A Custom Doll

A custom doll for a dear reader's little girl. She is 12.5 inches tall, made of organic cotton Swiss jersey skin fabric, firmly stuffed with 100% organic wool. Her face was sculpted using a combination of traditional waldorf doll making techniques and needlefelting. Her hat is made from softest, cuddliest 100% cashmere, and her blond hair is from 100% organic lambswool. Her eyes (which are quite beautiful, if I do say so myself) took forever and a half to embroider! Her wardrobe consists of a pair of tiny bloomers edged in vintage lace, a dress made from coordinating cotton fabric with a matching bias neckline, and a sweet little linen/cotton blend pinafore with a matching pocket. I have to finish up a few tiny details, and she should be heading for her new home in a day or two!

Oh, Hello There!

I've started this blog post in my head a hundred times or more. I have so much I want to say, but I don't have any idea of where to start! It's been a while...
Ideas for possible topics of this post I tossed around in my head:

• I miss blogging. I miss composing my thoughts and sharing a little tiny slice of my family's life with the world at large. I miss posting pictures, so that a year or 12 from now we can come back and see them and remember just what was happening on a certain date in our lives. That was the plan for this blog in the first place.

{Claire helping Grandma plant things}

• I miss your comments. I really like hearing from you all. 

• Depression stinks! (possibly due to any or all of the following: post-baby hormones, winter, or maybe my brain just doesn't work correctly all of the time, to produce the right amount of happy hormones... stupid brain.Working on improving my diet, letting things go, and lots of sunshine are helping.)

{Out for exercise in the sunshine with Emmett}

• Grief stinks, too!

• Grief really stinks when it's not just you, but your 2 year old baby suffering over the loss of her (foster) sister!! (Little Miss H, our foster daughter, was moved from our home to go live with relatives out of state a little over a month ago. We all miss her and it has been very hard to deal with. But it has been especially hard for Claire. H came to live with us when both girls were about 18 months old. Claire doesn't remember a time before H was here. They did every. single. thing. together. They thought they were really sisters and we treated both of them as such. Then one day strangers came in to our home, sat in our living room and talked for a few hours and then took her sister away, never to be seen again. How do you explain that to a 2 year old? Claire spent most of February crying over any and everything. She stopped sleeping through the night, and never wanted to leave my side. Some days would be better than others, unless she caught sight of something that belonged to H still laying around somewhere then she would crumble into a tearful mess and cry and act out and be generally miserable the rest of the day. I still have no idea how to best help her. I know she is grieving, I know she doesn't understand. And I don't know what to do about it. I am trying to just follow her lead and deal with it day by day. She still talks about H constantly and asks about her. I try to explain as best as I can, and she tries to understand as best she can and somehow we'll get through this. But it's hard. 

• Our foster care system is good/horrible/necessary/evil/uncaring/difficult/works really well/doesn't help at all! All of those things, depending on what day you ask me.

• We are selling our house, well, we are trying to sell our house. Anyone out there want a well cared for, sweet little house in a nice country neighbourhood? 

• I've noticed that I always spell neighbour and neighbourhood like the rest of the world does and not like they do here in the USA. Google spell checker doesn't like it. I don't care! It is a nice quiet neighbourhood with friendly caring neighbours! Take that Google spell checker!

• I like it when Australians say chooks, instead of chickens. I still say chickens though. Actually I don't say much of either one right now, since we got rid of all of our chickens in January... trying to sell our house you know. I didn't think prospective buyers would appreciate the chickens in the yard. If they want them they are welcome bring their own!

• The idea of selling our home is really kind of stressful! First we have 3/4 of our stuff packed away to make this small house look open and roomy. (It's 1400 square feet and there are 7 of us living in it!) Plus I have to keep it much cleaner than I am used to, so that it can be ready on a moments notice to show to buyers... not easy with this many people home all day long!  The pictures I took for the real estate listing make it look pretty nice I think, looking at them I thought that I would want to buy this house. Only we want a place with more land and hopefully a larger house! But also it is really hard to contemplate leaving here. This is the first home we've ever owned, and it has been "home" for the past 6 years. Claire and Emmett where born here. We've made a lot of really good memories here. But we all feel like the time has come for a change. 

• Our trampoline decided to go wandering due to a huge wind/thunder storm that came through the area a couple of weeks ago. It wanted to see how it would look perched in a neighbour's tree 2 houses (and over 2 fences) away from our house. It didn't look so great up there, so we got it down and brought it back over both of those fences back to our backyard where it belongs. Oh and we staked it down so it wouldn't go wandering without permission anymore. The neighbour agreed with us that his tree was a strange place to keep our trampoline after all. 

• I've been a bit of a creative slump.

• I'm coming out of my creative slump! Lots of WIP's and ideas percolating. Even a few finished things to share here soon!

• There has been some of this going on... Still not very reliably though, just when the mood strikes her ;-)

• And lots of this... 

{Emmett is almost 6 months old already!}

{Check out those beautiful chubby arms, and face! He is so very squeezable and cuddly!} 

So that is a brief summary of what has been happening around here for the past few months... Well, maybe not so brief in retrospect, but when you consider that I haven't posted here in about 2 months... A lot can happen in that time! I can't wait to start posting again now. I have tons of things to share! 

Work in Progress Wed. and a very important Announcement!

I posted a while back about the Seed Exchange that I am taking part in... Well now it is time to actually send the seeds out! Originally I had planned on hand painting the front of each seed packet, but that idea flew out the window for a couple of reasons! #1 Time and Energy (or lack there-of!*) I am sending out more than 50 packets... that would be a lot of painting! #2 I decided that those seed packets where too small and I couldn't get enough info on them. So I opted for a simple template that I could put all of the seed's info on directly in Microsoft Word, and just printed out the number of packets needed. Then it was a simple matter of cutting them out, gluing them together and filling them with seeds!

To seal them I used my new Japanese Washi Tape! Rodrigo got it for me for Valentine's Day! Wasn't that a sweet surprise?! It's so pretty! I had been admiring it for a long time online, but have never bought myself any. I think these are just perfect!

 

 

And in other news I have been working on this sundress for me. I am making it out of some quilting weight cotton that I've had in my stash for a long time. I found this free pattern online from the fabric designer Heather Ross. (I love her fabrics... so cute!) I liked the pattern because it is so easy to make, even the shirring is simply done using elastic thread, and because it has pockets! I love a dress with pockets!  It still needs to be hemmed and to have the shoulder straps attached. I think I'll make a few more of them and maybe a couple for Claire as well... matching sundresses for Mama and tiny girl!

 

But most importantly I liked the pattern because it will work for me throughout the coming Spring and Summer with my rapidly expanding tummy!

I am very thankful to be able to announce to you all that we are expecting baby number 5 to join our family this coming September! Such exciting news, and truly an important "work in progress!"

* lack of energy... that has been my main pregnancy symptom so far. I am just so tired all of the time! I am 9 weeks along right now, so I should be feeling a bit more like my normal self in a month or two. But for now, this mama is taking things easy. 

WIP Wednesday ~ more handmade presents

I just wanted to share the sweet little needle felted terrarium I made for my sister-in-law for Christmas. I found this adorable apothecary jar one evening when Rodrigo and I were out on a date and knew as soon as I saw it, what I wanted to use it for! I finished it up last night... what do you think?

The boys and I dyed all of the wool using Kool-aid and food coloring... I love how many of the colors turned out mottled looking with different shades running all through the wool. It made for lovely moss and rocks!

I decided to make my terrarium look "realistic" (well, if of course you can consider a tiny wee rabbit inside a terrarium realistic!) So I added dirt under the moss, as well as several wool stones.

The following is the project I spent all of my free time working on today:  A little cape for Claire out of the same fabric as the one I am making for me. The closer I got to finishing it the bigger it seemed. I don't have much experience sewing for baby girls, and the patterns have different sizes than I am used to seeing for baby's clothing... The pattern was for toddler's sizes 1/2, (one half), 1, 2, and 3. I was assuming by the measurements on the back of the pattern that 1/2 was equal to a 6 month size, and size 1 was a 12 month size. Here is the cape nearly finished, it still lacks the closures ... Since Claire is nearly a year old (!) and wears a size 12 months clothes I used the size 1 toddler's pattern.

And here is the cape being modeled by Ethan who is 7 years old!!! It's huge!

There is no way my poor little Claire is going to be able to wear this any time in the next 2 years (or possibly more!) I really can't figure out how this happened! The size 1/2 wasn't that much smaller (maybe an half an inch shorter, or so.) They don't make patterns in size one tenth.... so now what?  At least it went together quickly, during both of her naps today! And someday she'll be big enough to wear it...

WIP Wednesday ~ a new doll and more wooden toys

Here are a few of the toys I have been working on over the past week when the kids are in bed :-). My stock of handmade Christmas presents for our Handmade Holiday is growing!

This little Waldorf inspired doll has her under things made, but she still needs a dress! (I put the pint jar in the picture for size comparison...) I was going to give her purple or black eyes, but Rodrigo thought she should have aqua colored eyes to match some tiny aqua colored highlights in her woolly hair. I just love her huge ponytails with her big white bows.  I hadn't really planned on making Claire another baby doll... but once I had made her tiny head I couldn't stop myself, it just felt right to make her! Maybe I'll find a new home for her, but she is really cute... hmm...

Her lacy undies!

Playing hide-n-seek!

Mama and Baby Skunks... aren't they adorable!!! So far they are my very favorite wooden animal I've made! I used a wood burner to outline the details then I painted them with water based non toxic paints.

 A trio of hedgehogs, with wood burnt details and lightly painted. All of my wooden toys are sealed with a handmade organic beeswax wood sealer, made from local beeswax and organic cold pressed coconut oil.

 Four friendly snakes...

I have lots more wooden toys drawn up and ready to make... I am having such a great time doing this! I think everyone on my list just might need little wooden toys or Waldorf dolls for Christmas, don't you?