2012 Roundup

Happy 2013!!

Okay, I’ll do a year-end roundup too. If only because I feel like I did nothing but I know I did something. But I’m not really going to link to my posts, because that takes too much time and I’m lazy.

The beginning of the year had me knitting. I did this Mallory Cowl by www.luvinthemommyhood.com, and I also knitted but never photographed a vest for Olivia. Then I eventually fell off the bandwagon when I knitted two adorable little cardigans and then lost interest mid-sleeve after I ran out of yarn for a second time and needed to order more. Math is apparently not a thing for me.

I sewed this cute couch pillows, and I have no idea where they went. My children made off with them. The sparkly one didn’t even last a day before it was stolen.

I let my then four year old play with scissors and sew herself a circle skirt.

And since I was pretty sure I was having a girl (wrong) I gussied up a receiving blanket and did a tutorial. Sharp crochet hook for the win!

I created a fun little valentine for Nicole’s preschool class

I rearranged my house for the first of many times, and I sewed Olivia a giant sleep sack that she will never outgrow because she takes her clothes off instead of going to sleep sometimes. Confession: I never finished the armholes because I needed it that night but I would do it later. I did not do it later.

I attempted to partake in Kids Clothing Week Challenge, and I did this little peasant top for Olivia. It was one of two projects I did with fabric that had cool continual prints/features that I had bought to make dresses for myself without taking into account that since I needed to use the selvedge and couldn’t cut double, I should have bought twice as much. sigh.

Cute little double-tiered circle skirt for Olivia happened and I still love this project, long outgrown.

I know there were more projects but they didn’t wind up being blogged. I wound up staying at my parents for about six weeks, and didn’t really do anything crafty while I was there. Sadly when I was back home I was into the third trimester and really feeling it, I put all my energy into taking my girls on fun outings and working on stuff for our home renovation. My hubby and I went through a rough patch this year but we worked through it with lots of prayer and guidance. Quick tip: major home renovations during pregnancy with a chaotic toddler are pretty much the opposite of say, doing yoga.

One of the things I did get done was Nicole’s dress for her preschool graduation. It was a refashion project and by far her favourite thing that I did this year.

 

And in July, this happened:

At which point I got a whole bunch of help from some awesome family members as I adjusted from having two to having two-under-two. Jackson was a bit early and thankfully I kind of saw it coming, or at least was incredibly uncomfortable enough to cancel the party I’d been putting together for Nicole’s birthday before I sent out the invites. I didn’t ever share his birth story, did I? I’ll get to it, but as a prequel, I was in prelabour for something like a week and a half, waters bulging, 5cm dilated, and it was hot hot July weather. In other words, I was fun in a bottle.

Anyways. Distractible.

This little guy stayed tiny for the first month, and then he exploded into Giant Baby status.

That set of pictures still cracks me up. Oh, the difference a month can make!

I did make him a pair of teeny tiny Sunday shorts while he was too small for normal bottoms.

At some point in here we did finish our kitchen renovations, but I never did wind up blogging about them properly after we heard mutterings in our circles ‘in real life’ saying snarky things about us and our new kitchen. It made me pretty upset, because I lived with a pretty bad kitchen for about five years, and it progressively got worse as time went on (about halfway through, the pantry got black mold in it and I lost a pantry and a cupboard, which left me with almost no cupboard space at all) and I didn’t really complain about it much I think. So I was pretty excited to have a nice kitchen! Haters gonna hate though, hey? I’ve been reading a book called When People Are Big and God is Small and I recommend it big time. It’s about exactly that sort of thing and not letting people be a Big Thing when there’s really only one Big Thing you need to worry about. (God)

But back to the roundup! I sewed this skirt for Nicole, and she loved it. She got to pick the embroidery for it herself. I actually went on a little bit of an embroidery spree trying out the features on my new sewing machine, which sews like butter and I wish I had upgraded years ago. My sewing took several large steps up in improvement … if you’re considering getting into sewing, this may sound like a no-brainer but get a machine that sews well. It will really, truly make a difference.

I went on a bit of a sewing spree. I made the skirt for Nicole and the shirt for Olivia. I also did some tailoring and embroidering on random things, but I’ll leave those out of this post.

My baby got gorgeous. I also found instagram and my blogging took a bit of a dive, ha.

And that pretty much sums up the past year of blogging! We did a LOT of renovation and moving things around and painting and the like. Our family grew, and my girls grew up. Nicole was just a chubby little baby pretty much in those preschool grad pictures, and now she’s suddenly got these skinny little legs that has my husband pushing her to have a few more bites at supper each day.

I’m hoping to blog more consistently now that things are getting a bit more normal around here. Renos, holidays, work, school, everything has been nuts but we’ve been so blessed. I hope you all have a fantastic year in 2013… I know I plan to!