A Preview of the New Year

I wish my phone would take a better picture, but I wanted to officially share our happy news with everyone: we're having another baby this year! We found out just before Thanksgiving and told our families and now we're ready to spread the news. Above is a photo of my first sonogram taken today. I'm nine weeks along and the baby's due July 31.

Hope God blesses you all in the coming new year!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Homemade Christmas Card

For some reason I decided to undertake hand printing my own Christmas cards this year. My initial motivation was innocent enough--sharing some hand-crafted goodness while spreading the real message of Christmas--but it definitely resulted in some sweat and blood (although no tears--yet). I began with a hand drawn image, transferred it onto a linoleum print block and then began the arduous task of carving out all of the negative space (this is where the blood comes in).





I'm pretty happy with the end result though. I printed a total of 65 cards (or was it 60??) in metallic blue and gold, and I love their shimmer in the light! I did save us some money, but I am still writing a good chunk of cards for the mail tomorrow! Merry Christmas!

Quilted Tree Skirt

I actually finished this back before Thanksgiving, but with the hecticness of life this time of year I haven't been as on top of my blogging.

I was really excited to finish my lovely tree skirt--it was actually my first complete quilted project. I still have Liam's baby clothes quilt in progress, but it's much faster working with larger pieces of fabric. I used a tutorial from Sew 4 Home and it was easy to follow--for those of you who are ambitious sewers you may be able to finish one in time for next week!

Heart-Shaped Crayons

I had this blog post from Craftzine bookmarked on my Google reader and it came in handy a couple of weekends ago while Chris was at work. I used our heart-shaped muffin pan to make some fun shapes (plus I don't use it as often). Just peeling the crayons kept the kids busy for a good half-hour!




And here are the results fresh out of the freezer. I think all but one or two of them broke within the first twenty minutes, but they still work. I had used a combination of cheap and brand-name crayons, and I didn't break them up as small as I probably should have so they took a lot longer to melt. In the end they probably broke because I left them in the freezer too long--the kids weren't going to sit around quietly while they cooled so of course I got a little distracted! I'd definitely try this again, and if I could keep them from breaking it would definitely make a great gift.