The fire stacker...

R's mama-made gift in all it's finished glory!

Notes for next Christmas...

For next year:
NOT AS MANY GIFTS for the KIDS! Seriously, one big gift and one small gift from Santa and a couple homemade gifts from me is ENOUGH! 

Make more cloth gift bags... start in July.

Have the kids help out/make more gifts.  R loved making and doing.   On the day of Christmas have him be the "elf" and hand out gifts.   He loved it and did a fabulous job.

Buy the one small gift from Santa on Black Friday.  It really had the best deals.   Buy all other purchased gifts at this time too.

Don't get the big gift until the last minute.   R will change his mind a billion times between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Hem adult Christmas jammies. Two years in a row of tripping over our pant legs sucks. 

Merry, Merry Day!

I hope you are feeling as merry and bright as we are.  A lovely day was had by all and it was so nice to spend it with Nonna and Papa B. 

Gifts for the children

I adore making gifts for my children.  It fufills both a desire to provide for my children and a creative need to work with my hands.

So, here are a few more goodies for the babes for Christmas...

Wooden tree for R and a Cell phone for S.

S's cell phone is made from an old sweater and various buttons from my stash. 
Nothing purchased for this project!

A Life Update

Well, we are mostly settled in.  The Kansas weather has been good so far!

I am enrolled in 6 hours (2 classes) for next semester.  Just today I accepted a graduate assistantship in the College of Technology (Ha! Not as much as a Luddite as I thought).  And I'm very excited to start in January. 

N is starting a new job on Monday.  This is the third job he's taken since our arrival in the Sunflower State.  He'll be part-time Monday-Thursday mornings at the local book store.  That will leave him free in afternoons and evenings to watch the children while I work and go to school.  Since we can't live on that alone, he'll still be doing handy-man jobs too. 

R will be going to the preschool at the University.  He'll be just two doors down from my old office.  I think he's excited.  I wish the opening would have been in the morning class instead of the afternoon class.  On the rare occasion he might need a nap.  That and I'll need to re-arrange S's naps to make drop off work. 

In happiest news, S is completely potty trained.  At the ripe old age of 22 months!  She's so very smart.  I know most of this is all based on the child, but you have to wonder if what they say about cloth diapered kids training early is true.  Lord knows, mine were "early" and "easy" both!  And I LOVE not having to wash diapers two days a week!

Proud mama moment!

Tulsa Birthday Party

Phasing out Plastic

So I read this article about little girls trending towards earlier and earlier puberty.  Scary stuff.  Most of the prevention list are things we already do... as much organics as possible, eat healthy, etc.  But so far we still have a lot of plastic in our lives.  Probably time to start phasing it out altogether. 

Now, how do I keep the mice out stuff???

A Wee Tiny Elven

R is convinced that Santa's helpers are called "elven".  One is an "elven" and the plural is "elvens" (where does he get this stuff???)...  So I made them a wee tiny Elven...

This is one of the smallest peg dolls.  I haven't worked with this size before and my proportions came out a bit wonky.  Overall, I like it!

Winter Wonderland Sensory Bin

Christmas Sensory Bin

Stocking Stuffer Swap

LOTS of goodies to sort and ship... almost done!

Fine Art's Final Day... late again...

Not much art going on over here... the focus has really been on playdough and all the wonderful warm weather!

Hand-me-down Coat

When we lived in Michigan we got a lot of wonderful hand-me-downs and hand-me-arounds.  This little coat was in one box.  It cleaned up pretty good after a washing, but it was missing one button and two others were about to fall off.

 Although my little lady loves pink, I liked that the coat was a sweet blue.  The green lining has pink, white and blue polka dots.  Just girly enough.

After digging into my stash of buttons, I settled on a couple vintage green ones from Nonna's stash.  Pink cotton floss for the added bit of "pinkness" and reinforced the buttons that were still holding on. 

 I love that this whole project (even the original garment) were free. It's got me thinking about another year of "nothing new". I wonder if that would be possible here where we don't have friends (yet) with children. Hmmm. Thoughts?

One-to-one Swap

For the first time, I decided to participate in a one-to-one swap.  In these swaps you craft for another mama and she crafts for you.  No theme, you just decide what to craft after getting to know her better.  So, my partner has two kids.  A six year old boy and a 3 year old girl.  I thought they would enjoy a stacker.  Lord knows my kids adore our rainbow stacker.  My partner mentioned that her kids might like a gnome home and that became my inspiration.  So here's the finished product...

It needed some greenery, so they are getting the 3 little shrubs too.  And one extra little surprise.  :)

Off to work on the fire stacker for R.  It was his "mama made" request for Christmas. 

Giving Thanks

There has been a lot of struggle this year, but there are still many things to be thankful for.

These are my two biggest "thankfulls":

Martinmas

For the last several years, I've had aspirations of celebrating Martinmas.  Yet, each year we are either "sick" or "off" on this date.  Regardless, we make lanterns (in theory, to celebrate St. Martin's kindness to Jesus and his ability to bring warmth and light to those who were previously in darkness) to take on a nighttime walk. 

Here we are making said (unused) lanterns...

Fall images

Or maybe I should call it "Indian Summer"...