Embracing the Christmas season early!

As I mentioned before, my favorite holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I know most people think that Christmas season shouldn't start until the day after Thanksgiving but I don't quite follow that.  I listen to Christmas music all year long if I'm doing something like dishes or cleaning where I need a pick me up.  It's my happy place music!  And this year for the first time, I have put up our Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving and I am very happy about it.  It might just be a new tradition in our house. 

Saturday during Ria's nap, Carmen and I decorated the bigger tree!  She was so excited about the lights and checked out every ornament!  It was so much fun to tell her about each one and show her the ones she made last year for our tree.

After Ria woke up from her nap, I had wrapped two new ornaments for them to open and put on the tree. I don't have close ups but Carmen got Elsa and Ria got Anna from Frozen. Yes, if you notice my stocking is not completed yet!  It's in a project bag and about 2/3rds done.  I actually decided last night that I was going to put away the hitofude cardigan I've been working on and finish up the stocking first before I go back to knitting on the cardigan.  I also have a secret project I'm knitting for the girls that I'm very excited about and will share with you as soon as I'm done!  I'm almost 50% done with it.

My step-sister came over after we were done with the tree and helped me and Carmen with some crafts during Ria's nap!  I found two pins on pinterest that I wanted to do this year.  First was the ornament wreath seen below and pin found here.  To make this, we took all the ornaments that I bought at the dollar tree and hot glued the tops to them.  Then we strung them on a wire hanger and closed up the wire hanger and hung it up.  The burlap garland I made using this pin and hot glued the ornaments on to it.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE how this came out and it makes me so happy to see it!

I love how it looks from my kitchen too!  I was cooking dinner and was just so happy to see it!  I also hung up some new pictures in the corner there too!  We are repainting the living room and changing out those curtains in the new year but I couldn't wait any longer to put some stuff up.  You can also see my small nativity scene in this picture.  I still haven't found a safe place for my willow tree nativity scene but some day it will come back out.

One of the crafts I did last year was this nativity scene that my sister printed and laminated for me!  I put magnets on the back and Carmen loved playing with it last year.  This year it's been a bit hit too!  The pin for that can be found here so you can print your own.

After a busy day of crafting, cleaning, and toddler/child wrangling, I was so happy to sit with some hot cocoa, my knitting, and Love Actually with all the Christmas decorations up!  It was so nice to get some time to enjoy it at the end of a busy day!

I hope you enjoyed my Christmas decorations!  I have some more ideas but most are going to have to wait until next year.  There is one more decoration I have left to finish that is already half way completed and then I'm getting back to knitting and baking!

Happy Christmas Decorating!!!

When do you plan to put up your decorations?  Have you already?  Any new decorations you have for this year?

Advent Countdown to Christmas!

With the start of the Advent season this Sunday, I wanted to do something special for Carmen to countdown to CHRIST-mas.  Last year, I found a bunch of fun ideas but since we weren't spending the holidays here we didn't do any of them.  One of my favorite that stayed with me last year was this pin on pinterest.

I present to you our Advent Countdown to CHRIST-mas!

The general idea behind this is as follows:
1. find 24 books that you already own (I did all the Christmas books we own plus some other cute ones.  I also only did 23 since I decided to follow the actual advent calendar that always starts on Sunday so that would be the 2nd of December this year.  This works out better for us since we will be celebrating her birthday at her Papa's house the night before.)
2. wrap them up individually
3. put them under your tree or a tree in their room (while she has a little tree in her room, I opted to put them under the bigger tree in the living room since she was sleeping)
4. let them pick a book a night during advent to open and read.

This is right down my budget conscious alleyway! No buying anything but wrapping paper and only real cost is time, which it didn't take very long.  My only problem is that we've been really busy this week with family in town and preparing for little Miss Carmen's 2nd birthday party Saturday, so this wrapping session didn't start until late last night and I stayed up WAY later than this pregnancy lady should have. I enjoyed it though.  I put some holiday music and plopped down on the floor in front of the tree.  It was just too late to add hot cocoa to the mix.

Carmen was SO excited to see the "presents" under the tree.  She immediately went over and started naming all the characters on the wrapping paper!  Go me for picking out the right wrapping papers for her this year!  I had to explain a couple times that we can't open any yet and that we'll start on Sunday.  She did carry one or two of the books around the living room a couple times but put them back each time.

Here she is bedhead crazy hair inspecting the books...

And another picture of her later on once we tamed the wild hair and changed her on our way to pick up Grandpa or "EeePa" as she calls him. As her shirt says, she truly is the greatest present ever!  She's my little girl, who was due 2 years ago today but just like her stubborn self refused to join us until she was ready 2 days later.  I feel so blessed that she chose us to be her parents!  Love that silly face!

Happy Crafting and Holiday Season!

What is a tradition(s) your family enjoys during the holidays?

Baby Bump: craft reveal and 14 week update

First off...yes, I know back to back baby bump updates.  I have knitting stuff and other things to post so this won't happen next time. :) At least I will try.  However, I've been mentioning for sometime that I have this craft that I made for my pregnancy!  I have been wanting to share but needed to get good pictures...and now I have gotten ones so let's begin.

I got the idea from here to create a pregnancy calendar shirt.  Looking back I wish I had picked out a better shirt instead of just a large men's shirt but it's what I picked so until I can get my sister to help me sew the sleeves and fix it more...it's going to work.  We did sew in some elastic to the sides to gather it in but it was our first time doing that and didn't work out as well as I had hoped.  We got that idea from here.

At first I was going to follow the way the tutorial said for making the numbers but after some persuasion I decided to try out my sister's cricket to make the numbers!  We were able to, after lots of trial and error, figure out how to arrange the letters in the right way to fit nicely on the shirt and then we cut the freezer paper with the cricket!  I had never heard of freezer paper before but I LOVE IT!  So fun!  After getting the freezer paper all cut, I slowly peeled the freezer paper off the board for the cricket leaving all the numbers behind to create a stencil.  I then laid it onto the t-shirt and put the center parts back inside the 0,4,6,8, and 9s.  That was a painstaking task but I reminded myself how much easier this was then the tutorials suggestion of cutting out the individual numbers.

After I ironed the freezer paper onto the shirt, I painted 3 layers of the white fabric paint onto the stencil and let it dry over night.

The next day, I removed the stencil and check out how cool it came out!  I was so happy with it!

Then I started marking off the weeks I was at the time I created this shirt. :) Yes, I was only 7 weeks along when I did this shirt and you are just getting to see it now at 14 but are you really surprised after all the sickness and stuff I've been through?

I did get pictures of me in the shirt at 7 weeks, which you can see here but they weren't good enough for my t-shirt reveal!

Finally, I had my sister take some pictures of me and some with Carmen of the shirt.  They are better but we'll get there.  So...here we go...Baby bump update...yes I know this is a LONG post!

Week: 14 weeks and 1 day
Weight gain: 6+ lbs...haven't been weighed since last apt.
Baby's sex: We don't officially find out until our Nov ultrasound but I have my guess. :)
This past week: This weekend I was having some cramping, which turns out was my bodies way of saying it needs more water.  Also this pregnancy I've been super emotional.  I don't full on cry at the drop of a hat but I could!  I have teared up a couple times about things that I normally wouldn't tear up about and forget watching Grey's with dry eyes.  I've also gotten into my head a lot this pregnancy.  I felt I was pretty normal and level headed with Carmen but this time with things that have happened to others and just my overall feeling of I've been sick forever...I've let my mind run away with me.  Monday I called and talked to the OB nurse and told her that I'm having a hard time calming my brain, told her about the cramping I've been having, and about how I messed up my back on Sunday while washing Abby so I asked her what I could do about that.  She told me that I'm 14 weeks and I'm not spotting and cramping is probably due to not having enough water.  We've talked about it before since this pregnancy water just doesn't appeal to me and I have a hard time getting enough in. She also gave me some tips on helping my back.  She said that I shouldn't be concerned BUT if I wanted to I could come get the fetal heart rate checked.  I said when can I be there! :)
Doctor's Visit: My impromptu fetal heart rate check, which technically wasn't a doctor's visit and wasn't charged as such either but we'll put it here.  They said I could come in anytime before 3 so as soon as it was around my normal lunch time I headed over.  I was fully expecting to just have a nurse pull me back and use a heart rate monitor to check the fetal heart rate but much to my surprise the sonogram tech, who has been the same throughout both pregnancies, came out to get me.  She pulled me back to the u/s room and I got to see the baby! She first just found the heart beat right away!  153 beats per minute and beating strong.  Then she just looked over the baby again and I got to see the baby flip and having a grand ole time in there.  It was fun to see and as usual eased my mind so much.  We talked again about the sex and she quickly checked but we didn't look too long...but my guess is the same. She gave me a couple more pictures of the baby and this one was the best so far!

Next Doctor's Visit: Next apt is October 26th with the doctor who delivered Carmen and my favorite at the practice!  Looking forward to seeing her.
Overall, I'm focusing on praying more and getting my emotions in check...this coming from a hormonal pregnant women. I'm starting to feel little flutters but I'm just not fully convinced yet that it's the baby.  I look forward to when I really can feel the baby move.  Thanks for reading another update so soon!  Hoping to spread these out but since I posted so late last week...this one came pretty fast. :)

Happy Wednesday!

A Series of Thoughts: Ravelypmics a threat to the Olympics??

For those of you muggles out there, Ravelympics is an event that coincides with the Olympics that is held withing the forums on Ravelry.com, an online community of over 2 million knitters, crocheters, and spinners.  It's a silly event that encourages people to knit/spin/crochet while watching the Olympics.  I've participated the last couple times and it's fun.  It gives me a goal and a time frame to complete projects and I feel I actually watch the Olympics more because of it.

My last Ravelympics project ready for cast on!

Yesterday, Ravelympics blew up on twitter and the knitting blogsphere because the US Olympic Committee sent an email to Casey and Jess the creators, which was quite disturbing.  While they asked them to change the name of the event, which I'm all for since they have the rights to the Olympic name...their following comment struck a nerve.

We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

What are they trying to say?  That crafters around the world watching the games and knitting/spinning/crocheting along is disrespectful to the athletes?  Really? When I first heard about the letter, I was sort of just taken aback but wasn't surprised that the letter was sent...then I started reading about the letter on blogs and comments on twitter, so I had to go actually read the full thing, which was posted by Casey within ravelry forums(rav link).  You can also read full letter on the gawker site here.  Once I read this part, I was disturbed.  Not all 2 million people on Ravelry participate but a large chunk of them do.  Currently, in the Ravelympics 2012 group on Ravelry.com there are 7562 members and I'm sure with the press it's getting that number will increase.  Why wouldn't you want to encourage almost 8 thousand people to all watch the opening ceremonies and the games?  I used to not worry about the opening ceremonies until I started participating in the ravelympics.  You can't cast on your project until the ceremonies start so I watched and cast on with thousands of others!

This morning I read a post by Kay on the Mason & Dixon blog and I immediately felt I needed to join her call!  She tweeted Stephen Colbert that if he did a piece on the "Knitters who are destroying the Olympics" that he would then receive a lifetime supply of hand knit socks!  I love her call to action and I'm all for knitting him a pair of socks if he does the piece!  As I've said before and will say again, you just don't mess with knitters because they are really taking over the world and are armed with pointy sticks! 

There have also been calls of action to boycott all Olympic sponsors.  While I don't know if I'll go that far, I am thinking this wasn't a good way to handle the issue by the lawyers for the Olympic Committee.  I hope that no one goes so far as to bother the actual US team about it as this isn't coming from them but let's get this out there because you can't say knitters are trying to destroy the Olympics and get away with it!

Happy Knitting!

EDITED: They issued an apology but this is seriously not a real response.  It says it was a standard letter...umm...just see comment above...that isn't standard! 

And ANOTHER apology this time on their Facebook wall!  They are getting closer...

What do you think of all this?  Are you bothered by their comment?  What do you plan to do to take action?

crafting, decorations, and knitting....oh my!

I'm busy getting ready for Carmen's first birthday Party on Saturday!! Her birthday is Thursday and I just can't believe it's almost been a year...I'll talk more about that later.  I've got lots to do between now and then but wanted to share some pics of things I've done for the party.  Here is a sneak peak of the decorations for the party!  

and what I did with the crayons from yesterday!  They are all ready to head to the daycare tomorrow for the kiddos!

can't get this to go in here right! Will fix later!

Happy Week!

PS...a sneak peak of a new pattern that will be going up free!  Carmen's First Birthday Socks aka Toddlers socks!

Craftmania!!!

I've been meaning to post for about 14 days now but every time I think about it I'm no where near my computer!  I had not mentioned on my blog yet about how I joined the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry.com.  I don't even know how to describe it other than AWESOME!  It's a Harry Potter themed challenge that in my opinion promotes productivity in your crafting.  If you want to learn more, go over to the group and read the homepage information.  Sign ups are not open right now but you can join at anytime and play as a NQFY (Not Quite First Year) and learn the ropes.  I played as a NQFY back in late July and through the break month of August.  It was a great way to meet people and learn about how the classes, OWLs, Quidditch, the houses and much more.

The Sorting Hat, yes there is a sorting hat, put me into Gryffindor for the Fall 2011 term! I am very excited to be a Gryffindor and have really enjoyed all the fun stuff that we've been doing in our House even though I know all the houses are pretty great! I've met so many great people both in Gryffindor and other houses!

The first month of term, which a term spans three months, was September and I was very proud of myself for how much I have accomplished that month!  Since little miss CGR was born I haven't felt like I have been very productive when it came to knitting.  I was finishing projects but I was also easily distracted and just didn't feel focused with my knitting.  The House Cup has brought both to my crafting.  Some may be surprised at this but I am a big planner!  I like to make plans and lists and research things.  I may not always implement them the way I intend to but I start off with a plan. :)  So, the house cup is perfect for this.  When the class prompts come out the first day of term, I have managed to read them and put together a plan for that month.  Then I get started!  Last month I did great!  Here is a picture of all the things I was able to turn in and which class they fit into.  My OWL project is a three month project so it won't be complete until November.

If you are looking for some focus, fun time and great Harry Potter fun...go check out the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup group!

Go Gryffindor!!!  ROAR!!

Happy Crafting!

Summer Crafting Todo List

My crafting has forsaken me...or I have forsaken crafting.  Not sure what has happened but my creativity is all ideas and no action.  What to do about this but create a to do list!  Since I wasn't sure where to put this list and if I make it public maybe I'll be more motivated to finish more of it...here you go!

General Crafts:
1. Build three of these chairs for our porch. I know I definitely want to make one for Carmen and then 2 adult sized ones for SK and me.

Spinning:
1. finish the polwarth fiber that I have currently on the bobbins
2. spin up the black Corriedale locks that I cleaned before I had CGR into about 2000 yards of lace weight

Knitting:
1. Frog all project on the needles that I do not plan to finish or have not worked on in months!
2. Organize yarn stash
3. CO a project for CGR
4. CO a sock (believe it or not I do not have a sock on the needles!!)
5. CO a cardigan for me!
6. Finish at least 20 more squares for CGR's Barknknit Raising Quilt

I think this is all I have for now.  As I finish I'll cross it off and if I get so inspired I will add to this list in the coming weeks and months.  I would like to get most of the stuff on here done by the last day in August.

Happy Crafting!!