Mushroom Mobile

Ever since I started making baby mobiles 3 years ago, Susanna has asked me to make her one. Since my nephew is 10-years-old, and Susanna has emphatically informed me that she will not be having another baby, I have always put her off because I've been so busy making mobiles for all of the newborns.

This year for Christmas I decided to make far fewer gifts than last year, and to focus on making a few special gifts. In addition to Elle's quilt, I put a lot of attention into finally making a mobile for Susanna. 

When I visited her last October for a craft weekend I came home with several liquor bottle corks courtesy of her friend, Amy, and some inspiration from a craft magazine that Susanna had purchased.

awesome liquor bottle cork

Inspiration

See where I'm going with this?

Using acrylic paint, I put several coats on the corks and finished the tops with a satin coat.

The gnomes are made from wool roving, wool felt, pipe cleaners and embroidery thread.

The mushrooms are suspended from a ring, which has been covered with Paperclay and painted.

The stumps are also paperclay, and there are two air plants (tillandsia) resting along the ring.

Add some ribbon, woven cord and rubber bugs, and you've got a mobile fit for a 35-year-old woman!

A "Just A Jar" Mosaic

Remember way back in February 2012 when Mike and I took a Mosaics class through PCC and I made this mosaic?

Well, this is what Mike was working on - and managed to finish on Christmas day in time* to gift it to our brother-in-law Bobby.

The image was taken from one of Bobby's own pieces of artwork ; one that Mike and I both really like. 

When Mike decided to make a mosaic he knew right away that he wanted to render one of Bobby's pieces as a gift for him - the trick was deciding which one. We thought it'd be done in time for his 30th birthday last Spring, but Christmas is good too!

This piece is much larger than mine, about 4 times as large. It's "mosaiced" directly onto a plywood backer, and framed with Cherry. It's all set up to hang on the wall or made into a tabletop.
I think it turned out beautifully, and the really wonderful thing is that Mike is proud of his work - which is a rare thing for him!

*by this I mean he gave it to Bobby about 4 hours after we finished opening gifts.

Thankful for it all

I love this time of year - the food, family and festivities make the freezing rain seem bearable.

Mike and I spent the thanksgiving holiday at Papa's house - 4 lovely days of food, sitting by the fire, antiquing, watching football and working on projects. Between us all we had a myriad of projects going on:

Papa, Mike and Aidan brewed a batch of IPA (some details on the process here)

Papa and I made cinnamon rolls from the Grand Central Baking Book
(thanks Remi & Andrew!).

They were delicious, and time consuming.

Pa and Sharon have been hard at work on getting a railing up around their loft area. With a little help from Mike and Aidan they managed to get the vertical support beam in place...

... and several of the horizontal rails bolted in place. You can see the ladder that Pa recently made to the loft at the right of the photo. Aidan and I spent some time reading his new book up there. It's nice and cozy.

Papa, Susanna & I also bottled and corked 184 bottles of red wine!

In addition:

• We stained some kitchen stools, decided they were ugly, and sanded the stain off.
• Worked on a sewing project (to be revealed after it's gifted).
• Crocheted a baby sweater.
• And made a ton of Thanksgiving food! 

As you may have noticed from all the above involvement of my father, my need to have lots of projects going on at one time is genetic. In the Fall issue of West Sound Home & Garden magazine, Pa and Sharon's house & a sampling of all their projects were the focus of an article, complete with a ton of photos. For any interested family and friends who haven't seen it, below are images of the magazine pages. Click on each one and it will enlarge for reading.

A Gnoming

 

Last year for my birthday I got "gnomed"  by my sister, Sara (via Mike).

 

 This year Mom got me via the mail!

In a much smaller scale!

This one was made by SpitfireGirl.com, but you can see that it's pretty simple: gift box, plastic toys, paper and photo. There are endless possibilities with this idea - I won't be able to resist. Somebody is going to get one of these in the near future...

Balloon-travelin' Bear Band Baby Mobile

Some folks say that bears go around smelling bad  

Others say that a bear is honey sweet  

Some folks say this bear's the best I ever had  

Some folks got a bear beneath their feet

Baby Sprout will soon have a bear above it's head - five bears to be exact.

These bears are hand-sewn from wool felt, the balloon is constructed from individual "shingles" of cotton fabric, and the instruments are wood; picked up at a street fair (banjo), a garage sale (guitar), and glued together with random scraps (tambourine!).

 We have a bear who can belt out a Lyle Lovett tune...

Some folks drive the bears out of the wilderness 

Some to see a bear would pay a fee 

Me, I just bear up to my bewildered best 

And some folks even see the bear in me

And a bear who jams on the banjo.

Below, a hip, swingin' bear strums the guitar. 

 

There's a bear wearing a jaunty scarf and holding a dangling rope...

... from which dangles a tambourine-playin' bear!

 So meet a bear and take him on out to lunch with you 

Even though your friends may stop and stare 

Just remember that's a bear there in the bunch with you 

And they just don't come no better than a bear

 

Veggie Garden Baby Shower

On July 14th we threw Sara a baby shower at Mom's house in Bow, Wa.
The theme was "Veggie Garden" in honor of Sara's nickname, Bean, and our nickname for the baby, Sprout (it also tied in nicely with Sara's book theme, Soil Mates).

Me, Sara, Susanna & Mom

The centerpiece of the party decorations were vegetable cake pops. Susanna paired her cake decorating skills with her friend Heidi's cake pop expertise, and they created a masterpiece. The carrots and sweet peas were lemon cake and the eggplant and tomatoes were red velvet. They all had cream cheese frosting.

 

Susanna put a lot of work into the details, including dry-brushing color onto the tomatoes and carrots for highlights. The pops were stuck into styrofoam, which was then covered with All Bran, Cocopuffs and mini gummy worms.

Sara thought they were delicious

So did Alexis

In addition to the cake pops, Susanna made mini duct-tape flowers as centerpieces for each table, and then we gave them away for party favors.

Additional party favors (can't have too many favors right? everybody loves a freebie) were jars of homemade strawberry jam (another creation by Susanna).

We decorated the food & drink tables with garden-themed children's books and crocheted vegetables and berries (also made by Susanna - she was busy!).

 

 

We didn't do too many "activities" but we did prepare some just in case.

We set up a table as a baby block decorating station.

I made the bunting out of paper and bias tape, and I sewed it up on the sewing machine.

To create the blocks I purchased a 42" x 1.75" x 1.75" wooden banister post from Woodcrafters. Mike cut them down into 1.75" square blocks and Sara and I sanded the cut edges.

I sorted through Mom's extensive stamp collection and picked out a bunch of easily recognizable shapes, letters and lots of fun patterns. We used permanent ink stamp pads that were formulated for wood surfaces.

I hope to finish decorating the blocks (only a few people decorated them) and then coat them with melted beeswax.

Tia & Susanna makin' blocks

Another activity I pulled together were baby shower Mad Libs. I found two types online and reformatted them to fit our party, but unfortunately we didn't really get a chance to do them. We did get almost everybody to fill out a "wishes" card, however.

In place of "advice" cards for Sara and Bobby, we had "wishes" cards for Baby Bean Sprout.
While I created the layout to match the invitation, the "wishes" are from Suzie's Cards on Etsy. There are lots of people on Etsy who will create these for you if you don't have the software to do it yourself.

We had a lot of fun reading through these cards at the end of the party and we have plans to incorporate them into a baby shower photo album.

The rest of the party was dedicated to eating, chatting, wandering around the gorgeous property, and opening presents!

Sprout will be a Springsteen fan, for sure!

Alexis picked out some of her toys to give to the baby

Sara seemed to be pleased with the baby mobile I made...

It was a great celebration for Sara and the soon-to-arrive baby. We're excited to meet you baby bean Sprout!