She's Crafty!

It's a Beastie Boys song. I'm not tooting my own horn.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you the results of a recent bite from the craft bug. One of my girlfriends is having twins this summer, and I recently attended/hosted a baby shower for her. We were supposed to bring gifts for the mommy-to-be, but I refused. Sorry, but she's about to have TWO babies. At once. She needs stuff for those little ones! I did include a little something for her, so as not to disobey my fellow hostesses completely, but the majority of the gift was for the babies. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. It was a very large oval basket filled with tiny little size 1 diapers (about 300 of the suckers.) Then hanging out of the front were two tag blankets that (Mama and) I made. *Thank you to my sister-in-law, Lauren, and Margaret at Le Jardin Blanc for making me aware of these great little things. Bennett adores his that Aunt Lauren made for him.*

Long story short, one of the girls at the shower (who is due any day now) saw the blankets and asked if I could make her one. Hmm... did I want to do that? Let's see, the shower was on Sunday. Monday I went to Southeast Yarn to get the fabric and to Michael's to get the ribbon. Monday evening they were all pinned and ready to go. Mama brought her sewing machine over Tuesday and several minutes after that, they were done. What do you think? Yeah, I think I was more than happy to do it. Sewing is fun! Well, maybe it's not so much the sewing, but the coordinating that I really enjoy. But the sewing is fun too. I bought enough fabric to do a few blankets, and I can't wait to pick out some more ribbon and do a couple more.

I didn't get a picture of the ones I made Miranda, but here is the one I made for her friend, and a couple extras I made:

The other thing I got to do was my niece Elizabeth's first birthday cake. Cici (her mom) brought over the invitation about a week before, and Mama and I matched the icing colors to the colors on the invitation. I always get really freaked out when I start doing these things, worried that it's going to look terrible, but they always turn out just fine. What really makes me nervous is the writing. Ugh. I stress so much over that. Mama forgot to bring over her little script "Happy Birthday" imprint thingy that you just press into the cake and then just trace icing over, so I got to freehand it. Nerve wrecking. What made feel a little better was that the next day, she was going to bring over her alphabet stencils and at least I could do Elizabeth's name in block letters using those. Guess what? She forgot those, too. Ahh! So, while I think the "Happy Birthday" turned out alright, I'm not real happy with the "Elizabeth." And the colors are a little off, but we did our best. And Josh pointed out that the little polka dots look like hard boiled eggs. They sure do. Oh well.

Now that I have thouroughly critiqued and criticized our own handy work, here is the final product. Oh yeah, Mama made cupcakes out of the left over batter, and we decorated one of those for Elizabeth to chow down on. And boy, did she ever.

She ate the ENTIRE thing. Icing and all. And she didn't get sick! At least not before she left our house yesterday...

Of course Bennett got to enjoy some, too. He definitely enjoyed this one more than he did his own in December.

What? You don't make your kids eat off the floor?

Oh. Oh well.

So that's what I've been up to. That, and working on the everlasting Money Pit / Green House. We're almost there! I can't wait to post the final pictures of that house. I so, so, so want to move in. I was kind of joking when I first started saying that, but now I find myself visualizing our furniture in there, like, "Will that fit over there, or would we have to put it against this wall?" It is so nice! And I'm really tired of being on two levels. I hate it. But our house is amazing, so I know I'm nuts to even be saying this. Anyway, look forward to a post SOON! Well, is three weeks soon?

Soon enough.