Back on board/ FIRST GIVEAWAY OF 2012!!

2012!! I apologize for not acknowledging you sooner, now that it is the last day of January. Forgive me. Am I the only one who felt like it took the whole month to recover from Christmas Break? I'm just now sort of feeling like I'm getting back in the routine of things.
Now on to the good part. I meant to do this earlier and am now putting it together, a giveaway!! Hooray! One free hat from Chelsea's Attic. Any size. Any color. Any style. Any animal/creature. Anything. Personally for you, or someone you know. If I can do it, I will make it for you. And I will make this really simple too: all you have to do is post below and tell me what kind of hat you would want and who it would be for. One post. One entry per person. And then my trusty friend random number generator will tell me who the winner is.
Winner will be announced Monday morning! In other news, I have now officially knit a couple of hats! It's invigorating...but holy cow it takes me a lot longer to knit. Unfortunately I have fallen in love with how it turns out...so tightly woven together, so neat and tidy...it's heaven. Here's a hat I made for a friend of mine for her little boy coming any day now. And hey, if you win the hat and you want it knit, I'm all for it. Even if it looks complicated, I want to try it. Bring it on.

Family Fun

I really want to photoshop myself in this photo and pretend like I'm part of the family. Unfortunately, I think my attractiveness would pale too much in the shadow of theirs and it'd be a dead giveaway. :-) Check out all the other fun families at I Heart Faces this week!

Well hello again!

My oh my.
Is it really almost halfway through January already??? I'm having a hard time digesting that 2011 is OVER. Kaput. Where the heck did that year go? I am working on a lot of stuff right now, most of it including changing diapers, dousing fights between children, and picking up toys constantly, but some of it including a few things I'm very excited about, like this:


Yes, folks, I am learning how to knit. Very rapidly in fact. I'm the type of person that will jump headfirst into a project and I'm already halfway through it before I realize that I have to start over because I didn't in fact read through all the directions and didn't do it right, or I don't know how to finish it, or I don't have all the materials...yes, so you can imagine that my knitting projects, while getting better each time, have not yet come to completion. But they will. And soon. My heart will probably always be with crocheting...probably because it takes a LOT less time than knitting...but I just can't help but marvel at what comes out of those two little knitting needles. It's like I'm creating a whole little world out of yarn. Beau-tee-ful.
In the meantime, I've been meaning to blog about these hats forever, but I'm now unveiling them. I made these for a friend of mine for her kids for Christmas and in return I got a dozen per hat of the most AMAZING tasting cinnamon rolls (her signature Gooey Rolls...) I think I've ever had. Seriously. Everyone go contact her and order some from her right now. Or check out some of her beautiful cakes at Sugar Momma Cakes.






Hearts.

Animals and why we love them

Ahh...I think I used a shot from this shoot in my last I Heart Faces entry, but here's another one! One of these days I will post something from a shoot OTHER than this one, but it was just a blast, I'm still hung up on it majorly. Horses are such noble creatures, you can't help feeling connected to them when you are around them.

Check out a bunch of other magnanimous furry faces shots at I Heart Faces!

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time two people fell in love. And then they promptly called me and asked me to take engagement photos for them, to which I, in my barely budding photography days, readily agreed. I mean, who wouldn't want to take pictures of these gorgeous people?
Well, then time went on, they got married, and then one day I got another message asking me to take maternity pictures for them. SHAH!!!!!
And I don't know what happened that day, but my camera sort of levitated from my hands and started taking some of the most glorious pictures it's ever produced. Just...magically...I can't...just wow. With permission, I post some of them for your eyes to gam off of for a while.

These first few are of her horse flown here from Denmark. A very gentle creature and we almost didn't take the photos with the horse...so glad we decided to.









Every pregnant woman's envy, right here. :-) I wish I looked half this good when I was pregnant!

Baby Bear

I love December. Every day is Christmas as far as I'm concerned. I wish I could say that I loved it so much that I had all our Christmas decorations out the day after Thanksgiving, but we have yet to pull everything out. Every night our kids look out the window and see all our neighbor's houses lit up so pretty, then scorn and shame us into feeling like scum of the earth because we haven't put our lights up yet. We'll get there. Hopefully the snow melts quickly so Craig can get on the roof without killing himself this weekend. :-)
Happy first day of Christmas.
We are going to be putting together our 12 days of Christmas calendar here pretty soon- each day we do something together as a family to celebrate. Make cookies, do secret santas to friends and neighbors, it'll be the first year we'll do all 12 days since I'm at home and not too swamped with music programs to put it together. :-) HOORAY!
Tell me what some of your Christmas traditions are, we're in the "building lasting memories" experimental stage of our family, I'd love to here them. :-)



Ahhh...tis the season.

Be on the lookout for some holiday hats upcoming. And some more family pictures. And all the catchup from what I haven't posted yet that I should have.
PS- did you all eat lots of turkey???

OOF!

Yeah, that's how I feel.
I don't think I've stopped feeling full since yesterday morning. Thanksgiving, love everything about it except standing on the scale the Sunday after. Yeah, that's where that OOF comes in, right?
Please be kind, Mr. Scale. Let's be friends this year, shall we?
Little late for Halloween, but monsters are cute anytime of the year. This one was for a friend from my teaching days- monsters and boys fit so well together. :-)