So, I cleaned a little, finished a great book (or two.  or three.  reading is so much more fun than exercising when it’s cold outside.  especially when your bed is outfitted with an electric blanket), and got out the patterns.

Spring is coming (someday!) and it’s hard to resist those little baby sundresses.

There’s something I want to practice this year:  sewing clothes for myself.  Clarification:  sewing clothes that I want to wear in public.   I’ve admired the Wiksten Tova shirt for a long time (some examples here), and after a lot of hemming and hawing around, I broke out the muslin and made myself a shirt.

(sorry about the dark picture. )

Then I extended the bottom of the shirt, and made myself a dress.  And they both turned out pretty great.

Then I remember how much I liked the Collette Violet shirt (from this post), so I tried it again, this time with longer sleeves. After much agonizing over the sleeves, I ripped them out and completely altered them from the pattern.

Sometimes I like to make piles of fabric and just look at them, together.

Here are some things I made for Christmas gifts.

A quilt for my niece.

A wall hanging for my mom.  (Not sure why the corner is turned up like that. ?)  This was just one single quilt block, but it’s kind of a challenging pattern so it’s fun to practice it one square at a time.  Someday I would love to make an entire quilt of these blocks.  Maybe in different prints of white?

Some appliqueing for my big girls, to freshen up some plain tshirts.

They’ve had two recitals this Christmas season, and we’ve posted videos of them both.  Watch them if you’d like. (Although they will probably be mainly enjoyed by grandparents!)

The first set of videos is from a recital hosted by CAPTA, at the arts center in Cary.  It was a bit fancier (and bigger!) compared to what they are used to.  (Big stage and audience!) They practiced for weeks on these songs (they had to be memorized!), and we celebrated with buying fancy  new dresses for the occasion.

Click on the images to play the videos.

Charlotte:

Ivy:

Their second recital for Christmas was at their piano teacher’s lovely home.  Informal and cozy…we love those kinds of recitals.

Christmas recitals are over (now we’re playing carols for fun!), school is winding down for the year, gifts are wrapped, books and curriculum are ordered for January, the tree us up, house is decorated, and the Christmas music is queued up in the cd player. Today is gray and cold, and on the list for this week:  gingerbread men, sugar cookies, lots of icing and decorating, and some reading.  (Scott started reading Redwall to the kids, and I am so excited.  Many memories of loving these books as a child!)  I am reading The Railway Children to them, and as I’ve never read it before, I can’t wait to get to the next chapter!

(Annie loves Daddy.)

Asher turned 5 recently.  I could not seem to get to a birthday blog post, I know!   Five must be a big deal for him, because he got a BB gun this year and woke up the day after his birthday asking to do chores every morning.

We had another birthday this month:  a sweet girl turned 7.  I am often so surprised that another birthday has come for each child, but here is another year gone.

Charlotte loves to read the dictionary.  We think it’s wonderful!

She says that 7 doesn’t feel much different than 6 yet, but the jury is still out on that.  We celebrated her birthday with a little “Hot Chocolate party”, and invited a few friends over.

She did most of the planning, baking and food prep for her little party.  It was a lot of fun, and I can’t imagine many more fun ways to celebrate a birthday than to get dressed up and eat cake and cookies and hot chocolate with some friends and your sister.

And here are some shots of a rapidly-growing, getting-busier-and-moving-faster every day 8-month-old baby.

There is a lot I could say about what I’ve been thinking, how it’s affected our days here at home, and what happens around here to make me think of these articles.

But I think I’ll just post the links.

They’re written by Rachel (from over at Femina), and the articles are posted at Desiring God.

Motherhood as a Mission Field

“The closer you get to home, the less intriguing the work of sacrifice seems. As someone once said, “Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom with the dishes.” When you are a mother at home with your children, the church is not clamoring for monthly ministry updates. When you talk to other believers, there is not any kind of awe about what you are sacrificing for the gospel. People are not pressing you for needs you might have, how they can pray for you. It does not feel intriguing, or glamorous. Your work is normal, because it is as close to home as you can possibly be. You have actually gone so far as to become home.”

Motherhood is a Calling (and Where Your Children Rank)

“Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.”

Motherhood is Application

“The gospel is not just something to talk about Sunday morning while you are in clean clothes and the kids are looking orderly. It is not limited to quiet times and reflective moods. It is something to apply while you are in a difficult position in the back of the car trying to buckle a child up who is playing the kazoo and needs their nose wiped. “

(photo shoot out at the Brown’s)

I found a new recipe.  It’s this amazing bread that has pumpkin baked right in, and then you dump a whole bunch of sugar and butter on top of it and bake it.

And it is really good.

A little more time-intensive than what I usually do for “extra” treats around here, but I think it was worth it.

You can find the recipe here, at Sunny Side Up in San Diego.

I made this jumper (McCalls 4160, apparently out of print) for Charlotte.  I tried a zipper in the back (my least favorite thing to do on sewing a dress) and it turned out okay.  Just okay.  I’m practicing.  I love the fabric on this dress (a corduroy from the new line of Lisette fabrics), but the overall result of the dress I am not crazy about.  I think my expectations were pretty high for this, and I had a specific way I wanted it to look on her.   It doesn’t look anything like what I had envisioned.

But she loves it!  And that is important.

Next up was a skirt for Ivy.  I think this was also from the Lisette fabrics (I love these corduroys….they hang so well on a dress or skirt and aren’t clunky at all), and this pattern I got from The Handmade Dress, one of my favorite Etsy shops.  I had to alter the pattern slightly due to a lack of coordinating fabric, but the result was lovely.

Ivy begged to wear this skirt to play in one day, and at first I cringed but then just let it go.  A true test to see if I’ve made the seams sturdy enough!  (It held up just fine.)

I also stitched up a little romper for Annie B., which was quite easy until I got to the snaps on the legs.  This was Simplicity 4054, and I added a little embroidery on the bodice to dress up the lightweight denim.

Boy it’s hard to get a full-length picture of a wiggly baby who can’t stand up.

Tiny pink buttons in the back make for a sweet little outfit.

Now my gaze shifts to sewing Christmas gifts.  In the works is a quilt for a niece (which is moving along….pictures soon!), and some small gift things which will probably include cloth napkins and appliqued shirts.  After the holidays are done, I am strongly considering diving in and making a dress for myself.  I’m picturing something dark gray, similar to this (over at Boden, which is where I do all my clothes dreaming).

And she’s really delicious.

Six months brings all sorts of changes, doesn’t it?  Learning to sit up (a big belly hinders that a little bit), maturing our eating habits (I think she’s close to moving to table food!), discovering toes, and learning that Mommy is our favorite person in the world and it’s really best if she never leaves our sight.

She loves to be read to, for as long as anyone is willing to sit with her,

loves to swing, sing pretty baby songs, drool, roll over,  suck her thumb, give slobbery kisses, and snuggle.

We think she’s just the most lovely thing and can’t get enough of her.

Anyway, yesterday was a good day for Asher.

Someone must have cleaned out their attic and found a box of their son’s books.

I love the illustrations on this one.

These books are old Weekly Reader hardcovers.  Remember those?  I had several as a child and remember reading them constantly.

Some of the authors we recognize (this book and this one we use for school, both by Clyde Robert Bulla).

Although he’s not at the reading level to enjoy these quite yet, it was fun to find these for him.

Our little A-man started “kindergarten” yesterday.

We haven’t given up homeschooling.  A friend of ours has graciously invited Asher to attend a kindergarten co-op class that she is teaching in her home this year.

His first day was yesterday, and he hasn’t stopped talking about it since he got home.

It’s a small class, with only six children.  But it’s something special for him, and he gets to do special things that are harder for me to do with the big girls taking up so much school time.