Hope Squared

These fun fabrics from Joann's . . . . . . led to this simple quilt for Craft Hope Project #5. May each child that receives receives one, is comforted and warmed by the love and caring of strangers.

Blog Background

This afternoon, somehow I lost be blog background again. I think I accidentally deleted it when I was adding a page element and then I couldn't remember where I'd found it to begin with. So, after perusing lots of free backgrounds and finding none that I really loved for my blog, I decided to try to make my own. It's certainly not perfect (I haven't figured out how to "tile" the images yet so that it's seamless), but I kind of like it.

What do you think?

Randomness

On the way home from the baby shower, this is what I saw on the edge of the street near my house. While part of me felt like I should get a blanket and cover it up, the other part of me thought, "since I have my camera in the car, I'll take a pic of it" I love the total randomness!!

Showers Again

Today's baby shower was so sweet. It was a smallish crowd--Alice is new to the area and to our church so she is just getting to know some of the ladies in her Sunday School and art classes. I met her through some mission projects we've worked on together and found her so genuine and sweet. What a joy it has been to get to know her and share a part in her new beginning. Bobra's house is beautiful and the food was amazing (there's a reason that I stick to sewing and crafts and let others handle the food!) Here are a few photos:

We can't wait to meet you, little John Evan!!

Baby Memories

I thought I'd show you the baby book that I created for Alice. Her nursery theme is Woodland Animals, so I carried that over to the Baby/Memory Book. I used a plain, off-white, 8.5" x 11" album and paper by Paper Studio that I bought at Hobby Lobby. Inspired by the baby book pages found over at Ali Edwards Tuesday Tutorials, made by Janet Hopkins, I purchased and downloaded this kit from House of 3. Once downloaded though, I realized that I wanted alot more detail, so I created my own pages to use in conjunction with their kit. Here's what I came up with:
The Title Page (using the logo from House of 3):

And the baby book itself (you can click on the picture to enlarge it):
And the last page features a pocket filled with "photo cards"--one for each month--the idea being to place the card in front of the baby each month and snap a picture. There are 12 different photo slots to display the photos just before this page.

Five Minutes

I want to share a blog that I read on a regular basis. This morning's post over at (in)Courage touched my heart because it captures the very reason I love my job so much. I don't know Parker at all, but I know many other children like him who are filled with joy and love and uniqueness and I am thankful for them.

They linked to another website that I wasn't familiar with---5 Minutes for Special Needs. Check it out.

Felt Deer

I am co-hostessing a baby shower tomorrow for a friend at church. Alice is using browns and greens in her nursery with this wonderful bedding set. Given the forest animals and Fall season, we decided to use that as our theme for the shower, too. I made the invitations and a Baby Book/Memory album which we plan to give as a hostess gift.

Tonight, I tackled the last project-- the little deer that we want to decorate the table with. Plan A involved buying some of that really stiff felt, cutting out 2 pieces, gluing it together at the top, leaving the legs free so that the deer will stand up. Great idea, right? Well, did you know that you can't find that stiff felt in brown? I went to every store I could think of and no brown, stiff felt.

So, on to plan B.

1. Design a pattern, 2. Cut out felt deer parts, 3. Sew them together 4. And stuff. (not necessarily in that order). Well, it was a little bit more complicated than that, but not much. (the tutorial can be downloaded as a .pdf file here)

They turned out pretty cute! Tomorrow I'll post some pics of the shower decorations.