Meet Gwen

 Meet our new friend, Gwen.  She likes to be called Gwenny, though.  She is one crazy girl and she makes us laugh so hard we almost pee in our pants.  She makes herself laugh.

 She doesn't ever stop talking.

 Uh-oh Gwenny, no sticking out your tongue...her hair gets a little wild sometimes.

 Oh, don't get mad, it still looks super cute...even 

when you're bald.

 She doesn't stay mad for long.  

She gets right back to uncontrollable laughter pretty fast.

Bye Gwenny, kisses to you too.

Scrap purse and coin pouch

 I made this little purse and coin pouch for my niece's b-day a couple of weeks ago.  I let Ella help me pick out the fabric from a bag of scrap fabric that I had found at a rummage sale.  She picked out these three and I really like how they look together.

I really hope she liked it.

they make me smile....

 this wall art...I can't remember where I came across it, but it is perfect and inspiring if anyone knows the source let me know,

this sweet face...even at 6 am when the sun is just rising over the hills and streaming through our window,

 coffee...so that I can function at 6 am and can make

 some homemade waffles on our new waffle iron...apple cinnamon and banana pecan are my two favorites so far,

 yum, these are dangerous,

 this sweet girl playing

 with the late afternoon sun hitting her and  her bubbles perfectly,

 crocheting on cold nights,

 little dogs trying to steal big bones from big dogs

and being successful

Andy and his hoarding of car parts.

New Hats

 Here we are embracing the camera and sportin' a couple of new hats I just finished. For this picture Ella said, 'let's do funny faces'.  I guess that is Julian's new funny face.  It used to be grabbing the sides of his mouth and pulling it out to the sides.  Now it's pulling his eyes.  I guess I will have to explain to him at some point that people might take offense to that funny face.  
So our new hats were a couple of the easiest hats I have ever made.  I started E's a while ago but it was buried under some yarn.  Such a great surprise to find a project that is already half way done.  I made my hat a while back, but I didn't like the way that it looked and never wore it, so I took out a couple of rows and replaced them with the cream colored yarn and made it a little tighter.  Much better.  New hats and just a little bit of work.

 I made Andy embrace the camera with us.

Project ReStyle: T-shirt scrap to pj top

 I feel like I am cheating a little with the project this week.  I pretty much just took the fabric from the T-shirt (this is the T Andy let me have for Ella's Yoda ears hat) and sewed it into something else .  I guess I did try to use the graphics a little.  The flannel that I used for his pj bottoms is super soft, but in my opinion, a little more appropriate for a baby boy.  So the graphics at least add a little more big-boyishness to his pj's.  I know these are just jammies so who cares, but this is something a mama sometimes thinks about.

 Ella also got some new pj bottoms.  Like I said previously, I did a lot of sewing this past weekend.  Julian's shirt came out a little on the big side, but I'm good with that because he is growing like crazy.

 Back view.  I had to use the graphics going up and down because that was the only way that it fit. 

So this is my kind of, cheater version, Project ReStyle for the week.

Book Love!

I was going through the kid's books organizing, weeding out ones that we don't read too often and trying to make more room for our every growing collection.  As I was going through them, I realized some of my favorite books are the old vintage ones I have collected here and there.  They have great illustrations.

 Here are a couple of my favorite.

 I love this one and the kid's do too.  We have read this book hundreds of times.  It is now really falling apart and we don't read it much because I want to somehow repair it before we destroy it more.  This was a gift from a friend when Ella was born.  It was published in the 1956.  I love the kid's clothes and most of all I love the way these kid's play..the way kid's should play, using their imagination and being creative in their play.

 This one is called A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa.  It was published in 1957.  Love these illustrations also.

 A great collection of classics published in 1959.  This one is falling apart also.

 Another favorite of the kids with great illustrations, published in 1959.

 I love the record player illustrated under the heading 'And How We Live Today'. 

We love these books...a little too much.  We need to find a place to rebind them before they are destroyed.