The Way We do Things Around Here

A bunch of the same busy busy busy around here.  Keeping sane by keeping busy. Mornings are still pretty much without TV.  We do puzzles still.  Lots of coloring.  Today Otis made a ramp for his cars with the ironing board.  Anything to pass the time!

I've been pretty busy crafty wise.  I had a new consignment order for a place right across from State Fair Park, and seeing as State Fair started today, I had to get my stuff there in a timely fashion.  I also have two other consignment orders to work on, and another Maker Market is coming up September 1st.  So, busy mama.  Ingrid and I made this felt doll for a friend's birthday present.  Ingrid was too funny, "Mom, I have to play with it to make sure it works, okay?"  Apparently it was in working order.

 I went through some old photo books and found some gems.  I love that I'm taking pictures of pictures.  Here's Brendan and I the first summer we met ten years ago.  We are little kids, it's crazy!

 Speaking of little kids, there has been a bounty of little kids around our house the past week or so.  We watched a friend's girls one afternoon, here's Eleanor and Otis looking sneaky.  They found this water fountain (or "bubbler" if you want to get Milwaukee on me) and took turns seeing who could actually get to the water.  It was hilarious.  They're both just a tad too small so they were trying SO HARD to climb up!

 We also went to the zoo with our neighbors the other day.  Here they are at the barn with the cows.  I still can't believe my mom had four kids.  How do you do it?  I have it down pat now to look for each of my kids, but four?  Jeez louise.

 And here I am looking like I have long hair.  WHICH I DO.  Which if you've known me in real life you'll understand how freaking amazing this is.  I have had short hair my whole life.  Except for a short stint in middle school/early high school with a perm and some fierce bangs, I've had a pretty short hair style.  Like boy short most of the time, what feminine people call a pixie cut.  I have always just said it was short, you know, like a boy.  But now that I have money to pay someone amazing to cut my hair in a flattering way, what do you know?  I can grow it out.  It still seems so new and crazy that I can pull it back in a ponytail.  Like a normal girl.  Weird.

Felt Dolls

Yesterday in a burst of creativity, I finally made some felt dolls for Ingrid.  I'd seen on mamasmiles and it looked super cute.  Ingrid has the magnetic ones from Melissa and Doug, but I have so many felt scraps that she loves to play with, I thought I really should try to make some of these dolls.

They were a hit!  I drew out a shape onto cardstock paper, along with shapes for pants, shirts, and dresses, and then we used those as templates for the felt.  I made different hairstyles, bows to put in the hair, and we had random scraps that Ingrid used to add to the shirts and dresses.  It was super easy, just took some scissors and a bunch of felt.

 Of course I couldn't just have them sitting around in a ziploc bag, nor could I have Ingrid putting them on another scrap of felt.  I had to make a little carrying case, with a pocket for the clothes, right?  Of course.  So I put two pieces of cardboard in between two pieces of felt.  I'd put on a name tag on the front, then a pocket on the inside first, then I sewed everything up into a little folding book.  Portable and functional! 

 They do not look as fancy as some I've seen on Pinterest, but Ingrid loves them anyway.  She has seriously been playing with them nonstop since I made them yesterday while Otis napped!  And that, my friends, is a thumbs up in my book.

A Lovely Weekend

It was a perfect weekend of sun and family.  Otis has been crawling...backward.  He ended up under the couch and got mad.  Ingrid got new tennis shoes and wore them to bed Friday night.  Silly.

Otis decided not to take a nap Saturday morning, so we walked over to soccer with Brendan and Ingrid.  That is hilarious-- tons of preschoolers running around, a coach trying to get them to listen.  Ingrid is so social, just runs right up to the other kids and starts talking.  She loves it!

We had a good day yesterday, too.  A sunny afternoon outside with the family when we know the sun is going to go away soon, we have to take advantage of it!  Otis was having fun chewing on leaves and sticks.  And snotting everywhere.  Still.  Are we destined to have runny noses all fall and winter??  He was on a no nap streak and stayed up all afternoon, which does not make for the happiest baby around. 

And now it's back to school, and back to sewing.  My halloween felt garland got onto the front page of etsy yesterday morning so I've had orders for them like crazy!  I will be spending Otis' naptime watching last night's Breaking Bad and cutting out orange and black felt circles!

Hanging Out and Sewing

My two favorite things!!  This week has been so fun.  Minimal breakdowns on both Ingrid's and my parts.  Friends came over to play.  We cleaned while listening to Abba. We painted with sparkly paints.  Good times!

We also got some sewing done.  I got a new pattern for these cute felt shoes.  I only had eco-fi felt on hand but I figured I'd try it and then spend the money on wool felt if they turned okay.  They turned out awesome!  Totally going to make more of these in wool felt!

Also finally made the taggy book for a friend.  She wanted it months ago but luckily the baby she is giving it to was just born and won't play with it for awhile anyway, so it wasn't a rush order!  I love this Michael Miller print with the bikes.  Bikes are rad.

More to come soon!  Friends are coming over this weekend, Tia is coming to take pictures on Sunday.  It's going to be awesome!

Keeping Busy

Day five.  Things are good.  Not much new.  I'm bored.  I'm feeling lucky nothing major is going on and Otis is staying in.  I'm trying to get the doctors to let me go home to do bedrest.  I've heard different things but maybe they'll let me since I'm stable and have a couple weeks to go.  That would be awesome, as my shower this morning was about 2 seconds long since I couldn't get any hot water AT ALL.  Blah.

But...I'm keeping busy making felt garlands in my bed.  I had two reorders, people that liked them so much they needed another!  And since I have time on my hands I tried a star shaped garland, it turned out so cute.  Brendan said you cut those all out by hand?  And sewed them by hand?  How do you have the patience??  Isn't it funny how we each have our own things we love to do--I found it very calming and relaxing to do that last night as I watched TV.

I've also got some books, I'm reading Friday Night Knitting Club right now and it's keeping my attention.  Any other books that are light and not depressing or hard to read would be nice.  I only have a VCR in my room so I have to send Brendan to the library to see if he can find the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice on VHS.  Hello, Colin Firth, you can take up some of my time :)

That's about it.  We're hanging in there and keeping Otis growing and hoping to make it to 34 weeks.  The midwife told me today if we do make it to 34 wks we may be able to have a midwife deliver and not have to switch to the doctors.  Yay!  That would be great. 

Ahhhhh, a Break.

I'm sick.  I can't breathe, therefore I can't sleep.  When I try to nap, Ingrid jumps on me and suddenly wants to "cuddle" (really she just wants to jump on the couch around me.)  I was at my wit's end, so I did what anyone would do--I called my mommy.  She agreed to take Ingrid for the weekend, so we met halfway and made the switcheroo.

I love this.  Ingrid was SO excited to go to Gramma's, Gramma is happy to have a bundle of energy around for a couple days, and I get to sleep.  And get things done.  And go out to eat with my husband.  And watch a movie.  Ahhh, bliss.

I got SO MUCH accomplished today without Ingrid around!  I made a burp cloth set, three bibs, a felt garland, took pictures of them all, and listed them all on etsy!  That would normally be one week's worth of work for me because I'd have to fit in sewing something here, snapping a picture there, and getting time on the computer whenever I could.  But today I just sat and did it.  It felt amazing!

I love my kid but boy do I love the break, too!!

Fat Squirrels and Felt Circles

Yesterday we got to see nature at its finest!  We still have a pumpkin we never ended up carving for Halloween and have noticed little chunks missing.  The squirrels in Ann Arbor are FAT so we had an idea of who the culprit might be.  And lo and behold, we looked out our window to see this:

We had a nice time watching.  Ingrid was yelling at him to get away but I reminded her that everyone needs to eat, and why not let him eat a pumpkin we were just going to throw out anyway?

We also played for two hours with felt yesterday.  I wanted to make another garland so we sat down with the felt box and I was overcome with the urge to clean it out (which has never been done before.)  So...piece by teeny piece I went through it and threw away the scraps that were too small for anything.  Along the way I cut out leaves for Ingrid's giraffe to eat.  Then she got out her other animals, so we also made a fish for the penguin and a bone for the dog.  She had so much fun feeding them their felt food!

I got some cute shots of her yesterday.  I have to say it, she's pretty cute.  I can't wait to see what Otis looks like!!

I feel so blessed that this is my life.