Robins!

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”  ~ The Secret Garden

Our neighborhood had the privilege of hosting a flock of robins the other day. Four of the tallest trees surrounding our house were covered in robins! I recorded a little of their chattering! Ignore the lack of film skills and just listen to them talk.

“To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman” ~ The Secret Garden

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

subtitled: The Sister Edition

{pretty}

A pretty new sweater hand knit by her loving sister! She plans to grow into it soon.

{happy}

Shortcake was so happy to finally get to rock her little sister to sleep!

{funny}
Girls just wanna have fun!

 Blond or brunette? What do you think?

Mommy... the big girls are accessorizing me again!

{real}

Ignore the mess behind the cute baby face...

Ignore the mess behind the cute baby face!

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter

Baby Day!

For Patty and possibly for Amy too!

Prayers of thanksgiving and prayers of support are on their way ladies!

 

Baby Boy Bandana Blankets

I wanted to show you some blankets I've made recently for some super special baby boys. I was mentioning to Jessica that I think I've made more quilties for little boys than little girls and I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that my boys were much more attached to their blankets than my girls were. Maybe.

Anyway, these are the bandana blankets I made for our sweet little bud of a godson. It's cold where he lives and sending these blankets was as close as I could get to giving him a nice warm snuggle!

A pretty manly blue and black.
And...

... a cowboy themed blanket from Texas, of course.

This next quiltie was for a special little boy, almost as little as my own sweet Cupcake when he was born. Now for those of you who read both Jessica's and my blog, you might remember the beautiful online baby shower Jessica hosted for us. Miss Jamie Jo's family won the cupcake contest when my girls picked their adorable ducky cupcakes as their favorites. Well, I took Sunshine with me to the craft store when I went shopping for fabric and I told her who we were making the blanket for. She thought it would be great if we could find some ducky fabric. I told her that was a sweet idea but knowing that most baby ducky fabric is usually pastel and babyish and not what I had in mind for a quiltie I told her not to get her hopes up. When we found this fabric, we both knew it was meant to be! We even found blue and green bandanas to match the blue and green of the umbrellas! I love it! So cute and not babyish at all.

Don't get me wrong, I like making quilties for babies, I just don't like them to be the typical pastel, babyish design. You know, alphabet blocks and teddy bears and the like. I like cute and spunky, fun and funky, or even sometimes a little elegant if that suits the mama. Does that make sense? I hope so. I'm a little sleep deprived right now.

Look how cute they are! All those little duckies!

Cupcake is a bit enamored with the leftover ducky fabric. She might need a cute little spring outfit with them on it or something!

 

Pinning It Down {3}: Tin Bins

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Easy peasy organizing going on today. Altoid tin organizing bins! Just the perfect size for a label and holding some doodads in the junk drawer. (Oh good grief. First, I showed you my garage, now my junk drawer. What is wrong with me?)

Altoids are medicinal around here especially during allergy season, which in Texas lasts from January to November. Nothing induces a couple of cleansing sneezes like chewing an Altoid. Unfortunately, I had tossed a big pile of these helpful bins before I saw this great idea. So, I took the few I had and started using them.  I don't have a label maker so I just printed these on the computer and secured them with clear packing tape. I hope to add more later.

Bye now!
 

A Birthday in Review

The Professor had a great day yesterday even though it was decidedly more low key than years past. We can do simple. As I mentioned, he didn't want a themed party but Sean and I still wanted to decorate something special for him, so we pulled out of the party box anything that reminded him of one of his past birthdays. A Lord of The Rings banner, Lego minifigs, a Cars tablecloth that had gone unused, a NASCAR Racers display and the Ranger's Apprentice centerpiece I made for him. (Yes, I have an under-the-bed sized party box of past decorations that I save, but I try to limit it to only those things that will store flat.)

He was surprised. I think I've been inspired to put together a little book for him of his birthday celebrations, I just need to scan in the non-digital pictures.

He received some fun presents from us and relatives. He absolutely loved Civilization IV ( for Mac)! Sean teased him that his Homeschool Heartthrob quotient increased by a factor of ten when he celebrated loudly, "Yes! I got a Christian Missionary!! Whoo hoo!"

His other big surprise... a calendar featuring the fabulous artwork of Mr. Dan Phelps at LEGO a Day!

He also was surprised by and ultimately loved this LEGO® Architecture Brandenburg Gate. Something he was reading inspired a conversation not long ago about the Brandenburg Gate and we spent some time looking at the pictures I took when I was in Berlin. He thought it was cool that I had been right there at this foreign place he had just read about. 

The Brandenburg Gate

Me and some fellow travelers... technically, across the street from the Brandenburg Gate, I think.

And when he finally cracked into the set, he said it was the coolest set he'd ever put together! High praise indeed!

Minifigure Me

The dessert? Eh. It was OK. It tasted good, but the edges really stuck and it didn't come out of the springform pan I baked it in very easily so it wasn't really that pretty. Like he cared! I know, but I did. Here are some pictures proving that it's all in the perspective...

Not too bad edge...

Earthquake!!!

 

Fourteen

Prior to Cupcake's arrival, he was our littlest baby.

And now he's the biggest...

Biggest appetite, biggest feet (taller than all of us including his dad), and my biggest helper!

Somedays, I wish I could turn you back into that cute little boy with the cock-eyed smile who loved to sit on my lap and say "Read it again!" but then I wouldn't have you here... you who I trust, who I depend on, and who still loves to read everything again and again and again.

You are an amazing young man. 

Happy Birthday, Professor! 

For anyone wondering, he decided that he wasn't really interested in a theme this year. (Sniff sniff.) He  went to the LEGO store yesterday, is going to get a birthday blessing today, wants to eat ribs for dinner and finish the day off with a Pecan Pie Cake. I'll let you know how that turns out!

{p,h,f,r}

{pretty}

See my pretty mama and her pretty grandkids? She came for a visit last weekend.

{happy}

So happy to have such helpful big kids!

{funny}

BigBoy was playing with Cupcake and her Twilight Ladybug.

{real}

Real cute!

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter

First Communion Cake Link-up

Over at Catholic Cuisine! There is also a Baptism Cake Link-up. Won't you join us?

I am posting these old pictures from The Professor's First Holy Communion and Sunshine's too so that I can join Jessica's link-up. The Professor received his First Holy Communion back before I started blogging and Sunshine's cake is buried deep in a post somewhere. If I find it later, I'll link to it.

The Professor knew he wanted a chocolate chocolate cake! 

He even drew out the little design in the middle to show me exactly what he wanted.

This is a Costco cake. I had them leave the center empty so that I could transfer his design to it myself. I thought there should have been some writing but he was pretty adamant he wanted it plain. When he was younger, he sometimes had trouble making decisions. Since he was so certain about what he wanted, I gladly set aside my personal tastes and preferences to honor his.

Sunshine's First Holy Communion happened the day after the Back-to-Back Birthday Extravaganza for that year. I remember being very tired! Here's that post I was looking for. This cake came from our local Tom Thumb bakery. I picked it out for her since she didn't have any preference other than "pink". She loved it. It came with the little girl figurine you see on the left but I asked them not to put it on the cake.

(I have no picture of Shortcake's cake because her cake was a group cake celebrating her older siblings' and cousins' Confirmation. She did get a nice dinner out with her godparents and a special dessert.)

 

Pinning It Down {2}: Ribbon Organization

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I hadn't planned on participating every week in Sarah and Pam's link-up, just a few here and there when I could manage it, but it has been so motivationally inspiring that I just couldn't help myself. Plus this was an easy one (and I actually accomplished it a few weeks ago...shhhhh!).

I was excited by so many common sense ideas in this post that I pinned the whole thing and will probably come back to it multiple times. The wrapping paper on the ceiling idea got me thinking and looking for clever ways to store my ribbon rolls which led me to this post which got me so fired up that I jumped up to go do it without pinning it first (so I did that just now). Tee hee!

Well, combining the two ideas, here is my Pinning It Down offering for this week. It's a weird angle, I know. Imagine you have just opened the door to my garage and then looked up:

One rod for curling ribbon and one for fabric ribbon. 

OK... I cannot believe I just showed you a picture of my garage ceiling. Well, it's the little entryway into the garage, but still, it's in the garage! But that's where my craft closet is and that's where it will have to stay as long as the rooms are full of little people (and not so little people). I can live with that! :)

OH... I used two tension rods that I had sitting in my closet. One of them was thicker so I put the curling ribbon on it and one was thinner but it was still too thick for some of the really tiny ribbon rolls. We found (the girls helped me) that if you cut slits in the holes of the cardboard ends of the ribbon rolls, you could push those flaps in and make the hole big enough to slide onto the tension rod. Just FYI!