Baskets of Homemade Goodness

These are two baskets I made. One for a fundraiser and one as a wedding gift. Both baskets are recycled with bags and coffee filters made from scrap fabrics filled with home canned items such as blackberry jam, pickles, tomato sauce and apple butter.

Thanksgiving

Somewhere within the boogy stained shirts and dirty hair is a craftswoman. Creative & artistic I have sometimes thought myself to be. Dedicated to my children and wanting to stay home with them while they are still small I am trying to get back to crafting again in hopes of selling my wares. So, I have decided to start posting my creations here as a ways of documenting them. Starting with my Thanksgiving table.
This year my sister has just moved North to Oregon and my parents decided to have Thanksgiving there with her in her new lovely place. 160 acres of pasture and woods. So, here at Gormley Keep it was just going to be Hubby, myself, Phelan, Cleo and my two brothers. Mark and Michael.
And thank goodness for that!! Have I mentioned that this household has pretty much beeen sick for the previous two weeks?? So, a very low key holiday was planned.

I had no intention of decorating the table, but when I looked out the window that morning I saw a few lovely roses blooming and took the kids ourside to collect them for our table, then we added rosemary, which was also blooming, and mint... then we saw all these lovely fallen leaves and collected those up as well as some pink peppers. Tossed on the table with the little felted witch my hubby won at a fundraiser and here it is! I am regretting not folding the napkins a little nicer, but all in all it really set the tone for a lovely meal.

What I am grateful for this year..... My amazingly beautiful children, my hardworking husband, my mother and father, my friends who inspire me, love me, support me, and challenge me. The bounty of nature.

Stream of Words

Cleo is yammering in her crib.... wanted her to take a little nap, but it's a wee bit late. Phelan is climbing on my desk 'plugging in' who knows what.

I want to get better at organizing my thoughts into words. I am a visual creature and can't compose a letter with out silence and hours to ponder. So here I am with all my daily distractions seeing if anything can come out with some sort of relative sence.

"Mommy, where is my Blackberry?" (the electronic device, not the fruit) How often does your three year old say that? Mine does daily.

Cleo is silent and Phelan is playing quietly across the room... .hm... now I'm at a loss of words.

So, I've been feeling the need to get out of my domestic rut lately. The housework is never done, so why put off all the cool stuff I want to do till after I get 'my stuff' done. Sometimes I feel like the stero-typical 'housewife', who feels trapped in her house and years to get out and discover who she is, except I pretty much know who I am. I've just had to put parts myself in hibernation in order to become the mommy-housewife I am. I see it not as a permanent sacrifice, but a temporary one. As my kids get older, I have visions of of them tagging along behind me in the woods with packs of thier own upon thier backs.

"Just when the catipillar thought the world was over, she bacame a beautiful butterfly"

A night without kids

Tomorrow I leave for an overnight trip without my kids.
Last time I left Phelan overnight was a year ago for the Spring Equinox and other than one night when he was 3 mos old, that was the first time I had spent the night away from him, Considering I was pregnant at the time, I don't consider it a true kid free night.
I've never left Cleo overnight before.

I'm a little anxious.

Not so much about the kids, I know now that they will be fine. Phelan loves to hang out with his Papa and 'fix things'. Cleo is an easy baby and my mother is coming to take care of her, and Mom (aka, Lala.) is amazing with children, especially babies.
I'm worring about my mom. She holds a lot in and sometimes my father treats her like a servant, and she seems to have accepted that role for herself. I want this visit to be as easy for her as possible and for her to have fun with her only grandkids. I'm worried that if my dad stays as well, she will be in a position where she will be worrying about what he needs or cooking and tidying up. I was hoping to get a bunch of food cooked in advanced for her, but that didn't pan out.
Everything seems to take so much longer when there is a baby involved.

Ok.... (talking to myself, again.) They will be fine. Rick will be here, Mom can take care of herself. They will be fine. Don't forget to leave the kids medical cards.

Phelan quote

The other day Phelan was trying to climb onto my desk to get to my sewing light and he said he was trying to get to the light because, "The light will help my brain get big, so I can get on the computer and TV."

Now, mind you, he has pretty limited TV time. Only a movie here and there when I leave him with his papa (sometimes) or once or twice when we were both sick. But, he knows that his papa watches TV at night, and Jilli and Sissy have TV's in their rooms. And, well, only grownups have computers too.

Oh, my.....

...my, my, my.....
My cousin, by way of my lil' sister has dragged me into Facebook. So far a great big timesink.
Ah, the wee-ist is awake.

Yesterday was a good day

...despite being woken up at 3:15am by the rain. Then, of course, Phelan was up at 4am, Cleo was up at 5am. I got Cleo back to sleep and made Phelan lay down and try to sleep. (I think he may have dozed a bit... I dozed a bit.)

Made coffee in one of my new coffee filters. My hubby asked me where I got the idea for them. I said, "Well, I was making a grocery list and we were out of coffee filters."


I used some 30 year old fabic that I have been carting around with me over all these years, and now I don't ever have to pay $2.00 for coffee filters again!


So, on top of finishing a total of 5 coffee filters, I mended all four couch pillows, a bed pillow, and made three pillowcases while Cleo was taking a nap. That's it for the quick stuff. Next I'm going to work on some wool pants for Phelan and a sleep sack for Cleo using some old wool sweaters picked up at goodwill. But first I need to do some shopping! Pinking shears, a zigzag foot, zipper foot and a zipper.

Yesterday I also did my first massage in four years! I've been lookng at ways to work from home to earn some money and getting back into massage on the weekends seems like the perfect job. Rick stayed home with both kids and did very well. It felt good to earn a little money on my own. Probably just enough for my pinking shears! ;)