The Little Man

Lest you think we've forgotten about our silly little Petey, here are a couple of recent fun things I caught the boy doing. 

It seems the little man loves oranges.

Especially when I cut them into triangles so he can give me big cheesers like this:

And a couple of days ago, I went to wake him up from his nap and this was the 'relaxed' pose I found him in:

He just looks like some care-free, young bachelor to me.

And yes, I really, really didn't want to wake him up.

I'm so crafty, I make PEOPLE!

Well my friends, the title of this post really says it all. Travis, Petey and I are getting really excited to welcome the newest little Millet into our home come May 6 next year. Unlike with Petey, we've had to be patient for a very long time while walking a pretty uphill road - so we are now feeling extra blessed at the moment after watching the ultrasound (and seeing our healthy baby moving all around).

As for the baby -- well, even though Travis was convinced it was going to be a girl we found out it is going to be a BOY! Let's just say I am thrilled seeing as we already have everything we need and know what to do with boys. Maybe that's lazy, but I couldn't be more happy.

Lastly, I thought I'd share a conversation we had with Peter today. All throughout this pregnancy he's been telling me he thinks it's a baby sister, but this last week he changed his mind.

Me: "Peter, do you think there's a baby brother or a baby sister in mommy's tummy?"

Peter: "Baby broder."

Me: "Really? What should we name your baby brother?"

Peter: "Uh... Petey."

Me: "But your name is already Peter. What will we call the baby?"

Peter: "He will be little Petey and I will be big Petey."

Me: "Okay, that's not confusing at all."

Peter: "Then Mama will have a baby Petey and Daddy will have a baby Petey."

Travis: "Well, that makes sense to me."

Can't argue with that kind of logic.

Advent Calendars

For some odd and unfathomable reason I decided to make my family Christmas presents this year. To be totally honest, I've done this many times in the past, and have always really enjoyed it, but this year I think I took on the most ambitious project of all: The advent calendar.

And I needed to make FOUR.

By December 1st.

Crazy.

I'm not sure why I decided to pick something so random or so time-consuming, but I did. I really had no clue how even to start, so I searched around a bit until I found this blog with some pretty good tutorials. But since no one really had any kind of post on how to make exactly what I wanted and in the interest of sharing with others what I learned along the way - I thought I'd post a mini-tutorial here.

First I started off with this beauty (via Land of Nod) as my insipration and kind of went from there:

First order of business was to cut the pockets. Instead of using all sorts of random colors I decided to just use traditional Christmas reds and greens (except for the calendar for my sister - because she decorates in blue and silver but I'll explain more later) and so I cut out 25 little 3"x3" squares of felt for each one. I ended up using 5 different colors - 3 greens and 2 reds - and just used those 8.5"x11" sheets of felt from JoAnns.

Next I had to come up with 25 Christmas themed pictures (harder than you think) for each pocket and then cut those out. Followed by their corresponding numbers 1-25. (It was a lot of cutting). Probably the hardest part was decided what should go where and in what color. It's pretty stressful trying to make sure you don't have 6 green squares in a row!

 

Then came the sewing.

And sewing. 

And still more sewing. 

Travis will attest to this. I spent literally every nap time and every evening (that I didn't simply crash) sewing up these bad boys since early October. I think Trav felt thoroughly ignored and neglected. Poor baby. Although I was able to finally watch the entire season of Firefly and the movie Serenity - both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

For the hand-stitching parts, I bought some fun twisty embroidery thread from JoAnns which came with lots of wonderful colors. Since I don't know how to embroider, I used this basic stitch guide and sort of made up the rest as I went.

After all the sewing was done, I ironed on a square of fusible webbing to the back of each piece (just a little smaller than each pocket) so that the threads wouldn't catch each time you pulled the candy or papers out of the pockets. Sneaky me.

The next big step was sewing each individual pocket to the green felt backing. Travis was floored that I would actually choose to do this all by hand, but I figured since I already done so much by hand, using the machine would be a little like cheating. I might as well make the pockets look extra pretty too.

After sewing on each square individually with some fun green thread, I sewed (used the machine here kids) the large piece of green felt to a matching piece of red felt so all those stitches were hidden (I know it's the back, but I was worried about it). Lastly, I sewed together a layered brown felt roof and added that on top.

Whew.   

The fruits of my labors. My hands are cramping just thinking about all the time I spent on these bad boys. But really, it wouldn't have been so bad if I had just been making ONE. Since I ended up doing four (one for my folks, each sibling, and one, of course, for us) I may have developed carpal tunnel in the process.

One of the four calendars I actually did in a silver/blue color scheme because my sister decorates for Christmas in all blues and silvers.Trav confessed that he liked this one better than ours, but oh well. He got a red and green one.

If your curious, here's how that one turned out. Even though I don't have a final picture - just image this all with the pockets sewn on with white thread and a grey roof (like the others).

some detail.

So there you have it. The reason I have not blogged, read much, and kept my house cleaning to a minimum over the past two months. I'm pretty excited over how they all turned out - I think the real reason I love making Christmas gifts is because you have all this time while you are actually putting the thing together to think about the person you are making them for. It's a nice way to keep your family in mind during the holidays - especially for me when mine all live so far away.

As a side note, because of all my preparations, I got into the Christmas spirit very, very early this year and have been singing Christmas songs to Petey since early November (which I usually NEVER do before Thanksgiving). I'm thinking it's not necessarily a bad thing ;)

Now I just need to come up with 25 activities for each pocket....