Grass stained knees

Ready to countdown....

Tomorrow is December 1st. We are poised and ready..... Christmas season here we come!!

I was inspired by the knitted hats and mittens advent calendar in the Garnet Hill catalog this year....

Since my knitting skills are in their infancy, I thought it would be more successful if I crafted ours with felt. I also used yarn, embroidery thread and jingle bells. The jingle bells were a late addition and one that I think makes it even more fantastic. Ours is a bit less colorful, there isn't exactly a rainbow of fruit flavors available in felt, but certainly more meaningful because mama made it herself! I'm incredibly pleased with the end result, I'm even more proud that here it stands hung and ready to go by Dec. 1st. It is stocked, each day containing a description of a holiday activity that will help our family count down the days and prepare our hearts all month long. Each morning our festive activity for the day will be revealed, I'm so excited to do so many of them, it is going to take a lot of restraint to not skip ahead to my favorites!

Here is a sneak preview of some of the things we will be doing from now until Christmas eve. I don't know about you but just reading this list puts me in the spirit.

Little Helpers?

Just recently Caleb has turned into a "helper". It is truly amusing to watch a little person get so excited about the prospect of doing chores. He hears the dishwasher open and... BAM, there he is popping out of nowhere, so eager to help unload. If he catches you trying to fold laundry he's right there by your side ready to "fold", unfortunately he has a tendency to work on the pile that has already been neatly stacked. My least favorite is when I am busy with a bucket of soapy water trying to do baseboards or the kitchen floor. Before you know it his little hand has plunged into the bucket with a kitchen washcloth, the kind for wiping yogurt faces after lunch. His favorite choice is to wipe with a wet rag, the problem is he has no idea how to wring it out, so he proceeds to make giant puddles all over the floor.

On the bright side, this brand of helpfulness has positively effected household productivity because once you begin a task it feels like a race against the clock. It also requires housework to be completed like a spy, quiet as a mouse for fear you will be discovered. Quickly, and stealthily finish your task before he finds you out, because once he knows what you are up to, it turns into a relay race. Quick accept the pass and put it away so you are ready for the next handful before something gets dropped and broken.

Handmade

See that stack? I have in mind a gift for one very lucky person and some of this fabric just might look familiar come Christmas.

See that mound of clay? A by-product of the ceramics hand-building class I'm currently taking. It is very likely that many more of you might be receiving a gift waiting to reveal itself from this exact mound of soft goodness.

You see, I have taken the Handmade Pledge this holiday season, you'll see the badge in my sidebar. It means that I am going to do my best to make sure that the gifts I give this year are either handmade by me or someone else. In this world of gross materialism, massive over-consumption and scary Chinese imports it just feels right to get back to simple things, gifts that are both beautiful and useful.

My project list is pretty aggressive, inspired by many things, but largely the projects at Sew Mama Sew. They have featured 30 Handmade gift tutorials throughout the 30 days of November. There have been some really great and completely do-able ideas. Of course if I don't manage to be as productive as I'm hoping to be there is always Etsy, my favorite virtual craft fair. For those of you unaware, Etsy is a website that features handmade crafts of every imaginable kind from independent artists and craftsmen. It is so fun to sit and browse with a cup of tea in your pajamas. By far the coziest craft show experience I've found.

So if you are on my Christmas list this year anticipate a gift that is either a product of my hands, heart and time or something lovely that will support an independent artist somewhere in the world. Because I think a gift made by hand is a gift that comes from the heart.

 

Ready, Set,.... Wait.

Here it is, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. The official start of the holiday season has arrived and we are knee deep in.... Birthday.

Growing up, the day after Thanksgiving was the day we were finally allowed to break out our favorite Christmas records. It was a milestone I looked forward to for weeks. Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and our Christmas tunes remain in the storage bin.

Samuel's birthday falls on December 3rd. It just feels wrong to embrace all things Christmas until we have appropriately commemorated the day of his birth. The fact is, I really wish I could get excited and throw myself into planning the most amazing birthday party ever, the problem however is all I really want to do is throw myself with wild abandon into everything Christmas. So here we are in this weird annual limbo. The rest of the world is going on as usual, carols are on the radio, stores are all decorated, people are driving home with trees on the tops of their cars and I proceed to Party City for dinosaur cups and napkins, planning party games and gathering goody bags. The Christmas elf inside myself is screaming to get out but for now we wait.

It has become a tradition to start the birthday celebration with Grandmother and "Grampy Bobby" while they are in town for Thanksgiving weekend. So the presents and Tastycakes came out on Friday. Great additions to our train set were made. The boys are both thrilled. Thanks Guys!!

And this week while I would love to be putting up lights, starting crafts and baking, we will be consumed with constructing volcano's and assembling dinosaur digs for our prehistoric bash on Saturday. But believe me, the minute the party concludes, the CD player will start right up and the lights will make their way out of the attic.

New Favorite

Saturday we enjoyed an opportunity for some outdoor adventure. We have heard about this park right around the corner from our house for some time now, but kept forgetting to check it out. Well this weekend we finally did and it sure was stupendous! The air was really chilly but the sky was bright and sunny. We all bundled up and away we ran.

It is funny that even as a grown up, I find it so exciting to discover a new place, to run to all it's corners not knowing what will be found around the next bend. It makes it even better to do it with the boys and what we found was fantastic...

Giant green meadows...

A wonderful babbling brook...

Bridges and paths to cross....

It looks like we have found a new favorite.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing everyone a relaxing day to be with family and friends, an opportunity to reflect on what matters most in your lives and a peaceful moment to feel your heart swell with gratitude. It would be amazing to join hands with so many of you around our table this evening, please know that you are on our minds and in our hearts.

Turkeys Continued

Hand-print Turkeys, everyone's favorite Thanksgiving craft. They were doing them at preschool last week on placemat sized scraps of canvas, I was swooning over how cute they were and Samuel assured me that he wouldn't make one. I believe You can't make me, ever. were his exact words. Well, that was a challenge I couldn't resist. So I found a piece of muslin and ironed it, stitching the edges to create a runner for our table, busted out the fabric paint, smocks and we got to it. Surprisingly, I didn't have to hog tie son #1 to participate and once we got started neither of the boys wanted to stop. We even roped dad in on the fun when he arrived home from work. See his big turkey with "Go Hoos" feathers.

That one there is mine, see the lady pilgrim hat? And below, a small glimpse of a long flock of turkeys that will be running across our table tomorrow. Funny turkeys made from my children's little hands, just one more thing to be thankful for.

Thankful for Autumn Discoveries

We have been talking this week about thankfulness and gratitude. All of us have been grateful for the warm and sunny skies that have afforded us the opportunity to spend lots of time being outdoors together. This morning we went on a discovery hike, collecting and observing what mother nature has been cooking up lately. What an adventure was had....

Talking Turkey...crafts

We've been getting in the spirit for Turkey Day around here.

Last Thursday we sat down to work with these pine cones. The discussion part was a group process and I had a bit of help with the sticking in of the feathers, otherwise, Samuel was busy with his own interpretation of this craft. I know in theory it's fantastic that he always wants to take these activities in his own direction, he always has his own vision for how they're supposed to turn out. But it's a little frustrating for me because I envision us working together to create these sweet little things and it usually ends up that I make mine and he makes his own, with little regard for the original concept. I need to let go and just embrace it, what he does is true creativity at it's best.

So we all started with the same supplies, and he even humored me by gluing two eyes on the end of a pine cone but quickly abandoned that to get down to the real deal. So this is Samuel's "turkey", looking rather like a Thanksgiving parrot. He makes me feel so much more like Capt. Jack and a bottle of rum than pilgrims and Plymouth Rock. He really did a nice job though, it has eyes on both sides of it's head and a functioning mouth that opens and closes. Genius design really, my little visionary!

Full-On Fall

Can I just tell you how insane the foliage is at our house right now? Everywhere we drive, I keep wishing my camera was in the passenger seat, if it was it would take us forever to arrive anywhere because I would be pulling off the road every two seconds to try to capture all this outrageous beauty.

And like a cosmic joke, with the weather amazingly gorgeous, and all this leaf drama, all I want to do is be outside every minute with the boys, soaking it up every way we can. But for some reason, life has gotten insane this week, my minutes have found themselves overrun with obligations and busyness that is making it all but impossible to take advantage of mother nature's magnificence.

So in the mean time, we are carving out the opportunities as best we can. Instead of the picnic I would have liked to take, with yummy snacks and leisurely laughter in the sunshine, we had to settle for a quick walk between naps and pediatrician appointments.

And P.S.

This picture is an excellent example of why my house is a perpetual leafy, dirty, sandy mess. Click on it so it will blow up and you can see it in all it's glory! Truth be told, I wouldn't want it any other way, just a sign of another productive day!