Much of the same

It feels like we've been playing catch-up since my last post and I wish I could rewind time for a chance to slow things down and get things done. (I haven't even sent out my Christmas cards... eek!)

I did a little bit of working over Christmas taking Santa photos. Even though you can get some trying customers, I really enjoy it (this is the second year I've done it).
We had our usual busy Christmas, opening presents here with Grandma on skype, off to SIL's quickly to give presents then to MIL/FIL's for lunch and then off to visit some extended family for dinner. I'm always amazed at how many people are on the roads on Christmas day. It's a really common thing for people to visit multiple family members on the big day (it's like everyone tries to cram visiting every single family member in on one day) so there's a typical rush in the morning, just before/after lunch and just before/after dinner. Despite all the rushing around and driving, we had a great day.

The garden has hit it's peak and is now on the way down. We've gotten a few dozen grape and cherry sized tomatoes off our little plant and we'll get about a dozen regular sized tomatoes off our other bushes. They've struggled quite a bit with the heat - especially since our nights haven't been cooling off at all. I managed to get one very pathetic looking carrot and hopefully we'll be harvesting some corn in a few weeks.

My flowers have definitely hit their peak, I need to get out there and clean things up a bit. I was at the store yesterday and all the spring bulbs are out! So excited! I bought some tulip bulbs (my favourite) and I'll pick up a few other things, it seems like I have way better luck with bulbs than I do seeds. I might pick up a few big pots for out front to put bulbs in.

Other than that, there's been a few crafty projects which I might save for other posts and of course the regular baby wrangling. Except I think I need to start calling her a toddler now!

Christmas Crafting

On Fridays Aurora and I go to rhyme time at the local library and most of the time two of the girls from MG come along. To make it worth the drive for them we try to go for a bit of a walk and we usually always have lunch (there is an awesome chicken shop in the shops by the library). This week we decided to do some Christmas crafts as well.
I whipped up some corn starch dough using this recipe. I made six batches of white, three batches of red and two batches of green (I coloured the dough with Wilton's Icing Gels - the red took a lot of dye, one small pot of Christmas Red, No-taste red and about a quarter of a pot of burgundy, the green was one pot of kelly green).

There are a few reasons I chose to do corn starch rather than the traditional salt dough and one of them was that these corn flour ornaments were VERY white, a lot of the salt dough ornaments I've seen are sort of yellow-y. Another was that I happened to have corn starch and baking soda on hand (I later went to the store for more to make my mega batches) and another was that I get baker's eczema from flour and even though it's not that bad, I try to avoid it when I can.

After our lunch we got to work kneading and rolling out the dough. We decided to do our white ornaments first then our green and then our red to avoid colour mixing. The dough kneaded up beautifully and was very smooth.

We made a little over two dozen white ornaments, and a little over one dozen each of the red and green before the girls had to go.

After the girls left I made a few of my own ornaments. Aurora was asleep while they were here so I didn't get to do her hand print ornaments earlier in the day. The girls also left me their cookie cutters to use so I decided to cut out some letters. No idea what I'll do with them (glue them onto a plaque?) but they might make cute Christmas presents.

We're going to get together to decorate our handprints (we're going to turn them into Santas) and then we'll take some of the others to MG to decorate on the 12th.

Sewing

Summer is coming down here so I've been itching to get into the sewing room to make a few more hats for Aurora. I made two bonnets for our trip to Canada and ended up giving one to a family member who has a daughter about 4 months younger than Aurora.

The pattern I'm using is great and the bonnet is simple to put together. It takes me about an hour and a half or so to do one (with picking out and ironing the fabric, cutting everything out and putzing around and checking on a sleeping baby). So if I'm lucky I can get one totally finished while Aurora naps.

I'm in the process of looking for a good pattern for a Christmas dress for Aurora. For some reason there's a distinct lack of red/white/green clothes around here. I had a heck of a time finding Aurora Christmas pjs last year (I managed to find a pair while we were in Canada a few months ago, I was so excited!). I don't necessarily want something froofy and fancy, just a cute dress I can sew fairly easily with some Christmas fabric. I need to figure it out in a few weeks so we can do some Christmas photos (crazy that we're already thinking of Christmas isn't it?!).

I'll hopefully get some action shots of Aurora in the new bonnets in the next few days, she's been kind of uncooperative the last few times she's been wearing them. Until then, here's a picture of her wearing one from our trip to Canada.