I am posting this for Jennifer at Craftsanity.  She mentioned in her podcast about wanting to knit some less than traditional doilies.  I raided Todd’s grandma’s doily cabinet a few years ago.  She is an amazing knitter/crocheter.  I could not do these (yet.)  She had mostly very traditional doilies, but these two jumped out at me and are now used daily in my house. 

I LOVE this one.  I have a thing for the flowers and the colors she chose.

This one is unusual due to the color choice.  I really do have it hanging on the back of my toilet.  The bathroom has a lot of this color green, and it looks good there.  I love  Grandma’s doilies!

So my nephew (great-nephew, if you want to get technical) is having his first birthday party today.  He is a beautiful sweet boy.I can’t believe that he is already a year old.  I remember last year being at school and getting the call that his mama had delivered.  I was so excited that I literally sprinted out of the school building.  I know I still feel like that when I see him. 

Well last night I made his birthday present.  I doubt anyone will be surprised.  He’s getting a Monster Doll (formerly aka Ugly).  I liked how his face turned out.  I used my sewing machine on the eyes.  I thought it would stay better than whip-stitching it.  Remember he is only one. 

I wish now that I had made a design on his body.  He is a little plain.  He was supposed to have feet, but I attached them wrong and they are sewn inside.  OOPS!  I was getting a little too cocky in my abilities, and didn’t double check my work.  (Hmmmm…sounds like my 2nd graders in math.)

We’ll see if he likes it.

I am loving the Kingdom Project that is happening in our church. N has decided he is going to have a crafternoon during Christmas break and organize people into an assembly line to create Monster dolls. His plan is to then give the dolls to kids either at a hospital or maybe a shelter.

I spoke to others tonight about their ideas. One is thinking about creating gift baskets to do a silent auction and then using that money to do a larger mission project. Another is thinking about finding a way to do some sort of scholarship for kids that academically have made great progress. Another is buying toys for Toys for Tots.

I am really curious to see what all happens here. Everyone that begins talking about it has a twinkle in their eyes. Seriously…I’m not exaggerating.

I love this woman’s wall art!  The owl is my favorite, but they are all beautiful.  I have her birds in my bathroom and they were wonderfully easy to put up!  After I paint my living room next summer I am buying the owl!  It is just too cute!  www.vinylwallart.com 

If you are into stamping you should check out her stamps!

Psst…she has a cool give away at her blog right now.  You should check it out!

My children approached me at the end of September with their costume wishes.  My mouth dropped open when they showed the characters they wanted to be:

This is Pit. 

This is Ike.  They are two video game characters that don’t stand a chance of being popular enough for me to buy their costumes.  The real super hero?  That would be me, if I could actually make these things.

How did I do?

I thought I did OK.  I bought the wings.  I also didn’t dye youngest son’s hair blue.  So that is what I have been doing for the last week or so. 

It was nice to take a break last night.  My Super Friend, Julie had an amazing  pre-trick or treating dinner at her house.  She had awesome food, 20 some kids, and lots of laughter from the adults.  After we ate we took the wee ones trick-or-treating.

I really wish I had a little girl to dress up like a Princess.  (SIGH!)

Too cool to dress up!    You know he wants to.

E struck a pose every time I took his picture as did our other dear friend.  Poor thing her “fashion” boots (that was what we called them in the 70’s) about killed her off.

Some teenage girls stopped to pet little Jonah.  How could you not???

My oldest isn’t in the group shot.  He ditched us to go with a friend to his first real Haunted House.  He kept repeating later, “It was scary, fun, but really scary.”  He loved it.  I thought our gaggle of kids had a pretty great time.

Happy Halloween!

It’s Saturday night.  S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!  Do you remember the Bay City Rollers?  My older sister had their album and I somehow ended up with it.  My younger sister and I would sit singing away to that song.  OK, truth is we sang away to lots of songs.  One of our favorite things to do was get out our 45’s (also given to us from our older sister, Anne), grab a tape recorder, and pretend we were Deejays.  We thought we were so cool. 

Fast forward MANY years and here I sit.  I am making a red cape for my youngest son’s Halloween costume.

By the way if you really sew, than you probably recognize that I have no idea what I am doing! 

I am enjoying our fire.

However, I am also playing nursemaid for my youngest that is suffering from 101 temp.  Poor guy!  Except for him being sick, I love weekend nights at home. 

New dreams, but not quite as strange.  I’m really only remembering snippets though.  Todd and I were walking down the street and there were two lions and a jaguar.  We inched slowly back to our van.  Next dream: I’m on a cruise ship with a friend from church and her mom.  I however am huddled  in a corner really upset that I left my phone charger at home.  Last dream:  I’m knitting something with really cool purple yellow yarn. 

Explanations: Judy was talking about the lions at the zoo to me.  I was talking about church before I went to sleep.  My phone really does need charged and I forgot to do it.  I read a knitting magazine before bed.    But the last two nights have been really active dreamwise.  I’m waking up tired.

I am a proponent of learning.  That should be obvious being an educator.  However, I sometimes have difficulty trying new things.  I’m a girl that goes to a restaurant and always orders the same dish.  I don’t like making phone calls.  I’m not a good net worker.  I have hang ups about going places that I don’t know.

Case in point, this wonderful little yarn shop uptown.  We have an amazing yarn shop in this little town that I live in.  I have begun knitting.  When you knit you need yarn.  I drive 35 minutes to buy yarn rather than go into this sweet little store. 

I did go in once, with my children.  I spoke with the owner briefly.  She is lovely.  She offered to teach me how to read patterns and teach me to knit.  Ummm…well I haven’t been back.  I planned to go back without my children, but … I don’t know why I haven’t been back. 

I almost went back.  I pulled in the parking lot.  Then I decided that since I wasn’t sure what project I was going to do, I should wait and go another day.  I have decided know.  Later this week I am going to go buy some beautiful yarn, the kind of yarn I see on Etsy.  (She is closed today, and I have a meeting tomorrow.)

My bigger question is why do I do this?  Why do I lack so much faith in myself that I paralyze myself?  It just doesn’t make sense.  Oddly I would bet that people that know me, even some that know me well, probably wouldn’t peg me to be like this.  I’m going to have to think about this….

I really like the idea of keeping an art journal.  I have been hearing whispers of such journals all summer and then Jennifer over at CraftSanity interviewed Dawn DeVries Sokol the author of 1000 Artist Journal Pages.  As I listened to the pod cast all I wanted to do was pick up some thin line markers and go to town in a journal.  I love the concept of an art journal.  Just doodling thoughts, ideas, lists, feelings into a picture. 

I think I am a fairly creative person, but truth be told I don’t have a passion that I funnel all that into.  My husband plays his music and you can feel his creativity vibrate through your chest.  But me???  I try this and I try that.  Obviously I have the theatre.  However most of that is truly day to day running the business.  I am not usually (except for Jack and the Beanstalk) in the creative process of putting on the play.  I have things I try.  So far this summer I have drawn, sewn, baked (gained 10 pounds), knitted, rug punched, and I think there may be some things I am forgetting.  (Consequently I don’t do any of these things real well.)

So here I sit with these visions of creating an art journal.  I’m not foolish enough to think I would ever do this kind of thing every day, but I am thinking maybe I will try just a few pages a month.  I would like to incorporate some pictures of my family into these.   

Another reason this is appealing to me is the post last week about stress.  Morroco’s comment about coloring relieving stress came about the same time I listened to the pod cast.  Both idea’s have just been sticking with me. 

So now I have laid it out here.  I think I will give it a try.  Sometime later this week I will post whatever I end up with on my blog.  Maybe you are interested in keeping an art journal.  Maybe not, but the pod cast and Dawn’s website are both very interesting.  I can’t wait to see the book.

*On a separate note I would love to do this with kids during Writer’s Workshop for a few weeks.

Today is my very good friend’s birthday.  She is one of those amazing people that I call a “healer”.  Those are people that make you feel good about yourself just be being near them.  Jules is one of those people.  She is also an amazingly kind and loving woman.  I am very blessed that she is my friend (even if she does drag my lazy self out of bed before any sane person would think of getting out of bed  especially because she encourages me to walk in the mornings.) 

I have been working on Julie’s present for a while, although I wasn’t sure if I would actually give it to her.  This is my first knitting project.  The funny thing was that I was working on it in front of her last weekend at an outdoor concert.  I even told her what I was making.  I just didn’t tell her it was for her, but I was on a deadline! 

Happy Birthday Julie!