Nutmeg To Needles

So Saturday was the first day we have been able to go to garage sales since Jim’s ankle surgery a little over a month ago and it was actually a good day. Sometimes you go and you find nothing but this time we spent about $12 and got some really great stuff. I was so excited about it I took pictures to post and then forgot and was just going through my camera and remembered.I found a tree skirt for 50 cents. Can you believe it? I love the country-ish/homemadeness of it. There is a little button that slips through a ribbon on the opposite side to connect it around the tree trunk.

We always try to give some people homemade cookies and other goodies for which I picked up the tins but I might have to keep the one on the left for myself.

We were looking for some plain shiny red balls in the after Christmas sales this year but all we could find were the frosted ones. For a buck, I picked up a box of 12, 3 of which are pictured on the Christmas plate to add to my collection of Christmas dishes.

Another dish, this one for my teacup collection. This I think was my favorite find of the day. I love the colors and the picture on it.

We also picked up the mini-loaf pan for 50 cents. It makes 6 small loaves and I thought Henry would have fun making little loaves of zucchini or banana bread. I made the “mistake” of letting him help me make pumpkin pie (which he called crust pie) last week and now any time he hears me make a noise in the kitchen, he comes running to “help”. Cute when it’s wanted but when I’m just feeding the dog and he doesn’t believe me or I’m trying to make dinner fast, it can come with a bit of a fit from the boy.

And last but not least, we found an older gentleman who was selling these wooden toys that he made. (Pardon the crappy pictures). These are by far not the best that he had, however they are the operable ones that we could let Henry play with and not worry about him breaking off any of the detailing. He had some really cool trains all detailed out with “logs” on the trailers and detailed semi-trucks and old style cars. He also had a seal that you would pull and when he moved a ball set on a peg that went down into his nose would bounce up and down.

A guy a couple of doors down also had some woodwork out however his was a bit more detailed and not stuff you would buy for your kids. Amazing tractors and cranes with working parts but the prices were huge (understandably with the amount of time that had to go into them) and they were things that you would buy to set up on a shelf, not to play with.

Afterwards we came home and Jack slept while I finished putting in my garden and Jim and Henry went back into town to watch the soap box derby. All in all, it was a very good Saturday!

So here is another thing I did back in March. I had orginally bought this craft box at Michael’s to be a box to hold paper dolls for my niece, Gentry for Christmas. The dolls were WAY smaller than I had anticipated so I had to get a smaller box for them, thus I was left with this one to hold for that project that just needed a wooden box. That came about 3 months later when I decided to make a Barbie bed for Gentry’s birthday. I used fabric I had bought at a second-hand store for seventy-nine cents to make a quilt and matching pillows. Well, once I got going I couldn’t stop and before you knew it I had bolster pillows made from some of my quilting scraps, a sheet made from some fabric samples the interior design firm in Jim’s office had given me, mattress made from those same samples and I decided to pull out the box to use as a bed frame. I roped Jim into cutting out a couple of magazine pictures to glue into the lid so it looks like pictures hanging on the wall and walla…..a bed in a box.

A 1 hour project turned into 2 1/2 hours but it was fun.  Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t have any girls….

On another note I have new favorite laundry detergent……that I made myself. I have been trying to save money and at the same time do things more naturally/organically and I found this recipe on the internet. I must admit, I was skeptical but it was so cheap to make I figured I should give it a try. I splurged a bit and bought a $2 bar of 99% natural rosemary mint soap instead of using the 33 cent bar of Ivory that the recipe called for. I have used it this week to wash our laundry and it works great. My clothes feel and smell clean.  It has kind of a weird consistancy….my sister was over yesterday and she just kept sticking her fingers in it. I was trying to figure out what she was doing and then I realized she was trying to figure out what it felt like and I told her it was frog eggs and she agreed. (We used to go out and catch frogs in our pond and take their eggs and put them in buckets of water so we could see the tadpoles when they hatched.) Don’t let that turn you off of it…..it just feels like them doesn’t look like them. It works great and I have 110-ish loads of laundry detergent for three or four dollars as opposed to the twelve something I usually spend to do the same amount.

Keeping up with this blog it turns out is not my forte. I think about posting often but it’s always for “after I finish folding the clothes” or “after I get this diaper changed”, etc. Obviously that never happens. It’s been a busy couple of months around here. I did get the sweater I was talking about on my last post done but no pics because I finished it at the baby shower. Cut that one close! I put on a baby shower for my sister and her new baby boy and these are the invites that I made.

I cut a triangle out of cardstock, folded it into a diaper shape and snipped the corners off for the leg holes. Then I punched two holes in one fold of the diaper and inserted a diaper pin. The invitation is printed on paper and glued to the inside. They were super easy and I really like the way they turned out.

We have been doing a bit of gardening around here too. Henry and I planted peas a month or so ago (only 4 plants made an appearance so I think the birds liked them. I have since replanted.)

I had another baby shower to attend in May for my sister-in-law and I actually finished this gift in time. The booties are the Classic Cashmere Booties (not made in cashmere) and the hat is the Baby’s Beanie Hat both from my standby baby gift book, Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight. The butterfly is from a hand sewing pattern purchased from Hilary at Wee Wonderfuls (they changed wordpress and I can’t figure out how to add a link but she’s one of the blogs on my sidebar).

Today is nasty and rainy and my son is stir crazy so in between loads of laundry, he and I did a bit of crafting. He is really into David when we read him his Bible so we made masks for him to be a lion, the sheep that the lion is going to eat, and David when he fights of the lion.

He wanted to make and ark and Noah but I didn’t have it in me so we improvised. We had some stickers that Henry got for Christmas from his cousins in France so we made and ark and I let him put the animal stickers all over it. He is super fascinated with animals right now and loves the Planet Earth series, which I don’t feel quite so bad letting him watch since it’s educational. He was going to get glue everywhere if he tried to play with the masks so I deterred him with an “animal movie”. He clutched his Noah picture and took it with him to the couch.

His request was the episode where the lions kill the elephant. Should I be worried that my son is morbid? I guess he’s just a boy! I gotta go fold clothes. Boys go through so many clothes and I know this is only the beginning. I remember the mud caked jeans that my brothers used to bring in……uggh!

So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. It’s been pretty busy around here. I have been watching my sister’s kids 2-3 days a week and then we have had nasty colds and stomach bugs come through…..I am so glad that spring is finally here…..or is it? It’s so stinkin’ damp and cold outside right now it doesn’t feel like spring at all. But there are daffodils in the yard and the trees across the street are starting to bud so it must be coming soon. Hopefully with some time outside, people will start to get healthy and stay that way. Even with the business, I have managed to get a few things accomplished besides laundry, dishes, and taking care of kids. Not as much as I would like but a few things. Right now I’m pushing on a sweater to get done by next weekend for a baby shower. We’ll see if it happens. Here are the things I recently finished.

A monkey for Henry’s birthday. I made one like this for Henry’s cousin, William, for Christmas and both of them have been huge hits. William’s came with a cape since he is very into super heroes right now. This pattern came from a book I checked out at the library called Knitted Toys by Fiona McTague.

A hat and bear for the baby of a friend of Jim’s from college. Jeremy loves orange and their wedding was actually orange and hot pink since his wife likes pink. It sounds awful but it actually worked out really well. So anyhoo, since they had a boy, we thought we would send them something orange. Both patterns are from Simple Knits for Cherished Baby by Erika. Knight

And these are some desperately needed kitchen towels that I embroidered. All of our towels but two we have had since our wedding (3 1/2 yrs ago) and between everyday use and our dog deciding they were chew toys, our supply had either hit the rag bag or needed to. I freehanded the embroidery on these and decided to go with a theme….as you can see rather than all the same thing.

Well, I had good intentions for this evening.  I have mostly been finishing up some IOU Christmas presents as of late, none of which have I photographed so far.  Jim is gone at Bible study and I had planned to actually be able to get something done craftwise.  I have several projects in the works both physically and swimming in my head to get done.  Henry didn’t take much of a nap and was up at 6:30am so I expected him to crash and Jack is usually pretty happy in the evenings…..Not today!  Instead I have had to put Henry to bed twice.  He ended up getting up after the first time because I went to help him find the pa (pacifier) he was yelling that he had lost only to find his mouth dripping blood.  He split his lips on the windowsill at my grandma’s house today and somehow he must have opened the wounds back up in his messing around when he was supposed to be sleeping.  So that was fun.  I got him all cleaned up and made sure we were ok there but he’s been in bed again for another 40 minutes or so and I can still hear him talking in there and now Jack is fussy….Oh the joys!  The projects will have to wait!

We celebrated Henry’s 2nd Birthday on Sunday with pizza and cake.  He liked when we sang “Happy Birthday” and even joined in with Jim & I.  Jim made him a monkey cake but I am not going to show it because the cookie sheet he made it on is one of those cookie sheets my aunt likes to call “the one you’ve had too long to part with even though you know you should”.  It’s nasty looking and embarrassing.  But here is Henry enjoying the cake:

You can kind of see the corner of the cookie sheet there…..pretend you don’t.    He was sick on his birthday so we kept it pretty low key but he loved it anyhow.  It doesn’t take much when they are this age.  We really didn’t get him much for his birthday since we just had Christmas and all but the hit was definitely “Mr Brown Can Moo Can You?” by Dr Suess.

And so he doesn’t feel left out,  here is a picture of my other son being indecent.  I hope he doesn’t make a habit of this behavior in later years.

Christmas is coming and I have so much to do.  I am feeling tons better from my surgery though still sore and a bit slow in the AM.  I guess since I am only 5 days out I’m doing really well.  We have been extremely blessed to have family and friends offer meals and to have had two meals in the freezer leftover from an extra large soup I made and a dinner someone brought to me post-baby that I couldn’t eat because of the gallbladder (which I now was able to eat).  I haven’t felt much up to cooking yet and it’s very nice to not have to worry about it.  Today I ventured out of the house to my Grandma’s to let Henry play with his aunt and uncles (my youngest sibling is the same age as Henry) so I could just sit back with Jack and knit Christmas presents.  It was nice.  We just sent our Christmas package off to Jim’s sister’s family in France which feels like a huge load off my shoulders.  Now I am just (ya, just) working on getting out Christmas cards, finishing up a hat for my little sister, making some paper dolls and a ballet bag for my niece, a gift for my in-laws (which may or may not happen before Christmas, they may end up with an IOU),  a hat and slippers for my little bro,  a gift for my husbands bro and his wife, cookies, and I would like to actually make something for my sons…..we’ll see what I get to.  Here’s the pic we took last night to put in with our Christmas cards.

Aren’t they precious?  Which reminds me, I need to order those now.  The Costco website was too slow last night and wouldn’t let us order them.   I better get going!

This is what we had this morning when Jim and Henry went to church. It was just starting to snow. It’s been lightly snowing now for about two hours but there really isn’t much more than this on the ground. It’s so pretty. I wish I could take Henry out to play in it but I ended up going in for a rushed gallbladder removal on Thursday. The recovery honestly hasn’t been as bad as I expected but I’m still sore at the incision sites and a bit slow getting moving in the morning so I opted to stay home from church today.

This is Mee Mow:

As you can see, the kitty was begging me with her eyes to let her in. I didn’t buckle. I don’t like cat hair or other things cats leave in my house and I don’t do litter boxes so my cats are outside cats. The only reason we really have cats is to take care of the mice and field rats but the two we have are super cute and great kid cats. Great kitties to warm the hearts of those non-cat people like myself.

Jack and I are home with a warm fire and I am drinking a cup of cocoa in my favorite Christmas cup (with a saucer). I have recently decided that I love cups with matching saucers….unique cups with matching saucers. I started a Christmas dish collection last year and I have two cups with saucers that I love and several other favorite cups, plates and bowls as well but I think I may start to get some everyday cups with saucers as I come across them in thrift stores and at garage sales. There is just something cozy about a cup of something warm with it’s own plate to put it on. I don’t know, I’m weird. Well, I am going to go work on Christmas cards. With surgery and being sick, I have gotten behind on quite a few things I wanted to have done by now.  We were supposed to go out towards the mountains with my sister and her hubby to get a tree today but we may end up just going to the store to get one.  It depends on the roads.  I want to get it up today though since Christmas is only two weeks away.  Aaahhh!  I have so much to do!

Some days I feel like all I do is clean up bodily fluids.  I am potty training Henry which makes for tons more laundry(but less in the end I hope).  Henry and Jack both have colds so I am wiping snotty noses all day.  I, of course, have to change Jack’s diaper and wipe up his spit up and then take Zoey, our dog out to do her business.  Jack wet our bed last night so I am washing our sheets….again….I just did it yesterday.  To top it all off, Henry was sick last night and I am now washing all of his bedding and his coat, scarf, and hat from last nights vomiting episodes.  These are the days when I remind myself that this will only be for a season and the season really will go too fast and I should spend my time enjoying them being little no matter how dependent they are  rather than wishing it were over.

This is a great picture that my brother, Johnny took last winter of the woods at my parents house in one of the snowfalls we had last year.  Snow doesn’t happen a ton here so it’s always exciting when we get it.  It sucks when you have to drive in it because it’s usually sloppy but it is so beautiful.   My parents have great property with woods that we had free reign of when we were kids…..and the kids that are still home are still getting to enjoy it.   I am so looking forward to snow this year.  I really hope we get a good snowfall for Henry to play in.  Last year he wasn’t old enough to like it.  He  was fascinated with it through the window or when we were holding him but he screamed when we set him down in it.  I hope he is old enough to love it this year.

Here are some gifts that people made for baby Jack.  First a great sweater made by my mother-in-law.

A giant elephant made by my sister-in-law and a cuddly teddy bear made by one of my piano student’s aunts.

and an adorable hat made by the same piano students mom.