So, today is the 28th of December, and we’re home! We came home to a clean house, still full of Christmas Cheer, brothers, a dog and a cat!

Now we get to play with our loot! Cause, as you can imagine, two Christmas’ mean’s lots of LOOT! :) Some exciting craftiness of note, knitting needles!!! Three sizes!!! And a sweet Aunt who patiently walked me through knitting! This is the scarf I got started on our drive home yesterday.

Books, books, books!

Now, the baby is asleep so I’m going to start reading!

Oh, wait, and did I forget to mention a PRINTING PRESS (it’s still in the car, but I think I see printmaking once again in my future!
Happy Holidays!

Speaking of after Christmas, I have a whole bunch of posts that will be going up after the holidays (don’t want anyone to see their crafty little gifts beforehand!).

So stay tuned!

5:10am Alarm goes off, hit snooze

5:20am Alarm goes off, get out of bed and ready for work a.k.a. make coffee

5:45am Kiss the babe & hubby and leave the house to go to work, hopefully have my lunch & coffee ready to go

6:00am Arrive at work, it’s cold here, the heat doesn’t turn on till 7am, keep layers on, drink coffee, oh yea… catch up on my email

7:00am First conference call, hopefully have breakfast or snack before the call!

9:00am Everyone else starts to show up at work, I greet them with a smile, and ask “where have you been sleephead” or “how nice of you to join us”, they reply to me around 1:30pm, “where you off to, slacker”

10:00am snack time, maybe more coffee…. walk around & stretch, maybe socialize, work some more

11:30am Snack time again, maybe eat my lunch… make everyone else jealous of the yummy smells

12:00pm Baby delivery! Not all days, but some days, she visits, we chat, nurse, hang out for a while

1:30pm Do my work dishes, clean up my desk for tomorrow morning (I’m notorious for spilling coffee all over everything especially in the morning, so, if it’s a clean desk, it’s easier to save important things from the ever invasive coffee spill

1:45pm Head home to relieve the grandma of duty, commuting is fun (more fun when I can ride my bike, but it’s WAY TO COLD for that now)

2:00pm Home, Grandma Allen heads off to work/home, we nurse, play, nap, blog, walk, chat, shop, climb, hike, clean, sweep, laundry, roam, sing, dance and wash.

5:00pm Papa comes home from work (YAY), more time for chores and fun,  maybe even a shower or hot tub soak

5:30pm We start to make some tasty dinner

6:30pm Eat the tasty dinner and wash up

7:00pm Play a little, read a book (baby book) and then start to get ready for bed

7:30pm Bed time, brush the baby teeth, and off to snoozyland

8:00pm If we’re lucky mama get’s up and hangs out with papa (grown up time)

8:45pm Mama bed time

We had our first freeze (I actually had to scrape ICE), the night before last, and now all our the trees are dropping their leaves. Whabam (the sound of leaves dropping…. maybe a little more violent sounding than I intended, Whabam).

Etta thinks it’s pretty neat!

I just love those pants!

I call them her pirate pants!

We even visited a pirate ship that day in the San Diego Harbor (I think it was that day… we had quite a few of them in San Diego and each one was better than the day before!)

Now, over a month later, on a relatively lazy Sunday afternoon I’ve finished the Dress! I’ve spent time during evening naps,  papa play time, and after baby’s gone to sleep time, to craft this up.

I’m very pleased! Of course, there we’re some snafu’s,  I’m a relatively new sewer, and this is my first pattern outfit. Luckily, I don’t think Etta will notice!

Picking out the buttons was awfully hard, so I let Etta help! She chose the pink shiny ones with little squares inset into them. I think it was a good decision, here are the runner ups.

I’ll let you know how it looks on her, when her birthday rolls around! Until then… Shhhhhh…..

Anywho… Here’s what we made.

My family likes their pizza without the tomato sauce, so BBQ is always a close contender.  This BBQ sauce is called “Alien’s East Bay Style Blues-Q” It’s made by Colton’s cousins! It’s to DIE for!

We also harvested the butternut squash. YUM. This is them after their bath.

So, every night we’ve been playing catch up on those fun activities! Oh Joy!

We also started going through our vacation photo’s and this is one of my favorites from the San Diego Zoo. A baby flamingo, apparently they are born gray and gradually get their pink as they age.

Every spring since our visit I’ve planted Cosmo’s, this year I planted a whole long row in my back yard of orange ones… and every day, when I look out my window, I think of Japan and our dear friends there.

I love to read them, especially the crafty ones with great ideas and inspiration.

So, after much thought, I’ve decided to leap into the blogging world. I’ve toyed with it previously (my website homepage has been a “updates” area that I’ve periodically have updated) but am now ready to commit myself!
What am I going to blog about? Well, we’ll just have to see, my favorite things are

1) Family

2) Food

3) Crafting!

I plan on sharing all three here, in the days, weeks, months… who knows even years to come!