Violaceous

Happy New Year!

Wishing you and your loved ones the happiest of new years, filled with everything happy and good!

 

Post-Holiday Quiet

Quiet, peaceful afternoon...

The first picture says it all, he is normally one busy little guy. Sending you wishes for some post-holiday quiet in your life too!

Merry Christmas!

We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It's April!

Happy 1st of April!

I, for one, am happy that spring and summer are starting to creep up. Although you wouldn't know it by the weather here lately.

Are you a good April fool-er? I'm so not. Everything shows on my face. I don't think I've ever once gotten away with really tricking someone. I'm very (ridiculously) honest and always give people my opinion. I think that and the inability to lie/be tricky go hand in hand. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing. But, it doesn't make April Fool's Day much fun for me! I'm always the target.

If you are a good April fool-er, what's the best trick you've played on someone?

I think this lady's April Fool's joke on her kids is so cute. I would love to see their faces when they bite into that cupcake!

Happy New Year!

Goodbye 2009, and welcome 2010! I'm excited to start a clean, fresh year. 2009 was a rough year for us, both financially and emotionally. I've learned a lot over the last year, I supposed that's the good side to bad times. But, here's to better things ahead!

No Man's Land

I hope you had a merry, merry Christmas!! 

Do you ever feel that the days between Christmas and New Year's Day are no man's land? I never quite know what to do with myself. After the craziness of getting ready for Christmas and the holiday rush in my etsy shops, everything just suddenly comes to a dead halt! People seem like they're in a sort of fog right now. Nothing is expected of anyone right now. Can't really get ready for any holiday, it's a little early for "spring cleaning", most Christmas decorations are still up, etc. I guess we're supposed to be standing in line with returns. 

The last few days, I've been:

• Spending a lot of time on our new Christmas couch. It's so comfy and pretty.
• Watching favorite movies like Little Women and Gone With the Wind
• Satisfying cravings for yummy, chewy artisan bread with olive oil or goat cheese, avocados and diet coke. *shrug*
• Fighting lots of snow and ice around here - driving is scary!
• Knitting up a storm
• Lazing around the house with Dustin and Lucy.

I've made quite a bit of headway on this new knitted blanket pattern!

 

I love it because you add squares by picking up stitches from the previous square - no sewing squares together! It's supposed to help use up your stash and be fun and colorful so I've been enjoying choosing colors as I go. 

 

The pattern is from Living Crafts, a wonderful magazine if you have kids and/or like using natural materials to craft with. They have some great ideas and patterns!

So that's what I've been doing, how have you been spending the days after Christmas?

Oh Deer

How time has been flying this month. Do you feel the same way? I can't believe that Christmas is 6 days away! And that we're almost in 2010!

I just wanted to show you my little vintage deer collection...if you can call 3 a collection. These little guys are getting harder and harder to find! I've been trying to buy a new one every year for the last couple of years. Well, without shopping online. Sometimes collecting things online is a little too easy, I like the thrill of the hunt. ;)

 

This guy is my favorite. He's so prance-y. I love his jaunty bell, gold antlers and pink ears. 

I like this one because he's little and fancy. He has a shiny gold bow tie and is very cute! I got the white Christmas cottage and silver bottle brush tree at Target, they have lots of fun sparkly pastel Christmas cottages in their Christmas section this year. I love them!

 

And this one is, well, a little pathetic. This is my new deer for this year, I rescued him from one of the local thrift stores. His flocking is almost totally off of his head and he looks more alien than deer. Poor little guy. Look at those antlers though!! At least he has something to be proud of.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Christmas Cheer

The house looks so much cheerier with most of our Christmas decorations up!

 

I so love that vintage cone shaped Santa. :)

What's your favorite decoration in your home?

I'm in love

with my new Noel banner in pink. She made it especially for me and I love how it turned out!! I don't normally buy many Christmas decorations but I love the stylish simplicity of this.

 

My picture absolutely does not do it justice, by the way (bad angle). Why oh why are good pictures of the inside of my home so hard to take. Am I the only one with this problem?

In which I pretend to post about the 4th of July but am really posting about my new camera.

Did you have a nice Independence Day? I hope so! Lucy's finally at that age where she's starting to get excited about holidays, which is really fun! I got a new camera over the weekend and have been trying to get the hang of it. It's a Canon Powershot SD1100 IS. I'm completely amazed at the difference. I knew my old camera was bad, but I don't think I knew quite how out of date it was.

Look how nicely this seed pod came out in macro! I'm impressed.
 
And these:

I'm still trying to figure out a few things, and I need to figure out how to resize pictures because they're coming out huge.

Lucy's Independence Day outfit:

I made her 3 of those little pillowcase dresses last weekend and I just love how they came out!

My two sweeties, at the parade yesterday.

I am so happy with how quickly my new camera can get photos of Lucy when she's in motion! We were having a little photo shoot of her in her dress and I accidentally got a shot of her in mid fall, when her stool tipped over! It wasn't blurry at all. Hopefully I'll be able to post better pictures now.

Unrelated - I have to show off Lucy's vintage stool, it's so cute!