… and that I happen to have 5 brothers.
This is a picture of my eldest brother (in front of a big cloud off of Mount St. Helens – that's cool).
We spent a great deal of time together as kids playing Super Mario, eating chinese food (or mac and cheese if we had to cook). He's turned into a great uncle – he can sit on the floor for hours and play (he's pretty happy to have an excuse to play with the playdough and paints).
I guess I'll have to start a series here – it's a good place to begin!
wannaspell.com has to be the coolest, most fun, beautiful amazing site – check it out and stay awhile…
(the boy saw it on digg – gotta love digg!)
Tomorrow Baby Girl and I, her best friend and her best friend’s mom ( a friend of mine) are going on a day trip – just over 2 hours away. This is the first time we are going to stick two 3 year old girls together in the back seat for over 4 hours of driving. They love each other like sisters – and fight like them. This is what it’s worth around here to get the kids to Chuck E Cheese so they can run around like crazy people (and we can do some shopping).
Photo credit: Baby Girl’s portrait of Best Friend
We’ve had a few of those Kodak disposable cameras around. It’s been kind of fun to have a camera in my bag that I don’t have to worry about at all. It’s also given Baby Girl a chance to work on her photography. I quite like this pic of The Boy.
Isn’t that just the cutest name for a town? My ornaments from the ornament swap have started to arrive. Mary sent a hand painted clay ornament – so sweet! She even wrapped the ornament up with pretty paper and a ribbon. So nice!
As I’m picking up my items from my local holiday shows I’m slowly adding items to my etsy store. There’s a few new things there now…
A friend owns and operates a knitting store (and website) in Rochester, NY – Wild Wools Yarn. She has some really gorgeous yarn on her site. The cutest thing though is this –> the Wild Wooly!
She gives these Wild Wooly’s away and the tag says to make something, anything with the yarn attached and send in what you make to her site. That’s cute – but the cutest thing it says is to take the tag and tie it to some of your own unused stash and to leave it where someone else might find it and knit with it…I love that! Knitting with random found yarn – the excitement of seeing a little bundle of yarn laying somewhere that ends up being yours..I love it! Spread the knitting love!
The ReadyMade blog posted about a new color toy from Adobe today – Kuler. Just move the sliders around or look at the color combinations other people have created. Super fun for web projects – but also just great for ideas and inspiration – for fabric, paint, paper – anything!
Baby Girl has music class on Fridays. Yesterday was our last class until the middle of January. I decided about an hour before we left that we should bring the teacher a present – class is fabulous and we just love Amy! I had some felt bags still in process so I decided to make one just for her. Now – I love the little initial. I wish I had thought of this idea before I loaded everything into the craft show…
Linda and I have participated in Wyly Wares for the past 3 or 4 years. It’s a local holiday craft show to help raise funds for a small non-profit art center. I set-up our stuff today – that green stand with the books is ours and the pedastals on each side have my new felt bags and our cards. Baby Girl came with me and was really patient and helpful the whole time we were there. It’s amazing getting stuff done together. There’s lots of cute handmade stuff at Wyly – it definitely feels like the start of the season!
Yesterday I wrapped up my Holiday Swap ornaments. They turned out pretty cute – but each one is very unique. It’s funny how different the glue and glitter and string can act (not very complicated ingredients). Really, I just love anything wrapped in the celophane bag.
I packed them all up to travel around the world. The three international are missing from the picture because I shipped them out first thing. I think it took me just about as long to find 9 small boxes as it did to make the ornaments.
…now I’m using them on the bingo books!
I received my batch of mini moo cards yesterday – I love them! I picked about 30 – 40 images so I got 2 – 3 of each image with my blog and etsy store address on the back. They are so cute! I shared them with everyone at work and already have the whole digital department interested and then the rest of the crafty chicas.
I think I’m going to order another batch with Baby Girl and use them for New Year’s cards.
I think I discovered something about snow today – after 24″ it’s hard to see it getting taller. I think the weight of the new snow starts to compress the snow below. (This picture was taken at 2pm and it’s still snowing.)
My fabulous Boy is back-up and running as the photographer for our ski company’s website. It’s super fun because it makes him get out on the mountain at least twice a week (if not more) and they post his shots on the SkiCo webpage. He also got to shoot The English Beat Saturday night for the opening weekend concert. Baby Girl and I went to the show – they were fabulous!
Baby Girl and I made the Molasses Spice Cookies from the Cook’s Illustrated Holiday Baking edition. I like molasses cookies enough…but these cookies are fabulous. I followed the directions pretty closely (which I’m not always prone to do) and they came out pretty perfect.
I’m also in love with these little clear bags. I think they’re made by Wilton’s (like from Michael’s). They make everything look cute and holiday-y.
We spent Thanksgiving in Chicago with family. Baby GIrl had a great time playing with everyone. It was one of the warmest Thanksgivings. We had to wear coats, but we could play at the beach and make sand castles (a really uncommon event for late November). I don’t think I ever made sand castles as a kid so it’s been great fun with Baby Girl.
My crafty business partner in crime – Linda – took some pictures of me when we were cutting book covers. We get really thick archival chip board – which I do love – but is very hard to cut by hand. We have the advantage of having access to a sculpture studio at work. We take the book board there and cut it on the sheet metal cutter. It gets done really fast!
