It's a blog eat blog world!

Lately I keep seeing my posts and ideas posted on other blogs, and while I like sharing my ideas, it makes me so sad when people post them as if they're their own and don't refer to their original source. Some people have even copied my exact text. It's happened a lot lately, which makes me wonder how many more instances are out there that I haven't seen.

For instance, remember this post on a piece of artwork that I wanted to try to make a quilt of? Well, lo and behold, one of the Pink Christmas girls did just make a fabric version of it, and she didn't mention that the idea was from me or that it was based on Isa's artwork. Not cool! I suppose it's possible that she also came across the same website, which wasn't even in English for awhile, and she also picked that particular piece out of everything on the site and she also came up with the idea to make a fabric version, and it's a mere coincidence that we share a mutual friend and are both a part of Pink Christmas, but it seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it? I almost posted a comment on the Pink Christmas blog, but then I figured nothing good would come of that, would it?

Maybe it's my background in editing, which required me to sit through many a lecture on what constitutes plagiarism, but it really bothers me when people copy me. I feel so discouraged that I haven't even gotten around to posting the rest of my homemade Christmas ideas, but I guess it's not fair to the rest of my lovely readers who would never do such a thing, is it?

PS- Can you tell that I have a headcold and am feeling a little crabby today? Sorry for the rant, but I had to complain to someone!

Pink Christmas

My Pink Christmas gift arrived a few days ago and I haven't had proper time to gush about it. First of all, it was from Jill, the Good Mail Queen, who sent it with plenty of time to arrive by Christmas, but due to some postal mixup, it just arrived a few days ago. I'm always a little sad once Christmas was over so I was glad that my gift was late so I still had something to look forward to, and boy was it worth the wait. It was a cute little suitcase full of stationary designed by Jill herself. There was all sorts of customized cards and labels and even stamps; everything that I need to send good mail to others. The perfect gift that keeps on giving!

Thank you Jill!

New Year's Eve Wishes

This year your wish for the New Year could be among thousands written on the confetti sprinkled down in Times Square to welcome the New Year. check here for more info.

Creed at Nine Months

They're a little bit late, but here are Creed's nine month pictures Check out those chubby cheeks!

I had Larry there helping me jolly Creed so we caught lots of smiles.

He's still chubby , but this has been a bit of a rough month for him so he seems to be thinning out a bit. He's had a cold, he's been teething, and his reflux is not improving so he's lost his appetite and had a few extremely crabby days. Who can blame him when we're torturing him with likes like barium swallows for upper GI scans? Poor guy!

He's also growing so quickly. The latest development is that he's been standing on his own. At first it was accidental, when he was absorbed in something that he was holding and forgot to hold himself up. Lately he's standing on purpose for longer periods.

He's also become a clapping machine! He never misses an opportunity to cheer for himself or someone else.

He STILL has not figured out sippy cups. Maybe it's his approach?

Here he is on his first wagon ride.

He was so excited and adorable! (and of course Wadsworth the duck had to come along for the ride)

Check out how long his hair has been getting. When Larry realized what a great mohawk Creed can have, he asked me why we haven't been doing this every day.This little guy makes us smile every day and we are just doing our best to enjoy him.

Signs that Creed has a cold

I'm used to having spit-up all over my shirt, but this time it's not spit-up. NICE!

Fondue anyone?

My friend Katherine invited us over to have fondue with her family. She says that growing up, her family tradition is to have fondue every Christmas Eve. It makes such a fun meal that takes a little bit longer to eat so you have a lot of time to visit. It was even more delicious than it looks here. Afterwards, we had a lot of fun watching the kids play charades. Here they are thinking hard about how to act out their clue.

Thank you Katherine for such a fun night. Larry says I need your cheese fondue recipe!

Look who is back!

Ted! (Which is what we affectionately call our Isuzu Rodeo) He still has several issues, including, but not limited to the fact that he is two different colors of white, but we are happy to be driving the rodeo again! That said, I have to mention that when Larry picked up the rental car that we used in the meantime, he walked in and told me that he thinks we need a minivan. Have you driven in a new Dodge Caravan? They are so weird! Check it out.

This remote opens and closes the back doors, a feature I'm familiar with

but it is also the key that you plug into your dashboard and turn to start the car.

The stow and go seating was perfect for taking all of our wards' toy donations in to Salvation army

but have you ever seen a minivan with sliding door windows that roll down? That one was new to me.

I forgot to take a picture of the neon green lighting that lines the ceiling of the car at night that makes everyone comment that they feel like they are in the cashcab.

Don't worry, I don't think we need a minivan for our single baby, I just had to share these weird features that I didn't even know existed.

Homemade Christmas Project #3 - Lullaby CD

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find good non-cheesy lullabies? Just because a baby is going to listen to it, does it have to sound like elevator music? Come on people!


I decided to make my own CD of lullabies for Creed, and I made a copy for Audrey for Christmas. I suspect a few of you may be getting a copy from me too because I'm so happy with the songs that I found, and I figure that even if you don't have the same musical taste that I do, it's still handy to learn the words to a few lullabies because I was just singing bits and pieces to Creed and humming the rest until I made this CD and learned the words.



So without further ado, here and the songs I selected:


1. Moon River - Innocence Mission

2. Godspeed (Sweet Dreams) - Dixie Chicks

3. Count Your Blessings - Bing Crosby

4. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Elizabeth Mitchell & Lisa Loeb

5. Dream A Little Dream of Me - The Mamas & The Papas

6. All Through The Night - Shawn Colvin

7. We’re Going To Be Friends - Jack Johnson

8. Bye-Lo - Innocence Mission

9. Sweetly Sleeps - Peter Breinholt

10. Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

11. Close Your Eyes - Shawn Colvin

12. The Rainbow Connection - Sarah McLachlan

13. Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel) - Billy Joel

14. Chi-Baba Chi-Baba - Perry Como

15. Which Will - Nick Drake

16. Lullaby - Dixie Chicks

17. Slumber My Darling - Allison Krauss & Yo-Yo Ma

A few others that I thought about including that you might be interested in if you enjoy these are:

Golden Slumbers: Ben Folds or Beatles (Itunes doesn't sell Beatles songs because of a rights dispute and the Ben Folds version has a really loud part that I thought might wake a baby)

Sarah MacLachlan - Ice Cream

Sarah Maclachlan – Blackbird

Catch the Moon – Lisa Loeb & Elizabeth Mitchell

Across the universe - Rufus, Moby, Sean Lennon

Joshua Radin – Everything’ll be alright

You Can Close your eyes – Sheryl Crow (I really wanted to include this song, but Itunes doesn't sell it and I'm not tech savvy enough to know how to buy it somewhere else and import it into Itunes)

I also learned that if I was just going to buy a whole CD instead of create my own, I would probably choose Now the Day is Over by Innocence Mission or Catch the Moon by Elizabeth Mitchell and Lisa Loeb.

Enjoy!

I think I'm going to work on a good, happy Kids' music collection next. Any suggestions?

Homemade Christmas Project #2 - Make your own apron

This year I participated in a handmade gift exchange among bloggers called Pink Christmas.

After a lot of deliberating, I decided to make Melissa an apron. She said she would love to have anything to help with her cooking efforts, but unfortunately, I'm a terrible cook and couldn't come up with anything that could help. Instead, I thought if I made her a cute apron, at least she would look cute while she was cooking and who is going to pay attention to her cooking when she looks so good? I told her that I'm thinking I need to make myself one now, because it might get me to try cooking some new things just so I can spend time wearing a fun apron. Maybe it will inspire both of us! Sorry, I couldn't seem to get a picture with out my little helper elf!

I didn't plan on doing a tutorial so I didn't take any pictures of the process or any measurements, but here are the basics.

If you know me, you know I decided not to get a pattern and to just make it up as I went along and hope it turned out. I think I got a 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 yards of fabric. I used really heavy decorators fabric with duck cloth for the pockets and pre-washed them because I knew the apron would need to be washed a lot, and I wanted it to last a long time. Because of the direction of the pattern, I ended up using the fabric from finished edge to edge so I had plenty of fabric to make two aprons if I wanted to.

I laid the fabric out and fold it in half width-wise and laid my favorite A-line skirt that twirls a little on top with one edge of the skirt along the folded edge of the fabric, then I just cut using the skirt as a pattern for the curved top and bottom of the apron. Then I pressed all of the edges in a 1/4 inch and then over 1/4 inch again and sewed a straight stitch all the way around to hem it. I added two yards of pretty ribbon to the top for the apron tie. I left a little fabric showing above, but you can do whatever you prefer. I lined the center of the ribbon up with the center of the apron and pinned it along to the edges, then stitched around the whole thing, triple stitching the outside edges to secure them well.

For the pockets, take two rectangles of fabric a bit bigger then you want your pockets to be. Mark the top center of each piece with a pin. Measure 1 1/2 inch from the pin on each side and fold it in to meet the pin in the middle and pin it there. Now you should have your box pleat at the top. At the bottom of the pocket, pull the fabric tight from side to side and then trim the edges to be straight vertically (you should be trimming off a little triangle about an inch or inch and a half at the bottom). I rounded the corners of my pockets by tracing around a bottle of big spool of tread on the back of the fabric and then clipping the edges and ironing the seam allowance under all the way around the sides and bottom of the pocket. You could skip this step and it would still be cute with square corners. I took another rectangle the width of the pocket and folded it in half with the edges turned under to line the top of the pocket and secure the pleat. Just pin it across the top edge and sew a straight line across it. Then I just pinned both pockets to the apron and top stitched around the sides and the bottom. And there you have it.

If you have questions just email me or leave a comment and I'll try to answer them. Good luck!

Homemade Christmas Project #1

Ok, this wasn't really supposed to be a Christmas present, but I didn't deliver it earlier so it ended up being a Christmas gift.


My friend Nikki just made partner at her firm so I wanted to make something special to congratulate her on such a big achievement so I decided to make her a felt cake; something to congratulate her, that her daughter Audrey can play with when she gets older. I've seen felt cakes all over online, but they have really cute ones here. They are just plain white felt cakes that come with a lot of felt shapes that will stick to them so kids can decorate them over and over. The twinkle cakes you see through the link are made on upholstery foam, but I decided to make mine on hollow boxes that can stack inside themselves for easy storage.


My friend Reba and I made these together, and they are pretty simple. We just got a big sheet of white felt and sprayed it with spray adhesive and wrapped it around our boxes. Reba cut all of her felt decorations by hand and they turns out really cute. You can see hers here.

I just bought pre-cut felt shapes at the scrapbooking store for Nikki's cake because they had the word "celebrate" and a lot of other fun shapes and I already had a long homemade Christmas list to work on. Here's how mine turned out.


They are really easy to make, but if you attempt your own and you have any questions, just let me know.