Wee Wonderfuls

christmas break

Okay! The gift cards are all crappily wrapped and ready to go. The half as many Christmas cards as were needed have been ordered from snapfish and sent out. All baking projects have been abandoned. All official Christmas outings, pagents, parties, etc have been checked off. Christmas pajamas have been bought instead of made. I'm done! And pretty happy about it. It's time for some serious holiday lazing about. So I think I'm going to sign off for the holidays early this year. I'll be back after the new year. Of course I'm sure I'll be lurking around on flickr. Have a great holiday everyone!

It's a Christmas miracle!

I finally have the freebie sleeping bag pattern available for chapter 2 make-a-longers! I'm so sorry this took me so long. The morning sickness didn't help, but really I just had a total brain freeze with this thing. I made them up really quick and then when I had to figure out how I'd done it I was stuck. I just found this project so difficult to explain for some reason. Who knows, pregnancy brain. Anyway, It's done now (phew!) and I'm working on sending out emails this afternoon with the download to everyone who bought make-a-long chapter 2. Thanks for your patience!

Welcome Christmas, Come this Way!

Here's the Whoville tree! It was a beautiful, slim, vintage looking tree when we first put it up and then it just sort of flopped, not that flopping is bad, but it was very uneven flopping. I like to complain about how wonky it is and how it's already losing all its needles but Tim becomes very emotionally attached to the tree. It's the Charlie Brown in him. He says this tree was just special and had extra needles to begin with. ok!

And since you've stopped by for a visit, I'll subject you to the same treatment as all visitors to the house... you have to sit through me pointing out every ornament on the tree. And I'm not even going to put them behind the cut, that's how pushy I am!

An Oscar favorite (you can tell because it's been rehung over a light!)

tinsel wreath making its debut this year

also debuting, a reproduction vintage diorama ornament. I always loved these as a kid. Now I have my own!

our new Rudolf

skiing in the buffet

Oscar's 2006 ornament

where the tiny people in the tree live

someone else's xmas memories appropriated (ornament from this summer's garage sales)

snowman from Tim many christmases ago

cozy cherry mittens

and what are the holidays without a trip to hazel? our newest addition, these beautiful glittered bells!

ornament from Grandma Ev's collection

German angels from Grandma Mary

and finally, favorite ornament ever

And just in case you thought I was done with you, some more ornaments from last year.

I think I promised new kitchen tree pics but it's virtually unchanged so here it is from last year. Still very pleased with the dishtowel garland and these retro ad ornaments held up well. The candy ornaments from MS Kids did not make it unfortunately. But it's for the best since Oscar was trying to eat the broken pieces right out of the box.

Thanks for stopping by!

flickr groups

Well, no tree pics as promised. It's dark and rainy today so it'll have to wait. Instead I thought I'd post some of your pics from the pattern galleries. Here are a few cuties that have been added recently. And I just set up the robot and spaceboy group and would love to post some of those here too!

sknittymama's 3 bunny sisters

imacruzen's Make-a-long girls

button mcgee's Christmas stitchette pillow

Here's one! Kerflop's Spaceboy. I love his up in the air arm!

and thanks for the jingle bell bun love! I feel so accomplished to have made at least one Christmas present this year. Now I can go back to my online shopping guilt free :)

Jingle Bell Buns

I finally got around to my painting project. I started out painting in the sinkhole but after dropping wet paint heads on my shirt twice Tim ordered me out of the couch and to the table. pah, sitting up. overrated if you ask me. I love the painted wood German Christmas ornaments so much and wanted to try to make a little something like that for the tree this year. So I went to Michaels and got some round doll heads and candle cups from their painted wood stuff aisle and this is what I came up with. I painted some jingle bells for buns and hot glue gunned the pieces together.

I tied string through the back of the bell buns and they hang on the tree okay. They lean forward a little but if they're hung up high it works. Looks like they're looking down at you. I need to take some photos of the rest of our wonky Whoville tree today. First I'll have to clean up the clutter so I can take a full tree shot and you can see it's crookedness in its full glory!

paypal hates me, but just a little

** another (last) update**
I seem to have gotten to the bottom of this and it only affected 3 orders. People who paid with eChecks on the 27th whose emails the paypal system dropped. Theirs were not on my downloaded activity that I was checking orders against. Good gravy! Anyway, it seems all squared away. Of course, if you're still concerned about your order feel free to email me. Sorry for all the boring paypal crap. I actually have a craft to post today! Need to get my camera out.

**update**
So far so good. Only the one missed order that alerted me to this so far. Please do email me though if you're worried. And if you're Canadian, I'm sorry I have no idea what's up with the mail. So pokey! Seems Australian orders haven't landed yet either.

If anyone ordered their Spaceboy and Robot Put-together book (or anything else) between November 27-30 and hasn't yet received their order can you email me your paypal receipt to hillarylang at gmail.com so I can doublecheck that I got it. I had that paypal problem with the email notifications not coming through and now it seems there's another problem. That some of the orders didn't make it into the downloaded activity spreadsheet I was going from. If there was a single person at paypal that gave a damn, believe me they'd be getting an earful. But since they've got 'only game in town' customer service I'm just going to have to figure this out on my own. So sorry for any mix-ups that might have happened!

thanks you guys!

Now I'm wishing I'd mentioned it on the blog when we first found out instead of following the 12 week rule. The euphoria of finally getting pregnant was too quickly overshadowed by over-35 worries and where are we going to fit all these kids worries and the oh my god I'm going to barf out the window of this car worries. I'm so happy today. I'm outed and feeling very happily pregnant. I'm even wearing a maternity shirt today and it's the first day my belly bottom isn't peeking out for the world to see. All your wonderful comments and warm wishes really brought back the new baby excitement for me. Thank you!

We're for sure going to find out if it's a boy or a girl. So funny that so many of you mention girl. I'm totally feeling boy. That's what I've kinda been hoping for, most of the time, although we'll be happy either way. I know Oscar would really enjoy a little brother (although he's not on board with this new baby thing one bit) and I think 2 boys are just so cute. Really, I just can't imagine a girl. I always refer to belly baby as a he. But of course, somewhere in my subconscious girl must creep in occasionally because I felt compelled to buy all these cutie storybook fabrics from Superbuzzy.

And thanks for all the supportive comments about the sickness. I've decided that's why you're not allowed to tell people in the first 12 weeks, so they don't have to hear you bitching about how awful you feel every day. I've got my new sea band bracelets on and my ginger ale and my positive outlook but I'm still under it. I toughed it through another holiday outing today. We went to see Polar Express at the movie theater downtown. Oscar was enthralled. It was so cute. If only cute cured morning sickness.

And thank you to those of you who said you were amazed at how much I got done these past months while being sick! I was trying so hard to keep up in some way. We totally busted our ass on the robot book and I am so proud I was able to suck it up and get that done. Despite that effort, I've still been feeling so guilty and behind on everything. I'm ready to let go of that too. Here's to cute killing blogging guilt too!

really big project number two

Ok, I can't wait any longer. I think it's about time to blog about the reason I haven't been blogging much lately, instead of once again sitting here staring at a blank page thinking of anything to say except what I want to say which is, I'm 3 months pregnant with baby number 2! We're so excited to have the final piece of the Lang family puzzle in motion. I'm due in June and am especially excited to be having a Spring baby. Having a baby at the coldest, darkest time of the year was really tough. So that's our happy news and I'm so relieved to have the first trimester behind me. I can tell already number two is going to be filled with a lot more worry than the first time around. And the sick, jeebus. I don't remember it being like this with Oscar. I've been knocked out for 6 weeks now. I was really hoping it'd miraculously disappear right in time for Christmas projects but it's digging its heels in. I'm crossing my fingers and wishing on every 11:11 that this is my last week of it and that mythical 2nd trimester energy will kick in just in time to make some gifts and cookies and Christmas merriment. Any minute now I'll be able to somehow propel myself out of the sinkhole I've created in the couch straight into a Christmas frenzy. I am feeling motivated to find a nice gender neutral knitting project for the baby (knitting I can do from my sinkhole) and to think really happy positive thoughts. And happy thoughts and congratulations for fellow pregnancy friend Kim!

blinking

The Christmas tree keeps demanding my attention. I'm puttering around, making breakfast, cleaning up toys, checking email and the tree keeps catching my eye. I just realized a small part of one of the strands of lights is going in and out and that's what's changing in my landscape and making me look at the tree.

It occurs to me that this is how Tim and I are feeling about James Kim and his family. We are trying to go about business as usual but our thoughts have been turning to them often. We are heartbroken for their loss.

Lisa and Stephanie are organizing a fundraiser for the Kim family and the friends of the family are taking donations on their behalf here.

Thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes for Oscar the other day. We are so thankful for our beautiful big boy and are hugging him tight.

three!

help! this big boy ate my baby. actually he says he's a little boy because he's not ready for the things big boys do yet (peeing in the potty, blowing his own nose, etc). but he seems awfully big to me.

we've been busy birthday'ing it up around here. a trip to the lego train exhibit, lots and lots of presents. of course with his birthday so close to christmas his birthday presents tend to be more of the useful variety. clothes, books, learning toys. the gluttony of cars we save til xmas. he was very happy with everything though. "ooh, new red shoes". he's in his new birthday duds modeling for the xmas card picture here. this isn't the one we're going with but I do think it sums up 3 very well.

happy birthday boxcar!