J's Christmas present

J.  loves to knit, weave, sew or whatever has to do with creating.  It seems to make him happy and keep him calm.  His sense of pride in his work is humble but rewarded and this makes me happy.  We decided to make him his very own loom of sorts for Christmas and this is what he got.

Thankfully, he says it is really easy to work.

He says he is making a belt.  The kind to hold up pants.  It is a Birthday present for his friend.

Nice work!

Isn't it great and it won't take any more work to make a rug or place mats then it does to make a belt. 

C's Christmas present

For Christmas Art and I found silk screening supplies for C.  It was not easy and we had to improvise with somethings but we got a kit of some sort together knowing that he would probably have some fun with it and  of course I can't stay out of it either.
Just last week a new homeschool group has started at our end of town, which is really great because the one we went to before is way to far for us now that we've moved.  At our first meeting, last Thursay, the kids voted to call themselves "The Busy Bisons".  This is because the big bisons are in a field right near where we meet, which is practically next door to where we live. 
Anyway, all that to say, C got excited to try to make everyone in the group a badge with his new silk screening kit.  So together we worked and here is what we've managed to come up with.

 He is so proud of himself!

Demonstrating the process

 

Just off the screen.  So fun!

Partied out

Hi Everyone,
We are once again coming to the end of the busiest month of the year.  December is crazy month.  Between birthdays, Christmas and Anniversary comes Art's company party, Church Party, Personal invites to friends homes to celebrate the season with them and parties at home for people we feel we should maintain a close relationship with for the sake of sharing Jesus with them. 
We are not done yet.  We still have Christmas, Anniversary, and a friends Birthday party to attend to.  In the between of all of this I have needed to come up with a special gift for our elderly neighbours who have been so kind to us.  I decided to make them a small quilt.  I noticed that they love birds,  there house is decorated in blue colours with pink curtains and the like.  So  I got to work and hours later I came up with a nice picture quilted for them.
Here it is.

Here is a random picture of Ziggy who turned eight years old this week.  He is holding our beautiful cat who is getting so big but still things he is a baby.

And since we are onto Random pictures, here is one of the littlest angels at our church Christmas pagent this year, which I made all the costumes for, save two,

yet again this year.

Well, off to bed with me.  I'm so tired, I can't think of anything at all to post.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Cool-Multiplexi-RamaRama-Plastic Toy Maker

Me: "C, Please clean your room."
C: "Ok"

Few minutes later:
Me:  "Is your room clean?"
C: "Yup!  You should see my new invention!"
Me: "Ok."
I walk in his room and sure enough everything is picked up but not necessarily put away.  All the bits and pieces that he was either too lazy to put away or wasn't quite sure where to put them landed in a little pile.  It was made up of pencil sharpener, camera, pencils, legos, and other miscilanious items.  A few of them were strategically placed to resemble some momentary contemplation.  Then, came his announcement:  "It is my invention called Cool-Multiplexi-RamaRama-Plastic Toy Maker!"

Ah, yeah!  I'm not so easily tricked.  This invention is called pure laziness to put things away, not "Cool-Multiplexi-RamaRama-Plastic Toy Maker" like he told me and wanted me to believe that he put major amounts of contemplation and work into. 
I'll have to give him an A+ for the creative manipulation part though. LOL
No go though!  Clean your room Mojo!

Finished the boys room

Hi Everyone
I just had to show you the finishing touches to the boys room.  I love, love, love their "very boy" room!
My sister had posted on her blog, some scripture decals that she had gotten for her kid's rooms and I loved them.  But, I am neither patient (I would have to order them through the mail = 2 weeks waiting) nor do I want to spend the money.  What could I do to have the same thing?  I thought and thought and pondered and well, I'm sure it took two weeks anyway, for me to come up with this remedy to my problem.
I went to the dollar store and found lots of different colours of mac-tac.  I chose black.  I then went to my computer and with Printmaster I found a font that I liked.  I put as many words for my verse on a page as possible in the font size I liked and then flipped them all so the words were all backwards.
I then cut out my  black mac-tac to the size of a regular printer paper and put it into my printer one page at a time.  I had to be careful because it is softer then regular paper and wanted to scrunch in the printer but we did all right.  I printed all my backward words on the back of the mac-tac and then cut them out.  Now when I peal the paper off the back and stick it to the wall, it all faces the right way.  Hurray!!  It sticks to the wall.  It looks permanent but it can be pealed off and moved.  And it has just the effect I was looking for.  I am so happy!  All these bedroom decals (except for the motorcycles, they are painted) cost me a total of about $5.00
I happened also to like the verse and the version or paraphrase my sister put in her daughter's room so I stole that idea too.  Thanks Angie  --  love the ideas.  Keep them coming!
Oh and by the way, Angie.  You can have as many verses and decals as you want now, all over your house, for hardly any cost at all except time!  Good luck finding that.  :0)

Here, have a peek!

The Border says, "You are a child of God.  You are wonderfully made, dearly loved and precious in His sight!

Ziggy's side of the room has this little guy repelling off of the words, "Before God made you, He knew you..."

J. loves to play hockey with his friends.  It says, "There is no one else like you!"

Cute little clock I found.  It is shaped like a tire.

motorcycles

I took a picture of one of the wall in the boys new bedroom.  I didn't really want to spend anymore money on paint so I took left overs from this and that from other rooms in the house and well,  I'm not terribly impressed with how coordinated they are but the boys love it.  They begged me not to change it.  They also asked me to put motorcycles and stuff on their walls.  Well, buying wall decals can be very expensive and right now, I'm trying to avoid expensive sooooo.... Finally I thought of an idea.  I googled "dirt bike silouette" and found some that they liked.  I printed them on paper and cut them out.  Then I took masking tape and covered a heavy duty zip lock bag with it, overlapping each strip and using my paper motorbike stencil that I made I traced around it onto the masking tape.  Then I cut it out, peeled the plastic of the back, put the tape negative on the wall and painted in the blanks.  I didn't even have to be careful.  Here is the end result of my motorcycle experiment.

                                                   

Mittens for Bri

Here is a link to the pattern Caleb uses for the mittens, Bri.  I hope this works for you.  http://felting.craftgossip.com/2009/10/15/recycled-sweater-wool-mittens-how-tos/

I also attached this little drawing that I did to show you that I have a little edge added to the thumb to make for an easier seam. They are so simple to make.  Enjoy.

Sorry it is kind of hard to read.  It only says something about the edge I added and shows you where I mean.

Hear are some pictures of Caleb's mittens.

Here are some more mittens that he made yesterday.  They don't have the fleece liner in them yet so they tend to pucker and  not hold their shape very well but once we get that in there, they will be beautiful.  These are lady's and men's sizes

New Painting for My Hall

Yeah, ok,  I know I have an obsession with trees and their beauty at the moment but my yard is lacking in them now and so I have to create them and put them in my house.  Here is my new painting.  I did it yesterday.
You will notice there is a rock hedge at the bottom of the trees.  All the trees in a row reminded me of when I was little and we had a row of large maple trees growing all along a rock hedge.  We used to like to climb the first one and see if we could get to the next one without touching the rocks or the ground below.  It was so much fun.  Anyway.  I have that row of trees in my hallway now.  :0)

 

Scarves For Angie's Choir

Here are the scarves that Jacob makes and tries to sell.  They look better on girls but since I don't have any little girls, he had to be the model.  Anyway,  They are not too bulky and fit well on little girls for dress up.  They are easy to make and Jacob sells them for $10 dollars each if anyone would rather buy them instead of make them.  It is best to get yarn that is fuzzy or fluffy and it makes a fuller looking scarf. 
Here is a red and white one that he made.  We got the wool from the dollar store and doubled red with white to give it more body.

Here is a very fuzzy kind of colourful yarn that made for a very dressy style scarf.

Here is how you start.

Next step is to put this slip loop over your pointing finger.

Now, start weaving it back and forth between your fingers

And back the other way again.

Do it again so that you have two loops on each finger.

.

Now pull the bottom loop up and over the top of the finger. You may have to bend your finger down to get it through.

Next wrap another round of string around the fingers (weaving yarn through fingers and back again makes one set of loops.)

 lift the bottom loop over the top of the fingers and carry on in this fashion until you have a scarf that is one and a half yards long. Then tie it off by threading the string through the loops and tying a small not.  

This is done with non-fluffy yard for demonstration purposes but it only takes a minute or two to see the speedy results of you not-so-hard labour.

My Entry Way

Ok, here is a picture of my entry way but only on one side of it as the other side is not yet completed.  My neighbor made this bench and over head hanger shelf for me.  I paid for the material and he and his wife got busy and withing three days I had this beautiful piece of wooden artwork in my entry way.  I am so in love with it.
My new neighbors are retired folk and I see that he spends a lot of time out on his quad gathering firewood.  They have tons of firewood.  His wife told me he was bored so that is what he did with his time.  She asked if I would like anything to be build for me.  I told her that if he had time he could make me a bench and shelf for my entryway.  Within the day he had started on the project and a few days later called me to see if I was happy with it.  Oh yes,  I'm happy!  Just look at it!

Kitchen and Dining room

Ok,  I know, I'm a day late in my promise but I couldn't exactly take pictures when I had everything from the entry way piled on the kitchen table.  I worked on the entry way yesterday but it will still be a few days before I am fully complete and able to take pictures of that.  However,  I did needed the kitchen table so I cleared it all off and piled everything back in the entryway.

Here is my pretty kitchen and dining room.  I love so much.  This colour stuff is just right for me and so much fun.

 We will be getting a new chandelier in the future as this one is very 70ish.  But we have to save our pennies for that.

And from a different angle

These are the pretty new dishes that my mother-in-law bought for us.  We painted the kitchen to match the dishes.  I think they are so pretty!

Here is my lovely kitchen.  I have to get some nice stools for under the breakfast bar and just so you know.  The counter top is not yellow but the light gives it that look in the picture.

And lastely,  I changed the colour of the trees in the living room from green to brown and they look a lot better.  I am very pleased with it now.  I will eventually be hanging chocolate brown curtains in the living room as well.

Ok, now back to work.  I've still a great deal to do.  :0)

I love colour

I love colour.  Oh my,  I have been so deprived all my life.  (kidding)  I have always lived in places where I have had to have neutral coloured walls because either I was in a dorm room or in a rented housed where it was not allowed to be painted.  Well, now I own my first home and every wall is a fresh canvas.  I am not a quiet type of personality and I love brilliance.  I love colour!!

Anyway,  I may be going a little crazy but it is only paint and I can repaint when I'm ready for neutral again.  Right now I'm not.  so I'm going to show you my living room and tomorrow I'll show you my kitchen.

We have a new Home

Hi Everyone
We are finally back online.  We have a new home that we bought out in the country.  It is nice and has lots of potential for wonderful future plans should time last long enough.  We are in the process of doing what every new home owner has to do and that is figuring out all the quirks of this house.  It is an old house so there are several suprises but so far nothing too bad.  Our land is completely fenced and ready for animals but I think I will prefer to till it all under and garden it instead.  There is 5 years worth of horse manure which should make it fairly rich.  The fence will still come in handy to keep the wild critters out. 
We saw a buffilo (?) and her calf walk by the back fence the other day and that was very cool.  Later there were Caribou.  We are enjoying the sunrises and sunsets here too, as we have a lot less trees and can see a lot more sky.  It also provides for a lot more sunlight. 
My kitchen is extensive and lacks nothing.  I love it.  Our living room is large but needs more lighting which we will have to work on.  Our master bedroom is small but has a large closet space which we turned half into Art's office.  Unfortunately the last people who lived here painted every wall a deep burgandy and allowed their cat to pee all over the bedroom carpet.  So, I've painted the walls, ripped out the carpet and am in the process of re-doing it all.  The boys rooms will be painted as well. 
The house is small but will be sufficient.  There is a shop though, that is Art's pride and joy.  The shop is a double garage twice as long.  It also boasts two attached sheds for storage and parking for bikes.  It also has a paint booth for painting airplanes, cars, kayaks, and canoes, whatever, my husband is working on.
Our neighbours are old but very into wood working and have come over to let us know that they have a fully equipped wood working shop that he would be happy to help us build anything.  That is so great for the boys.
The neighbours on the other side are horse people and so we have a constant veiw of horses out to pature.  It's pretty.
We are less then a kilometer away from the hotsprings and I intend to make use of them all winter if I can afford it.  The Wildlife Preserve (which is our zoo around here) boasts all kinds of wild yukon animal.  My favorite is the musk ox.  Anyway, they are our neighbours at our back fence hence the buffilo and caribou.  I have also found out that if will cost us only $50 for a family pass for the year and we can bike, ski, snow shoe, walk or bus tour through there anytime we want.  What a great Sabbath activity.  I can hardly wait.
Well,  I'll catch you up with some pictures later. 
I've got more unpacking to do.
Julie

craft fair coming up

We have been very busy lately getting ready for the craft fair coming up at the end of October. 
However, I still have some orders to fill too and one of them was for a stuffy toy for a baby.  The lady who wants it bought a teddy bear from me a while back but has another grandbaby to buy for now and wanted something different.  I asked her what she would like and she said "I don't know, come up with something."  Oh,  I hate orders like that but here goes and we'll see if she likes it.

Caleb is also working hard and learning to sew really well.  Practice is making perfect.  He is determined to sell mittens so if you know anyone who would like to buy some of his special home made wool mittens he would love to sell lots.  He is trying to raise money for his trip to Africa. 
I did the design on the back of the fancy mittens and helped with the sewing on the first few but now he is able to sew them all on his own.  He is quite proud of his work and he calls them "Penguin Mittens".  Here is his poster.

Here are the mittens.

Jacob is not to be left out though and has been very busy making what he calls, "Skinny Scarves".  The are more for class then for warmth but they would work for either.  Here he is with several that he has already knitted (he knits them with his fingers).  He loves doing it!

And here is me, wearing one of them.  I have it folded in half so it is not so very long.  They add a nice touch I think.