Wrap up....

Alright, here we go. I'm going to get '07 wrapped up right now. In the interest of time, I'm just going to share some highlights of the holidays...
We spent Christmas with my family. Santa received special instructions to visit us there. Finn got some very nice things and luckily he did receive some much needed toys (as much as anyone really 'needs' toys, anyway). I also made him some nice new jammies which he received on Christmas Eve so that he could wear them for the next day's festivities.


He was referred to as "Peppermint Pants" pretty much the whole day. My family has a "come in your jammies" Christmas tradition, so even those who live elsewhere drive to my parents' house Christmas morning in their jammies and most of us never make it out of our jammies the whole day. Here is Peppermint Pants chilling after the excitement has died down.



I will also share a gift that Finn got from my sister....knitted fruits and vegetables! These will be an awesome addition to his (my) play kitchen once it is moved to my house from my parents'.


I taught my sister how to knit last year and over Thanksgiving I mentioned knitted produce as an awesome thing to knit for kids, but had no idea that she had jumped on it and got busy with the knitting, so I was surprised. She is the last of the four daughters in my family to learn how to knit, so we now have three active knitters in the family and one who is too busy raising six kids to even think about knitting.

And here are some magnets that I made using paper and clear gems. A few sets were xmas themed and the rest just pretty prints cut from Paper Source catalogs.







These were gifts for the women in the family. An easy project, albeit smelly due to the super strong glue I used. R kept saying that the house smelled like asparagus - I don't know about that, but it did have an odor. My only regret is that the magnets aren't as strong as I would have liked and I didn't bother to test them before I made about 50 of these suckers. I also made a couple with a photo of Finn that he gave to his grandmothers.



Alright...I think that does it. Now I can move on. Happy New Year!!!

Baby Gifts :: Part Two

Geez, I'm getting really behind with the blogging. So, I'm going to try to start off the new year by catching up.

During my last week at home before the big holiday travel week, I visited the Kline household and got to meet the newest resident, William - on his first birthday, actually. As a gift for the new baby, I decided to make a project from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, the Birthday Pillow. But instead I made it an adoption pillow commemorating the joyous day that Will officially joined his new family. Aside from early technical difficulties related to the printable cotton fabric, this was a fun and easy project. The text is printed and then embroidered in matching thread. Here is the finished result:



Will really was as happy and smiley as Annie always says he is. I think the boys will have lots of fun together in the year to come!

Baby Gifts :: Part One

I finally got to meet Amanda's newest family member, Eleni, earlier this week, which means that I can finally share what I made for her. (Eleni was darling, of course! I can never get over how small newborns are, no matter how often I see them, which is fairly often these days.)

My mom traditionally makes a quilt for all of the new babies in our family and then another family member uses leftover fabric to make what we call a grab ball for the baby. I also have one from my babyhood. As soon as I heard of Amanda making a crib skirt for Eleni's nursery, I had the idea to use those fabrics to make her a ball. Turns out, Cara had similar thoughts and happened to make a baby blanket for Amanda with those same fabrics. (Great minds, I tell ya!). So...here is my contribution to this running theme. I sure hope Amanda is not getting sick of her fabric choices!



I also made this soft block with ribbon tags, since all mothers know how much babies love tags.



As it turns out, a pattern for the ball can be found in Joelle Hoverson's recently published, Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts. She calls it a puzzle ball. It was kind of neat to see that she had this in her book, but I have to admit that I'm also a little bummed that this will likely become a more common item as a result. So much for my unique go to baby gift...

And the award goes to....

Now, I realize there is probably a lot of competition in this category, but I kind of feel like I should get the bad blogger award.
So much to say, so little time...that's my excuse.

Since I haven't taken the time to open up Finn's baby book in a while either, I'm going to note some things here as a record and hopefully others will find some enjoyment in reading about them.

1. He's a walker! He started walking one week after his first birthday and he's getting better and better every day. The first day was so much fun (for me)...every time I'd see him go I just got really excited, because it was happening so fast.

2. He finally has his third tooth, top left (I don't know tooth names). It made it's appearance last Monday, Dec. 10th. And I think that teething period explains some occasional unwelcome chomping he had been doing when nursing. Which brings me to...

3. We've made it to the one year mark and still nursing. I did let him try some cow's milk, and he drank about an ounce, but in place of nursing...he's not interested. I tried that once and he cried his eyes out. I honestly don't know what the weaning approach is going to be, or when it will be. I can certainly think of personal reasons to stop, but as far as his health it's still a good thing so we're gonna keep going for now.

4. Finn recently had his first little accident that led to a cracked lip and tiny bit of blood. Just before bedtime, R set him down on the floor and he sort of threw his head forward to the ground and managed to hit his mouth on the metal railing on the floor for our pocket doors. He cried. He got over it.

5. We've also made it to the one year mark on cloth diapers and homemade food. I have yet to buy a disposable diaper (yay!), although there was a time or two when forgotten laundry almost had me running to the store. And there were times when the thought of just going to buy a jar of baby food came up, but that hasn't happened and now Finn is mostly eating with the big kids (that's R and I). I do buy baby cereal, so don't think I'm a total nutcase.

6. He finally says Mama with some definite meaning to it. It's nice. I'm going to enjoy it now because I'm sure the days of being nagged with it are not far off. Aside from Dada, I don't think he says much else. I think he's trying to say kittykat, but it sounds like di-da which is very much like dada.

Aside from baby, I've had a lot of projects going on and I do hope to share them here soon. That's the idea anyway. My last knitting project was a sweater for Finn that he got for his birthday. He has not been interested at all in posing for a photo in the sweater, so I'll share this one from the party.



Please note the big thumbs up that Finn is giving the sweater. And I do believe he was saying, "Oooooooh!!!!"

Happy Birthday, Baby!

Today my baby turns one. A year ago I had this prescious little bundle...



...and now I have a curious, brown-eyed, trouble-making, armful of cuteness.


We had a birthday party for him over the weekend at my parents' house. It was a bird theme - I made a birdhouse cake and little bird's nest cupcakes.





The cake was...well, troublesome. In hindsight, I should have ditched the cream cheese frosting (it was a carrot cake) for something more solid, and I should have chosen a light color for the birdhouse. It was supposed to be burgundy and after many rounds of adding coloring, I finally gave in to what was a pinkish house because it was taking waaaay too long. (Enter guilt for making my son's first birthday cake pink.) I think the bird's nests, however, were absolutely adorable. The whole thing probably would have been a failure if it weren't for the help of my sister who has been doing her kids' birthday cakes for 13 years now.

Finn absolutely enjoyed his cupcake, including the little nest bits.


He ate every bit that wasn't lost in his highchair.


I also got these warbling bird whistles as favors for the kids at the party. I just loved these when I was little.



And here is the birthday garlard that I made:


A crappy picture...I know. If I get a chance I'll do some more in a follow-up. Anyway, this is something I will use over and over again. I can't take credit for the idea - I saw it here at Mahar Drygoods some time ago and have been planning to make one ever since. I just added the birds to the ends for this year. I think the supplies cost me less than $6, so definitely worth it and fun to make.

My, how time flies...

Since this blog hasn't existed for even a year, there are some big things that were never shared here. Today, I'm going to fill a small void.

This was me last year at this time:



Well...the photo was taken by my wonderful husband on October 29th of '06. But on today's date (November 20th) last year I was 40 weeks pregnant and waiting. Part of me doesn't even remember what it was like being pregnant. If I try to remember, I can recall all the little things, but overall it was pretty much just like being...not pregnant. Now, the being a parent and not being a parent...those are two very different lives, but that's another topic. As it turned out I was to wait another week before I would begin the transition from pregnant to not pregnant and non-parent to parent.

Craft Event Alert

If you're looking for something to do this weekend, check out the 4th Annual Handmade Arcade, taking place at Construction Junction in Point Breeze. The event features the crafty goods of some of our area's most creative minds. If you've never been to the arcade before, it's a fun place to find unique gifts as well as inspiration for your own projects.

ETA: Since many of my readers are knitters, perhaps I should highlight that Stacey from Knit One will be doing a yarn dyeing demo on Saturday at 1:30. Check the site for a full schedule of crafty demos.