Snowy Sunday

 

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!

Only for a season…..

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.

 

Handknit baby gifts

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.

A few things I’ve been working on…..

Well, it’s been a month since I posted last but with the new baby and adjusting to life with two kiddos it’s been a bit busy. Hopefully I will be able to blog a bit more now but my gallbladder acted up again this weekend so we’ll see. I did finish those coasters I was talking about a couple of posts ago. I traced a leaf that I found outside onto cardstock and cut it out to use as a pattern. I then pinned it to two pieces of felt in contrasting colors and cut them out using the cardstock leaf as a template. I glued them together with fabric glue and now we have fall coasters. I have wanted to get some done since last year so I was very excited about them. It’s not the best photo but I don’t feel like taking another one so this is what you get.

I also finished the cradle bumpers here.

Jim made this cradle for me for the Christmas before we had Henry. I didn’t get the bedding done for Henry. I think we just folded up some blankets for him to sleep on and did the same thing for bumpers but for Jack we now have bedding. Too bad he doesn’t like to sleep in it. Hopefully we’ll get there. It doesn’t matter how out he is, withing ten minutes of laying him down, he’ll be awake and then be quiet as soon as we get him into bed with us. I would let him cry but he’ll wake up Henry so I am working on getting him to sleep by himself for naps and eventually….hopefully….I’ll be able to sleep without a baby on or beside me again.

After Jack was born, I realized that all of the “newborn” hats were way too big so I quick knit him up a hat that would fit. Henry got jealous so I had to knit him one too, and Jim has been begging me for a hat for a couple of months now so they all have matching hats. Jim’s has stripes because I was afraid I was going to run out of yarn. I think I would have been ok but I like the stripes so I’m glad I decided to put them in.

Here’s a picture of my boys modeling their stocking caps.

It’s a boy!

Well, baby #2 decided to come early by about 19 days. I wasn’t quite prepared but that’s ok. His name is Jack Abraham and we are doing great! Tired but great. He was born yesterday, October 10 and weighed in at 6lb, 15oz and 20 inches. Here’s a picture of Jack and one of him and his big brother, Henry.

Baby gifts

Here are some baby gifts I recently made.  This little bonnet and booties I made for a new little baby at church, Hazel.

The bonnet was really a lot easier to make than I thought.  I found the button’s at an antique store (who knew that you couldn’t find nice little brown buttons at a craft store?).  The patterns were more from Erika Knight.  I love her stuff because it is so simple yet elegant.

This I made for my cousin.  She just had her first baby, Scarlett.  I call it a nursing blanket.  Someone gave me something similar when Henry was almost a year old so I really didn’t get to take much advantage of it (besides the fact that it wasn’t the most attractive thing in the world.  I plan on making myself a new one for this baby.  It snaps around your neck so you don’t have to try to hold the blanket under your chin while nursing and the baby can’t pull it off of you as easily when he/she gets to that wiggly I want to look around while I eat stage.

Now I am working on finishing the bumper for the cradle (the bumper I started when Henry was about 6 months old and almost out of the cradle) and some fall leaf coasters to keep marks off my furniture.  Three weeks to go until this little kiddo is due so it could be any time.

Sweater for our October baby

Ok, so I think I figured it out. It turned out a bit stiffer than I would have liked but by the time I realized it may turn out this way, I was over half-way done and didn’t feel like ripping it out. I got the pattern from a book by Erica Knight….I think it was from “Simple Knits for Cherished Babies.” I altered it a bit in that it was actually short sleeved instead of long sleeved and it tied with a ribbon instead of buttons. I figure with the baby being born in the fall, short sleeved wasn’t practical and if our baby is a boy I really can’t see myself dressing him in ribbons. My husband would kill me.

So, here I am…….

At the prodding of my husband for the last several months, I am finally starting a blog. I have been crazily canning, cooking, sewing, knitting, and taking care of my son and my niece and nephew an he wants me to keep track of the things that I do so I can see what I have done and not get overwhelmed with what I have to do. I don’t really think that what I have to offer is that interesting and I am definitely not a writer but we’ll see how it goes. I enjoy reading other peoples blogs, especially anything that has to do with any sort of crafting or cooking so I guess I might as well contribute. Right now, Jim is at a meeting and Henry (our 20 month son) is snuggly sleeping in his bed. It’s nicely pouring outside, the only thing wrong is I can’t see it because it’s dark but I can hear it which is lovely. I love this time of year when the weather starts to get cold. It makes me want to snuggle up on the couch with a cup of something warm and make something. I just finished doing the dishes and working with our puppy, Zoey, when I started to have some of those lovely Braxton hicks so I decided that I should sit down and take a break. I already had a scare with early labor this week and I certainly don’t need another one. I still have 4 1/2 weeks to go until baby #2 is due. Technically, if the baby comes in a week and a half, I’m fine but it has to wait at least until then. Otherwise I have to go to the hospital and not the birthing center and I really am not a huge fan of hospitals. They have their place, I just don’t like to be there myself. No, we don’t know what we are having. It’s a baby. I like to be surprised. It gives me something to push for is what I figure. I was going to show a picture of the sweater I recently finished for the little October baby but I can’t figure out how to make it work so I am going to have to wait for Jim to help me.   What can I say, I am not super computer savvy.