Paper Overload

My kids bring home so many papers from school that I'm convinced they use a tree a week. And since our community recycling program has been closed (The guy running it closed it because he wasn't making any money doing it. Don't even get me started.) I've been trying to figure out what we could possibly do with at least some of it rather than just throwing it away. Then I caught the husband cheerfully making a list of game codes on my prettiest stationary. He tried to defend himself by muttering, "But, it was the only paper I could find!" After I realized he was right, there wasn't a notepad in sight and grudgingly admitted it, it hit me, scrap paper notepads! It's so simple I can't believe I didn't come up with it earlier. All I had to do was rip 3 sheets of paper into 1/4 stack them up and blanket stitch them together. Ta-da!!

A Very Knitty Christmas

For the past few years I have attempted to make most of my Christmas presents....and failed. This year however, since the husband has been laid off for over a year, I knew it needed to be a stash-busting kind of Christmas. And so I actually started making presents in October. Here is most of what I made.


Missing are another 7 gift baskets which hold homemade raspberry & apricot jam, canned green beans from our garden, cardamom and sourdough bread. Also another baby hat in pink and two pairs of flip-top mittens that had to be mailed before I thought to take a picture. The only people who got store bought gifts were my kids, because right now legos rule and I can't make those. I did make two knit lego guys that were a big hit. A HUGE thank you to Ani for discovering this awesome pattern, even if the difficulty of actually constructing these guys made me invent new and undiscovered swear words.

Our Christmas came with the boys' "winter concert." Ian had a speaking part. One line which he repeated over and over to himself starting two days after Halloween. I'd find him building legos or drawing while muttering "When I'm feeling sad, I like to think about things that make me feel thankful." But all the practice paid off and he did a fantastic job. I admit it made me a little teary-eyed to see my baby up on that big stage speaking so carefully and clearly in front of a very large audience. Drew made up for not getting the microphone all to himself by singing "We wish you a Merry Christmas" loudly enough to be heard over all the other (100+) kids. Thank God he didn't get his father's singing voice.


For the past 4 years we have gone to the same cut your own tree farm, with my parents, to pick out our Christmas trees. This year Andy, who apparently misses using his power tools at work, decided that his saws-all would be the perfect thing to cut down said trees with. I think my father was a bit surprised, however he made no objection to Andy cutting down his tree for him, instead of using the hand saw he had brought. After the trees were put in/on the trucks we had our anual snowball fight. Then we headed to Mimi and Poppa's house to help put up their tree and have some much needed hot cocoa.