The Conference Yield.



During Saturdays sessions I started this little doll for my daughters birthday. I did most of it by hand because I couldn't listen to conference and use the noisy sewing machine at the same time. When ever I put the doll down to rethread my needle my daughter would snatch it up and say "E-ya-ya, guy? Nooo, mama guy." (E-ya-ya is how she says her own name.) And then I would have to force her to give it back to me. She wants the doll now, we will see if she will want it once she can really have it on her birthday. It is meant to be played with in the castle I made for my son a while back. I think I'll make another doll and a bed and chair to fit in it.

For Sundays session I couldn't finish the doll because somewhere in my upbringing I learned that sewing on Sundays is strictly forbidden, and if you do, you will have to pick out the stitches with your nose. I don't know if I truly believe this, it might be one of those things I would group with the idea that womens ankles should never be seen. In some cases I'm sure the rule still sticks, but for the kind of mild sewing I do, I'm not so sure. Still I won't dare pick up a needle on a Sunday because I'd be wracked with guilt. So instead I doodled and sketched, I just have to have something to do with my hands or my listening ability is greatly diminished.

All in all the message that stuck with me the most from the whole thing was that I should be a better mother to my children. They will be with me for such a short period of time in their lives and I am creating the foundation that they will live by, so I should set them, and my duties as wife, above all else.

After some relentless begging here is a dragon for my sons room.



My husband has told him a bed time story that ends with a golden dragon that lives on a mountain top. So he got a golden dragon, and it's even on a mountain top.

I should have taken a "before" picture of the frame, it had a few problems...the corners didn't meet up right, and it had some tacky felt on it too, but most of all it was gold. I am anti gold when it comes to picture frames. The frame came from Kim, and when my son saw it he immediately began asking to put it up in his room. I kept telling him "Maybe some day..." in an effort to let him forget about it. Then I found out that he wanted a picture of a dragon for his room and he wanted dragon slime on it. This I could handle. He was very persistent in getting me to work on it, and kept asking me, "How many more minutes?"

Probably looks familiar...



I made another quilt just like this before, but I like the other one a lot more. The colors on this one aren't quite right. The fabric for the top looked more green in the stores lighting, turns out it's fairly yellow, with a slight nuclear waste tinge to it. Being juxtaposed with the black doesn't help it at all. The city has a bit of a balance issue too. Oh well, I finished it this morning. It has been sitting around with about half an hour of stitches left undone on it. I was looking for a totally unrelated object this morning and as I looked under the quilt, I forgot about the object and decided to finish the quilt instead. I am so easily distracted, sometimes it's not a bad thing.

No Easter Bunny, but there were baskets and candy and hidden eggs...


...and tears and boogers and wailings of all sorts...

Someone turned 2 years old, and this is what I gave her. Two flowery barrettes, and a card. Aren't I the nicest Aunt?

While I sit here and listen to Last of the Mohicans on Librivox, I've made a few more barrettes too. Maybe someday I'll post them in my etsy shop, but I'm not promising anything.

If you want to see me swoon...

...watch me read books such as this and this... Well I shouldn't say read, I just like to look at the pretty pictures. And eventually I start doodling and drawing. This is what came of my foray into the ornament books this time...




I might have had some purpose in mind when I started, but it eludes me now. I guess that just makes it a blog ornament.

I'll have you know, I painted the feather.


I also finished two little pictures of dragons. I wish I had painted the red one green, but I don't think I'll go back and change it. This means that I finished the whole wall... sort of. I'm waiting for Mike to come visit so that he can hang the frames straight, and I need to clean the mirror.

This dragon is standing on his head. It looked better as a sketch than a painting, he seams a bit off balance.




What I really want to do is paint my kitchen green. When we painted the house the first time I almost did, but I am a chicken when it comes to color, and I opted for neutral. The house is mostly beige colors with a few black accents and wood that is on the darker side. I'm thinking a green that is somewhere between a lime and an olive. All this thinking and wanting is for naught though, my husband is very much against the idea of painting the kitchen, he says it's about at the bottom of his priority list. I think I need to encourage him to take a trip for a couple of days.

Completed.


Remember the reading dragons with the alphabet, well here is it's companion picture. Numbers. Now my kids will be sure to be able to count to the number 16 as well as say their ABC's.



It has yet to be determined whether the man is taking, or giving the money to the short guys. What do you think? And as far as the short guys go, would they be considered dwarfs, elves, or children with big noses?



Oops, I'm not done! I didn't paint the feather in the guys hand.




Does the guy at the end remind you of my father at a ward Christmas party? Maybe, for a brief second.



Giving credit where credit is due: When I was trying to draw those short guys I had a difficult time. I couldn't get their stances and proportions right. So I turned to my Very First Dictionary a Magic Word of Words published by Macmillan publishing in 1983. These are the pictures I used a references, in fact they were partially traced, but altered much. Can you tell which one goes to which little guy?


Am I an evil plaigarizing fool, or can I get away with this because the picture is for my own personal use?

I love Alice because she hates hearts. I can't say I'm too fond of them either, but this one was a very pretty surprise.


I have had a few butternut squashes hanging around on my kitchen counter, from my dad's garden last summer. I see them almost every day around 5 when the kids are howling that they want dinner and my husband will be home from work in a few minutes, and I have nothing planned. By that time it is too late to cook winter squash because I need something fast to quell the ensuing mutiny.

Last Saturday the kitchen was newly cleaned, so I figured I should mess it up. I decided to cook up some butternut soup. I thought perhaps the squash would be getting old and dry by now on it's way to becoming a gourd. But as I split the first one open I was pleasantly greeted with an absolutely delicious smell. It smelled like a very sweet cantaloupe, and it's deep and bright orange color was like medicine for the winter dreary neurons in my head.

The heart shape was a bit ironic and made me laugh. Just a few days before my son had come to me and declared that he wanted to cancel Valentines day, and since I'm a scrooge at all holidays I heartily agreed. So we made signs that said, "Valentine's Day Canceled!" (my sons idea.) And then he said he was going out to yell it at the cars. I told him I didn't want him yelling at cars, so he agreed that he would just talk to them. After a few minutes of standing on the corner out in the cold he came in disapointed that no cars had come by. Later that day he got a package in the mail from his grandma with Valentine's presents, so he decided that it wouldn't be canceled after all.

I haven't been working on much lately because I feel like this painting by Picasso, in fact if this lady had a fatter nose and I had bangs, it would be the spitting image of me.


Yup, she's got the winter time blues , er I mean greens. I am ready for the snow to go away, or at least, the clouds to allow the sun to shine through. I spend my days looking at real estate in far off exotic locations (like exotic St. George, Utah) wishing I could move there. But I have to consign myself to the fact that we're not going anywhere. And as soon as spring starts showing up I'll be 100% content with life.

This next picture is a project I've been working on for about 5 years. It is the first quilt I ever started, and at the rate I'm going it will probably be the last I ever finish, hopefully that isn't true because I would like to finish it by the end of the winter. It doesn't help that I can't find my thimble. Someday when I finish it I'll show you the whole thing.


Little Rant: Did I mention that I hate my camera? Yes I have. And I'd like to say it again. I hate my Nikon Coolpix 5200. Out of the thousands of pictures I have taken of my children, only about 15 of them are usable.

So I found out what Christmas is all about for our family. It's pretty much just a big threat to get the children to clean up or be good.

"If you don't help clean up then I am going to cancel Christmas forever!"

Okay, I didn't ever go to that extreme, but I found myself using Christmas and presents as a bargaining chip to try to get him to stop fighting, crying, and to get him to clean up and do his chores. My son would always come back with something along the lines of, "If you don't want to give presents then that means you don't love Jesus." Oh this kid knows how to really push my buttons... In the mean time my little girl just ran around being good and truly earning all the presents she got. In the end I didn't throw out any presents, even though I really wanted to, and we had a good Christmas. Next year I hope I can abolish the Christmas Threat attitude and replace it with something more positive.

My husband and I are trying to figure out what defines Christmas at our house. We of course want it to be centered around Christ, but as much as we emphasize Him, around here the kids are still mostly awed by the lights and decorations and the allure of gifts for themselves. The youngest of course doesn't have any clue about presents and she just likes to see how often she can get away with pulling something off the tree. We have decided that Santa Clause will not be a part of Christmas around here. My husband feels deeply that we should not lie to the kids. I don't care that much for Santa Clause so I support him on this. We have told our son that Santa is not real, but he insists that he is. He likes to play the "Is he real?" game. It goes like this. "Is Ron Paul real?" "Yes," I tell him. "Is Superman real?" "No," I tell him. "Is President Hinkley real?" "Yes," I tell him. "Is Santa Clause real?" "No," I tell him. "Yes, he is mom, because my cousin said so, and I saw him at the church." In addition to taking away Santa Clause from our children we have also banned "made in China" items from our gift giving, and since almost all toys are made in china these days, our kids won't be getting any toys for Christmas. And to top it off we also won't be having any candy. My husband and I both have stopped eating candy, I've only been doing it for a few months and I make a few exceptions, but my husband hasn't had candy in years. It isn't as bad as it sounds, the kids will get plenty of goodies and sugar, it just won't be "candy." We'll have granola bars, and fruit snacks, and dried fruit, and beef jerky, and nuts and goldfish crackers. I'm sure they will get plenty of candy from other people, and that is fine, they just won't get it from their parents. So after all this rambling I now come to the funny story that I was going to share...

On Friday night I told the kids that we had to clean the house before we went to get a Christmas tree, so we all worked together to get the house cleaned, by the next morning the house was a mess again, so we cleaned up again and while we cleaned my husband and I decided that we wanted to go to DI and see if we could get a decent fake tree. We jumped in the car and went on our way. We found a tree at DI and decided it would work, but lo and behold our son was heart broken, he wanted a real tree! My husband and I were feeling pretty bad that we were letting him down, especially with all our other tyrannical Christmas rules and he had worked so hard to help clean. So we gave in and went to the tree lot. There is tree lot in our area that sells $5 trees as well as larger more beautiful trees. The $5 trees are small and sparse, but they are actually quite adequate and top off at about 5 feet high. When we got to the lot there were only about 4 of these little trees left. We told our son to pick one. He reacted by throwing a big fit..."I want a normal tree, these aren't normal trees, these aren't normal!" He went on and on about how not "normal" they were and how unfair it was, but he couldn't explain to us what he meant by normal. We showed him a bunch of the other trees that were $20-$60 some of them he thought were normal, but we explained that they cost too much and so we had to choose from the small trees. He continued to throw his fit. My husband and I were feeling stupid for giving in in the first place and thinking that we were going to go back to get the fake tree, when all of a sudden the kid perks up and says "Here's one! This one is Normal!" It was one of the $5 trees that we had looked at first. So we all agreed that it was "Normal," and we bought it and went home.

Still after all this rambling what I really wanted to share was my item listed on Etsy.

This was my Sunday activity...very uplifting, wouldn't you say? He's made out of felt and is a puppet. I tried a needle felting method, but I think if I'm going to do it this way again, I need to use unspun wool instead of felt sheets because of the hard edge that the felt sheets have, or maybe I just need to embellish more with unspun wool. I also need to improve on the mechanics, he's not too easy to make talk.

Would you want to discuss politics with this guy? What about if you were also an ugly puppet, then would you? Just wondering.

It was late in the evening of November 3rd, just three measly days into NaNoWriMo when I came to the conclusion that I was done. No I hadn't completed my novel, I just wasn't going to work on it anymore. It wasn't because, I was falling behind, I was actually doing quite well with my word count. I simply came to the conclusion that there were other things I needed, and wanted, to be doing. I'm not the kind of person that can bust out 1700 words in no time at all. It takes me a good portion of the day, as the month wore on it might have gotten easier, but I won't be giving it a chance.

I do not want to be discouraging to other writers. Please don't give up, I implore you, keep going. Write! Write like the wind!

Now I suppose, I'll have to come up with some fancy stuff to show that I am doing something instead of writing. If only I could write and quilt at the same time.

I just wanted to remind you all that you should be preparing for November. Get your art projects, craft projects, and other silly commitments finished up (or just to a point where you can put them aside for a month.) Yes, November is National Novel Writing Month, and yes, I do expect everyone to participate, no matter what. I will be writing my own novel of course, or at least starting one, as I have done in years past. I think the most I've ever written was 16 pages of nonsense. I always tend to give up after about a week because I just can't keep up my word count and life starts piling up. This year will be different, I'm sure, considering that my youngest is 18 months old and can practically take care of herself.

These hats are great. I want one my size, in a more Pam friendly color and warmer material.

I thought I'd make my own simpler version, and so I did. It turned out too small for my little girl, so one of my smaller nieces with a smaller noggin will have to wear it, that is until she cries and pulls it off, or her mom takes it off for her because everyone laughs at her.

Is the electrical circuit box hidden under picture number 1, 2, or 3? You will never guess, or maybe you will, but I'm not giving out any prizes, so it won't do you any good.

After a few weeks of arranging and re-arranging various frames around on the floor in front of this wall, and making a few trips to our local thrift shops to find the perfect sized frame, I have finally decided that this is how this wall will hang. I have yet to fill the 3 frames on the left with pictures, so they don't really count towards my new years resolution.

I officially now have my very own ruffle.



I was working on painting some frames for my kitchen, to go along with the alphabet picture, and I needed another frame, but I couldn't go and get one because I didn't have a car to leave the house with. So, alas, I started another project. I thought it would take me an hour or two, and I could have the sewing machine put away before my husband got home, instead it took me all day and part of the next morning. I did a lot of picking out stitches, cutting more fabric than I really needed, and I pinned and re-pinned the darn thing numerous times, trying to get it's ruffle spread out equally.

At one point my son wanted to help by taking out the pins after I sewed over them, (normally I would take them out right before sewing over them, but I was sewing slowly, so we were not in much danger of gouging our eyes out with broken needles.) I sewed along, and he removed the pins. After sewing about 3 feet I realized that I had run out of bobbin thread, which meant that the whole time I hadn't actually been sewing at all. And since my son had steadfastly helped me by taking out each and every pin, I had to re-pin it and sew it again. What is the longest stitch that you thought you stitched, but really hadn't? (This is one of those blog competitions, post a comment including your answer and who ever stitched the longest non-stitch will win a prize!)

Now that the ruffle is finished I don't know that I like it all that much. It looks too countryish, like I should have some cow and daisy themed porcelain plates hanging on the wall next to them. I don't know what I expected, it is a ruffle after all.

Someone was turning one and I wanted to give her a present for her birthday. I accompanied my mother and sister to Toys R Us where the shelves were stocked full of goods any child would be happy to have. But no, none of these items were to be my present for my cousins little girl. She would not be getting what she wanted from me. Instead I gave her some odd little felt barrettes that were made by my very own person, and in the good old U.S.A. She will have to grow a bit more hair in order to wear them.

I borrowed my brother's girlfriend's head to model, since her hair had the capacity to hold in a barrette, and she was the least likely person in the room to protest and run away. Thanks Kim for taking the pictures.

I had more felt left over, so I made some for my little girl, she won't leave them in her hair, instead she likes to take them out and suck on them. Ick, slimy felt. So I wear them instead.

I am actually working on my new years resolution to put stuff on my walls. I have just finished something. It's not on the wall though, that will probably take me another month or two.



I often look back at my kindergarten days in Mrs. Davis's class and I remember fondly the alphabet on the wall in front of the room over the chalkboard. I could always look up there in case I forgot how to make a particular letter. Since my children will be home schooled I want to have the alphabet readily accessible for them to look at. But the large laminated brightly colored alphabet from my childhood isn't something I want hanging in a prominent place in my home. So I have made my own. In my last home I painted a border around my sons room with the whole alphabet, and of course dragons. It took me forever to paint and just as I finished it we sold the house and moved, and I had to leave it behind. When we move next I will be able to take this one with me.



"Yuck, what is that?" a young boy visiting my house asked me. He was referring to the gunk on the frame. I told him it is dehydrated slime. I love my ugly frames, I haven't found anyone else who agrees with me, especially not my husband. He doesn't understand why I would "ruin" a perfectly good frame.

Below are some blurry close ups. My camera stinks, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.




The greatest news in all of this is that I can now clean off my kitchen table, and my husband can love me again, at least until I mess it up again.