Quilts around the house

Most mornings I make the children's beds. I go through their rooms in the morning to open the blinds and let in some light. Now that the clocks have turned back, I'm craving all the natural light I can get.

I just love these quilts--I made them for the kids for Christmas last year. I have no such plans for any huge undertakings like that for this year. Cranking these three out was a job and a half--my mom and I were hand-stitching the binding to the backs of the quilts on Christmas Eve day!
This is Caitlin's quilt. I think her room is my favorite. It's sunny and yellow--just like her! She is a crazy sleeper, and her quilt is usually pulled off the bed by morning, so that's why I make the beds instead of torturing myself to get them to do it.

With these dark blue walls, Bobby's room is the darkest in the house. While it's great for going to sleep, I just can't stand to leave his blinds closed once he's up--it's like a cave in there!

Yes, that bed was his big sister's (it's white and a little girly, but it was free). He hasn't complained about it. My mother-in-law offered to give him her old bedroom furniture. It's more masculine looking, but it's a full sized bed, so that will have to wait until...(until he gets a bigger room? Don't see that on the horizon.)

These are Bobby's dirty clothes. That wicker basket is the hamper. We're working on this. I am trying to get the kids to put their dirty clothes in the hamper. I'm trying not to nag them about it, but I have told them that I will only wash clothes that are in the hamper. Also you see a pile of Halloween costumes...

And here is Caroline's quilt. It's queen sized, and it was a beast to quilt, even with the simple cross-hatching pattern. I like all the different fabrics. It's busy, but I love to get lost in looking at all the patterns.

Shel Silverstein has a poem titled, "Hector the Collector." I often call Caroline "Hector." You can see why. She doesn't like to close her dresser drawers. Ever.

So there you have a brief tour of quilts and my children's messes. We are working on "contributing" to the family. They are supposed to be contributing by putting away their clean clothes and by putting the dirty ones in the hamper. Also putting away their shoes. It's a work in progress, and it doesn't appear to be going well, judging by these pictures. I think that the kids are more than capable of doing these tasks, and I am trying to restrain myself from sweeping in and doing it all for them. If I'm going to let them learn responsibility, I have to let them own the tasks, even when they appear to be failing.

And now I need to go work on some of my own contributions to the family--namely, decluttered kitchen counters!

Loads o'photos

I love these mittens. The pattern was very easy to follow, although I didn't do the magic loop as called for in the pattern. I think I needed a longer circular needle to do it successfully. It knit up just fine on dpns.
Today I went in search of yarn for more Christmas related activities. I had a very brief kid-free window of time, so I had to go to A.C. Moore instead of one of my favorite LYS. What a pleasant surprise to discover that A.C. Moore had a much larger than expected selection of Patons wool AND it was all 25% off! Bonus!

What early November post would be complete without some Halloween pictures? Here are the girls after I finished with face paint and right before the oldest ran out the door to trick or treat with a friend.

A fairy and a clown. Later I discovered that the clown had wiped all her face paint off before she went out.

This one is grainy because I forgot to turn the flash on, but I wanted to show the boy in his costume. He's Ben 10--and all of these costumes were either handed down or recycled!

Last night, the boy lost his second tooth! It was a bloody mess, but he was so pleased with himself.

And when he woke up this morning, he quietly took his dollar from the tooth fairy and put it in his piggy bank! Just too cute for this mama!

In Between

In between the company, the dance lessons, the school parades and the school parties this week, there has been some more crafting.

For Christmas for my niece, the Bella mittens. One down, one to go.

And stocking stuffers for my kids, the Family Heart from Handmade Home. A super way to use up some scraps. (I still have to stuff them.)

I'm making slow progress on my Christmas quilt. It seems that every time I sit down to work on it, I immediately think of other things that I could be working on, and I find myself fighting the urge to start on something else.

After several nights of good cooking, I ran out of steam last night, and Rob went to Chipotle. (We had a coupon for a free burrito!) And with all the back and forth to school today, I never had time to run out to the store; so I'm torn between throwing something together from what I have at home or asking Rob to pick up something on his way home. I'm trying to save pizza night for tomorrow, so I should get to searching the pantry.

What do you do...

When you learn that you'll be having overnight guests on Tuesday, and the house is still in its post-weekend-wreck state,

And you just brought this book home from the library,
And you have this toile left over from when you decorated the dining room?

You make Mama's Bag,

And you put your latest knitting project in it!

And then you clean!

Oktoberfest

Yesterday afternoon, we attended our church's Family Oktoberfest. It was held at a local farm/nursery. The kids had a blast.

They painted pumpkins.

They had their faces painted.

They dined on hot dogs and s'mores and went on a hayride with friends. A lovely way to end the weekend.

Friday--and my first Christmas rant of the season

Bobby has two birthday parties this weekend. The first one is tonight.

Somehow it's easier to make presents for girls. I just don't see boys getting excited about personalized t-shirts. (I know Bobby is not excited to give homemade gifts.) So I've decided that for the boy birthday gifts, we'll be sticking to legos or games.

This week has felt busy--I mailed out a large stack of packages this week, and it feels good to get that stuff out of the dining room. Guess what I discovered languishing on the floor? That Christmas quilt I had started several weeks ago! Now that I have some time, I'm going to be working on it. I also have fabric and a pattern for a dress...that I purchased last year. I think this will be mama's Christmas dress for this year.

And speaking of Christmas, lots of good info is out there this week. I like to start on handmade presents early, for obvious reasons. Every year I go through the struggle between wanting to give my kids gifts (and feeling good about it) and not wanting to flood the house with stuff (and feeling icky about it). It seems that every year Rob and I find ourselves walking up and down the aisles of Target, adding more and more junk to the cart. I hate that feeling of buying "just because."

This week, I introduced an idea to the kids (and this is totally not original on my part): four gifts--something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read. I'm trying to plant this seed early, and hopefully when they're browsing through the few catalogs I'm going to let into the house, we can try to categorize the "I wants".

I had also asked the kids what their favorite Christmas gifts from last year were. They couldn't name a thing. Caitlin named her American girl doll--but that was from two years ago. I can think of the crappy digital camera that had to be thrown away after falling into an unflushed toilet. (I know.) There's the guitar that was eventually broken--but we never learned how to play it because we didn't think about giving lessons to go with it. There's the electronic virtual friend thingy that lives in a drawer and comes out every other month. Most of the dolls are naked and headless. All of the batteries are dead.

I have a couple of ideas about how to move away from the annual gift orgy toward the four gifts idea--maybe the four gifts from the parents, and maybe Santa brings three gifts (as I keep telling the kids, Jesus received three gifts). And the three gifts from Santa could be a toy, a game, a book.

I'm trying to focus more on making memories with the kids--and those are made by spending time, not money. Like I said earlier, this is an annual struggle. Maybe I should look at it not as a struggle, but as a journey--a one where there will be bumps and backslides. I'd like you hear about your journey too. What is your Christmas plan? How do you handle the kids' gifts? What are some of your favorite Christmas memories, and what memories are you planning on making this year?

Sew Connected: October

October is Dee's month! She followed Amanda Jean's inspiration and decided to make one of those stunning little house quilts.
Dee sent this soft pink for the background and an assortment of pretty pink and yellow patterned fabrics. Truth be told, I could eat up the fabric she sent--it's just so pretty and girly!

I'm so glad she decided to do this quilt--after my frustrations with making a little house last month, I was happy to get another chance at it. Last month, I had drawn out the house I wanted to make on graph paper, but it just wouldn't come together. This month, it somehow made more sense to me, and it went together easily and quickly.

It's my turn next month, so I've been assembling and cutting fabrics. I hope to get them out in the mail by the end of the week (technically, I think they're supposed to go out today). This is one of those busy weeks where I'm going to be over at the school a lot!