Scout's 1st Birthday

Scout is One!
That year seemed to go by very fast.
We had a party at home for him with just our family, it was a fun day to celebrate our little boy.

 He did not like his cupcake at all.  It was fun for us to watch, but I think he licked the frosting and then then played with it for a little while before we just took it away from him.

The presents that we game him, measuring spoons, measuring cups, a can of tennis balls and a cardboard box.

I think he liked the cardboard box the best.

Mermaids in the park

The park where the Easter Egg hunt was held also had a Mermaid. I couldn't even find the boys to add to the picture.

Quilt #5 Beach Shack

I finished another mini quilt.  This is another paper piecing. This one gave me lots of challenges and I was way too friendly with my seam ripper.  The little life preserver in the border is made up of 21 pieces.  I like how it turned out in the end, but it took me a lot longer than I planned. 

It is machine quilted, and I used temporary spray adhesive to assemble it and I really like how that prevents movement and stretching.    After looking at the pictures, I realized the tail on the kite is a little long, and flipped up so I need to trim it.  It is just ribbon tacked on, so I can easily trim it.  The clothesline and the doorknob are embroidered and along with the kite tail adds some dimension to it.

Easter 2012

We had a great Easter.  We had an Easter egg hunt at church and then another one at home with Daddy doing his best to hide the eggs.   I didn't get much pictures.  Daddy had the big kids and I got to watch this one shake the 2 eggs he found.  He was cute to watch.

We did get one good picture taken at church on Easter morning...

This was the 1st version of that attempt... not so good.

Easter Eggs

My kids really like hard boiled eggs....
We colored eggs in the morning, they ate all of them (a dozen) at lunch time.  Daddy never even got to see them.

Into everything

Scout is into everything. Especially electronic stuff, he sees us with it and wants to play too.

 His big sister let him play bowling on the Nook.

Scout on the move

About 2 weeks before his 1st Birthday Scout has decided that he doesn't need help.   He can go up AND DOWN the stairs without any help.  He escaped one day when I was putting away laundry and I found him downstairs.  I didn't see him in action, but apparently he got down without any help.  (Prior to this he would sit at the top of the steps and whine/cry until someone carried him down the steps.)   Now I have seen him successfully go down and it makes my life a little easier knowing that he is competent.
He stops at the top, slowly turns around and goes down backwards... He is a smart little boy.

 Safe at the bottom!

He may not have any desire to learn to walk in the near future, but I am OK with that, he can go downstairs by himself. 

Basketball Bag

Buddy is disgruntled sometimes that I always make stuff for the girls and not as much for him.  This week he finally got something that he LOVES. 

I took an old flat basketball and turned it into the coolest bag he has ever seen.  He even willingly smiled and let me take a picture. 

The directions are here on instructables

Baby Carrier

I carry Scout in my Ergo carrier everywhere... I rarely ever use the stroller and I love that he is happy back there.  However my little one needed a carrier for her baby.   I found a pattern here   It was simple but next time I would use normal straps instead of ribbon, they don't stay put and slide way too easily after a few hours I just added safety pins so they wouldn't move.

She can wear it on the front or on the back.   She usually likes it on her back so she can still play.

Just because

Just because he is so cute.

Making stuff

My family seems to think that I can sew anything.   I seem to be making all sorts of strange things lately.  
Princess wanted a new teddy bear and she wanted to make it.  She drew out a pattern, cut it out, traced it on fabric and then had me sew it together for her. 

Now she has a new teddy bear, complete with button eyes and a pink smiling mouth.  I think it looks a little creepy, but the fabric is leftover from her quilt, so it matches, and she loves it.

Daddy is having me construct a backpack for him.  After he designed it and cut out the fabric, I assembled and sewed the waistbelt.  I haven't taken a picture, but it is pretty ugly and I don't enjoy working with Nylon and foam.  I even put a needle through my finger while working on the waistbelt.  I know there are more parts of this to come, but I am going to procrastinate on his project as much as possible.  My sewing projects are much more fun.

When things go wrong

When things go wrong, it is usually not just one thing.
The light cord fell off when Daddy was putting breakfast on the table one busy morning, plus the ceiling fan switch broke a few days earlier. We had cereal by candle light.  We finally took the time to fix it, 2 days later. 

While standing on the table to reach the light, the table broke.   After 3 trips to the hardware store, all is fixed and back to normal. 

But for a little while, our dining room looked like this:

Quilt #4

Actually this quilt was finished before the wine quilt, but I forgot to take a picture of it.  This is Princess' quilt. She cut out all the pieces, she sewed some of them together and then Grandma and I finished it.  So the assembly is much better than Munchkins, but the quilting is horrible.   Thinking I was better at this, I did not baste it as much as I should have, so it has LOTS of puckers.  The glitter fabric on the border is stiff, and the minkee on the back was not quite big enough, so it was a challenge to put together.  

It is FAR from perfect, but a little 8-yr old loves it and sleeps with it every night.

Child labor

We are firm believers of child labor, and even somehow manage to draft other neighborhood children into our labor. 

 We have one child scraping paint in a tutu and another one supervising all the work.

Spring Break Bouncing off the walls

The kids had an early spring break and I decided to take them to one of the jump house places for a morning.  We brought 2 friends, so the van was full.  But it burned off lots of energy and they had a great time.  However it is really hard to get pictures there.  The kids don't stop moving.

 This is the only picture I could get of Buddy, he just never stopped moving.

 Even Scout got to explore.