look ugly, or worse - choked my sweet little niece? So I formulated another plan. I remembered one of my favorite remnants.

I went to work. (if you can call it work - it was very fun!)

I made the heart big enough to cover the indents left by the crappy iron-on which, by the way, I'm glad didn't work out because I love this a lot more than I would have loved that.

probably my favorite verse

What shall we do about poor little Tigger?

If he never eats nothing he'll never get bigger.

He doesn't like honey or haycorns or thistles

because of the taste and because of the bristles.

And all of the good things which an animal likes

have the wrong sort of swallow or too many spikes.

-- A.A. Milne

This tiny book is one we had as children.

I remember looking at during church when I was very small,

it's the story of when Eeyore lost his tail.

that sweater set

I'm mad at it. I made 87 different sweaters, it felt like that many anyway (blogged about it here). finally landed on one that worked. Yay! Right? Made booties. Made hat. Found baby upon whom to try them out for sizing. Hat too small. Booties WAY too small. Crochet those items again. Booties slightly big, but not bad. Hat, WAY too big. Arg.

Cute baby though, right? She's the daughter of a girl who used to babysit for us when our girls were small.

change, it kills me.

so i was trying some new layouts. new fonts. new colors. the best i could do was a new pattern (which i really like, by the way) from the cutest blog on the block. i like to change that from time to time, but putting my links on the right-hand side of my blog? Ack! i don't think i could cope with that.

some other strange things? i hate, hate, hate to touch metal. i can only use certain pieces of flatware because (and i kid you not) some of them hurt my hands. or my brain. or both. i really don't like going to bed at night. i suffer from huge amounts of anxiety (topped the charts when i took the profile test thing) and it increases as the sun goes down. i'm left-handed but only for writing, eating, crocheting & knitting, everything else is done with my right hand. and finally the blog changes, this entry, are only lame attempts to stall bedtime.

blah.

a picture. birdie's birthday cake. it was good.

it occurs to me

I remember I was going to share a picture of the rag blanket I made for Doug. It is similar to the ones the girls got for Christmas, only this one is a little bigger.

If you know Doug you know he's a talented musician. He plays piano, and very well. When I saw this musical note flannel at Joann's before Christmas, I knew it was for him. He loves it but unfortunately so does the cat. Tiger thinks it's her wonderful new bed.

addictions

i've recently been cultivating a new-to-me addiction;

remnants.

i may need a 12-step program.

a few gifts

For some young friends of mine:

Bubble Gum, for a little girl who reminds me a lot of my girls when they were preschoolers.

Caramel Kitty II, for my nephew's birthday (brother of the nephew who received Buster II)

Dots, a birthday gift for my adorable niece who just turned one.

13 things I love about Birdie

1. She is one of the most intelligent people I know.

2. I've never once worried about her misbehaving at school.

3. The effort I've seen her making to have good relationships with her sisters & cousins.

4. She's very musically talented.

5. Her laugh.

6. That she is open with me about more than I was at that age.

7. How hard she works at school, especially this past year.

8. She is dependable.

9. Her long, long eyelashes (though sometimes it borders jealousy for me!)

10. Like her aunts, she's a fantastic writer, her 6th grade teacher would often read her pieces to the class.

11. She is a talented artist.

12. I get to be her mom.

13. She's my kid.

Happy 13th birthday, Girlie!

Adventures in Mod Podge

Good news! Doug said he's going to put all of his junk from the other room in the garage and I can transform the crap room into my very own craft room. Ok, well in honesty I'll probably have to let the girls in every once in a while, but it will be mostly mine, and I couldn't be happier! To celebrate I went to Hobby Lobby and bought some cool letters and attempted Mod Podge for the first time in my life. How have I lived nearly 35 years and never before tried this stuff? I'm in love. Check it out:

I'm going to paint the walls orange and hang these there. I can't wait! I'm not typically a fan of words on the walls (I do have one sign that I love, but other than that, not so much) but I just couldn't resist. The letters are on sale this week for a dollar each. The paper too, though I have probably a small forests worth of scrapbook papers in my closet, unused because I really only scrapbook in theory anymore. Maybe having a room dedicated to my endless crafts (mostly crafts-in-progress *sigh*) will help. Tessa is sad because her book only has two pages (one of those I posted).

I miss having babies

chapter books

This is one of those happy/sad things for me. I have them often when Tessa starts something new and exciting. She has begun to read chapter books. And she's started with Charlotte's Web. Happy because, well, who doesn't want their kid to read? (super funny clip by Brian Regan: here) And sad because this is my baby. And she isn't much of one anymore.

But lest anyone be concerned, she began reading this book with motives that were not quite pure. It seems her teacher is reading it to the class and she, my darling, my baby, my Tessa, was merely interested in getting ahead of everyone else. Yep. That's my girl!