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This has been reader reaction to the bath monster lurking in the last post. I have since photo-shopped some yellow bath bubbles to help keep this blog's PG 13 rating.
Hey! I made finger puppets! Lots more craftiness to show and tell in the next few days. Maybe I could convince Craig to model these puppies over on my other blog. Wink wink.
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I've been experiencing a lot of crafting flubs the last couple of months so I guess it's a lie when I said I lost all my crafting skills along with placenta number two. I especially been having an awful time wet felting large projects so I have all these massive wet felted pieces kicking around just waiting to be transformed into something either useful or beautiful and hopefully both.
I made Edie's stocking last year who Barney the cat has kindly been shredding the toe. Segue way; check out what a monstrous beast this-not-so-little critter is turning in to. Don't tell him, but he kind of scares me a little.
And you know I was this close to calling this post "And the Stockings Were Hung...".
This year I transformed what was a lame attempt at a giant felted diaper bag into a mini stocking for Kale. Craig saw it and said in his Craig voice (if you know us IRL (in real life) you'll get the full effect. If you don't it's quite distinct in a sexy, SNAGy (sensitive new age guy), really, really quiet, a tinge moody and super slow talking way) "kind of small isn't it?". Hello?!!?? His feet are the size of new potatoes. How big of stockings could this little guy fill?
The tree's all hooked up with stringed popcorns and merriment, cookies are baked for Santa ingestion and we're good to go. Merriest of holidays to everyone. Much love to you all. Especially to my family who I'll thinking much of this very special Christmas for us, gulp, four. Blessings and peace.
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Edie wanted a big sister for Clara so I made one which literally contains a healthy dose of blood, sweat and tears. You can see it there, the blood anyway, on her sweet little ballerina's chest. I may just call them birth marks because they're not washing off.
I vented to a girlfriend it feels like I've been experiencing the worst crafting luck lately. Every project has been either disastrous or a two steps forward at least one step backwards kind of deal. It seems like I lost my decision making skills along with Edie's placenta and with Drippy's, my crafting ones.
Add to the challenge my new sewing room pictured above is now located immediately right next to her new playroom, pictured here ...
... which is awesome but makes it a little tricky to keep some surprise elements intact. So I decided to let her participate in the actual construction of the yet to be named Ballerina girl; helping with the stuffing of limbs, placing the rose quartz heart where it belongs after giving it a quick kiss, picking out eye and hair colour and then Ballerina girl went into hiding until Solstice morning. The ballerina outfit part was the surprise bit.
Every time she came over to my room for a visit she'd have her hands over her eyes so she wouldn't see the finishing touches I was making on the doll. We like to pretend that we're next door neighbours up there and we take turns calling each other and asking "had you had your baby yet?". And if so, the neighbour cooks up a meal for the new mother. So sweet how she has the knack for loving babes already. The little pro. Happy Winter Solstice everyone!
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Ack! No internet for a while. But it's back and have lots of craftiness to share. My doula's a pretty crafty one at that. She should probably write a book titled 101 Things to Do With Your Placenta. As I was laying on the bathroom floor after Drippy Kale's arrival (man, hard to get out of the Drippy habit!), Lisa, my doula, kept poking her head in the bathroom door curtain (which just happened to be my labour project with Edie's birth) saying things like; "hey, Kathy, you're pretty crafty, you have some paper I can make an inprint of the placenta?"
Pretty cool, I was thinking in those hazy first moments with a newborn plopped on my belly starting his half hour journey up to my boobs all on his own. There's a moment in the bonus features of the video Birth Day where the father makes an "artistic placenta print" after the birth of his daughter that was just so beautiful and I remember thinking it was just the coolest thing ever.
A few minutes later she pops her head back in and says she's got pancakes going on but did I want her to make a bracelet for Drippy out of some of the same stuff? Suppose to bring termendous luck to him in the future. Later... want some dehydrated in the oven for capsules later? Here's some placenta ala carta for you to shoot back. Here's some for the freezer, carefully marked "Drippy's Placenta". More, less squeamish craft updates coming up soon. So nice to have the Internets back!
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which got Craig got all suspicious with reason to be. We were planning a mini surprise get-together to celebrate Craigmas 2008. Happy Birthday my dahling. Edie and I made him a chocolate-banana cake all top secret style but then learned that four year olds aren't the world's greatest secret keepers. That's okay, he was still pretty surprised to have some friends drop by after supper and glad to see his wife with clothes on again.
And then yesterday, I got out of my nifty pajamas with holes cut out of the boobs (I have to stop using that word, I'm sure it's driving in all kinds of interesting traffic), got my Sorrels on and took in my first breath of fresh outside air since Kale's arrival. I trekked up the mountain behind us, (nice and slow, still healing) to my favorite spot which I lovingly refer to as my Cry Spot. Tears of joy, tears of not so much joy; all kinds of blubbering! You just simply can't have one of those what Oprah calls 'ugly cries' once you have a small child in the same house I discovered. Here I can really let it all hang out (suppose I could have kept my hole-y jammies on after all) and scare the bears away once in a while. I love checking out our house from this vantage point and imagine my family inside, buzzing in the hive, like I'm the queen bee off on a top secret honey mission.
Here's the cedar grove just above the Cry Spot. I call this my Laugh Spot (ha, ha).
And this is my old man. No, no, not Craig. This old man came with the place. He greets us at the edge of laughter and tears. Sacred guy this guy. With a great sense of humor.
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A name that is. Officially introducing finally little Kale Jove Stowell. The cutest bundle of boy I've ever seen. A lot of thought and research went into this name and really in the end we should have named him Wiki.
We love the name Kale, meaning Free Man in Hawaiian and upon further
investigation, Craig discovered it's one of the moons of Jupiter.
Another name for Jupiter is Jove which is a bit more corporate
environment friendly lest little Kale decides to rebel and go all
mainstream on us. Jove/Jupiter was the original word for Thursday and
he blessed us with his arrival on a Thursday morn. Jove is root word
too for jovial - happy guy. Jupiter is the God of gods and being a
giant gaseous planet feels fitting for the midwife came by yesterday to
weigh him and kind of let out a yelp when she plopped him on the scale.
He gained 13 ounces in 11 days! That's alot midwife says. Like
potentially one and half ounces a day considering he may have lost some
of his birth weight the days following his birth. Suffice to say he
likes boob. (Insert deep breath here) AND, these days, if it wasn't so
cloudy, one could see with the naked eye Jupiter, Venus and the quarter
moon all aligned prettily together, a rare occurance apparently.
Bonus: said out loud fast it kinda sounds like we're saying Kale Gob - like this guy:
Which is pretty cool. I'm a big Gob fan.
Enough baby talk already! We cracked open the first window of the Advent calender yesterday. Edie is so excited. It's what we do now after breakfast and teeth brushing.
This is the first whisper of Christmas in the Happy House. Though it's kind of got me all gung ho to get on Christmas gift and project making, my body quickly reigns me in with some bizarre achy sensation in some parts of my nether regions that make for an almost daily call to the midwife saying "here's my 'is this normal' question of the day". Prescription: lay low as much as possible. But I have a list of stuff I want to make that is sooooo tempting just to crawl up the stairs to my "new" sewing room and start cranking but the easier I take it the quicker and better I'll recover completely. I'll share my plans and pictures of my new space for a later post. Right now the kids (that's so surreal to type!) are beckoning!
One more thing: Grossgrain's having a giveaway of this little outfit that's so dang cute I have to share (well, actually, I literally have to share - the contest rule is to provide a link on your blog which is cool. There's always super cute girly type giveaways here!). Imagine the little Tangerine in this? Cross your fingers we win! I'd sew one but... ouchy still.
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