My five year old daughter came up to me with her doodle pad with this drawing on it:



I thought it would make a great design for a shirt, so I took the picture and opened it up in MS Paint.  I then had her write "Big Truck" on a piece of paper and scanned it in.  She wrote "Big Tr" and then ran out of space..so "uck" is on the other side of the page....she's not exactly writing yet - just really good at copying letters.



I took that image, put it under the drawing, moved the letters around and resized a bit.  Cleaned up the truck, filled in the lines and got rid of some background.



Printed on freezer paper, cut out the letters and around the lines of the truck, ironed it on to a blank shirt I had that fit my son and painted with black fabric paint.

Tada!



I could have just printed an iron-on with the image, but this will last through way more washes.

Elias LOVES his new shirt!!



The artists: Jenny and Mama:



This could become my new favourite thing!!!

Okay, okay.    Here's Ben!

This is the adorable Baby 4.0 shirt that cjclark made for me in her first swap.


Smiles!


And yes, my child is enormous.  I think my breastmilk must be 25% fat or something.   My daughter was bigger at birth than Ben was but she wasn't this big at a month old.  Maybe the feedings every two hours have something to do with it..?

I received my package from Flower today!  So now I can have the baby.   We were hanging out in the backyard and I just made it to the front to catch the delivery as he was writing out the card to say he missed us.  Yay!  Otherwise I would have had to wait until tomorrow to pick it up at the post office.

Anyway, Flower sent me a great package with items from my wishlist and a few surprises.

A rupunzel scarf - it's soooo soft and the colours are very "me".  Five felted wool dryer balls - I can't wait to try these out and time my drying.  Right now it seems like my dryer takes forever.



The lighting is weird on the next two....but I was too lazy to try to fix it.   A wet bag for keeping my unpaper towels in until they get washed - I love this fabric (it's green..even though it doesn't look like it here) and it goes well with my kitchen, too!  Reusable snack bags - these will definitely be used in my purse or diaper bag for baby and kid snacks.  I always feel bad going through ziplocs like I do...for financial and environmental reasons.  I end up reusing them too long and they get holes in them.  So these will be terrific!  And again, I LOVE the fabric - the colours are great!



The rest of the package was an addition to my baby shower in a box (see my signature for a link to all the other stuff I got from a bunch of awesome Craftsters) and a few books for my kiddos.  Flower sent me a soother/pacifier clip, a felted wool rattle ball - SO cool - and a whole bunch of size 2 diapers that her baby outgrew.  She said awhile back that she would pad my package with them...I imagined four or five, but there are way more than that.  Thank you, Rose!!!!



This has been another great swap - like lots of others, I look at all the pictures and make a mental list of all the great ideas people have..and things I want in the next round.   I'm so happy with this package - the dryer balls especially are something I've really been wanting. Yay!

I lost twenty-five pounds AFTER the baby weight was off from my second baby.  I did a modified South Beach diet - I found that I liked the basic concept but it was too strict for me to stick to, especially because I was exclusively breastfeeding my son at the time.  The biggest changes I made were adding more veggies, cutting out white flour and sugars, doing all my baking with whole wheat flour and trying not to eat junk at home.  I also upped my protein so it was closer to even with my carbohydrate intake.  I didn't say no to things in other people's homes and would have dessert or things made with white flour.  One of my biggest pet peeves about people dieting is when they refuse to eat nearly everything on the table.  I knew someone on the South Beach diet when I was doing it and she wouldn't eat pasta unless it was whole wheat, wouldn't eat bread, certain veggies or fruits..it got old fast.  We did it for about the same amount of time and lost just about the same amount of weight...so it seems it works the way I did it.  I didn't find that it cost more - I just ate things that I knew were healthy or that were on the approved list.  This wasn't at all like stricter diets where you have to know calorie counts or whatever.  I have way too much to think about to add calorie counting to it.  If anything, when buying pre-made, look for sugar or white flour in the ingredients.  Some things claim to be healthy because they are low or no-calories but then they're made with aspertame (BAD!) or other things you really don't need to eat.

Anyway, just my two cents on dieting.  Congrats, Disco Queen Highness!  The school sounds terrific!  I have a lot of gripes with the public school system and our Christian school here..which is why I'll be homeschooling.  But when it comes time for high school, we'll give the kids a choice of what they want to do.  

I asked my four and a half year old what she wanted to wear this morning and she said, "I want you to make me something to wear."  So I made her a skirt from the cut off bottoms from hubby's pants.  They had a huge hole in the knee and I cut them off a few days ago and made them into shorts.  So I had two legs and didn't know how to use them.  Skirt for Jenny!  She's super happy, too.

Just when I was starting to worry that my bookmark from thedreamer was lost and she'd have to remake it - it showed up today!  It's a book belt with nice coloured beads (I love brown and blue) and the little card it came with is super cute, too - it says "When I grow up, I will be tall"..I think I might glue it to some cardstock and make another bookmark out of it.

Okay, I am finally posting photos of the loot I got from mink_bikini on Monday.  The shopping bags have already been put to use and I've been showing off everything else (I wonder if my family gets annoyed with me showing off all my awesome swap stuff? ).  The taggie I got for the baby was going to be set aside to wait for his or her arrival, but I let my youngest play with it a bit and was amazed at how long he stayed entertained with it - and he's 19 months old!

Anyway, here's a group shot with nearly everything:

Top to bottom, left to right: recipe book (something mysteriously spilled on it already!), zipper pouch that I will probably keep my breast pads in when I'm nursing and out of the house, rice sock primarily for soothing myself when I'm breastfeeding - either in the beginning or if I end up getting infections again (which suck!), five sets of reusable breast pads, set of handmade cards, two of the four shopping bags, still folded up, card case, Diva cup bag (I love the triangular shape and the colours!), notebook for keeping track of shopping lists and price comparisons, cloth pad patterns and instructions.

The baby stuff (taggie toy and cute hat) and one of the bags unfolded:


Awkward self-portrait with the sweet hat mink made for me after seeing one like it on my wists.  She had the hat and added the ribbon.  I love it!!


Thanks again for everything, mink_bikini!! This was such a fun swap and you were a fabulous partner!!

I received from AlishaMisha yesterday - it got here safely even though the envelope was ripped!! And also from Quilter'sBlock today (I'm posting here before I send PMs..but no worries, that will be done directly afterward).

From Alisha: this is a very nice light green..the colour isn't so great in this photo.  Thank you Alisha for the lovely bookmark!


From Quilter'sBlock: The text says Read This! I love it.

The back of this one:


Thank you both so much!  This is great timing because I have so many books on the go at once.  I don't generally do that with fiction, but I'm terrible at reading straight through non-fiction without stopping to start somethign else.

This is the bookmark I sent QuiltersBlock - I haven't seen her in a few days so I figured I'd put it up.  It's not a great photo, though, so if she has a better one, hopefully she'll post it, too.

I received a bookmark from Homerof2 today!  A cute green crocheted tree - I love it!  I've never had any bookmarks like this, so I'm excited to have a different style.



Thank you, Homerof2!!

Some moose left a few gifts on my front walkway.  I have a friend who LOVES moose.  She said she'd like some of what they left behind, but I didn't think customs would go over well shipping it into the US.  So I went out with a latex glove and rearranged and took a photo.  And yes, I know this is really bizarre.  Some people will be grossed out but if your mind works like mine (and my friend's) I think you'll get it.



Titled: For Love of Moose