Fun in the snow

Sofie's first experience playing in deep snow was a great success. Once she got used to the fact that your feet sink, she had a wonderful time.



And, indeed, we made a whole bunch of snow-cats. This one even had a tail.


Ok, I made the snowcats. Sofie supervised.

Snowbound...

We're off on a last-minute, really short, road trip tomorrow to one of our favorite haunts in Eastern Washington - up to Mazama for one night to see some friends and take care of a little business. And although I thought we'd gotten better at traveling light in the last three years, this still involves:

• Packing two Sofie outfits each for both the trip there and the trip home, since she will inevitably throw up 2.5 hours into the trip. My little pukemonster. It took us a while, longer than it should have, to realize she was carsick and not actually miraculously coming down with the flu each time we were on vacation, but now that we know it's really just a matter of planning for it (no snacks in the car for you, kid, and hey, don't take your tarp off yet!) and then moving on.
  
  
• Engineering some kind of carseat cover that can be peeled off and tossed in a plastic bag after the incident mentioned above. Which involves something like cutting slits in a beach towel so it can be draped over the carseat. Or perhaps entirely encasing her in plastic.
  
  Ah, the things I never thought I'd blithely accept as par for the course before having a kid...
  
  
• Throwing her little toddler bed mattress in the cartop, because our hotel room has only one bed. Sounds nuts but we've done this before with great success. Who wouldn't like taking their own bed with them everywhere they go?
  
  
• Packing a big bag of boots, hats, gloves, scarves, and snowsuits because WE ARE GOING TO PLAY IN THE SNOW! Woo hoo! It's been unseasonably warm in Seattle all winter and it's looking less and less likely that we're going to see any snow here, so we're pretty excited.
  

So we'll report back on the snow and fun in a couple days!

Running update

Just finished today's run, six four minute runs with one minute of walking between them. Pretty much took me all the way around Greenlake, about the equivalent of a 5k. I'm doing the Runners World 8 week beginner running training program, and so far it's really great - nice slow way to build up your endurance while avoiding injury. A four minute interval is no big deal for me, but by the fifth and sixth repeat I was getting pretty tired. But I can feel my endurance improving, and since I decided earlier this week to just run slower I'm not getting all out of breath, which is a nice feeling.

Up next: repeat this run tomorrow or Saturday, then move on to next week with a series of five and six-minute intervals. Week three isn't too hard, not much time gained over the course of the week, but in week four it picks up again adding lots of minutes. By week eight, you're comfortably running for 30 minutes straight. Which is an awesome goal for me, since I've never in my life run two miles nonstop without gasping for breath and wanting to die.

So far, I'm encouraged by the fact that:

- I've been running four times a week pretty much all month and walking two other days each week, so I'm putting in lots and lots of exercise time!

- I've lost eight pounds without thinking all that hard about dieting. We're definitely eating differently, but I'm not being all hard core about tracking things right now. Focusing on fitness instead helps me want to eat better and it all seems to go easier that way.

- I literally can't WAIT to run again on my off days - I'm really getting hooked. I *love* running outside, and dread the treadmill. Treadmills are boring and hot and there's no sense of progress for me so I end up obsessively watching every second tick by. Outside feels so good, and the blocks go by and make you feel like you're really getting somewhere, and the intervals just fly by. The weather's been so nice that I've been able to do nearly every run outside, which is awesome (and unexpected, for January.)

- Concentrating on time spent running rather than speed or distance is really working out great. I'm such a geek that using a stopwatch totally makes me happy and takes the pressure off - I don't have to worry about how far I'm going to make it before I feel like walking because the stopwatch will tell me. :) I'm a gadget dork.

So yay! Next 5k in 17 days.

Again, the most beautiful fabric I've ever seen

I realize I say this too much, but again I'm blown away by a new fabric.

Just wanted to share this amazing fabric I stumbled upon yesterday at Fabric Crush in Magnolia - which, if you haven't already, you should totally visit. It's the sweetest little fabric store chock full of carefully chosen treasures, and Sarah the owner is a real pleasure to talk to. Plus she doesn't mind that my three year old digs through her ribbon basket. Hard to beat, that.

I don't usually do a lot of work with white-based fabrics, but I just fell in love with this and had to make something of it this morning:



Isn't it gorgeous? Of course I made it into a makeup roll - how could I not? Here's the inside, paired up with a lovely watermelon-pink print I had on hand and an orangey-pink ribbon:


And rolled up ready to be tied:


You can, of course, find several of these listed in my shop - stop on over to take a look!

Early Running

Did I mention that I ran a 5k with my sister-in-law two weeks ago? I don't think I ever got around to blogging about it. She's been running for a while now and suggested we try it when she was in town, and I've been wanting to try a 5k but was a little intimidated to do it alone. So that was perfect! We were slow but we finished and I ran one loop without stopping and about half of the second loop, which felt pretty good to me given that I haven't run since last spring.

And, as my sister-in-law assured me, a 5k is a very low-key thing. People are there of all shapes and sizes and abilities, and we were NOT the only people who did some walking, and it was just fine. The course was beautiful and it was a nice day and I did not feel like an idiot. In fact I can't wait to go back next month!

So now I'm all into this running thing, and the weather here has been exceptional (60 and sunny all last week!) so I've started what is usually my spring running schedule a couple months early.

I've also signed up for a couple of the next Magnuson Park 5ks - the next one is just 20 days away. Just as an added motivator.

Right now my plan is this:

Day one: Run distance
Day two: alternating walk/one-block sprints
Day three: walk
Day four: rest

Repeat forever. One of the runs each week I do over at a local lake that is about the length of a 5k, just to check in. Maybe 10-12 miles a week right now, which I know is pretty low for any serious running. But I'm working on it and being consistent and trying to protect my finicky shins and build my endurance and I think this is a good start.

I usually don't run much in the winter and I'm looking forward to being in much better shape this summer than I usually am and being able to run longer and harder than I usually can at the start of good weather. Maybe by summer I'll be able to do a whole 5k without walking.

Here's a blog entry over at SloRunnerMom that I really liked: Before and After Conversation with my Runner Self. Makes me feel good to hear someone say it took them four months to run their first mile!

What I'm reading

Been on a reading tear lately.

Since Christmas I've been working my way through a whole host of things - several PD James, including her newest (The Private Patient) and an older one (Murder Room), Sue Grafton's latest (U is for Undertow), a young adult book I've fallen in love with and will save for years for Sofie (When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead), the amazing sequel to the even more astonishing Pillars of the Earth - World Without End by Ken Follett, and just now I'm about a chapter from the end of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. This last one I'd avoided for a while - partly because I thought I'd already read it (I hadn't), and partly because I thought it might be too painful to read in light of the last year. It isn't, though - but it's a fascinating and very cerebral look at grief.

Last up is one I started and then put aside for all these others, called Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell. I wasn't in the mood for it when I first started reading it because I had all these other goodies sitting around -- good Christmas for book gifts, this year! But now I'm going to give it another try. I think I've just gotten a little too much Henry-the-VIIIth-ed lately, between The Tudors and various other books I've read on the subject in the last year or two.

Also, I have to mention a blog. Ever heard of Steam Me Up, Kid? I mention it because I only recently discovered it but I end up laughing out loud in nearly every entry. Like today's awesome conversation with her brother. Worth a read, this chica. :)

Yesterday's fabric...

Yesterday's new fabric is today's new goodies! Here's what I've made of it so far.

A cute little zip pouch with pumpkin orange accents and sky blue polka dots:


And a makeup roll - same fabrics and ribbon.


I think this is gonna be one of those fabrics I need to get a lot more of.

Both of these will be listed momentarily in my shop at Bellflower Textiles!

New Fabric

Just got a yard of this gorgeous fabric in the mail today:



...and it's SO much more gorgeous in person. I'm thrilled and have already made two cute little goodies from it, which I'll try to post a picture of tomorrow.

And yes, I do have a new fabric I'm utterly enthralled with at least once a week. So sue me. :)

My latest product line

Just a show and tell on my latest product line. I launched this about a week before Christmas and have sold a third of what I've listed so far, so I'm calling this a good sign. I think that's the quickest positive reaction I've ever had to a new product.

These are my new eyeglass/sunglass cases, which you can see in my shop at Bellflower Textiles:


They're all made of high quality wool felt in a lovely charcoal gray, with a bright cotton accent cuff and lining. And aside from the one in the bottom left corner, my earliest prototype, I'm putting a ribbon finger pull on each of them now too.

I'm really pleased with them - I love the charcoal gray color; it just sets off the bright designer prints I love so well. And they're thick and sturdy and padded and yet completely stylish. I keep meaning to make one for myself but so far I've been listing them as quickly as I can produce them.

My current favorite is the one in the top left corner with the little tulip flowers outlined in red. So cute. Just ordered a bunch more of that fabric yesterday since it's one of those designs I look at and can see a million things I want to make from it.

What do you think?

Poop humor

Sofie has discovered the joys of poop humor. All day long, random conversations are punctuated by her exclaiming "Poopy!" Much hilarity ensues.

Tonight she took it to a new level by making up "a funny game for you" (her words) in which she would lie on the living room chair "being the poopy" and I was supposed to lean over top of her and "be the diaper." Um... yuck. And then? We'd switch!!

This is her ultimate definition of fun.

Yesterday she announced that she'd thought up an especially funny joke to tell her friends at school. During snack time, she said, she was going to say, "Please pass the POOPY!" and then everyone would laugh and laugh! She really did lay out the whole scenario like this, all planned out with everyone's reactions anticipated. So when I picked her up today, I asked her about it. Did she pull it off?

"No. I just hid under the table instead."

Ah, well, ok. You go girl with the planning the perfect hijinks.

Really, these aren't resolutions...

This is not resolution-based, really, but I'm starting to try to exercise again. It's less about New Years than it is about feeling kind of ready for a change right now. I used to run pretty regularly, but that went out the window last year with a combination of dealing with Mom's illness and death in the first half of the year and then having my business take off in the second half and eat up all my free time.

Between the two, my tendency to stress eat went a little crazy - let's just say that both grief and deadlines go well with cookies. I've gained some weight I didn't want to gain. I haven't run in about eight or nine months, after working pretty consistently at it for the last three years. I am no longer wearing my skinny jeans, for shizzle.

So enough. Yesterday Sofie and I took advantage of the rather temperate winter we're having here to dust off the jogging stroller and take it out for a spin. This was actually her idea. She loves the jogging stroller. If I take her out in it and try to just walk, she exhorts me to run.

"Mama, you run!"

The kid, she loves the wind whoosing through her hair. She enjoyed herself for fifteen minutes and then passed out into the world's deepest and most satisfying nap for the remaining 45 minutes we were out.

She had a wonderful time. Me? Not so terrible, certainly not as bad as the first run post-baby several years back, the one that left me laying on the front yard while the neighbors joked about calling the EMTs. I took the easy, slightly-downhill for part of the way route for about a mile, then walked back where I used to try to run every other block back up the hill. But I made it most of that mile and while it was really really hard, it felt kind of good, too.

And I'm back off the brain-cancer juice, Diet Coke, and trying to stay away from Aspartame in all its forms, having finally looked up some stuff in google to try to confirm my theory that Aspartame has significant mood-altering effects on me and ending up reading some stuff that pretty much scared me straight.

Now I just need to try to get away from sugar, I think. The lovely and talented Finslippy had an awesome post on the evils of sugar today that I fully agreed with, and which left me with the sinking realization that I really need to do the same. But it's gonna be really, really hard.

On the first day of 2010...

Day one of 2010 was spent napping, eating leftovers, reading library books, and having a really fun playdate with some of Sofie's closest friends and their moms. Not a bad way to start the year! In spite of having been up until nearly 2 a.m. last night and drinking a little more than was probably good for us at Brett's annual Goodfellas dinner**, we had a really nice and mostly hangover-free day today.

++++++

The only person who appeared to be hung over was actually Sofie, who spent most of the day alternately lying listless on the couch and clutching wildly to me whenever I got so much as an inch away from her. This seems to be her motif, her metier of choice, lately, and she's getting increasingly good at it.

As I told my friends today, it's like having a great big newborn again, in that I'm literally physically attached to her 24/7 right now. Except that a newborn would take three nice naps a day and my 30-pound version never quits. She's on my lap or clinging to my leg or stuffing her hand inside my shirt (ugh) or dangling from my arm every second of the day. She's going through something, feeling anxious or undergoing a cognitive development that's difficult, or fighting off a minor bug, or all three at once.

I feel for her, I do, and I can tell this is genuinely a hard time for her, but does it make me a bad parent to admit that this is driving me FREAKING CRAZY? It's hard to be patient when you can't have even a few minutes alone. I fantasize about five minutes of time without someone touching me and whining. Which probably shows and only makes her feel worse, so then I'll overcompensate by being all lovey dovey and she's probably completely mixed up.

Parenting = kicking my ass again.

Two things make this bearable:

1) Most of my mom friends seem to be going through similar levels of "rip your hair out"-ness with their three year olds, so I assume this is a common phase. Which is why there's a book called Your Three Year Old: Friend or Foe. Amazon, gotta love you. Mom friends, how would I survive without you? Seriously.

2) This will pass. I know enough now to know that a lot of these difficult phases seem to come in 4-6 week increments. And she actually let Brett put her to bed tonight for the first time in a couple weeks. So there's hope.

+++++

Goodfellas dinner - every year Brett goes a little crazy and cooks this massive Italian dinner for a whole set of our nearest and dearest. Some years this has been as big as 18-20 people and some years, like this year, it's been a little smaller, but it's always raucous fun, accompanied by a painstakingly-created IPod playlist that contains every song that is played in the movie.

This year was really great - Sofie went to sleep early, the spaghetti was divine, we had good cannoli and roasted eggplants and tomatoes and lots and lots and lots and lots of wine. Oh, and also some wine.


Picture taken by Michael Murray

As for resolutions, I made none this year, and as far as I can remember, I didn't make any last year either. I think I had some goals for the year for the business, and I do for this year too, but on the personal side I'm just going to let this year develop on its own. 2009 was a tough, moving, sometimes awful, sometimes wonderful, wrenching, growing, intensely alive kind of year and I think I'm just going to be calm now and float along with the tide for a while.

Zen out a bit. Survive the dark days of January, both in terms of weather and in terms of painful anniversaries it holds. Get my mojo back. Breathe.

And hug my little clinging munchkin as much as I can and try to store up these days when all she wants as me in some kind of cosmic bank balance for the years when she's a teenager and doesn't want me around at all.

Year in Pictures

Borrowing a neat meme from Artsy-Crafty Babe - here's one pic per month that sums up the year for me. No commentary, just images.

January:


February:


March:


April:


May:


June:



July:


August:


September:


October:



November:


December:

Mini family reunion

The day after Christmas, Dad and I drove down to Portland to see his sister Dorothy, who was in town visiting her daughter Carol. I hadn't seen my Aunt Dorothy in at least two decades, not since my grandmother's funeral in the 1980s, and I'd never met my cousin Carol, who's been on the west coast since before I was born.

It was a beautiful day, and barely a car on the road - we whizzed down and back without ever going less than 70 mph, blue skies and sun, and had a wonderful visit with the family.

Sofie amused herself by chasing Carol's two cats, one of whom tried to tolerate her and one of whom, I believe, vaporized into ether as soon as she saw a toddler. At least, we never saw her again.

Here's my Dad and his sister:


We'll be seeing each other again in March when several branches of the Shult family meet in Colorado. I'm very excited to see everyone!

New fabric

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with it yet, but is this not the cutest fabric ever? A find earlier this week at the Quilting Loft...

More new ideas

Trying out some more things I've been meaning to try for a while - this time eyeglass/sunglass cases in a lovely charcoal gray wool felt, with bright accents. See them in the shop here!

What do you think?

Two years ago today...

Things to come...

Just a sneak peek at some things I'm working on right now - one just for gifties, and one that's a prototype for a new product next year...

And at last, things are slowing down

Ahhhhhhh. I love the last week before Christmas when things finally slow down a little.

Packages to relatives shipped: check

Last minute customers attended to: check

Tree and decorations in place: check

Gifts for local folks at least started: check

Cookie-making underway: check

Cards sent: mostly, except for a couple that require short letters


Everything, for once, feels under control and approaching calm. It helps that we got our mailed presents to family members out especially early this year - having that done by the first week of December was a life-saver, since business at Bellflower Textiles has been nonstop crazy pretty much every day this month until today.

I'm getting ready to do my year-end analysis, which is fun. A rough look so far says that I made about 650 sales since January 1st (730 or so overall), which is about six times the business I did last year and an average of almost two sales a day. Since July I've been making a pretty respectable income every month, and I've been profitable nine months out of twelve this year. Holiday business, in particular, has been spectacular -- September, November, and December have all been banner months. (I don't know what happened in October; slowslowslow.)

All in all I'm quite pleased! This was my first full year running the business and I think it's really growing well! Next year will be the real test for the viability of this long term, since it will be my first year with the business really well established. I'm planning to try to expand a lot more into wholesaling, try to find a way to balance busy online sales with the time and inventory to do more shows, and really seek out some press opportunities in 2010.

Oh, and rearrange my office/studio and get a shipping station set up upstairs. Very important.

But first, I'm going to relax. Make some cookies. Do some embroidery on some little gifties I'm making. Play with the kid. Play with the cats. Maybe drive around and look at some lights. Blast Christmas music on the stereo. Burn logs in the fireplace. Spend Christmas with Sofie's two grandpas. Figure out a way to deal with a rather bulky present that so far no one in the house has discovered in its rather poor hiding place. (Yay!) And officially just enjoy some good cheer.

Happy holidays!

Christmas pretties in our house

Just a few pics of some of the decorations around the house.

Clockwise from top left:
1) I love kissing balls, have one hanging from just about every doorway in the house.
2) Gorgeous crystal ornament from Brett's Aunt Charlotte
3) The living room, messy but warm
4) Madonna ornament from MissButler on etsy, one of my favorite shops
5) Pretty bows and berry garland on the hutch
6) My great silver button garland on the tree
7) White bone china votive from Crate and Barrel
8) Center: green and red felt scrap garland I got just yesterday at Display and Costume, just perfect for the light fixture over the dining room table

I love holiday decorating!

Here's the button garland a little larger - I'm just so tickled with this. Just perfect for an obsessive seamstress like me.

Working on lately...

Just sharing some recent goodies.

First off, I sold four of these this weekend and need to find some more of this gorgeous fabric! Isn't it pretty?



Only two of these snowflake snapsuits left, size 12m and 24m:



And some cute little holiday zip pouches I made just for Christmas - still plenty of time for US delivery before the 25th:

Random poetry, christmas, and grief

A lovely poem I found tonight while searching around for one of those rare search terms that Google turns up absolutely nothing for. But it brought up this, which was almost payment enough.

***

Wait (a poem) Galway Kinnell

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

***

Feeling sad lately, whether it's Christmas bringing up Mom's absence or something else. Watched "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney tonight and one simple comment she made about how sometimes the brain dies far in advance of the body just undid me for the evening. My general weepiness drove Brett to flee into his office. I cried in the car today and yesterday. It's been a while since I've done that. I mostly cry in the car when I need to, it seems, partly because it scares Sofie to death to see me cry, and it's one of the few places I'm ever alone.

Brett told me today that he doesn't care much for Christmas outside of the house but inside our house he loves it because of me. I thought that was one of the sweetest things I'd ever heard from him. Christmas when we were growing up wasn't a fancy thing; it was never about the immense stack of glittery presents that would be waiting under the tree, although that didn't stop us from going through an elaborate ritual of leafing through the Sears Roebuck catalog and making the world's longest Christmas list. Somehow I never got that rock polisher I asked for every year.

We'll have both my dad and his Dad with us for Christmas this year, which is a first, and no Mom, which is of course another first. Every time I see my Dad I'm so painfully aware of the future. Someday he'll be gone too. I can't stand the thought and yet I think about it all the time. It's as if I am constantly rehearsing my griefs. Hopefully that passes too. In the meantime, I'm so glad he's here - not just here on this Earth, but here across the street. Thank god, thank god, they moved out here.

Christmas this year holds other wonderful things -- Sofie is so aware of it this year, and so excited. Every day she takes a piece of fabric or a scrap of paper and wraps something up, a little toy, a stuffed animal, and gives it to me. "I have a surpise for you!" she says, all bated breath, and I open it and look delighted. I like that she's miming the giving of gifts as much as the getting of them.

Last night we went to see the Bellevue Botanical Garden's Garden D'Lights. It was maybe 28 degrees, unbelievably cold for Seattle, but we tromped around in the dark with a bunch of other families, Brett hauling Sofie around on his shoulders and me keeping track of Dad and making sure he didn't trip or stumble, and it was really lovely. Dad's game to go just about anywhere these days and is such nice company. He's got a new hat with a flashlight built in, three settings - high, medium, and low beams - and it was an excellent chance to try it out.

"Would your mom have liked the light show?" Brett asked later that night. Probably not; she often wasn't real comfortable going places with us. Invitations often seemed like impositions to her, and the dark and uneven paths would have been near-to impossible for her to manage. But I missed her all the same while we were there.

So we gather up what there is of our little family and move on, out of the chilly night and towards the warm house where the red and white lights glow along the roofline and the Christmas tree lights wink out the dining room window, where I glance out the upstairs window before I go to sleep to see if Dad is still up and glance out again in the morning to see if he's taken his paper in and is therefore ok, and we all feel a little bit more than we used to how precious - and fleeting - every bit of connection can really be.

Random thoughts

Today was a day of many adventures.

• The world's cutest and teeny-tiniest ever little girl marched up to me in the hallway at school today, her blond ponytail bouncing, and said, "I wanna have a playdate with Sofie!" How freaking adorable is that. Her mom, who showed up a few minutes later, said she had been talking about Sofie all weekend. So I guess that "making friends" thing is going pretty well. And hey, props to the little munchkin for a) recognizing me when Sofie was down the hall in class and b) not being afraid to speak her mind. Cutie patootey.
  
  
• Sofie was thrilled to discover that you sometimes you get to eat hamburgers in the car. In. The. CAR! I kid you not. We were rushing from preschool pickup to meet some friends for Santa pics on the other side of town, so I picked up a mini burger for her on my way to school and she looked like it was already Christmas morning when she found out she got to eat it in her carseat. Really Mom? And then she snarfed it and passed out in a blissful food half-coma for the next twenty minutes.
  
  
• Making things even more wonderful, we were early to the Santa meetup, so we were wandering around and discovered something straight out of Sofie's most dearly-held fantasies -- an actual, full-size bus, completely full of CATS. Live cats. It was a special Humane Society vehicle with little cat compartments with windows all over one wall showing a bunch of kitties they were hoping would be adopted.
  
  Now first off, Sofie has suspected for months now that there are all sorts of transportation devices (cars, planes, locomotives) that are driven by and entirely populated by cats, and I could just see her little mind whirring as this was confirmed. I knew it! And they told me cats can't drive!
  
  And second, props to the Humane Society, because how smart is that, to park the Great Kitteh Bus right next to where all the little kids are going to be waiting in line with their parents to see Santa? I bet they'll be hearing a lot of "Please mom? Pleeeeeeeeeeze?" over the next few weeks. More power to them.
  
  Luckily S. didn't quite realize that she could potentially have begged to take one of them home, so we escaped with just a visit.
  
  
  
  
• She and her buddy Molly did an awesome job with Santa this year - for the first time, they weren't afraid or even really cowed. Sofie went right up, plopped herself down on his lap, and shared that she wants a cat and some candy. She even smiled! I was so proud. See pic below...
  
  
• To the crazy man who honked and then idled at the next red light and stared at me after I moved my car three inches over towards your lane to avoid hitting someone waiting for a light in the other direction and taking up about a foot of my lane -- go suck it. There, I said it. I was nowhere near you, I wasn't swerving wildly, and the stink eye was really unnecessary. Jerk.
  
  
• And yes, I was looking at my phone at the red light, and I could just see your little brain whirring and saying "Ah, so you swerved because you were texting!" Uh, no. I put it down when I'm driving. So what if I check mail at red lights? Doesn't everyone?
  
  
• Ok, perhaps not.
  
  
• Results of the big Black Friday weekend sale at Bellflower Textiles? Not bad! I sold 23 items between Friday and Monday night. Woo hoo! Still lots and lots in stock and shipping deadlines are still a couple weeks away, so if you're Christmas shopping, cmon over and have a look!
  

Ok, so here's the Santa pic. Is she not adorable?

Thankful

Thinking, as are many of us, of the things I'm thankful for this year.

I'm so thankful for my family, my wonderful husband who always loves me and my sweet little pixie of a daughter. They are the magic in my life, the fun, the constant happiness, the reason I get out of bed in the morning. I love you both more than I can find words for.

I'm so, so thankful that my Dad is here, that he lives across the street, that he's not alone in Ohio without Mom, and that we've been able to be together as much as we have in this very difficult (in some ways) year. Grief without you would have been much, much harder. I love you, Dad.

I'm so thankful that Mom got to be here for some of Sofie's life, and that she lived nearby for the last few years, and that I got to be with her so much in the final days of her life. I'm thankful she didn't suffer very much compared to what could have been waiting for her if her Alzheimers had progressed to the final stages. I'm thankful to the wonderful people who helped take care of her in the last four months of her life, and that we were there at the end.

I'm thankful for my sister Dana and Kevin and the kids, and for my husband's family. We've seen everyone in the immediate family at least once this year, most of them more than that, which is awesome.

I'm so thankful that my Aunt Marilyn and Uncle George came out in July, and for my cousin Ann and Sarah's visit - it meant so much to me to reconnect with family this year.

I'm so thankful for my wonderful friends, and for the way my closest friends just drew in around me after Mom passed away and sheltered me with their love and support. I never felt alone in that time and I'll never, ever forget it. Thank you Jenn, Kate, Kate, Dianne, Michelle, Robin, Erica, Jacki, and everyone else who brought meals and asked how I was and spent time and listened.


I'm so thankful for the amazing little kids we know, Sofie's good friends. It's been three years since we met most of them, and watching them grow along with her has been an amazing experience! We love you Jack, Hazel, Molly, Leo, Daniel, Maggie, and newcomers Luke, Wilca, and Henry. So glad to know you all!


I'm thankful that Sofie is growing up and adjusting to her first excursions out into the great big world without Mommy at her side - preschool is going well, she's gaining so much knowledge and confidence and new skills every day. Being your mommy is the most amazing thing I've ever experienced.

I could go on -- house, garden, tomatoes, warmth, food, growing business, cats (definitely cats!) etc -- but honestly, it's people this year who have made such a difference in my life and who I treasure more than ever. So this is my list.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving crazy (and a weasel)

In the midst of a whirlwind of Thanksgiving preparation -- that is, getting ready for my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE HOLIDAY EVER -- I had occasion to pull out all the serving dishes I think we're going to need, including the much-beloved gravy weasel. Which I wanted to share.


Isn't he handsome?

Yes, he's probably a squirrel, but he was christened the gravy weasel five or six years ago and will forever be known as such. He's been a great favorite of all who have shared our table over the years, so I thought I'd take his portrait.

Here he is again... Don't you wish you had a rodent to serve your gravy from?


I also had a crazy Martha Stewart moment where I decided to carve holes in the top of two leftover mini-pumpkins from Halloween so I could put candles in them, as a centerpiece.


I wish I'd had orange ones instead of white, but I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out - and they'll look nice on my dark red tablecloth.

Sofie helped.


I made four dishes today -- a spinach gruyere puff, green beans with tarragon, the stuffing, and the cranberry satsuma sauce, and had lots of fun doing it. Tomorrow we pick up the turkeys and gravy from the bbq joint down the street, make potatoes and rolls, and just heat the rest up. Easy peasy. Mmmmmm.