These are a few of my favorite things today

Larry is always picking up random new things at the grocery store to try and these Chex snack packs are winners. They are so good! I really like the strawberry yogurt, but I LOVE the chocolate carmel and they are only 100 calories each! Keri told me that Hobby Lobby has their Christmas decorations out so I had to check them out when I was returning something there today. They had these tiny heart garlands that match my Valentine's Day decorations so I had to pick one up to make an even smaller garland to decorate the fairy door in our house this Valentine's Day so they match.

My friend Elisa sent me this soap that she made and it is amazing. She totally surprised me sending me a package out of the blue and It's still sitting on my kitchen table because it smells so good. Back in the days when my mom owned a shop we used to sell handmade soap that was so wonderful and smelled so good, and I thought I would buy the same kind of soap when I had a house, but I haven't seen any soap that good since then until now! Thank you so much Elisa!
Another great discovery were these awesome letters (just imagine how cool they'll look hanging on a colorful wall instead of my ugly berber carpet). Ok, so I'm a little obsessed with typography and monograms. There's an antique store in Powell that has their shop name in gold letters like this behind the counter and I totally coveted them. I bought some silver leafing wax because I'm not a huge fan of gold, but it's already growing on me and I think they'll stay gold. They're each about a foot tall. Where should I hang them?

And last, but not least, I love this little baseball bum!

A Day at the Fair

What better way for Alex to have a true Ohio experience than to go to the Ohio State Fair on a nice humid day? Larry and I did our best to enjoy our last Ohio State Fair. We began by introducing Creed and Alex to the annual tradition of sculpting a lifesize cow made out of butter.

Creed didn't think much of the butter cow

But he sure thought a lot of Alex. This is the face that he made everytime she looked at him.

Which is similar to the face that Larry made when he was introduced to the beef sundae.

And I think I was making the same face at the bottom of this slide because Larry and I raced, and even though I started out far behind, I totally beat him in the end!

And although I didn't catch it, I'm pretty sure it's the face Alex made when she received this . . .

Yes folks, Alex won an award for being the NUMBER ONE PIG ROOTER at the pig races!

We saw lots of other animals at the fair, like real cows, rabbits, horses, sheep, goats, llamas . . .

And of course Ben had to check out the chickens

A Friday Full of Good Things

Ok, so my friend Nikki introduced me to Northstar Cafe so a week ago I suggested it when my friends Megan and Jill were picking a place to meet for lunch on Friday. Friday morning arrives and Larry calls me from the hospital and asks me if Creed and I want to meet him for breakfast with a bunch of the residents and they're going to this cool place . . . Northstar. I've never had breakfast there, but I love their lunch menu so I figured why not make it twice in one day? Breakfast was delicious (I ordered sweet potato hash and Larry ordered ricotta pancakes) and lunch was awesome too. I love getting together with my old coworkers. Even though I would never trade staying at home with Creed, I do miss work a little bit and I miss adult interaction during the day! Here's Creed with Megan.

By that time Creed was on his third outfit have spit-up all over the clothes he wore at breakfast and then had a blow out during lunch. Can you believe that our friends are willing to hold him after that?

I made it home in time for the arrival of Ben, Larry's best friend from medical school who is like a member of the family. He was in Cincinnati for a conference and then drove up to see us. So here's Creed meeting Uncle Ben (who we refer to as our other son). They're even making the same face!

Ben's wife Alex flew in Friday night and all of us (Steph, Larry, Creed, and Ben) decided to wear name tags in case she forgot who were are.

So on the way from the airport, Larry was teasing me for eating twice that day at Northstar, and then he told them what we had and they said, "That actually sounds really good . . ." So here was are at Northstar for the THIRD time that day! (and yes, Creed is in outfit number four. You don't want to know!)

Northstar has two locations on High Street, one in the Short North, and one in Clintonville, and they have really fresh, fun food. Once upon a time neither of the locations had a sign and you had to know someone who knew about it, or come across it on your own, but now they have signs, but they are pretty discreet so you still have to know what you're looking for. Doesn't this Kuma Bowl with curry chicken look pretty?

I also made everyone stop at Goodale Park nearby because look how huge and amazing and gorgeous the lilies are in the pond! This picture doesn't really do them justice. Check them out if you're in the neighborhood.

Top it all off with getting a package from my friend Elisa and finishing Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer and it was a day full of good things (but more about those two later).

The reality of life around here

This is what I look like approximately 1 million times a day! Take a closer look in case you missed it

And did you notice that it was in my hair too? How does that happen? Oh, and take my word for it, that was a mild one. I spared you from seeing the worst. I was so optimistic that after Creed's doctor quadrupled his reflux medication life would be getting so much better around here. I had visions of long naps that would give me some free-time before 11 p.m. and laundry that smelled fresh for more than three minutes. Ya, not so much! We will be visiting another doctor tomorrow, but I'm not feeling too much hope for our poor little guy.

I did have a chance to experiment with glitter today though. I picked up two types, an extra-fine red glitter and a course muted pink glitter that looks a little like antique glass glitter. The extra fine glitter was a lot easier to work with, but harder to clean up. I just tried it on the simplest doors possible because I didn't know how it would turn out. What do you think? To glitter or not to glitter?

Think crafty thoughts

So I know that I've mentioned it before, but I have this goal every year to try a new thing for every year that I've been alive, and since my birthday is approaching at the end of the month, I've been reviewing my list for the year to make sure that I reach 26 new things.

Last month I taught a lesson in church on lifelong learning and I had everyone list things that they would like to learn and then I asked what efforts they were making to actually learn new things. My list consisted of some boring things like learning to budget and organize my home and a lot of crafty things like learning to screen print, and paint with acrylics. After spending so much time setting up shop on etsy.com I can't help but want to learn so many crafty things, and at the top of my list is needle felting. Just after I had Creed, I was watching Martha Stewart and saw this tutorial with Jenny Docherty, and I was in awe. I'd never even heard on needle felting. Jenny has an etsy shop and a web site where you can check out more of her work, but here are a few pictures from her blog.

And speaking of shops on etsy that sell adorable needle felted items, check out Lauren Alane's shop of needle felted birds. I bet after seeing Ralph and his friends, you're going to want to learn to needle felt too! Isn't he adorable?

There must be some stores around town that sell roving and other needle felting supplies, but I haven't found any of them yet. There are plenty of places to buy them online, but I'd like to have some human contact that I can ask questions if I run into trouble and I'd like to be able to browse and see things in person. Does anyone else ever hesitate to buy things online or am I becoming an old lady?

Now if only Creed would start regularly napping so I could have some time to craft and write. I probably shouldn't pick up anything new until I work on some of the projects I have waiting for me, like the fabric set aside for aprons or the covers for the quiet book pages I made, or the onsies that I want to tackle for Creed, or the blank canvases I have laying around, or the fabric for that tree quilt that I told you that I wanted to make, or the glass pebbles to make magnets, and the fairy doors ready and waiting to be painted . . .

I did finish a fairy door today that I'm absolutely in love with.

Doesn't it look cute in Creed's room? I think if it doesn't sell quickly I'm going to be tempted to pull it out of the shop to keep it for myself.

I know this entry is wandering, but as long as I'm talking about etsy, I want to share a few more shop that I love. Betz White is the queen of felting old sweaters and creating amazing things from them (another thing I'd like to try). I love these cupcake pincushions!

She also has her own web site and blog and she was on Martha Stewart doing a tutorial on how to make her teacup pin cushions, which you can see here. I can't wait for her book with felting projects to come to stores soon!

I'm also in love with every single thing BeeBee Mod makes! Don't you think every baby should have a cute onsie like this?

And a hoodie like this!

And speaking of baby clothes, Quilt Baby has some incredibly fun onsies too (and don't miss all of her modern baby bedding). I especially heart this giraffe onesie!

And if you wanted to have the best dressed baby, you would also need some shoes from DiddleDumpling. If I had a girl I would alreaady own these sweet birdie shoes!

There's so much more on Etsy, that I'd like to spotlight, but I will have to save it for another time. For now I'll leave you with a totally different shop from the rest that I've shown you, Kezzaroo. She specializes in making tiny 3 inch felt figures of characters from tv and movies and they are hilarious! You'll have to look through her sold items if you have a chance, but here are a couple for your viewing pleasure. Who doesn't need a Little Chuck Norris?

Or Nacho Libre?

Or Larry's favorite, Mr. T

Or my favorite, Hulk Hogan, singer of our friend Ben's favorite ballad, "I used to tear my shirt, but then you tore my heart!"

Is there a flood?

It seems I can't post these days without adding some adorable pictures of Creed, and I don't want this blog to turn into all "look how cute this baby is!" posts, but . . . LOOK HOW CUTE THIS BABY IS. How can I resist? And besides, we have to keep the grandmas happy with lots of pictures!

And on a totally random sidenote, for years I complained to Larry that he was wearing his pants too high so every once in awhile he would hike his pants up as high as possible and dance around just to mock me (which he found hilarious and once made my dad laugh so hard that he passed out). Now look what he keeps doing just to drive me crazy.

Ugh! Creed seems to think it's funny too.

A few more reasons that Larry rocks . . .

Well, first of all he's been putting up with our kitchen table looking like this more often than not. I have a craft space to make a mess in the library upstairs, but there's not a lot of room for Creed to play up there, and it's cooler downstairs so inevitably my mess gravitates downstairs and Larry has not complained once!Second, after Larry left for work, I discovered this in a cupboard today.
I heart chocolate covered pretzels!!!!!

And to top it off I found this in the freezer with another note for me.

Four Months old!

Ok, I know he's been four months old for at least a week, but I just got around to taking these pictures this morning because who can resist him in these cute Pajamas?

Keeping busy

We're finding plenty to keep us busy around here.

Fairy doors in progress

Playing with cupcakes
And of course this little guy (don't let him fool you, he looks so innocent, but he's becoming quite the impressive biter!)