I am honored that Kris from Monkey Foot Designs has tagged me to share seven random things that you might not know about me…

1.) I love driving in the car all by myself with the windows down and the radio turned up really loud! (I am sure that I look really cool doing this in the family mobile with the car seats in the back)
2.) For special treats I love to go to Starbucks for a Carmel Apple Spice (they just changed it as it used to be Carmel Apple Cider the ingredients are a little different which has been really hard for me to accept but it is still a treat) or to Sonic for a Cherry Limeade.
3.) If I could do anything on Saturday mornings I would get up and clean the whole house! There is just something therapeutic about doing this on Saturday mornings.
4.) In the same respect though I am a really messy person; I have piles of all kinds of random stuff everywhere (organized piles of course)!
5.) I am passionately in love with Humpback Whales! They are just so impressively immense! I have never seen one but I hope to someday.
6.) I think that my husband knows everything there is to know about anything (if he doesn’t know something he will look it up for me ). I am a pretty big fan of his!
7.) I will not go on most rides at amusement parks this includes roller coasters all the way down to merry-go-rounds they all make me feel really sick! Weird, I know!

Thanks for the tag Kris! I am going to tag Jennifer she is brand new to the blog world and already even doing a giveaway (on her third post)! Wow! Because I can’t just pick one I am going to tag my sister-in-laws as well Becca and Ariana!

Last week we made a trip to the used book store as we had piles of books that needed to be traded in. I was not planning on picking up any books for the kiddos as they are pretty set for now just coming through the holidays and all. As I was browsing around though I came across How Big Is God’s Love? by David and Helen Haidle. The cover looked a little cheesy but still I flipped through it I fell quickly in love with the book. The book is based on Ephesians 3:17-19 which says, “May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it of fully know or understand it.” These verses are very special to me as I pray them for our children often so the book became a must have. The pictures show many different cultures and explain the very vastness of God’s love. I just wanted to share as it has become a very precious book to our family!

Yep, I know! I never thought that I would be the one to fall over the edge and yet…there I went! I have started switching some of what our family eats over to organic. Call it one of my goals for the new year but I just really felt the need to learn more about organic foods and what is best for our family. After some research and a lot of speaking to those who have gone partial to even whole heart organic I felt like I had just enough information to be dangerous. I feel like there is probably a line out there somewhere with spending vs. benefits but I am not really sure where that is. I decided to start slow or big depending on just who you talk to in our family. It definitely impacts the wallet a bit as the hubby has noticed but I do think that he is pretty on board which is encouraging! He loves me a lot!!! I decided to cut back as many of the hormones that I could from our kiddos. We have switched milk, eggs, beef, chicken and yogurt. I hope to switch butter and cheese someday but for now the price is just such a huge difference that I am not sure that works for us just yet. Hopefully over time our community will have more organic products to offer and that might help the price out a little. I do have concern for all the not so lovely pesticides on the fruit and veggies as well but I am going to just take this slow and see where we go. It is amazing to see what all is in our food these days those little hidden things…who knew they were there. Who knows where these choices will lead our family or if they will even have an impact on their health but I am just trying to get the most information that I can and make wise decisions for us. Plus I have to say that I think that the organic items that we have tried so far even taste a little better…I think hubby thinks that it is all in my head, but wherever it is I like that it taste a little better!

Well, I have been feeling a bit like Elmo at the end of a long day…beat down, discarded and flat on my back. I partook in the lovely stomach bug the beginning of this week, so far no one else has followed suit in our home…here is hoping! I am happy to be on the mend and back as an active part of society (it is odd how the world does not stop when you stop). I have to take a second to thank our wonderful mothers who swooped in to help with the kiddos during the day Monday! Many many thanks!!! Also many many thanks to my wonderful husband who after a long day at work came home to help pick up the house, put the kiddos down and deal with his pretty lifeless wife! Hip hip hooray for the hubby! Needless to say I am happy to be back in Blogland!

Ahh yes, the dreams that I am dreaming for the year ahead in regards to sewing are quite big! Who knows if they will be started or even finished but a girl can dream can’t she? I feel in love with the Urban Chic Blossom Picnic Patchwork in Bark the first time that I saw it and just knew that one day it would be a quilt at our house, so I bookmarked it for another day (a day when I would have money to spend on fabric that I did not need). Recently I visited my bookmark to find that the store was totally sold out and had no hopes of getting more in so I checked out good ole’ Google to find that there just really was not a lot of this fabric left out there. I found one place that had the amount that I wanted but I had not really heard of it. I went through with ordering it hoping for the best in delivery and service as it was my last chance at the fabric. They had a handy little first time buyer coupon on their home page which I promptly applied to my order (can’t go wrong with a site that has a coupon on their home page). I am really happy with the way the fabric came as it even came with a little handy measuring gift (sorry for the horrible picture) and a coupon for my next order. Woo Hoo! So that is at least one project not to mention another quilt that I have all the pieces cut out for, a few gifts, a few purses etc. etc. I am itching to get started but first and foremost I must finish my big dreams from last year, those unfinished Christmas gifts. They are coming a long and it will not be too much longer now…hopefully!

Yes, it is a little late in the year to still be showing Christmas things buy hey, I am just running a little behind! I wanted to share the Christmas pants that I made for Charis. They looked so cozy and so much fun that I almost wanted a pair for me. I think that this is the first thing that I have made for her to wear that she has been really excited about which blessed my little mama sewing heart! Please do pardon all the wrinkles (they make the first picture look a little wonky) as you can see I am not a fan of the iron, but honest they were not so wrinkled when Charis wore them at Christmas!

Christmas Eve Pants

Christmas Day Pants

At the beginning of the week as Charis was sick we had to pull a little switch-a-roo as her sleepy time friends needed to go for a fun ride in the washing machine. She actually sleeps with three stuffed animals (plus three blankets) and we have an exact replica of only one of them which we lovingly call Pinky (of which she has no idea that there are two). Sleepy time friend number two actually has two names that he goes by Taggy or Guy of which we have no replacement, but if push came to shove I think that she would probably sleep without him. Last but not least there is Buns of which we have a stunt double for that is just a little off. Back to the story…Charis’s sleepy time friends needed to go for a little wash and fearing yet another disaster still to come in the night she got a choice of sleeping with Pinky which we have a stunt double for or buns which we have a kind of look alike stunt double for; this way there would still be one friend left if there was another disaster in the night. Charis chose Buns. Right away she knew that the ears were different even in her sick sleepy state she knew that there was a switch-a-roo going down. I had to come up with an elaborate story about how this was Buns brother etc. She settled for the story and bought into it so now we have Buns and That Buns (sometimes also lovingly referred to as Pink Buns or Buns Brother).

For Christmas my sister-in-law gave me a very precious gift of Advent Jesse Tree ornaments that she has handmade! They were unfinished at Christmas and looking incredible but today the finished product arrived in the mail and incredible does not even begin to describe them! Wow! Thanks so much for all your hard work and attention to detail Becca! They are really amazing! We are excited to use them with the kiddos next year! I had high hopes of coloring copied pages for the tree this year (sad compared to Becca’s creations) but I just ran out of time and we never picked up a little tree to use so we decided to wait and I am so glad that we did! How spiffy our little tree will be next year!

I have been waiting two and a half years for my official initiation and it finally came tonight! I have officially become a mom…I have been thrown up on!!! Not baby spit up but a full blown (very descriptive word coming fair warning) chunky thrown up on! Poor Charis has the stomach bug! She has been a trooper! It just really scares her when she throws up. She keeps begging for medicine to make it stop and it is hard to explain to her that there is no medicine and even if there was she would just throw that up as well. Lovely post I know! Sorry! Charis and I are both on our second showers for the night (yep, doubly initiated) and she is on her second pair of sheets (so that is why we need so many sheets with all the different characters on them) and all her sleepy time friends and blankets are in the wash as well, poor girl. Here is hoping that she can sleep for a little bit, this bug will pass quickly and that the rest of us do not partake in this little bug!

Gift giving was so much fun this year as I got to make so many of our gifts! I leaned a lot this being my first year of a handmade holiday, namely that I need to start MUCH earlier! I loved being able to give things that I had spent time on and really thought through, that was a lot of fun to me. Here are a few of the gifts that we got to give. I am missing a few pictures somehow and there are two gifts that are actually still under construction…gee! Here are the few pictures that I have though…

Drawstring Purses with Matching Zipper Pouches:

Magnets:

Scarfs:

Coaster Sets:

Tissue Holders: