Category: Scrapbooks

Empty House

Steph took the girls for the morning (from 9:30 until about 3), and Jerry left around 9:45 for a work/play beach trip with his boss and coworkers.

I did some laundry and some dishes and cleaned up a bit, and then spent the rest of the time in my empty house relishing the silence and working on our Christmas stockings, a project I started last January.

And a trip out to Michael’s with a 40% off coupon to buy another Sizzix machine, since one of my scrapbooking customers broke mine at my big workshop event in May. So I’ve now replaced it, and I’m going to sit WITH it at my workshop on Tuesday. Because she’s coming and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her break it again. I’m going to sit there and supervise, so that if/when she starts to force the mechanism, I can stop her.

I needed to go into Hancock Fabrics to get a few things, but I forgot to take that list with me. So I just kept going. No sense buying the supplies for another project when I need to finish something else first.

When the girls came home, we played all afternoon — with the TV OFF — cleaning Helen’s room and cleaning the den (even vacuumed!) and my Dad came over for dinner. Cleaned the kitchen… And then the girls had their baths and after Alice was in bed Helen and I made Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. And I let her lick the beater, just like my mom used to let me, something I remember fondly. There are two cookies in her lunch for tomorrow, already packed and in the fridge and ready to go. 🙂

It was a good day. I’m glad to be back.

Favorite Things This Weekend

Alice woke up fever-free and happy this morning. For the first time since Wednesday. I’ve missed our happy little baby, so this was welcomed, of course.

Alice is learning how to kiss. Now, if you say, “Alice, give me a kiss!” she’ll toddle over, lean in, cut her eyes off to one side, and slobber open-mouthed all over your face. I love it. It’s so sweet!

Alice really likes to sit in my lap. If I’m sitting on the floor, she’ll frequently bring over a book, turn around, and back into my lap. Precious.

We took the bunkbeds apart yesterday, and so Helen’s in a regular bed again (though significantly higher up than before, since she’s got a box spring and mattress on the lower frame of the bunkbeds)… She can feel “cold air” on her face at night, and this makes her happy. She woke us up at 5:10 this morning, but I took her back downstairs, went through the bedtime routine again, and put Logic on the bed with her to protect her. She slept for another 90 minutes or so. 🙂

The cousins all wore their matching dresses to church this morning, and Helen was a perfect angel. She told me before we left: “I’m going to be such a good girl! I’m going to be VERY quiet.” And she was.

Alice lets me put barrettes in her hair. And she’s beginning to understand things like “hair,” because if I mention her hair, she grabs her hair. Still working on “nose” and “belly,” though.

My niece is learning how to knit, and she’s been working on a scarf this week, with a thick boucle yarn. She dropped a stitch, but then continued to knit for several rows. I dug down into the scarf and recovered the stitch, thus securing my status as Coolest Aunt Ever.

Alice is wearing Baby Gap flared jeans with a white T-shirt right now, and she’s so cute it would rip your heart out.

I got to scrapbook with my sister-in-law on Saturday night. Last night and today I’ve been uploading photos so that I can finish Alice’s baby book and get caught up in our 2005 family album again.

Free-motion quilting on the Rhapsody in Blue quilt has begun, which means that Pandora’s box has officially been opened…

The local yarn store is having an “emergency 60% off sale” tomorrow through Thursday because a shipment of yarn came in Friday and they don’t have any space for it. So I’m going to go check out the sale bin, since I’ll be spending some time convalescing in about a month.

Life is good. 🙂

Binge

Last night I scrapped 9 pages in Alice’s baby book. I hate doing baby books — they’re nice when they’re DONE, but they’re a pain to DO. Things aren’t chronological (which drives me crazy), and you have to collect information and compile it onto one page. Too much research involved — it feels like homework. I’d much rather just slap pages together and call it DONE, but the Baby Book is constantly out of date with every trip to the doctor, every milestone reached, etc.

That said, I’m downstairs with Helen right now and Alice is asleep on her daddy’s chest upstairs. I’m trying to figure out if I can sneak up to the dining room and do a couple more pages in Alice’s book without any “help” from Helen. I doubt it. She’s been itching to “cut out letters” with my die cutting machine. She had a lot of fun stacking up paper scraps yesterday.

Uh-oh… There’s unrest upstairs. I hear Jerry and Alice descending with the dogs. And there goes my quiet morning. Hmph.