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Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.
  • Crew_girls
    My crew girls, love them! I think we make such a jolly happy group. Wednesday night we all got together at my place for our first annual event: gift swap and gingerbread house decorating. Yes first and I’m already calling it an annual thing because we (from left: Kathy, Kristin, Katie, Tracy, Lauren, Sciarrino, and Karen) had so much fun we vowed to do it again next year.

    Steps to a great Christmas themed party:
    1) Bulk candy, mass amounts of graham crackers and home made industrial strength frosting.
    2) Add and extra leaf in the middle of the table and gather round.
    3) Cheap cider made "fancy" by cinnamon sticks and cloves.
    4) A twenty dollar limit and two swaps per gift.
    5) A toasty fireplace.
    6) Good conversation.
    7) And the "Dick in a Box" skit saved on the TiVo (oh my god is this side splittingly funny or what?!?!!) *that’s the uncensored version – not for the little kiddies!

    Allhouses

    1 comment on At the Christmas Party Hop!
  • If it was a competition the wedding would be winning. I still have zero presents ready to go for Christmas, you read that right ZERO. Instead I have been working on wedding related stuff. The church we originally wanted fell through, so I’ve been busy looking into other ones, and have a bunch to check out tomorrow, so I have to head up to Portland again. Our save the dates are almost all done, I mailed out a huge batch yesterday:
    Save_the_date_stack

    People (who shall remain nameless) have questioned whether people will open them because they might be mistaken for junk mail. All I have to say about that is: I know where you sleep mom! The actual cards are designed by Sciarrino and are beautiful, but to save money I printed them all on my laser, and then Sciarrino and I cut all the pieces out. And there are a lot of pieces:
    Save

    Not only that, but of course being me, I had to type the return address and our wedding website on the back of each envelope. Then I also typed addresses on a separate sheet (that I also had to cut) to stick in the envelope and show through the little window. And on top of all of that as soon as they went out I had to do something else:
    Upclose_1

    Note the updates ticket. So I had to design a quickie blog (it’s here, though we haven’t done much). I did make a header for the site:
    Topper

    Which Bj hasn’t had time to put up. Which brings me to another problem. I have begun a transformation much like that of a caterpillar to a butterfly, only instead of a butterfly I’m turning into a nasty ass moth who is going to eat all your yarn (and maybe your sole). That’s right I’m becoming bitchy bride Amber. I have been working non stop on this thing and it’s starting to get to me. Bj said he didn’t have time to do anything and I flipped, and I mean FLIPPED out on him. I freaking stayed up until 3:45 AM to work on these things, that’s not exactly what I would call good quality free time. He still hasn’t given me any addresses, but whatever dude, I am getting my side out because I’m stressing out. And yes he reads this blog, but honestly I think he only looks at the pictures, I guess we will see.

    9 comments on Wedding vs. Christmas
  • So I dropped the kiddos off earlier today, then I took a nice long shower. I never know when to shower when I’m baby-sitting. I’m always so paranoid the kids will get into major trouble. Yesterday I kept them over at my house until after dinner. Hogan was a bit jealous that Karsen got to come over everyday and wanted to play with my super cool things:
    Typist

    Like this typewriter I have on loan from my dad’s office. I have been in love with this honkin’ humming beauty for like 20 years now. I need to get a sharpie and write on the back "when no longer needed Amber gets dibs" To keep them occupied while I cooked my "weird" (according to Hogan) soup I made up a big bowl of oobleck:
    Oobleck

    Hogan dove right in. Sissy only wanted to play for a few minuets before she looked up at me and said,  "messy, yucky, clean peas, PLEASE!" I "cleaned" her pants by turning them inside out, ha, fooled you! Actually this is messy and not messy at the same time. See it does get everywhere, but the thing is if you just wait to clean it up, the water evaporates and then you’re just cleaning up cornstarch again. I really recommend this project as it is dirt cheap, totally easy and kept the above mentioned five year old content for almost two hours. This morning the kids woke me up so early I was actually startled. Karsen then had a fit when I got her dress. Apparently putting tights on her is the equivalent of dipping her in boiling water. But all was worth it, because she was just too cute today:
    Wiggly_ribbon

    Ribbon on a stick, it’s a hit! So are my vintage alphabet blocks:
    Blocks

    I tried to get her to hold out the k block to and do little photo shoot thing, but dumping and putting back in the little wire basket was much more her style. After nap time I attempted to get a still sleepy Karsen into that baby bonnet:
    Bonnet_1

    Then I pulled the binky out of her mouth. Let’s hope Violet has a better reaction to handknits. So I’m off of kid duty for a while. Tonight is a little mini Christmas celebration at my dad’s since my sister will soon be leaving to spend the next couple of weeks with her dad’s family in North Carolina. Then I’ll be doing some sewing for my save the date cards! I’m also going to be putting that typewriter to good use.

    2 comments on More happy fun times

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