gobble, gobble, gobble

The kids helped me make these place cards for Thanksgiving at my brothers house this week. I originally offered to make them for all 30 guests, but my S-I-L suggested I just do them for the little kids. They were fun to make (and they turned out supper cute), but very time consuming, so I am glad that we only had 8 to make instead of 30!

You can see one of the cards I made for the other 22 guests in this bag.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

in the studio

I see a lot of people posting pictures of their work space, usually some cute, little brightly painted room. My "studio" is also our dining room/schoolroom/office. Here it is in action.

Regan took this picture of me painting the ornaments for our Jesse Tree. I will put one in each pocket of the quilt I finished on Saturday and we will take one out each day in December to hang on our Jesse Tree (what that will look like I am not quite sure yet).
Here are a few of the ornaments. There are scripture readings to go with each ornament that tell the story of Christ from Creation, to His birth.
I have been doing some other painting, but I can't post the pictures here... not yet anyway. It felt good to paint yesterday. It has been so long since I last painted. I used to paint all the time, but with 4 kids, it is not always easy to find the time and space to make such a mess :)

Downtown Holiday Jacket and Pant GIVEAWAY!!!!

Head over to Grosgrain and enter yourself to win this too cute Jacket and pant set!
Downtown Holiday Jacket and Pant GIVEAWAY!!!!

finally finished!

So, a couple years ago I saw this project in a magazine and decided to make my own advent version of it. I raided my moms fabric stash, looking for scraps of Christmas fabric, and got busy cutting out stars and snowmen and hand sewing the little pockets. I am not sure what happened but the quilt got packed away, probably to work on as it got closer to Christmas, and forgotten.

Okay, so when I said a couple of years, I guess I really meant almost 5 years!

Anyway, this was the year, I finally pulled it out of hiding and finished it. It's funny, 5 years later, I don't really like it anymore, but we will use it this year, and then I will probably start a new one next year, only with felt and much more simple than this. It feels good to have it completed though!

i'm thankful for...

moments like this

it's snowing... or not

When we got up this morning, it was flurrying a bit. O course, I had to go up in the attic and retrieve all the snow gear so that the kids could go out and play. The shower was brief, but they were excited just to see snow. This afternoon, while we were eating lunch, we looked out the window to see that it had begun to flurry again and then, 30 seconds later, it looked like this.

The kids left their lunch on the table and ran for their boots. They couldn't believe the "blizzard that was occurring outside our window!

Of course by the time I got Lulu's coat and hat on and got her out the door, this was the scene. Oh well, maybe since we are already seeing snow flurries in November that means we might actually see some real snow sometime this winter.

lazy post

I am hijacking my friends Blog today (hope you don't mind, Jen). First I was planning to share her baked oatmeal recipe with you. We had it for breakfast this morning and it was so yummy... Then I saw today's post and had to share it with you all. Makes you think.

scrap challenge and other crafting

Okay, so I was really supposed to complete my scrap challenge piece in two weeks, but in true Amy fashion, I took on a task much greater than I anticipated. You all have seen my paper collages, well, I had been thinking about attempting something similar with fabric, and the scrap challenge seemed to lend itself well to that, so I dove in shortly after receiving my fabric, not really having any idea how long it would take me to hand stitch this 14 x 14 collage. I am getting closer to the end, but still have quite a bit on detail work to do. Anyway, I thought I should at least post a peak of my project, since it was supposed to be completed a month ago and I just didn't get it done. In college, I would have just pulled a couple of all-nighters to finish the project, but I can't do that anymore!

In other news... I learned how to crochet last night! I made this wash cloth last night at my first ever sewing group! I started with half double, but in the end decided I liked single stitch better. I know it is not the best crochet job, but it was good practice.
After 3 hours of crocheting last night, I found myself crocheting in my dreams. The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was pull out this yarn the kids had picked out for their tapestries and start making a scarf for one of the boys.

What can I say... I am hooked!

i hope i never forget...

what two is like...
Her sweet little voice as she sings her abc's.
Her two-year old run as she chases after her siblings.
The smell of her strawberry shampoo when she curls up on my chest.
Her cheerful "hi mommy" when she comes into our room in the morning.
I want to remember all the details... the little things.

sunday dinner

My friend and I were talking recently about how we wish that we could have Sunday dinner with our family each week, but both of our families live 200+ miles away. So, we decided to start our own "family dinner" with our church family (our small group). She hosted the first dinner at her house while we were away and today we hosted at our house... Only we invited the whole church.
We had about 30 people come and had such a good time fellowshiping that I forgot to take pictures! Anyway, we had a bit of a casualty during all the fun, and Max's bed got broken.

Phil and I put Max's mattress on top of Micah's while we took apart his bed and I suggested that they sleep like this... bunk beds!

Micah wasn't so sure about that arrangement :)

So Max has been relegated to the floor for now.

Medieval Times

While we were at my parents house last month we went to Baltimore to Medieval Times. This was the culmination of our Konos kings and queens unit. Phil was able to fly into DC (instead of Norfolk) from his business trip that week, so he was able to come with us and his mom and my mom came as well. Here are a few pictures from the day. We all had a wonderful time and Regan got an extra special surprise while we were there!

This was the Green Knight, our mortal enemy. I would not have included him in my pictures here, except that this picture was so cool!

This is the Yellow Knight, he was our knight (the people in our section were all supposed to cheer for him).
Before the tournament began the knights rode around throwing flowers to the girls in the audience. We were lucky enough to be in the front row and Regan was raising her hands to have a flower thrown to her. The last round of flowers he looked at her and said "I've got something special for you". A few minutes later he came out with a banner tied around his lance. I guess each knight pick one girl to give his banner to, and he then fights for her love and honor...

The yellow knight chose Regan!

If you look closely at the picture of the 4 kids in front of the statue (above) she is wearing the banner.

sewing again

I am getting started on Christmas presents, hoping to do lots of sewing (that I will have to keep secret on here) in the next 6 weeks, but I can show you these...
Seems like everyone is having babies right now! I can't keep up with it all, and I hope that no one feels left out that I have not made your baby a blanket... I have the best of intentions and hope to get better at this, because I LOVE making and giving gifts! I still have not given one of these blankets and am counting on the fact that my friend just had her baby and is way to tired and busy to be reading my blog... If you are (reading), just act surprised when you get it :)

Here is a better look at the fabric in the bottom blanket, it's from Ikea and is supper cute!

castle lap book

I have had a few people ask me about lap books recently. I am really a beginner, but I thought I would post pictures of the lap book we just did for our medieval times unit. I got the print-outs from Homeschool Share. They have all sorts of free lap book downloads. The idea for the castle cover came from The Ultimate Lap Book Handbook. The book has lots of great info, like how to do different folds and ideas for different lap books. This lap book is heavy on knights, that seems to be what the kids enjoyed the most and Homeschool Share's templates were for a knight lap book. I tried to include some info on castles, some vocab words and little report on a famous king as well.

warning: I take too many pictures!

So, it seems I have gone a little picture crazy since getting my Nikon D40 last spring. Today we went for a hike in Newport News. We were there for about 1.5 hours and walked about 2.25 miles and I took 116 photos. There are a million stories I wanted to tell in these photos, but I am limiting myself to 10, as I am sure that it is not nearly as interesting to you all as it is to me!

We got out of our car to find some hungry geese and ducks in the lake we were to walk around. It just so happened that we had stopped at the store on the way to the park and had a loaf of bread (really for our lunch not theirs).

After crossing the dam we saw this...Oops!

I wish I'd had my zoom lens on, it was pretty awesome to see these birds take off out of the water!

Finally, the signs of Autumn I have been longing to see!

Me and Micah

It's 5 miles around the lake, we decided to just walk to the first overlook, just past the 1 mile mark. Here is the crew taking in the sights and resting before we headed back to the car.

"I just can't walk another step, Daddy!"

Here is my attempt to take a picture of me and Max. He wanted to hold my hand the whole way back. These moments are precious!
And just like that they are gone... The end of the trail was in site and he was off!
We ended the morning in the branches of this tree. I wish I could transport it to my back yard. I think you might actually find me in the tree as much as you'd find my kids in it!

i guess they get along sometimes

I went in to check on the boys the other night, before I went to bed, and this is how I found them.

in search of the perfect shoes

I went to the mall today in search of the perfect shoes. You know, something you can dress up or down, that goes with everything and most importantly is comfortable. Is does not exist. Instead I came home with these...

Considering my recent obsession with mushrooms, this was a must!
This sweater was only $21! It looked so cute on the rack, I had to try it on and I was pleased to find that it still looked cute when I put it on! I think I will wear it tonight on our date!

I had to laugh when I read the label... look closely, do you see it?

remember shrinky dinks?

Recently I discovered that you can buy Shrinky Dink paper at your local Michael's store. I have fond memories of coloring Smurf Shrinky Dinks as a kid and then watching them grow smaller in the oven until they were only a fraction of their original size, thick and stiff. I knew that this was a pass-time that no kid could scoff at so I bought a package and tucked them away for a quite afternoon when we needed something creative to do. I also purchased a 36 count package of assorted permanent markers... You can never have enough colors when embarking on a coloring adventure!

We tried a few small things a couple of weeks ago, before we went to visit Grammy and everyone has been begging me to do more ever since. So today after we put Lulu down for her nap and finished up our reading we pulled the Shrinky Dinks out again. Here is a sampling of what we made.

Pictures drawn on half sheets of paper, before they went into the oven.

My picture (on the right) curled up and got stuck together, I had to pry it apart with a butter knife and a chop stick (I know, strange choice of tools, they were the first things I saw when I opened the drawer) while it was still in the oven. I thought it would be ruined...

But it turned out alright, only minor damage and mostly just noticeable to me.

Here is a picture to show you what they looked like before and after, it is crazy how much they shrink!

Look how cute and tiny this butterfly is!

I am not usually one to be telling people to go and and buy something, but this is so much fun (for your kids and you)! The paper that I got is white and glossy so you have to use permanent ink on it, but if you get the etched paper I think you can use colored pencils, stamps, regular markers... the options are limitless! I used my paper punches to cut out the flowers and butterflies, but you can easily cut by hand too, or just color a whole sheet like a piece of paper!

Happy Shrinky Dinking!