some show and tell...

I have been going through pictures and realized that I have so many things that I have intended to share here... 

wedding gift wall art

 One of the groomsmen from our wedding recently got married and I wanted to give them something special... He married an artist and their invitation had a lovely motif at the top. I made this 8X10 pieced embroidery based on the invitation design and put it in a frame for them.

warm and cozy

 I finished Anna's sweater in plenty of time for the little bit of cool weather we have had... It is the little garter cardi - a free pattern through ravelry. I used Malabrigo yarn which is my all time favorite yarn.

before and after

 I have been intending to give this craiglist find a makeover for 3 years now... after Christmas I finally got the impulse to get it done.

fly away!

 Oh how I love Pinterest! I have the tutorial for this lovely simple project pinned. It is simple to make, but time consuming...

wing span

 Instead of tying the wings around her neck the way the tutorial suggests, I made longer ties that wrap around and tie in the back... just didn't feel comfortable with something around her neck. I also put the feathers on a fabulous silk dupioni- never waste an opportunity for fabulousness ;-)

feathered friend

late night sewing

 I have finally joined the crowd of people wearing the figure eight scarf from Anna Maria Horner's tutorial. I stayed up way too late piecing some of her velveteens and voiles (and a bit of silk)... I made my scarf a bit shorter and more narrow than her pattern... I think my dimensions are 15"X 65".

hand knits times two

Remember the sweater I knit for Anna a few years ago that she wore almost every cold day for two years? Well, it is getting a second life on cute little Charlotte (who was desperate for a nap and would not stay still for an instant)... yes it is the same exact color as the sweater I knit for Anna this year. I couldn't resist- goes so well with everything! It is too bad babies don't understand the importance of photography-- both girls were also wearing cute scrappy skirts... not exactly matching, but definitely coordinating.

merry christmas

And here is a little late Merry Christmas from us! and ... yeah, I wanted to show off my fabulous yellow boots. I kept looking for some and finally found them at Kudzu antiques in Decatur... they are great for brightening a gray day ;-)

Happy January

Normally "happy" doesn't go in the same sentence as January for me. But this year is different ... The whole month has been changed by the fact that the last weekend is going to be AMAZING! My big birthday present is a trip to Palm Springs for a sewing workshop with 3 of my favorite fabric designers (yes- Anna Maria Horner will be there!!). Having that to look forward to has really changed the whole feel of the month for me....Another thing that has made a huge difference is the timer on our lamp that gradually turns the light on before we wake up has really made waking up to the dark winter mornings so much better that I find myself singing on the way to preschool!

Here are some other things that have made this position in our orbit around the sun bearable :



::Spending time in the basement turning these patchwork squares into...



...this lovely clergy stole for my sister-in-law who is undergoing the Methodist ordination process this year.



::finally completing this big girl bed quilt for Anna.... Not ready for said big girl bed just yet, though!

edit:: turns out it didn't matter that I wasn't ready-- she not only could climb out of her bed, but she figured out how to unzip her crib tent and climb out... then she figured out how to reach her hand around and undo the safety pin I used to keep the zipper secure... I had to give in-- she has been sleeping under that lovely quilt in her big girl bed for a week now (sniff sniff... where did my babies go?)



:: having my sewing space transform from this ...



...to this! Being organized is fun... sometimes...




::putting a few more things(ok, ok-- a few more chickens) on my collage wall.




:: sewing with my girlie right beside me( who am I kidding- that was special, but also stressful ;)




:: having my chickens come visit me through my sewing studio window ;). ... You may have also noticed how much I have been enjoying instagram !



:: receiving a package from fabric.com... And having my 4 year old son as excited about the prettiness as I was! Those velveteens are so delightful!

edit-- I have been blogging from my phone b/c otherwise I just haven't been making time for it... trouble is- the pictures are small and awful, but they aren't as awful if you click on the image and it opens in a separate window.

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Welcome home

We have been in the Alabama woods for a week... a wonderful family thanksgiving break. We have been welcomed home by our garden with a lovely carrot bouquet ---



...and by our chickens with a six egg day! We have six chickens but they don't each lay eggs every single day, especially not during the darker time of year.... so the getting an egg from each one on the same day is unusual.


Can you tell that I have now joined instagram? Now I too can have cool looking pictures of everyday things ;)
speaking of cool pictures, here is one my sister-in-law took with her phone while my brother-in-law was doing a family photo shoot for us... Even though the kids were being almost as difficult as a two year old and a four year old can be, we still have more great photos than I know what to do with! We are so proud to have t2photography as our in house photographers!



We have much to be thankful for... Even after a doozy of a year, our hearts are full of thankfulness... The good so far outweighs the bad!

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Look at my boy! He is morphing from a little preschooler into a boyish big boy. He has started to eat like a bottomless pit... I'm beginning to imagine how hard it will be to keep enough food in the house for him when he is in high school! I am waiting for him to shoot up several inches overnight and grow out of half of his winter clothes. He is holding his pencil correctly and learning about bullies and girls who aren't ready to be loved...all the lessons of pre-K. And the boy noises have increased. Don't know if I'm really ready for it... The goofy sputtery giggles and so many more crashes and explosions---constantly! Growing up without the constant noise of brothers has left me little prepared for this;) But, I am soaking up all the sweet snuggling and kisses.., I know they can't last too much longer.


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Location:Big boy

Itsy bitsy spider

{anna's skirt is a scrappy skirt-- not quite as fluffy as my tutorial, but plenty fun}

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full chicken report

I just wrote and article for our community garden about our experience with chickens, so I am sharing it below... finally a good update!

this is Anna with Little Bird during week one!

Baby Princess is getting some loving as a teenager.... much bigger, but still no comb or wattles. Elisha told me the other day that the reason he loves her so much is because she is so yellow ;-)

our first egg! a lovely blue egg laid by our Araucana- Little Bird.

Little bird has lovely feathers and funny beard-like fluff around her face... this is typical of her breed.

Baby Princess is helping in the garden.

This is one of our Barred Rocks, either Glitter Rainbow or Henny Penny (Andrew wants to be sure you know that he didn't name any of the chickens ;-)

This is the home sweet coop... you can also see our two Rhode Island Reds: Sally and Kate.

So proud of our girls for laying their first eggs!

I think it all started with my mother... She brain washed me into thinking that you simply cannot have a kitchen without chickens. The chickens I grew up with were in paintings or on plates. Years later when I was registering for things to fill my family kitchen it was inevitable that the rooster plates and metal chicken would end up on the list. I little imagined that the sense of home I felt when surrounded by images of chickens in my kitchen would lead me to nurture a little flock of chickens in the backyard of my metropolitan area home.

A friend from Decatur told me about the Chicks in the City: Urban Chicken Symposium , so in January of 2010 I attended the Saturday morning workshop and decided that while I was pretty intimidated, this was something that I really wanted to try. Andrew and I spent the summer planning and building our coop and pen.

We worked on it here and there and finally decided that it was time to get some spring chickens just before Easter this year. At first we were hoping to get full grown birds so that we wouldn't have all the work of raising little bitties inside... but we finally decided that our chickens would need to be acclimated early on to life in our family with two small children and our dog. We bought our eight chicks from a feed and seed store in Roswell.They just happened to have a new shipment of the breeds we wanted at the time we were ready for them. We started with two Auracanas ( a South American breed that lays blue eggs), two Rhode Island Reds( a good laying reddish brown breed), two Buff Orpingtons (an English breed that is very friendly and lays consistently) and two Barred Rocks ( a lovely black and white checked breed).

All of our chickens are known as Dual Purpose, meaning they are good egg layers and have enough meat on them to be good for the soup pot when they stop laying eggs. Dual purpose breeds were in serious decline since practically the only chickens around have been commercially raised and therefore bred to be either enormous, fast growing, fat chickens for eating, or skinny egg producing machines. As backyard chicken enthusiasm has been spreading these dual purpose breeds are once again sought after.

When we tell people about our chickens they almost always ask if we are going to eat them... we hope that someone will benefit from our kindly raised healthy chickens when their job of egg laying is done, but we don't want to traumatize our children by forcing them to eat our pets. As it turns out this dilemma may be more of an issue for us than for our kids. It is amazing how normal all this seems to them since they have been exposed to the reality of the food chain from a young age. I overheard my son talking to his favorite chick, Baby Princess, when she and her flock mates were still living under a light bulb in our bathroom. He told her, "One day you are going to die and you'll get eaten up, but you have a happy life!" Speaking of being introduced to the food chain- my daughter's first sentence was "hawk eat chick"... a truth that she learned first hand! During our flock's first days outside one of the many neighborhood hawks got into the pen through a crack in the netting and left a little pile of feathers...well, we added more netting and thought they would be safe. The next day I heard my three year old son yelling down at the coop. He saw a hawk in the pen and went in after him. He was wielding a big stick trying to "teach that hawk not to get our chicks!" Thankfully, the hawk didn't get a chance to teach our son a lesson about threatening cornered animals. After the hawk escaped the pen we seamed all the overlapping pieces of netting shut and have not lost anymore of our remaining six birds. And now that our hens are full grown they have enjoying free ranging in the yard in the evenings... maybe the hawk decided that between our dog and our son, these chickens aren't worth the fight.

Although I was excited about having chickens, I didn't expect to feel so attached to them. Getting our chicks when they were just one week old fluff balls has really brought out the nurturing mother hen in me. People usually think of petting a soft dog or cat when they talk about how comforting pets can be... well, let me tell you-- having a warm fluffy chicken nestle into your arm and make sweet cooing chatter has been such a delight! And the entertainment is non stop... we love watching them busily scratch and peck around our yard in the evenings. Our dog got used to them early on and despite his bird dog heritage has become a chicken herder. Watching our chickens and our dog slyly steal leftover corn on the cob from each other was more fun than I expected.

Now, I was expecting to be excited about fresh backyard eggs and I have not been disappointed! A few weeks ago I was looking in the coop to check on their water and food when I was startled to see a beautiful blue egg nestled in the bedding by the door. Since we only have one Araucana chicken left I knew exactly which chicken laid that first egg. I was SO proud of her. You would think she had performed brain surgery judging from the amount of pride that swelled my chest every time I thought of her! Within a few days at least three of our chickens were leaving a daily egg in the coop. The only time we can hear the chickens from the house is when one of them is cackling an announcement to the world about the miracle she is about to perform... I'll go down 10-20 minutes later and sure enough, there will a fresh warm egg waiting for me. Chickens really are wonderful pets; you give them your leftovers and table scraps, your weeds and grubs and a safe place to sleep and they will give you beautiful healthy eggs, nitrogen rich manure for your garden, endless entertainment, and they will even go to work in your garden eating unwanted bugs and roto-tilling your plots.

I just went to my first backyard chicken meet-up group and got an excellent book written for city dwelling chicken owners. City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers, and Local Food Producers by Patricia Foreman is very informative and is great for gardeners. She gives detailed information about composting and all the ways you can put your chickens to work in your garden. It could be the only book you get because it covers all the topics related to small scale backyard chicken raising, start to finish. The meet-up group would be a good place to go if you are interested in starting and want some moral support along the way.

End of the season

Oh! The delight of a late summer beach trip! We are taking full advantage of having young children who can miss preschool for a September beach trip... It was a delightful time. We spent time with some of my family ...



The kids wanted to be with Pops as much as possible. Aunt Mary was a favorite playmate as well.



We got plenty of vitamin d the last day;) as we made huge sand canals and waited as the tide came in to see who would win... E was so determined that he could build walls strong enough that the waves couldn't knock then down.... Needless to say- he learned an important lesson about the strength if the tide.

{anna's dress is based on the free heather ross sundress tutorial}



We had a glorious evening boat ride... Perfect golden light and well timed after an early dinner, so there was no rush.

{anna's hat is great elastic fitted hat that I created a pattern for based on a store bought one my friend had-- maybe i'll do a tutorial sometime??}



And Anna learned an important thing as well--- she learned to swim! Elisha learned a month ago, so it has definitely been the swimming summer! Don't they look like little tadpoles ;)

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Little miss is growing up

Check out the fairly outrageous Christmas dress she is wearing... I went to an enormous consignment sale and - let me say this, we are SET for the next season! I saw the little number she is modeling and just knew that it would satisfy her girlie twirly heart (not to mention her grandmothers and great grandmothers;) I should add however that we did garner some looks as went on our errands.... Because there was no way she was going to take it off after she tried it on!


I just finished sewing her book bag for school- oh my! Can't believe she is heading of to preschool in a few short weeks! She is uber proud... Even though her bag practically drags the floor!


I drew the design on with washable markers (copied from one I saw on etsy and pinned on pintrest- oh how I love pintrest!) then I embroidered it and washed away the markings.


Backside of book bag


I have been working on a quilt for Anna to use when she graduates to a big girl bed... While not EXaCTly helpful, I will always treasure the memory of her helping lay out the squares!


Here she is enjoying a wonderful summer rain... Wish we could have another one of those... Glad we thoroughly enjoyed dancing in the last one we had!
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garden birthday party

don't know why it has taken me so long to post this--- e and a had a joint birthday party this year- along with their friend c... 30 kids in our backyard--- it was fun... no disasters ;-)when i got down lo to take their pic they decided that they should too...

we had some newsprint pots to plant seeds in.

log turned into a tea party spot ;-)

i made some tissue paper pompoms and fabric bunting... loving bunting right now!

more bunting... and initials for the birthday kids.

the bow tie was really easy to make-- i see many more in our future... there are lady bugs on it!
note the cast... luckily she was in such a boot phase that she didn't mind the permanent pink one ;-)... i had so much fun designing and making her dress... makes me so happy!

two and four... wow. how did that happen?!