weekending

I haven’t felt very inspired to pick up my camera lately, which is one of many reasons this blog has been rather quiet.  But this weekend, I decided to dust off the camera, and this is the result.  Perhaps I went a bit overboard…

This weekend was very full, and very together.

We started off the weekend with a morning of sledding and snow eating.  We’ve learned this winter that if you wake up to a world of white, you better go out and enjoy it, because it might not be so white anymore by the afternoon.

There was a bit of knitting, which of course requires my bag of notions to be raided and stitch markers to be scattered across the living room.

Jake and Adeline shared a bit of daddy/daughter Super Mario bonding time.  Adeline has developed a taste for princesses.  Disney princesses, to be more specific.  We’re trying to convince her that there are some other great princesses out there . . . so now she pretends she’s Princess Peach.

Some brew was bottled.

We learned about clouds.

Adeline has been talking about herself in the third person.

A & B were good friends these past few days, which is a relief because I’ve had it up to here with playing referee all day.  Adeline even helped put on Bea’s diaper and get her in her pajamas, which is the first time she’s helped with a diaper ever.

We spotted a cardinal eating our birdfood this morning.  It was a mama, so she wasn’t that cheerful spot of red we always hope to see, but she brightened our morning nonetheless.

As has been the trend this winter, our snow didn’t stay long, leaving us with plenty of mud to play in.  We went all went out for a walk, and before we’d even been out two minutes, Bea fell right into a puddle.  That’s what happens more often than not, actually, when we go out for walks in the mud.

Hope your weekend was full and wonderful, too.

Joining Amanda today.

 

 

all of a sudden

she went from this (writing with “the bumps”)

to this

She’s been writing us little cards and letters.  So fun!  Of course, she has her own unique spellings (though she’s pretty good at sounding words out), and there are no spaces between the words, and sometimes it’s hard to tell what a letter is supposed to be, so unless I’m watching her write it out, I usually can’t read the finished product.  But, oh how I treasure those little notes!  This is such a wonderfully exciting stage.  And this reminds me that I have yet to post part two of our letter learning.  Will try to do that soon.

Christmas gifts

Seeing as it is almost February, I forced myself to stop procrastinating and finish this post about our Christmas gifts.  This year we did a one-size-fits-all kind of thing and made these magnetic notepads.  I’ve had this idea in my head for a very long time now, so we’d been saving our scrap paper for it.  But we ended up having to buy a pack of computer paper because we didn’t have enough.

This was a really fun, easy project.  But it was a bit more time consuming than I anticipated, because somehow it slipped my mind that making 10 of something almost always takes longer than making 1.  Most of them were done on time!  We ended up using a roll of flat, self-adhesive magnet, instead of the round magnets suggested in the instructions.  We found the flat ones to be stronger, but the self-adhesive didn’t hold up the best — our own notepad came apart from the magnet after about a week.  We just used some super glue on it, and now it’s fine.

This was truly a family endeavor.  Adeline had a blast using the circle punch and putting on the stickers to make tags.  We also made some dough ornaments, and she decorated the small ones with glitter glue; then we used them to decorate the packages.

We got this idea from a Highlights High Five magazine: using an inkpad, Adeline made fingerprints all the way around the frame; then I drew a line connecting them with a green permanent marker.  They are supposed to look like Christmas lights.  We did this project with friends, which was a really good time, and it got me thinking that it would be really fun to host a crafternoon . . . if only I had a bigger house!

{this moment}

From Soulemama: {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

chalk cloth puppet theater

After a good friend of mine saw our puppet theater, she sort of commissioned me to make one for her kids.

By that time, I’d bought the book Oliver + S Little Things to Sew, and wanted to try out the doorway puppet theater project, which is a lot better constructed than my by-the-seat-of-my-pants felt theater.

The project has a very cute fabric house on the front (you can find a picture of it here) and I struggled with the choice of fabric, or whether I should leave it off entirely.  Then I had a flash of brilliance — chalk cloth!  Or perhaps it was not really so brilliant, as it made the theater sort of bulky and hard to sew.  However, I think it also stayed in place better than a fabric “house” would have, making a few less wrinkles in the end.

So anyway, now they have a fully customizable puppet theater/store/restaurant/house/whatever!  And we can’t wait to come over and play!

 

{this moment}

From Soulemama: {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

coffee & corduroy coasters

After I made myself these coasters, I promised my friend Gi I’d make her some, too.  For her birthday.  In 2010.

Well.  First I had a case of fabric-related indecision.  Finally I settled on this idea: coffee & corduroy, a play on the name of her blog.

I am a super-procrastinator when it comes to hand-stitching.  I’m not sure why, because once I finally force myself to sit down and do it, it’s never that painful, and it never takes very long.  But it’s pretty obvious that I don’t practice much, because my hand work is still atrocious.  I tell myself it looks more folky that way.  Anyway, I’m sure Gi will understand, since she is the person who pointed me to this Wendell Berry quotation:

“The body characterizes everything it touches. What it makes it traces over with the marks of its pulses and breathings, its excitements, hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. On its good work, it leaves the marks of skill, care, and love persisting through hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. And to those of us who love and honor the life of the body in this world, these marks are precious things, necessities of life.”

So, here they finally are, only one year late, the Coffee & Corduroy Coasters.  Love ya, Gi!!

weekending

This weekend was

Epiphany: pink cupcakes, blessing the house, and three Sleepover Pals (from Wee Wonderfuls) finished just in time for opening presents.

Of course, the whole weekend was spent chasing Beatrice, who kept insisting that the new dollies were hers (“My!!”), and returning the dolls to their rightful owner.  And then trying unsuccessfully to convince Bea to play with her own doll.

The amaryllis is in full bloom.

Beatrice keeps shedding her clothes and running around gleefully shouting “Nay-nee, nay-nee!” which is her way of saying “nakee,” i.e. naked.

Food was a big focus this weekend, both making it and sharing it.  We, like many people, made a few food resolutions for this year, so activity in the kitchen is picking up.  Unfortunately, the resolutions did not involve making fewer dirty dishes.  Fortunately (for me), Jake washed almost all of them this weekend.

The weather is still so unseasonably warm that we went hiking.  The trail was short and Adeline walked the whole way without complaining (until we got back to the parking lot and suddenly it was questionable whether she’d be able to make it back to the van), and Beatrice was carried the whole way, except for once we’d reached the top of the scenic overlook, when we put her on the ground for less than two minutes and she managed to fall into a patch of burrs, which got stuck all over her fleece pants.

Linking up with Amanda today.

three Christmases

Back in October, we passed a milestone of sorts.  We have been living in this home longer than we’ve ever lived in one place during our seven-and-a-half years of marriage (our old record was 2 years, 3 months).

snowman from Elsie Marley’s advent coloring book

In this place, more than in any other, I’ve let myself grow attached; I’ve dug some roots down into this community, even though I knew from the beginning that this place would likely be no more permanent than the rest have been.  I’ve literally dug roots here, planting a small perrenial flower bed, knowing full well that I won’t be here to see these plants come into their prime.  We’ve hung pictures on the wall.  For our girls, this is the only place Adeline remembers as home, and the only home Bea has ever known.

We’ve established traditions here, some that we can adapt and take with us wherever we end up, but some that revolve around this community that I will miss deeply when we’re gone.

A lot of things have been up in the air lately, with regards to staying or leaving … when … where?  Entering into our third Christmas in this home (more than we’ve ever celebrated in one place before) I was growing a bit sad, nervous, thinking it might be our last here; thinking of all leaving behind all our friends, adding more names to the list of good people we only correspond with via Christmas letter.  And always quietly praying that we will find a way to stay here – for good.

Even though I’m often anxious to be settled in “our place,” wherever that may be, it has been a bit of a relief to find out that we’ll  be staying here for a while longer than we originally thought.  That I’ll be able to tend those perennials this summer.  That we can watch the fireworks over the river again.  That we can make it to one last beer potluck and eat homemade funnel cakes during Riverboat Days.  That I can take Adeline to see The Nutcracker on her birthday one more time.  That we won’t have to say goodbye just yet to some very, very dear people.

That we will likely celebrate one more Christmas right here.  At home.

hello, 2012!