Hello everyone I hope that you are having a great winter.  I love this time of year.  But I love it better when it is OVER and Spring is in bloom.  I am getting ready for Spring already.  I love to plan what plants I will plant this year and what fruits and vegetables that I will grow in my garden.  I love organic fresh home grown foods.

This week I decided to make my baby Tristan a new smaller portable crochet blanket.  I made him a wonderful blanket when I was pregnant with him, (Tristan loves it) But it is a large crib sized blanket and it is too large for him to drag around.  Tristan is starting to roll places and he is already doing the beginning motions of crawling, and he wants to take his crochet crib blanket with him everywhere.  He gets tangled in the blanket often when he is playing on the floor.  Tristan is the type of child that loves textures and he loves the feel of string, ribbon and yarns.  So I decided to crochet him a smaller portable blanket that he could crawl around with and not get tied up in.   Because Tristan loves the feel of strings so much I have added on lots of tassels for him to grab.  He loves to just twirl the strings in his fingers.  If you have a child that loves strings also, I would suggest adding a bunch of tassels to a small blanket for them.

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Hello everyone,

I hope that you had a wonderful week.  It was a great week here.  Everyone is healthy and the Weather is Wonderful.

This year one of my New Year Resolutions was to get more organized.  We all have this goal in some form or another.  This year I wanted to come up with a system that was easier for my children to know what chores were expected from them each day, so they knew when free time was.  I also wanted to come up with a system so each person in the family knew what their job was for Family Home Evening.

Family Home Evening in our family is when we set aside one hour, one night of each week to talk about lesson from our religion that we want to teach our children for that week.  We each take a turn teaching the lesson.  The children love to come up with Games to go with the lesson that they are teaching.
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Hello everyone,

I hope that you are all having a great 2011 so far.  It has been a great year for us!

I have had a lot of great comments about the Snuggies that Leatha has made; she is very excited and proud of them.  To continue on with the homemade gifts theme, I am going to talk about what everyone made for Leatha this year for Christmas.

Cameron and Amelia both love to paint, so they wanted to be able to make something that they could paint for Leatha.  After looking for a long time at the Hobby store near us, they both decided they wanted to make Leatha a Jewelry box and they wanted Dad to help them.  They were very excited to find the wood items in the craft store and they found exactly what they wanted to make.   So we let them pick out the box that each of them wanted to give Leatha.

Amelia picked a cute box with a Mirror inside it and two lift out drawers, so additional items could be stored underneath.

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Hello again folks!  Justin Here.  Below is the second part of the snuggie pattern from Tuesday, check that post out here if you missed it.

The only thing left is to sew on the pockets.  My children love pockets so; Leatha place 2 pockets on each Snuggie.   Cut out the size of pockets you want.   Leatha wanted oversized pockets.  Sew a hem on the top of the pockets with a one inch seam.  This strengthens the top of the pockets.  Now place the pockets on the snuggie a few inches lower than where the person’s waist would be.  Place the Pockets even distance from the center line, at the same height as each other.

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Hello everyone!!!

Boy was it a busy holiday season! I hope that everyone had fun the end of 2010!! I know I did!

I had a great time with my family.  For Christmas this year, we decided to make a special present for everyone in our family.  We had a lot of fun with this.  My children are very creative and did a lot of work on each present that they were giving to each other.   This was such a fun idea that my children have asked to do this every year, so now it is one of our traditions.

I wanted to take a few posts and show you what my children did for each other to give you inspiration on what you can do for others in your family.  These homemade gifts are wonderful for grandparents.  What grandparent does not love an item made from their grandchild??  You can make these gifts for any holiday.

I will start this post with what Leatha made for her siblings.
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Hello everyone,
It has been a beautiful November for us! I love the Fall.

This week I did not do any repurposing. I actually made some new items from fabric that I purchased from the store. I do have more repurposing to come, but I did not have anything that I could use to make pajama bottoms for Cameron and a new Sunday Dress for Leatha.

My children love to go to the store with me and pick out their fabric for me to sew their new items. Leatha enjoyed watching me sew so much, that last year for Christmas we purchased her, a sewing machine on Black Friday. The sale was fantastic! If you have a child or teenager, that you would like to get a sewing machine for, check out the Black Friday sales. Get a great deal!

Now Leatha has her own sewing machine, so I do not have to share mine. Leatha used to take all of my scraps and sew them into stuffed animal clothing, doll clothing and aprons for her brother and sister. Now she can take my scraps and sew what she wants, when she wants. She has even made a few layer ruffle dresses for school. I am glad that she enjoys sewing as much as I do.

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