This was taken a few weeks ago at Easter but I'm just now looking at this batch of photos. Do you ever take a picture that completely captures your subject's personality? This shot of my little boy is one of those. That look on his face is pure him, sweet, a little misheivous and full of personality. His hair looks a bit crazy and that smirk on his face cracks me up.

The kids and were I alone over the weekend, the Man went up north to take our old tv and gigantic, heavy entertainment center up to my parent's cottage. He then had to leave abruptly on Sunday morning from the cottage to go to work, His bosses were having some important potential customers coming from France and they were freaking out about getting the studio in top shape for the visitors. Because we know that every single French person is the embodiment of style and culture, right? I'll admit, when we were in Paris many years ago, we didn't see anyone with a hair out of place or any sweatpants or sneakers in sight. In those days, before children and responsibility,, the Man and I were rather stylish and thin and were even mistaken for natives from time to time, quite an ego booster for us. Maybe that's why we didn't encounter any of the stereotypical rude French, because they didn't know we were Americans? This is with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, just call it my generalization overload blog for today.

The children and I had quite an uneventful weekend. Friday was pizza and movie night, I went slightly over my points allowance for the day. Pizza is what my WW leader would call my "trigger" food. A little bit is never enough. I'm not sure why I turned my relationship with food from a fairly normal one to a food is my only comfort one. It started when I had my 3rd baby, lots of circumstances leading to PPD, leading to food becoming way more important that it should be to ease my worries and help me to relax. It's almost embarrassing to type that out now, but I've learned from the other folks in my WW meetings that it isn't all that uncommon for a lot of people. So I'm trying to discover other ways to get comfort and relaxation, one of my comforts has become the internet and then that turned into another issue, spending way too much time online and getting almost nothing in return for all the time spent. Actually losing time with my family, in fact. I recently decided to limit my online time and in order to do that I had to drop from a group I had been with for a long time, but I had become obsessive with this group, checking on it constantly, posting many times in a day. I'll admit, I probably wouldn't have left had it not been for a few other incidents that don't need to be repeated here. I miss a few of the people I left behind but I hope to stay in touch with those few. I honestly don't think my leaving has sent much of a ripple through the group and I'd be lying if I didn't say I was hoping for a few emails asking where I was, at least. But that has always been one of my issues with this group. It was up to me to put myself out there to get closer to people, not expect them to do it for me. So when I see people forming sincere, deep friendships and I get envious about not being included, well, it is really my fault for not having the guts to put myself out there and trying to form solid relationships of my own with the people I felt a connection to.

Good grief, this started out as a how was our weekend blog and turned into an all about me ramble. Sorry, will be back to regularly scheduled less angst filled posting tomorrow.

I meant to post this on St. Patrick's Day, oh well, two weeks late it will have to be. In case you can't tell, that's a leprechaun on the right and a little bus friend for him to play with. I love it when the little man draws, he is getting more confident about his skills nowadays. He used to get so frustrated when pictures didn't come out the way he saw them in his head. I have another cute drawing he did for his big big sister with bunnies on it, I think I am going to try to embroider it on a canvas tote. If I can figure out how to transfer the drawing onto the fabric. I'm sure if I Google it, something will come up.

I've calmed down about the school situation, the open enrollment for our second choice school starts tomorrow. Not sure when we'll find out if she gets in there or not. I have been tinkering around with the idea of home schooling her and my daughter says she's willing to try too if we end up going that route, but I was worried about what my husband would say and he's totally for it so that's a relief anyway. My mouth, however, is still vexing me. It's still really sore and I have to keep taking Motrin to keep the pain at bay.

Easter was nice, although the annual Easter egg hunt that is held at the Historical Village was kind of a bummer. Due to the frozen solid snow on the ground, they had to hold the event in the playhouse with eggs scattered all over the floor. Not very challenging this year, then we turned our eggs in to be exchanged for candy and stuffed toys. We were late so our kids only got bubbles and the rest of the picked over reject candy and no stuffed bunnies. Oh well, it's not like we needed more.

The kids loved their mama made bunnies and the crocheted ice cream cones were a hit also. Yay!
The easter egg hunt held in our own yard was more challenging and as it has been for the last few years....very COLD! The lake is still frozen solid so the Man took the kids out for a romp while the snow was coming down pretty hard. They were all intrigued by the broken ice waves but the man was too nervous to let them go inside.

Our trip was wonderful until we got home and everything turned to crap.
Monday: Return home from up north
Tuesday: Take the kids to Ikea to look for new silverware
Things are still good, right?
Here comes Wednesday: Upper right tooth that has been bothering me for a week has gotten much worse so I begrudgingly make an appt with a dentist. Go to dentist and find out I have several cavities, some under the old silver fillings, some in front, some in between. Also a really bad upper left tooth that died months ago can still be saved but it will take a root canal and a crown. Some other teeth need the root canals and crowns too. The cost will exceed $5,000. Oh good, what a bargain. Guess what? We can't afford that! We decide to pull the worst tooth, and after much twisting, turning and breaking, the tooth is out. The worst part of that was the numbing shot that went into the roof of my mouth. OUCH!
The rest of this day and the following two days are spent with me in pain, being grouchy and not so pleasant to my kids. This afternoon, the Man comes home and is nice to me and I tell him how rotten I feel, he sympathizes. I go to get the mail and see that the results of the lottery from the high school we really want the oldest girl to attend has arrived. I say a prayer to the universe and open the letter.
Hello, this is to inform you that your number is 360

It goes on to say that anyone with 1-135 will definitely be going to the school

The next group of 135-160 will be on the immediate wait list

The next group of 161 and higher (that's us, we're HIGHER, we're FREAKIN' 360) we're on the long term wait list. The list also known as the no chance in hell of ever getting into this school list. I am pissed, I would have loved to have had the damn luck just for once! just once!

Wasn't that a fun way to end this mighty crappy week? I think so too.

I went on an vintage stuffed toy pattern buying spree last summer and ended up only making one thing so I decided to break them out and try again. I chose the animals on wheels pattern. Making the animals was the easy part, 3 pieces whipped stitched together and stuffed, I know how to do that. Here comes the hard part for me, attaching the wheels. The directions call for cardboard wheels that you make yourself, a 1/4" dowel, 4 small spools and 4 upholstery nails. Here is where I am totally stymied, the directions are all fairly clear (except the spool size where they just say "regular spool" huh?) but I can't seem to think ahead as to how this will work, so I've stopped. Plus, I need an ice pick or an awl to poke the holes in the stuffies to insert the dowels. I also decided to buy wooden wheels but they are much smaller in diameter than the cardboard wheels would be. So, I'm not sure where I'm going with that either.

Oh, and the other problem? The darn elephant is way too front heavy and it seems as though it will tip forward. I had to break down and ask the husband to help out with it. I hate doing that. He is busy with his own projects and I should be able to do this, it really doesn't seem that hard. Feh....

Here they are waiting to be pierced. Scotty needs a nose, eyes and his collar, Ellie needs her ears sewn on (which will make her even more front heavy) and her blanket sewn on, haven't decided what to use for that yet. I may use some bits of an old felted sweater I have laying around. Note the cute pattern pictures, their Ellie is curvier than mine. I hope she looks more elephantine with her ears on. Yes, I realize it is pure folly to make a wheeled toy with white felt. It was all I had for a scotty dog, brown just seemed wrong and I was out of black *and* grey. Note that Ellie is green, so I guess Scotty could have been a totally off color too. I am uphappy with the stuffing in their necks, it looks a little wobbly. hmmm...sorry to be such a whiner about this. I hope to like them better when I actually finish. Maybe this is another reason I avoid WIP posts?

I have been sticking with Weight Watchers much better this past week and I was happy to see a weight loss at my meeting yesterday. I forgot how much it helps just to write down and keep track of what I'm putting in my mouth. My first goal is to lose 10% of my beginning weight. I won't say how much that is, because any mathematical type will be able to figure out how much I weighed when I started this two weeks ago.

It occurred to me that I don't show pictures of
works in progress. That's usually because once I start something, I
just want it done and I think of nothing else. But I had some downtime in between making these bunnies so I snapped this shot. It took a bit of maneuvering to get a picture that doesn't show what an enormous mess is all around but I might have managed it. These two guys are waiting for their brother to be finished. I cribbed the design from a few bunnies I saw online, is that ok if you're just making them for yourself and not selling them? I hope so. Anyway, I haven't decided which kid gets which bunny. I was only going to make 2 because oldest girl has repeatedly stated that she has too many stuffed animals. But, I could not bring myself not to make one for her. Plus, I
think she may feel a little left out if she doesn't get one too. She's straddling that fence between childhood and teenhood and all that, right?

I *just* found out that my middle girl's teacher is retiring this year, she goes to a Montessori school and they stay in one class for 3 years. Well, this is my girls first year, so she is out a teacher. I am so so upset about this. We love her teacher, she has been teaching Montessori for over 20 years. UGH! I really don't want my daughter to have a brand new teacher next year. It's not that she can't adjust to a new teacher but the person they hire probably won't be as Montessori oriented. I'm not sure what we're going to do now. I'm already anxious about where my oldest is going to go for high school in the fall. Darn this school stuff, and the little guy starts kindy this September. That is going to be tough for me to handle, I think.

I'm so proud of my girl.

The ice show was a success. She was great, she went to every practice, every show (there were 4 performances) without complaint and she had fun and she was good in all 5 of the routines she was in. I think skating has been so good for her. Not only can she be athletic, but she can learn to be comfortable performing in front of other people. Which, for my self-conscious 13 year old, is very important. One of the coaches said he felt she really came out of her shell this year. I noticed that too. For instance, she was in a 'Thriller' routine with a ton of people and they had to do a lot of dance moves. You know the ones. Instead of trying to get lost in the crowd and barely doing the dancing part, she was putting in quite a bit of effort and was not hiding.

The pictures are from yesterday, we didn't get many good action shots on the ice. It's hard when your far away and can't use the flash.

Things are stressed around here lately, I'm having some weird health issues. I don't think it's anything serious. I hope.
But it's more annoying right now than troubling, I am going to see my doctor about it next week. I am beating myself up about my health because I think so many of my current problems are due to my weight, my poor eating habits and my lack of exercise. I know all this yet I don't do anything to help myself. I feel lazy and irresponsible and I do blame myself for all of my problems. I joined Weight Watchers again last week, was sticking to the program, counting my points, tracking my food intake and I weighed in yesterday to see a .4 pound weight loss. I was expecting more. Today I ate whatever I wanted. Very mature of me, right?
more sighs.....guess I'll go watch Reaper.

Wow, look at Santa down there! It has been a very long time since I've been here, maybe I burned myself out with all that posting in December? Or maybe I've been to busy to blog? Yeah, right. Nope, just plain and simple laziness. Instead of catching up, I'll just get right to what is going on now. We're gearing up for the oldest daughter's big figure skating show this weekend. She has had some kind of practice or ice show related event every day for the past couple of weeks. This week is the busiest. She is in 5(!) routines this year, her most ever. I am really excited to see the show come together this weekend. I've only seen bits and pieces at the practices, it will be so different with the lights and props. This year's theme is 'The British Invasion/American Rock n Roll'.
It basically means they are skating to a bunch of oldies, which isn't so bad. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Queen are good but they also threw Neil Diamond and Grand Funk Railroad in there. Then they jump to the 80s with 'Thriller'.

She joined the synchronized skating team this year, they are a fledgling group but their coach hopes they can compete someday. I'm not so sure if she will want to do that, but we'll see when the time comes. They are doing pretty well, but my girl often complains about the girls who don't pull their weight and just sort of get pulled along by everyone else, she gets very annoyed.

Little boy starts T-ball in a few weeks, he really wants to do soccer again but our recreation department only does soccer in the fall, so he's a little bummed and very worried that he'll have to know everything about baseball to play. Poor guy, I've been assuring him that's not the case, I hope I get through to him.

In the crafty department, I've been crocheting a lot. Making mostly amigurumi. Oldest girl wants to learn two to crochet, I'm excited to teach her. She gets a little impatient though when she can't do it perfectly immediately. *sigh*

So we're about to start our traditional New Year's Eve festivities. This is the night we let the kids each choose some normally forbidden food. The oldest girl always chooses Jeno's cheese Pizza Rolls. Middle girl hems and haws each year, this year she picked cereal straws, I am grossed out by these, but a tradition is a tradition, right? The Little Man's original idea was Cheetos but since he is spoiled by his grandma who lets him have those all the time at her house, he decided on the equally greasy but not as orange, Fritos. We also make 7-Up and lime sherbet punch and the hub and I have Pub Fondue with crusty bread, pickles, olives and our forbidden food, hard salami. Right now, the littles are taking a bath and making a mess, I am doing some last minute cleaning and then we'll play some games in front of the fire, eat our junky food and have our Family Talent Show with Daddy's Annual Puppet Show as the finale.

One of our traditions is to take my parents to Hamtramck (a Polish section of Detroit) for lunch and then to the Belle Isle Conservatory to see all the pretty flowers, but my mom was not feeling well today so we had to postpone that for another time. We all were sad about that as it is one thing we really look forward to every year. I leave you with the kiddos and Santa, who was not just a helper according to the Little Man but the actual Jolly Old Elf because "his beard was real and not just stuck on".

I made Peppermint Marshmalllows for the girl's teachers this year, all wrapped up in a cute tin with some Penzy's hot chocolate mix. The marshmallows taste delicious but they do not look nearly as pretty as the ones in the Martha Stewart recipe. I took a pic of them in the pan but it was kind of unappetizing. They look better cut up. I love these little gift tags, I got the PDF from an eBay seller.

More bottle brush trees, I just can't get enough of these things. I used red Rite dye this time.

Ok, here are a few of my current favorite things. The snowman ornament is from the Bethany Lowe collection. Wow, I just love some of her Christmas stuff. It is so old fashioned and sweet. I got Mr. Snowy here from Bayberry Cove.
I am thrilled with the dyed bottle brush trees, they came out great, I love the vivid colors I got from the food coloring. As you can see, I totally scammed the trees in a jar from The Adventures of Mama and Jack blog. The girls made the two with the red ribbons for my mom, I think she'll love them. I hope. The big one is mine, all mine.

Lastly, is this funky tree thing I bought at Ikea a few days ago, I wasn't sure what to put on it but I found a stash of red felt and decided to make these little ornaments. So we have a red and white theme on one side of the mantel, Yes, only one side. heh

Well, I'm behind in blogging but things are still moving along in the right direction with regard to our holiday must dos. Husband put up the fresh garland and our blue lights on the house, it looks so good. A little moody but cool. The girls and I went baking at grandma's on Sunday and we made several different kinds of cookies. The ones you see in the picture are thumbprints, chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, and lemon bars. You can see the lemon bars are a favorite of my children. The first layer is almost gone. I'm obviously not a food photographer, they taste much better than they look in the picture. I also made popcorn balls, another fave around here. My hands are always tingly the rest of the day after I make these, that's what happens when you stick you2 hands in popcorn coated with 254 degree mixture of corn syrup, sugar and butter. Yikes!

We also worked on bleaching and dying little bottle brush trees. Tutorial found here:
http://mamanjackjack.blogspot.com/2006/12/need-forest.html

These trees are popping up on many blogs and there is even a Flickr group for some:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/563828@N24/

We had a ton of fun making ours and will show pictures soon. BTW, if you want to try it yourself, I bought a huge bag of trees at Michael's for $8.99 (with a coupon). Such a deal!

So I'm trying to to move away from the factory made decorations this year. We still have our fair share but I wanted to try to have more handmade touches all around the house. Hence the fabric trees and amigurumi elf. Of course, I can't hog the spotlight so I have many projects lined up for the kids. One of them was painting these wonderful wooden trees, snowmen and "people". I bought these pieces from an awesome site called Casey's Wood Products. Check it out here:

http://caseyswood.com/

They are from Maine, the prices are great and the shipping was crazy fast. I found Casey's through another blog, I would post a link to them but I cannot find it again. Note the teen and her "don't take my picture" expression. The Little Man loved painting his items, he was so patient and engrossed by the whole thing. He usually gets bored quickly with crafty play but he was going to town on these. I love the pipes that oldest girl put on her snowmen. Middle girl was at grandma and papa's so she'll paint hers soon and I'm sure I will post pictures if those too.

By the way, don't you just love the mess you can see in that longshot? Yikes, and that is after cleaning up a bit. We are just the clutter family around here.

So here is our Christmas card picture, I'm surprised they still had some natural looking smiles left after all the photos I took. Even the bunny seems serene, look at her cute crossed paws.

Have you seen the new holiday stamps from the US Post Office? They're called Holiday Knits and I keep trying to upload a picture of them but it won't let me. They're sweet, trust me.

Found a cute site that writes personalized letter to your kiddos from Santa. It's free, I printed them out and will pop them in the mail today. I think the kids will get a kick out of it. Here's the URL: http://www.santawritesyou.com

So here are the other fabric trees, I like the look of the white buttons. I made the little amigurumi elf from a pattern I bought from this Etsy seller: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=33135
My crochet skills still leave a lot be desired and I am so sloooooow, it took me 5 hours to make the little guy and he is tiny. Anyone notice that one ear is bigger than the other?

These little girlies are called Dotee Dolls, named after their original creator who posted her tutorial here:
http://dotslifeandart.blogspot.com/search/label/tutorial
I made these for a Holiday Dotee Doll swap at Swap-Bot. I only needed to make one but I bought 3 different types of holiday fabric and I wanted to use them all. They are just so cute and you can embellish them in any way you like. I think my favorite is the candy cane one. I've been practicing with making different faces for them but so far they have come out looking odd so I'm sticking with the closed eyes, peaceful smile look for now.

I took several pictures of the kids yesterday for our our Christmas cards. I had them sit on the black futon and huddle together, the first 30 I took came out all out of focus (don't ask me how I did that) so I had to subject them to posing for another 30.
I ended up getting a few that I liked and I ordered the cards from Costco last night. The little man and I went to pick them up today. I really love the way they turned out.

Well, for once I am ahead of the game for Christmas. Oldest girl and I spent most of Sunday clearing out the clutter so we could start decorating. I bought the Chocolate Advent calendars for each of the 3 kiddos. Usually I don't get those until the middle of December, I am such a procratinator. I decided I wasn't even going to try making an Advent calendar this year since I didn't even start thinking about it until November 27th. See, what I said about procrastinating?

I did make a few things, I found a tutorial on how to make fabric trees here: http://thesmallobject.com/stenopad/wordpress/?p=822 and they were so cute and easy that I made 5. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the other 2 because I haven't found the perfect spot for them yet. They are slightly different than these. By the way, the little house is a vintage cottage I found at a thrift shop for a buck. I just love it and would die for more but all the ones I've seen since I bought this one have been horribly expensive. Even the reproduction houses, feh.

I decided I was going to try to post at least one completed holiday project for each day leading up to Christmas. I'm only 2 days late. Really, for me, that's not so bad.

His birthday isn't until tomorrow but I won't have time to post because we have a big day planned for the little man.
5 years ago tonight I was wondering when this baby was going to make an entrance to the world. My due date was Oct. 4th and still no signs of labor on October 15th! I was cursing my mother in law because when she found out I was due in October she proclaimed how nice it would be if the baby shared her and her fathers birthday or Oct. 17th. Hello?! That was almost 2 weeks after my due date! Well, he decided he wasn't going to share his birthday with anyone and I went into labor at 2am on the 16th. He was born 2 hours later, my midwife got here just as he was crowning and he came out screaming his little head off and he was so chunky and had a head full of hair (just like his big sisters) and was so cute and eeek.... A boy?! I have a boy?

My husband and I decided we wanted to be surprised and didn't find out the baby's sex. I didn't have an ultrasound anyway, but towards the end I had a feeling I was carrying a boy and I was terrified. What was I going to do with a boy? I already had 2 girls and was worried that I would not know how to be a mama to a boy. Seems so silly now.

I had to talk my husband into having a 3rd child, it took a lot of convincing and then it took even longer to conceive the baby. I look into my boy's big brown eyes and I can't even imagine him not being a part of our family. He is my last baby and the only one to be born at home, he's part of one of the proudest moments of my life.

So happy birthday my wonderful boy, I love you and your silliness and your sweetness and even your stubborn streak makes me smile.

Been on a Halloween ATC jag recently. I really love the vintage Halloween images. I received that ribbon I used for background
in a 2 liter bottle swap. You had to stuff a 2 liter bottle with all sorts of crafty supplies. Ribbons, stickers, thread, rubber stamps, pens,etc. Well, I've had this ribbon for over a year and I just pulled it out yesterday and thought I should give it away because it was kind of ugly and not my style. Apologies to anyone who likes it. But then I started playing with it as a frame on these cards and I think they turned out pretty good. So I need to start using more "ugly" ephemera, right?

So this is the week of tv season premieres. Heroes starts tonight! I think we are also going to check out that Chuck show which starts before Heroes. But what I'm really looking forward in the season premiere of The Office on Thursday. I love the 'What we did on our summer vacation' ad that's been showing on NBC. Creed says he found out he has grandchildren........and children. bwahahahaha Good 'ol Creed, one surprise after the other.