We’ve had some balmy near 60 degree weather, so our little toddler has been trying out his new skills.
He didn’t want to have anything to do with me holding his hand or helping him up when he fell. The shoes, the dry grass, the uneven ground, the rocks, they were all a whole new set of challenges to be conquered.
Guess who won…
I’ve been really quiet in this space all through the holidays. Christmas came and went. New Year’s came and went. And even though it hasn’t been recorded here yet, there was a lot of making and playing and singing and sledding; lots of attempted steps, wobbly steps, exhilirating steps, confident steps; and lots of just being.
Now it’s time for a fresh start.
If you haven’t noticed, my website is all fresh and new! I’ll have rotating links to various cool things over there to the left along with my (hopefully growing) list of project how-tos and patterns. Cool, huh?
I’m also changing my name. Well, the name of my website stuff. “Seedpod Books and Art” was coined many, many years ago when I got the idea to make and sell handmade books online. I wanted just seedpod.com, but some guy “owns” it and wants a ridiculous amount of money for it, so I had to come up with something to tack onto the end of that seedpod. Since I was planning on selling books and art, that’s what my name became. That was before blogs or etsy or any of that stuff (2001 I think). Eventually I discovered craft blogs, became totally addicted ( my first regular reads were Jessica’s old Very Mom blog, Wee Wonderfuls, and Loobylu) and morphed my lonely little website into a blog. Now it just doesn’t feel like the whole “Books and Art” thing fits anymore. It really hasn’t for a long time, but the mean guy still wants thousands of dollars for just plain seedpod.com. We thought seedpodcraft.com was workable– so that’s it.
In the time I’ve been writing here I’ve gone from 2 kids to 5. I’ve lived in New Mexico, Ohio, and Colorado with some short stops in between. I’ve bound books, made paper, spun yarn, painted, sewn, designed toys, printed, made silver jewelry… This has been the place to store my treasures. I’m happy to have it.
So, here’s to a new year and a fresh start. Let’s hope I can go at it with all the joy and enthusiasm he does:
When Brenna was tiny I was very idealistic about Halloween. I saw it as a little microcosm of life– that she could be anything she wanted, and I would help her get there. Silly, I know, but the dressing up and making was so much fun. As each new child has entered our family that whole idealism has, well, gone out the window. Now it is a last minute scramble to get the costumes decided on and all the stuff gathered up. Halloween ranks right up there with Christmas on my kids’ list of favorite holidays. At least once a day, ALL YEAR LONG, Logan tells me what he’s going to be for the next Halloween. I guess there is some magic in the thought that he really can transform himself into anything he wants. This year he settled on being a pirate:
Jonah was an alien:
Brenna was leopard:
Then there was Buzz– which has been Ian’s everyday uniform on most days lately:
And for the third time we had a little dinosaur. I made this hood and tail when Jonah was a baby. Logan was only 3 months old his first Halloween, so he was too little to wear it, but Ian did, and now Hunter:
(Barry took these pictures in the church parking lot during our Trunk-or-Treat.)
The only sewing I did this year was make Brenna a tail and ears to pin on to her sweats– the rest was just paint and hairspray and a good dig through the dress-up and recycling bins.
We lit our Jack-0-Lanterns and did a little Trick-or Treating around the neighborhood too.
I’ve really needed updated photos of my kids for my mantle since, well, I think the last time I had pictures taken was 2 years ago. I’ve got lots of snapshots of course, but I needed portraits. The thought of making an appointment, getting everyone clean and dressed and somewhere on time has been giving me hives.
I have big windows and lots of natural light in our family room, so yesterday I hung a big brown sheet at one end of the room and snapped away. Most of the pictures I took turned out like this:
Out of focus, fake smiles, silly faces, or Ian in the Buzz Lightyear costume he found in the dress-up bin about a month ago and hasn’t taken off since (I had to bribe him with chocolate chips). Click here to see the out takes bigger, if you’d really like.
But the beauty of digital photography is that I could take LOTS of pictures. I decided to go with black and white pictures so it didn’t matter what color the background or clothes were. A few clicks in iPhoto, the Costco photo printing center, and $8 later, I’ve got these lined up on my mantle:
Not bad for a day’s work.