2008 Family Calendar

Jordy's family has a great tradition of making a family calendar every year with pictures from the year and everyone's birthdays and anniversaries. I thought that this year, having a great collection of pictures from the wedding, I would make a calendar for my dad's side of the family. I used the photo booth photos from our wedding to make a 5.5x8 calendar held together with a binder clip. After an epic battle with my parents' printer, they finally got printed out exactly right- I also included a t-pin for hanging them. There they are at the bottom, all ready to be distributed at Christmas eve.

Form and Function

Merry Christmas! I hope that you are having a great holiday, and that Santa brought you something that suits you perfectly. We are finished opening presents, and are enjoying our coffee and A Christmas Story. Later on, I will be found printing things, and Jordy will be found packing and re-packing all of his clothes.
for me: Photoshop CS3 (!!!); rubber stamps (!!!); and a Gocco(!!!). for Jordy: very practical socks and underwear; shirts; and a packing organizing system.

Teddy Speck

All of us know one of those people who is good at everything he or she does, who can pick up pretty much any material and make that piece of clay, paper, metal, etc. into exactly what it was supposed to be all along. Meet Teddy Speck, who is my friend Speck's brother. He is already great at pottery and knitting, and has now come out with a fabulous line of earrings that he handcrafts out of wood. They are super affordable, especially for how beautiful they are. You can pick them up on etsy.

Finished!

I realized that I never posted finished pics of the quilt I was working on for Emily's daughter, Charlotte- here it is, with a little company:


I decided to bind with the polka dots- this was the first time that I had bound a quilt, so it ended up not being as neat as I wanted, but there's always next time to get it even better. I did a minimal amount of machine quilting on the outer border, but kept the area inside the ruffle just hand-tied so that it would stay really soft. I got to give this to Emily about a month ago at her shower, which was a ton of fun. There were no baby games, which was a relief to everyone involved. Charlotte was born on Wednesday- a beautiful girl with all ten fingers and ten toes- both mom and daughter are healthy and happy. Yay!

Printed

We just had a delicious dinner with Emma and Drew. She made an eggplant dish- I can't remember what it was called- with mozzerella, portabello mushrooms, ricotta, and eggplant- it was phenomenal. For dessert, we had a cookie plate and mint hot cocoa. If she's not careful, I might end up moving in with her. Anywho, they printed out the save the dates today and I got a sneak peek. She chose a smaller card than she had originally thought that she wanted to use, and it looks really, really good. Emma and Drew feel like the design "looks like them", and (toot, toot) I agree! It's funky, but still very vintage-y, with a great color scheme that Emma chose (I'll post about her bridesmaids' dresses here later). They also think that it looks a little like a Grateful Dead concert poster, which alludes to the fact that they both used to be hippies. I like them both a great deal anyway. Here they are printed out (again, excuse the crappy camera):

Puppies!

Usually, it irks me to no end when you buy something online and are then the recipient of 12 million catalogues and 14 thousand emails every day from the company from which you ordered. However, there is a little company, Organic Style, that sends me an email once in a blue moon because I ordered some flowers from them a while back. While their other stuff is, er, a little crunchy, their pet stuff is really cute. Look at this welcome-home gift for a new puppy! How great is this little set? The blanket would surely be headless within hours, but the thought! It's the thought that counts!
Getting our dog was not the most calculated decision that we ever made, so there was not a very long time for us to prepare for him to come home with us- in fact, we made our first trip to Petco with him in my lap. However, when I sent out a "birth announcement" for our new addition, our friends sent us a basket of gourmet doggie biscuits and treats. It was the most thoughtful and unexpected gift I think I have ever gotten. If someone you know is welcoming a new holiday puppy into their lives, this would be a perfect little gift to send. Here's the birth announcement we sent out- the title of the email was "It's a boy!"- I nearly gave my grandpa a heart attack...