So the other day I went into a thrift store near our house, looking for a cowgirl hat for my daughter’s dress up collection. Thrift stores are usually great places to find dress up clothes. Not that day. (I later found a super cute cowgirl/sheriff hat at a local toy store.) However, a quick survey of the fabric section surprised me with the best thrifted fabric score ever. (Indulge me.)

Someone – someone with good taste in fabric – cleaned out their stash. In two minutes, I found Miss Amy Butler:

Michael Miller:

And Alexander Henry:

There may have been more, but I had Bug with me and we were on our way to pick up Munchkin from preschool, so I had to be quick. I was shocked. I’ve bought fabric from thrift stores before. They sometimes have beautiful vintage fabrics and good children’s prints. But never before have I seen recent, designer, “quilt shop” fabrics at a thrift store. And yardage. These aren’t scraps. The first two are at least a yard and a half, and the Alexander Henry is two full yards. It totally made my day.

(I think this might make me a fabric geek. I'm okay with that.)

Why, yes, it has been two months since I last posted here. And now it is Christmas.

We got to meet Santa a week or so ago. What a nice gentleman he is. My Munchkin wrote him a little letter, the back of which you can see in the photo at the top of the post.

This is as near as my Bug would get to the jolly old elf. I had no intention of being in this year’s Santa photo, but – well, there I am. We weren’t about to put Bug or Santa through the trauma of making her sit on his lap just for the sake of a photo.

Now if I could just find the Santa photos from years past, we would have a nice little display in our living room. New Year’s resolution #1: Organize photos.

Amy at Park City Girl is hosting a Quilt Festival for the rest of us – i.e., everyone who is not in Houston at the International Quilt Festival. And yes, I am late! Today is the last day of Amy’s QF. I’ve been enjoying browsing through some of the 600+ links to pictures and stories of favorite quilts.  I don’t actually have a favorite quilt. The quilts in my house that have been made by someone else are all precious. The quilts that I have made have almost all been made for babies of dear friends.  So, while I can’t choose a favorite, I will share the quilt that was the most fun to make.

I made this quilt in 2007 for my friend’s son.

(Blogged here.)

The appliqued blocks each have a picture to represent a letter of the alphabet. Apple = A, Ball = B, etc. My husband and I had a lot of fun coming up with pictures for each letter. My favorites are T = Trogdor, a character from a website that the baby’s father and my husband both like; W = Weed Patch, the name of the store owned by the baby’s parents; and Y = mx+b, a tribute to the baby’s grandfather, who is a dear friend and a math PhD.

Two and a half years later, I look at this quilt and see all sorts of things I would do differently. Thank you to my friends who received those first guinea pig quilts! (If your kids’ quilts are falling apart, feel free to send them back for repairs!) But I really loved making this one.

This week’s theme challenge at I ♥ Faces is EXCITED. What fun! Here is my entry – she was very excited after her first few bites of solid food!

I wanted to let you all know of an opportunity created by Megan at Sorta Crunchy. She has organized a raffle to support the Vega family, whose four year old daughter, Gabriella, has had a stroke while waiting for a heart transplant. This beautiful little girl is the same age as my oldest daughter, and it breaks my heart to see her and her family go through this tremendous trial.  When I worked at a pediatric hospital before my girls were born, I had the opportunity to know and work with several families whose children had suffered strokes. This is not an easy thing, folks. Recovery can be slow, tedious, and very expensive. My thanks to Megan for making a way for us to offer our support to this family.

You can find details of the raffle here.

As an aside: there are thousands of families in our country, and millions and millions around the world, whose children are suffering from life-threatening diseases and medical conditions. Only a tiny fraction of these families have the means, whether personally or through insurance, to cover the high costs of treatment. There are some social service programs in place to help, and I am so grateful for them, but they are not enough. Any time you can help, in any way, you lighten the load and offer hope to a tired, frightened, hurting family. Please don’t underestimate the value of your contribution. The handmade donation boxes at grocery store counters for local families; the change boxes at McDonald’s for the Ronald McDonald House (this is a GREAT organization); raffles and charity auctions; craft fairs for medical charities; the list goes on and on. There is ample opportunity to help. We are fortunate enough to have a top pediatric medical center in our area, where I worked for the five years between college and babies. They operate several thrift stores in the area, the proceeds of which go to their Uncompensated Care fund. If you buy a lamp from their store – or donate a lamp to their store – you are actually providing a child with medical services that they would otherwise be unable to afford. Every offering helps a family.

Here she is, my Bug, less than five minutes old.

Tomorrow she’ll be one. Oh, how quickly this year has gone! She has challenged us, this one. She has stretched us more than we thought we could stretch. Not always gently. She was born strong. She was born awake and stayed that way for the majority of her first year. We had no idea we could function on so little sleep. She is an explorer, a climber, a fighter. She is also tender, loves to snuggle, loves to touch. She yells in protest when her sister aggravates her. She bursts into adorable, heartbreaking tears when her father tells her no. She grins when I tell her no. She dances to Mahna Mahna.  She loves cheese. She loves her Teddy. She loves her sister. She hates having her face washed. She has taken more falls in her first year than I think her sister has in four…climbed out of her crib (after we lowered her mattress to avoid just that), climbed out of her (buckled) highchair, climbed onto and fell off the hearth, climbed onto and fell off the sofa, etc. She has been walking for a month. She keeps us on our toes. She makes us laugh every day. She says, “DaDa” frequently, “MaMa” occasionally, both appropriately. When she is happy, she is happy; when she is sad, she is sad. She is full of life, joy, energy, enthusiasm.  I am excited to see her story unfold. I am not all that worried about what life will bring to her, because I can already see what she brings to life.

Happy birthday, Bug! I love you so very much.

It’s that time of year again.

When I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, my husband and I decided that we would use cloth diapers for her. The decision made sense for us. Cloth diapering is good for the baby, the earth, and the wallet. Our family has made a concerted effort to use fewer disposable goods, and we knew from our experience using disposable diapers with our first daughter that disposables are insanely expensive and can be irritating to a baby’s sensitive skin.  So, after a lot of research and many emails back and forth with the owner of this store*, we took the cloth diaper plunge.  And we loved it.

After our daughter outgrew Round 1 of cloth diapers, we decided we would try to be even more frugal. We bought another stack of prefold diapers, but decided that I would try and make the diaper cover. Why I decided that I would buy the flat, cotton, square diapers and make the synthetic, stretchy, gusseted, fitted covers is beyond me. But that’s what I did. I bought the fabric, bought a pattern, and….

Fast forward a few months. That’s right, months. I have been sewing for several years now. I’m not a professional by any means, but I can find my way through most patterns, cuts and stitches. This one, though…good grief. I will not mention which pattern I used, because I don’t like to speak ill of anyone’s honest efforts. I will say, though, that this pattern is not good. It gives super clear instructions on things like how to attach a safety pin to a piece of elastic. (Cause we all need instructions and illustrations on how to do that, right?) Then it leaves minor details, like attaching elastic gussets, completely to the imagination.  At one point, even my engineer husband was stumped. (I go to him when I am stuck on a sewing problem. As far as I know, he hasn’t made one stitch in his life, but his problem-solving skills are stellar.) It was a frustrating experience. But we kept at it, and now I am proud to introduce you to my first functional diaper cover.

I tried to get some action shots, but…well, yeah, the kid moves a little too fast.

Now that I’ve muddled my way through The Terrible Pattern, I think I have some good ideas on how to do it differently next time.  Which would be tonight/this weekend, since one diaper cover is not adequate, and my Bug is now way too big for her old diaper covers.  Stay tuned.

*This, by the way, is where you should buy your cloth diapering/natural parenting goods. They are simply the best.

My daughter told me that we need to eat all the colors of the rainbow. After rummaging in the fridge for a few minutes, I was happy to accommodate.  Rainbow: tomatoes, carrots, corn, peas, blueberries and grapes. Sun: cheese. Flowers: blackberries and green beans in a field of brown rice.

The only food left on her plate after lunch – with no nagging from me to stay at the table until she was finished or to take more bites – was a couple of green beans and a bit of the rice.

When I started this blog earlier this year, I said that I would be writing about my life as a stay at home mom with two kids.  Please consider my absence a description by omission.

A certain Munchkin turned four earlier this week. Her party will be tomorrow, but we spent her actual birthday in an all-day family celebration, with the birthday girl taking the lead on activity choices. Of course, we had to take her little sister’s needs into consideration as well, so Munchkin got some one-on-one time with each parent while the other parent stayed home for the Bug’s nap. (Note: Earlier in this blog’s life, I referred to my youngest daughter as Pumpkin. When she was newborn, that is indeed what we called her, when we did not call her by her real name. That has changed, though, and for whatever reason I have slipped into calling her “Bug”. Maybe “Pumpkin” was a seasonal inclination, since she was born in October? I don’t know.) The day included: pancakes by request for breakfast; a bus ride to the mall with Daddy (no, she’s not a young shopper – she likes the play area); a fancy lunch out with the whole family, including Grandma and Grandpa;  a trip to the library and party store, for  a special balloon, with Mommy; pizza by request for dinner; and we finished off the day with birthday cake, presents, and a round of The Birthday Party Game, which she received as a gift.  It was a good day.

I did just a little birthday crafting this year. This has been on the mental to-do list for….oh, you know….years. And in the end it took less than an hour. Figures. (It’s much longer than it looks in the photo.)

Now I know what to do with all those Christmas fabric scraps. My husband will be thrilled.