River Merida

River Merida was born at the end of last month, and we are so happy to have her home! Due to jaundice issues, she and I had to go back and stay at the hospital another two nights beyond the first three day stay, and it was really hard on her to not be held very much. She really hated the eye mask she had to wear, because she loves to look around!
Here are some pictures of our little girl in the beautiful blanket my mom made. I like the first one and the fourth one best (because it shows her face the most). Which do you like?
 I was so happy to have this blanket for our pictures, because it's way too cold in our house to even try the traditional naked baby pictures.

10 portraits and a partridge in a pear tree

This Christmas season, I had approximately a month and a half to finish ten portraits. To put this in perspective, last year I did four commissioned portraits over three months, and barely got them done in time! But I was up to the challenge, and it was fun to have something to work on.
Really, it was five kids to be drawn twice over. I assume to be given to two recipients?  For those persons of whom I had multiple pictures, I chose a different photo reference for their second portrait to mix it up a bit. But there were two kids that I had to draw the same picture twice, which wasn't as bad as I thought.
And I got them done and sent in time! Here they are,  both versions one after the other.

This group picture shows some of the color better- at least on the ones furthest away from the light source. It's weird how some of these were really similar in color in life, but because the photos were taken on different days the light made the colors look different. Oh well.
I like both of the baby ones, especially the one with the hand on the right- I like the hand.

Christmas Quilt

For Christmas this year, I decided to make Elora her own quilt that fits on her twin bed. Really, we just have tons of jeans and I hate throwing them away. Since I finished that quilt in May, I figured it wouldn't hurt to make a few more. This one turned out even better, because I knew more about what I was doing!
In making these quilts, I've discovered: I hate following patterns and symmetry , I like discovering ways to fit things together- like Tetris! And I'm still not very good at sewing, but its fun to come up with creative ways to hide that fact.
Elora's quilt is thicker and might I say prettier than the first one I made. She loves red, so I got some material that was super soft and pretty. Bonus, some of the jeans I used had some red detailing already! I got thicker batting too, so it's nice and fluffy.
 I tried to use a lot of Elora's old jeans that had fancy pockets or patches that added that unique touch.























Considering that the kids always fight over the other quilt when I get it out, I think she'll really like this one!

This was a patch in Elora's pants

I added some embellishment to the patches with light pink thread.  The patches are mostly used to tie the quilt together and add visual interest- also to obscure long lines that show where the sections were joined together.

These pockets were cute too!

It's hard to tell without any context, but the quilt is about 53" wide, and 100" long. I almost wish it was for me!

Halloween

Look, it's not even December and I'm writing about Halloween. yay!

There was the night we made Halloween sugar cookies: they lasted for almost a month! Joseph made vanilla, orange, raspberry, and lemon frosting for us to frost them with. I would have just made one kind, so that was very exciting for all. The lemon was the best, by the way.


















We did jack-o-lanterns too of course. The last two years I didn't even get one because it seemed like too much work after helping everyone else, but this year I decided to get a small pumpkin that I could decorate with paint. It was pretty fun! It helped that Josh and Elora could do there own, and daddy helped Jonah.


















I had to pick out everyone else's gourds because they weren't with me at the store, but everyone seemed pretty happy that they were close to what they wanted. Josh got the biggest, Elora the roundest, and Jonah the longest. Eli was with me and picked one with a funny bump, while daddy's had warts! We didn't know that meant it would be hard to carve. Good thing it was daddy's.

we didn't take the picture 'till the next day.

The school had their regular festivities with the Halloween walk in the gym and parties in the classes.
For the first year they had the brilliant idea of having the drum circle play some pow wow songs instead of playing scratchy Halloween songs on a cd player. The idea worked, because it was the first time in five years that I saw all the kids actually dancing as they went around the gym. Too bad they started it after the kindergarten had already walked around somberly.

 
Jonah got second place in his class, and Josh got first. Eli and I got to walk around with other preschoolers and parents, and we both got our own bag of candy for participating.
Elora was very disappointed that she didn't get to win anything, but she still had a fun day. She designed her face paint herself (in a drawing) and we spent a lot of time putting butterflies in her hair and on her clothes.

 





 
 Eli stayed all afternoon at Daddy- and Joshua's- class party. They had tons of treats while they watched Harry Potter! Eli was in heaven. Especially with the bag of candy he got at the costume parade in the gym!

I wanted a costume to capitalize on my belly.

Halloween itself was actually not on a school day. We were rushed getting everyone in their costumes because it was already getting dark. Cute.

Happy Halloween!