Happy Birthday Daddy!

Well, today is my father's birthday! We'll be singing the birthday song by the beatles to him later tonight. And we'll be taking him out for brunch on Sunday. But until then

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!

Scrabble Scrabble

Tim and I have always loved Scrabble. I never played it when I was a kid. It was something we sort of picked up together a short time after we met. I had a dream that I painted a room like a scrabble board. I don't know if I have the patience to do that, but it would be really neat! Anyway, boredom and avoiding doing my homework I found this.

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 12. What is your score? Get it here.

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 15. What is your score? Get it here.

Yep, Tim's name is worth more points than mine!

My first birthday present!

Well, my birthday is coming up on Friday. I turn 29 this year. (Or 29 for the first time, depending on how I feel next year.) I was very excited to get my first birthday present today. When actually I have received a few now! My first one came this morning, a friend of mine has been busy writing a crochet book, and I have been helping her out by proofing her work. Well, she sent me a gift this morning. It's all wrapped up in pretty paper, and I am refusing to open it until my birthday (we'll see how that goes.) Then, this afternoon, I received a package from a craftster birthday swap! I know it is a tote to carry my crochet projects in, but I'm also going to wait to open it until my birthday. Lore painted me a picture for my birthday, which I may have framed it's so cute. My mother-in-law is taking the boys on Friday so I can have a day to myself! (Excellent gift, since they have off on Friday!)

I sat down and just thought today about where I thought I'd be at this age, and surprisingly, I'm NO where near it. However, I am really happy, which I don't know if I ever really thought I would be at this age. So many people go through life getting through it, and I think at the ripe old age I am, I have finally realized that looking around is so much better than coasting through. I am so blessed! So I guess if this is what getting older is, just appreciating everything more, then I guess.... BRING IT ON!!

Rainbow Notebook Cover

I watched the color craft-a-long last year, and hoped to participate this year. Then I saw the quilt challenge this month (both on craftster.) And had a thought. I always use tons of different notebooks to make tons of lists. It's a horrible habit of mine. I then almost always lose the particular notebook or list before I really need it. So I bought myself a 5 subject notebook, thinking that I would have one subject for different aspects of my life. Meal planning, crochet, quilting, gift doodles, other.... you know what I mean. Anyway, the cover was so ucky and looked just like any other notebook. I figured even though it's bigger, I'd still find a way of losing it. So I again remembered the challenge and craft-a-long, and came up with a quilted notebook cover in rainbow (which was January's color.) So here it is. I love it, and haven't lost it yet, but I don't think I will!

Here's the outside cover. You can see I used a wide piece of elastic to hold the cover closed.

Here's a shot of the inside cover. I can keep my pens and pencils in there. (At the bottom you can see that the elastic is tucked on the front of the cover because it is open.)

Here's a not very good closeup shot of the quilting.

Tree Of Life Pendant

I am not a jewelry maker. I've dabbled in throwing some beads on a string and making book thongs, I've made a few row counter bracelets for friends, but never actually making jewelry. Well, I saw a pendant similar to this the other day on craftster, and I just had to make one. I did my best, and these are my results.

I am really quite proud of it, and would like to wear it, however, I can't figure out what to wear it on. I know in the picture it looks like copper wire, but it's really more of a brown. I have tried it on gold, silver, and copper chains. I didn't like any of these. I tried it on 2 different sueded leather cords and didn't like those. I have it on a black cord right now, and it's ok, but not really as attractive as I think it could be. Does anyone have any suggestions?

No matter what I am extremely proud of it, and I think I may make more of them possibly for Christmas ornaments next year.

Christmas Gifts

I didn't do the greatest at taking pictures of the gifts I made for everyone this year. However, I did manage a few shots, so here they are.

This is an Amish puzzle ball that I made for my new baby nephew Evan. He's only about 2 months old, so he didn't care a whole lot. It has flannel dinosaur fabric on the outside and red on the inside.

For my 2 youngest nieces I made monkey finger puppets. So they could act out the 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed. Here they are all together.

Here is Jorden posing with 2 of her monkeys. She didn't really care for her picture being taken.

Here is Ambrosia with her favorite monkey. Her favorite color is orange, so her favorite monkey was the one with the orange bow in her hair. They played with them all night together, it was really cute!

Ambrosia's mom, Terri, is my sister-in-law. I made her this scarf. I caught a quick picture of it right before I wrapped it. It is rolled up tight around some wool socks, some iron-close teabags, and some fabulous lipchap! She loved it. It looks similar to Neapolitan Ice cream.

These next 2 I didn't make, but I had creative packaging, so I thought I should share. My mom's boyfriend asks for beer every year, so that's what he gets, but since it's the same thing, I feel I have to be creative with the wrapping. It's 2 of Santa's toy bags in the sleigh, which are being pulled by 8 tiny ReinBeer. It took about 15 minutes before we went to my mom's house.

A close up of the ReinBeer Antlers

The last picture I remembered to grab was a scarf for my grandpa. He wanted a scarf for dress, and church, so I came up with this one. This is rolled up around Old Spice (His choice not mine,) some lottery tickets, lip chap and some grenadiers (cigars that he likes.)

Merry New Year!

Oh, I have been having some difficulties getting into blogger, but I think I may have figured it out, so I'm back now.

I had a wonderful holiday season! I hope everyone else did too.

I was wonderfully lucky to have Tim off of work the whole time that the boys and I were off of school! We got to spend a nice week together. Much of the time was spent with extended family, but lots was just the 5 of us having fun together. We played lots of games, and just got to know each other again, it was fabulous!

We went to a hotel one night, that had a bit of a water park, so the kids could just have fun. Here are a few pictures from then. (Unfortunately they are a tad dark, sorry.)

A picture of my hubby on a little water slide. He's such a dork!

Here's a picture of Liam on the same waterslide.

Levi just finishing the waterslide.

Levi again, looking a tad creepy!

And one last pic of all the boys right before going to the room for supper.