Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Busy Getting Ready for Christmas!

It's been looking a little like Santa's workshop around here with the projects that have been going on for the past several weeks. Thankfully, I have completed many of my gifts. I'd love to show them, but I don't want to spoil any surprises! However, I do have a few other non-present projects that I've completed that I can share!

Bootie slippers for Joanna, using this tutorial. They are absolutely adorable, but unfortunately, they ended up a little too small. I'm going to have to enlarge the pattern and try again.


Slippers for Benjamin, using this tutorial. I added a non-slip slipper sole.

I finished this little doll I made for Joanna. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I actually started this doll in March. It was her Easter gift. I had finished everything but the hair. That's what took me so long. The hair is made of tiny thread loops all over, which looks good in the end but was extremely time-consuming and tedious to do. I'm not planning on doing hair like that again! Thankfully Joanna didn't seem to mind the wait! =)

An advent calendar for the kids! I originally had wanted to make something that was a manger scene - like a stable that they added a felt person or animal to every day. Unfortunately, I'm not that creative - making felt animals and people is a little beyond my skill, so I settled for this design instead. It's a felt Christmas tree sewn to a muslin background. All over the Christmas tree are buttons that little felt ornaments will be hung from, one each day until Christmas. The presents under the tree are actually pockets that will hold the ornaments until they are used. I still have most of the ornaments to make, but I'm hoping to make a couple each day until they are done - hopefully before they are needed!

This is just to show how the ornaments will be hung - that's supposed to be Baby Jesus, which was the only thing from the manger scene that I thought would turn out somewhat decent! =)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Nine Months!


Miss Joanna is nine months old today - how the time has flown! =) She brings so much joy and sunshine into our lives, and is such a blessing!

She is a busy little girl - she's been crawling for almost a couple of weeks now and she makes good use of her mobility! She's also been completely self-feeding with her solid foods for about a month now, which has been nice for me! She's also started clapping and pulling herself to a stand. She's done all of these things well before Benjamin did!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

An Amazing Bargain!

Most people know I love a good deal. But this goes beyond a good deal - this is absolutely amazing...I'm still kind of in shock about this. So take a look at what I got:

All this for....are you ready for it? $6.78!!!! Yep, that's right. 30 pounds of honey (about a year's supply for us), two boxes of Wheaties (Seth loves these, but we don't buy them very often because they're so expensive, and they never go on sale), Sesame oil (I'm hoping to try a lip balm recipe with this), and a bouquet of flowers.

So how did I do it? Well, a couple of months ago I signed up for the Amazon Mom program, mostly to get the free three-month membership to Amazon Prime, since I thought the free shipping on any order would come in handy during the holiday season. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an email asking me to try out Amazon Fresh, their grocery delivery service. As an incentive, they gave me a coupon for $100 off an order of $100 or more! I have never seen a coupon that good! That was enough of an incentive for me! I had expected to pay around $10 - $15 for shipping, which would still have made it an excellent deal, but it was only $5.99 - even better! So my order totaled $100.79 - $100 coupon, + $5.99 shipping, which gave me a grand total of $6.78! And the flowers were a free gift for a first-time customer!

I had originally planned to buy honey and coconut oil (the most expensive things in my grocery budget), as well as the few smaller items, but they were out of the coconut oil that I wanted. I discovered that I could get a really good deal on the honey by buying 6 jugs, so I went with that, and with the other few things I wanted, the total worked out perfectly!

This was such a gift from God, and such a blessing to me!!!

Pumpkin Farm!

We joined Seth's family for a trip to the pumpkin farm a few weeks ago! As Benjamin has gotten older, it's more fun to take him places like this because he is so curious about everything!






We had to get a picture of Benjamin sitting here after seeing the sign!