A guessing game

DreamWorks has a holiday bazaar for employees, friends, and family on December 4th. With encouragement from Shane, I have signed up to have a table. To say I am nervous to show my things to people who breathe creativity would be an understatement. I mean, its DreamWorks!


Here is a little glimpse of a pattern I am working on for a new hat. See if you can guess what it might be. (No guessing for you Shane.) This picture is from the first time frogging I think. Let's just say it has gone through a few prototypes already. ;)

Elf Beanies

Here is a picture of the new hat and scarf set I have started creating. These are like the ones I sold at the boutique but I thought you all might like seeing it on Sydney. :) She makes them looks cuter. It was sort of by accident that I made the elf hat originally but I really like them. With a little adjusting to the pattern they are becoming my new favorite thing to crochet while I watch movies in the evenings. This set is over in the shop if you are interested in more details. Let me know what you think.

Blog Award

What is an Uber Amazing Award you ask.

Uber is a German word that is similar to our English word super.

An Uber Amazing Blog Award is a blog award given to sites who:
~ inspires you
~ make you smile and laugh
~ or maybe gives amazing information
~ a great read
~ has an amazing design
~ and any other reasons you can think of that makes them uber amazing!

Amy from Knit Me Pieces gave me this award. Here are the rules to play:

Once nominated, recipients are to follow these rules:

~ Put the logo on your blog or post.
~ Nominate at least 5 blogs (can be more) that for you are Uber Amazing!
~ Let them know that they have received this Uber Amazing award by commenting on their blog.
~ Share the love and link to this post and to the person you received your award from.

So I thought I would share some on my favorite (often daily) reads. I decided I would share some smaller more personal blogs since we all should know about Anna Maria Horner and Decor8 by now. (wink)

Mulholland Drive because I love him and it is fun to see things through his eyes.

Bricolage and Butter because their blog is a great read and inspiring. Plus, they are my dear cousins.

Alff Family Adventures for its witty humor.

Make It for her inspiration and beautiful designs.

My Longest Year because she inspires me to be a creative and encouraging wife and mom. In fact every girl should read this post, it is good perspective!

Hope you all enjoy these blogs. Go check them out especially if they are new to you.

Holiday Boutique Coverage

Thanks to everybody who stopped by at my first ever boutique. It was super fun to participate. The event too place in beautiful Pasadena and I was lucky enough to spend the day with Amy. We spent the time talking with each other, with other vendors, and with lots of visitors. I felt like if I sold one thing I could consider it a success and so it was a success. Hee hee.

Actually I sold an owl onesie, both of the elf beanies below, a bunch of buttons, and received a very special commissioned lap-size blanket that I will share with you all soon.

I have posted a couple of the blankets that did not sell in the shop and I hope to post more blankets and possibly a couple hats in the next couple days so stay posted.

Thank you Shane!

My wonderful husband gave me some birthday gifts yesterday. First he bought me some of these fabrics!!! I am so excited. Plus, since Shane bought me some last year too I am thinking that receiving Anna Maria Horner fabric should be a new birthday tradition. What do you say Shane? He went above and beyond and also bought me her new book. If you haven't seen it yet, GO GET IT! It is fabulous. I already have spent lots of time looking through it. It is beautiful, personal, and inspiring. Sydney gave me a new set of crochet hooks. I am excited to experiment with different gauges for the blankets soon.

Tonight Shane is taking me out to dinner with a couple close friends. Yummy Mexican food here we come. I am telling you....that handsome man knows the way to my heart: fabric, a good book, dinner out, and no dishes!!

Holiday Boutique

There will be a holiday boutique in Pasadena on November 15th. I will be participating and sharing a table with a dear friend, Amy from Knit Me Pieces. If anybody is in the area and available please stop by and say hi. There will be lots of opportunities for holiday shopping for unique and handmade gifts. This is my first time participating in anything like this so I am a bit nervous to see how my creations are received. I have a list of things I am trying to make in time for the boutique including crocheted baby and lap blankets. You will just have to come visit to see all the fun things I am making. ;)

The boutique will be at 1841 Fiske Ave. Pasadena, CA 91104 from 10am thru 3pm. Some of the handmade items will include dolls, quilts, cards, soaps, jewelry, bags, and my stuff just to name a few. I hope to see some of you there.

Voting

We went as a family this morning to vote. It is always a good way to teach Sydney about the process and about how blessed we are to live in a country were we have a choice. Whatever your feelings about either candidate or proposition on the ballots today, I hope you go vote. I have been feeling very torn over some of the choices in this election. I guess you could call it a general anxiety over where our state and country are now and where we may be heading. This past Sunday our pastor shared these words in our bulletin. I found it encouraging and a great reminder to always be praying for our elected officials and our nation. I especially loved the song he included which we also sang on Sunday.

The Apostle Paul had dual citizenship. He was a proud Roman citizen (Acts 22:28). He exercised those earthly rights more than once to further the Gospel. He was also a proud citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20). This was his eternal citizenship (Hebrews 11:16).

We have dual citizenship too. We are citizens of an earthly country and a heavenly country. If you are a citizen of the United States, this is a big week. We have several big responsibilities:

1. We register to vote.
2. We vote our conscience.
3. We pray for our elected leaders.

I want to teach you a song today. I think of it as a song for Wednesday morning. Beyond our periodic opportunity to vote in this country, we have a daily call to pray for our leaders (1st Timothy 2:1-2). This song has helped me pray.

You're the God of this city
You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation
You are

You're the light in this darkness
You're the hope to the hopeless
You're the peace to the restless
You are

There is no one like our God
There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done
In this city

For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done here

Halloween Part 3: Fun Fest

As you can see, Halloween was a smashing success for our little girl. She was such a trooper this past week as we prepared everything at church. She happily ran tons of errands with me and even was my helper at the church. She would run and grab me more supplies or water. She tried out all the games for me to make sure everything was working well. Of course, with all the preparations and running around making sure everybody had enough candy to hand out I did not take too many photos. Here are just a couple Shane took of the evening.

First up was getting her face painted.
Then she played some games.
Next was watching part of a pirate movie and enjoying some candy.
And finally here she is working on some crafts.
The evening was so fun and it was great to meet so many new people from the neighborhood around our church.

Halloween Part 2: Dreamworks

Sydney and I took a break from setting up for Fun Fest on Friday and spent a couple hours at Dreamworks for their family Halloween extravaganza. They had trick-or-treating for all the kids around the campus. They even had a little area for Monster vs. Aliens!! It was exciting to see some of the characters and stuff that Shane is working on every day. Sydney has already decided that she likes Bob and Ginormica the most. Here are some pictures...

Sydney's favorite part was the pink fountain!

Butterfly princess (sans wings) with Bob.

Creative frog balloons from the Shrek area.

Halloween Part 1: Pumpkin Carving

Last year we just let Sydney paint pumpkins for Halloween. This year Dreamworks was handing out free pumpkins for their pumpkin carving contest so we decided to let Sydney help carve her first pumpkin. At first she wanted nothing to do with putting her hand inside to get all the pumpkin guts out.

Then she decided it would be ok to use a scooper.


Finally Shane was able to convince her to try with her bare hands. She did not like it at all and quickly went back to the scooper even though it didn't work that well.


She was very pleased with the final pumpkin though. :)