My Birthday Present

This is what I told Jeremy I wanted for my birthday this year.  Didn't he do a beautiful job building it for me?  This now hangs in the entry hall of our home and will provide a fun decor opportunity year round.  Right now, I love the hooks for hanging stockings. (We, unfortunately, are fireplace free at this house.)  As you can tell, we have an empy hook.  I thought for sure that I would get Tad's stocking made before Christmas this year, but as I am looking at my "to do" list, I am pretty sure it won't happen.  It looks like he will have to get by with one of the old cheapos from days gone by.  Next year Tad.  I promise.

Love it!

Christmas Advent Quilt

My sister really enjoys piecing quilts.  She has inspired me over the last couple of years to pick up the hobby as well, and I must admit it is quite addicting.  Last year, she made a cute Christmas quilt.  I decided that I would like to make a Christmas quilt for my family this year.  I could just picture my boys snuggling up on the family room couch under a cute holiday quilt.  Then, I ran onto this pattern for an advent calendar quilt, with pockets pieced right into the quilt.  I knew I wanted to make it this year.  I armed myself with a Ready, Set, Snow charm pack by Moda and some yardage and got to work way back in August.

This was actually a fairly easy quilt to put together.  The worst part was appliqueing the numbers on the pockets.  If you are good at applique it would probably be a snap, but it took me FOREVER.  While I was in the middle of it, I told my sister that I wished I had just stenciled them on with some good fabric paint, or cut the numbers out of felt and used a fabric glue to apply them.  Now that it is done, however, I am really glad that I took the time to applique the numbers.  I love them!!

It is nice to have something substantial to hang on the wall during the Christmas season.  My boys will love getting their surprises out of the pockets every day.  Maybe next year I will make that dream Christmas quilt for them to snuggle up under on the couch.

Five Months

My beautiful number five is now five months!

Crying Over Spilled Milk

The other day I went to upload my photos from my camera to my computer.  There were some great ones.  Drake had just turned two and I had taken a bunch of cute pictures of him with his cake and opening his presents.  We had also just had Halloween, so I had taken loads of pictures of my kids in their costumes and at their school Halloween parade.  When my import was finished, I found that every picture had been deleted except for these. . .

This is all I have left to remember my child's second birthday and Halloween 2011.  I am sick inside.
The picture of Tad - was NOT taken by me, so I figure whoever took it, did the deleting. I really got after my kids, so I don't think they will dare touch the camera again for awhile.  At least the picture of Tad is cute.  It would have been an even bigger tragedy if I had lost all of those pictures for something like a picture of the TV screen, a transformer, or an elbow.  Kids!!!!!!

It's Autumntime

A few pics from this year's fall "leaf lookin'" excursion. 

I love Autumn!

Four Months

Tad is now four months old.  I enjoy him so much.  He is a really good baby and entertains the whole family with his huge smiles, cute laughs, and fun "talking".  We love him and can't get enough of him!!

Chores

This is pretty typical of what happens at our house if the boys are left on their own to do chores. The other day I asked the boys to clean their room. When I went to check on their progress, their room was still a complete mess and they were nowhere to be found. I went outside to look for them and found this on my back porch.

I walked a little more and saw this.

Yes.  That is Jack riding his bike in his underwear.  Dallin and Thomas, I can only imagine, are scheming about how they are going to get out of this one.  As usual, the room got cleaned by three very sad little boys.  I'm such a mean mother.  But, I must say the artwork is cute!