I don't have a lot of photos, but a mishmash of some random stuff. Today, I spent nearly all day finishing up the little books I made for Luke and Riley for Christmas. I know, Christmas was a month ago! But I still had some pages to fill out and I hadn't seen them for Christmas (Noah was pretty sick). I *must* get these to the kids this weekend. I'm thrilled with how they turned out!
Someone asked me to share more about them, so I'm going to write a separate detailed post about the whole thing--a tutorial. But for now, here are a few fun things from their books:
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| It's easier to imagine how it works when you look at the sides (the tutorial will show more) |
I needed to come up with some ideas for the pages and I decided to get creative with the program that I use to edit photos. Usually I just resize pictures and maybe brighten them if they are too dark, but I played around some more today to get fun pictures for their books...
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| Luke likes a Super Mario Bros. game and I played it with him. The cats were my favorite! |
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| Luke wants to be a pilot when he grows up, like his dad. Photo credit: @pilotpatrick on Instagram. He posts a ton of (photoshopped) photos like this. I just grabbed one of his and edited it for Luke. (If you, @pilotpatrick, happen to see this, I'd be happy to remove it at your request!) But check out his Instagram if you'd like some fun male eye-candy ;) |
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| Riley wants to be a nurse like her mom. Becky worked as an RN before she became a stay-at-home mom. |
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| This one is my favorite. Riley is OBSESSED with unicorns! Credit: The photo came from Etsy seller My Kids Dream. She basically does the same thing that I did--put your kid's face on the body. (And again, if the seller happens to see this and would like me to remove it, I'd be happy to.) |
Anyway, the books turned out super cute and I'm excited to share the whole thing in a tutorial!
Speaking of Riley, my mom took her to a "princess party" at a local recreation center. There were lots of girls dressed as princesses, and being treated as such for an evening :) (I don't know the names of the Disney princesses, but I'm guessing this is one of them.)
I don't like to celebrate birthdays, as you know, because I hate getting older. So it was only fitting, then, that I got pretty sick for a few days--the worst of it was on my birthday, actually. Jerry made me a "boogie bag" for all of my used tissues (I blew my nose a LOT). I took a few COVID tests and all were negative. Today, I am 100% on the mend. The only residual symptoms are that I'm super exhausted and that I'm still blowing my nose. But no sinus infection, fever, chills, or anything like that. Yay! (Although, this cold set me back on my 10K training for a week.)
Despite the fact that I was sick, I still wanted to choose a birthday dinner. For each of our birthdays, we get to pick our dinner--go out to a restaurant, get take-out, cook something here, whatever we want. And out of alllllll the food in allllll the world, you know what I wanted most?
Jerry and I started talking about what the cutest baby animal in the world is. We had no idea! We love kittens, but we haven't exactly looked this up before. After a google search and debate, we settled on THIS baby orangutan 😍
Vegan Truffle Mac & Cheese with shredded BBQ soy curls on top. BAHAHAHA! Who the heck did I turn into? On Monday, I will have been vegan for one year. Can you believe it? I never, ever would have imagined being vegan one day. And ohmygosh, I love this food.
Renee wished me happy birthday on Facebook and she included this picture. I'd never seen it before! I don't remember that shirt at all; but from the photo, I'm thinking it was our first day of our first practice of our first season coaching cross country. That was when we had practices at the elementary school and we included second graders!
I had a suede/faux fur coat that was too big on me. (Side note: Even though I have some suede and leather things--obviously not vegan--I don't feel like it's right to just get rid of them for the sole purpose of them not being vegan. I feel like that would be even more wasteful/disrespectful. I feel like keeping and caring for the animal products I already have is more respectful to the animals than just getting rid of them. So, if you see me wearing leather or suede, it's NOT new--it's something I've already owned.)
Anyway, I didn't want to just get rid of this suede coat (that I bought at Goodwill) because it's super soft and I knew the cats would like it. I disassembled the coat and then over the past few days, I cut the pieces into shapes that I could tetris together. Now, I can use that fabric for a couple of hammocks, like above, or another sort of cat bed. And then get rid of the gross beds!
These are all of the disassembled pieces of the coat. I'm too lazy to go find the blanket I stitched them into.
I'll start working on the hammock when my energy comes back (this virus or whatever sort of head cold it was has wiped me out).
I got a very generous and special gift in the mail from an old reader (who I like to consider a friend, although we've never met in person) named Cathy. She is SUPER crafty and she made me a "Crazy Cat Lady" tumbler with black cats on it! And there is a pen to match. I opened the package this morning and immediately used both items while making a grocery list.
Cathy was worried I'd be offended by the word "crazy"--while some people with mental illness may find it offensive, I do not AT ALL. So please, call me crazy all you want! :) I actually like the term, because it describes me pretty well, hahaha.
Cathy did NOT ask me to share these gifts or link to her Etsy store, but I want to do that--she has been incredibly kind and generous for probably 10 years now(!). You could not find a better seller than Cathy. (She has given me a couple of things before and the quality is top-notch!) You can find her Etsy store here: Eleventh Avenue Crafts.
Jerry and I laughed at the cats on the tumbler because the one at the very top looks JUST like Duck and the one sitting in the plant looking upward looks exactly like Chick.
Finally, this is the project I've chosen to work on in February. I think I'm going to stash my latch hook aside for another time because I'm just not enjoying it! I bought the pattern for this Shameless Mitts a long time ago but I never got around to making them. With arthritis in my hands, the cold really irritates it; wearing fingerless mitts always helps! I have some fabric ones that I made a couple of years ago, but I really like these ones. And I miss Shameless! ;)
Jerry is apparently sick with whatever virus I had, so we plan on having a low-key weekend again. I can't say that I'm complaining--it's been fun to not have to be anywhere.
Have a great weekened! xo
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