The First Pictures

Dear Baby,

Going through the thousands of pictures of you is a momentous task. Thousands of pictures, each one with a tiny nuance or slightly different facial expression and how can I possibly choose which to keep and which to delete into digital nothingness?

I'm getting there, slowly, but there's a folder of pictures I just don't like to open. Not yet. It's the folder of the first photos of you.

I avoid looking at them, even now, because it's just too hard, yet.

September and October.

This Week: An Announcement! {BIG NEWS! "This Week" Is Moving!}

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you are probably familiar with my chatty weekly round up of pictures and blessings and links.

It started up as Blessings this Week, and then changed to This Week, and now it's changing again! 

Sorry to be jerking you around.

I haven't been writing much (focusing instead on learning how to mom and other projects), but I really miss writing here. I need to get back into it. But I've been... overwhelmed. And I needed to make some changes.

Small Wonder

In this moment...

I could worry about germs

I could be concerned about splinters

I could think about how I really should sand and refinish our front porch

Makers Gonna Make

This little corner of the internet has been pretty quiet this summer.

Writing here on this blog has been an awesome creative outlet for me, but with a little baby sucking up most of my mental energy, words have been... not... coming. (See? No vocabulary left.)


My daily allotment of words have been going to these sentences:

"No no, that is not a safe activity. Find a safe activity, please!" 

"Happy guy! 

"Do you want to nurse? Nuuuuuuurrrrrrse?" 

"Cords are not for babies!"

"Biiiiiiig boy! Biiiiiiiig boy!"

And after saying those things over and over all day, there's not much left in my brain for blogging.

But! I've been spending my summer pouring creativity out elsewhere.

Here's what I've been making this summer!

Cow's It Going? : a bovine adventure

Today, during our usual living room playtime, I noticed cattle in our pasture.

This wouldn't be a problem.... except that our pasture isn't supposed to have cattle in it. Currently, it's got about 50 little delicate baby trees that might make a delicious snack for some cattle. And also, there's not a good fence between our pasture and the cornfield, so these cows-gone-rogue could get themselves good and lost in the cornfield pretty easily.

Trevor got out the four-wheeler and it was off to get some cattle back home.

DIY Onesie Extenders

We love (LOVE) cloth diapering. It's been going really well so far- we haven't had any issues at all, I'm not adding to a landfill, and they've more than halfway paid themselves off already.

The only trouble we've come across is that sometimes onesies don't cooperate over the extra fluffy bum. We end up with compression leaks when the snaps are too tight in the crotch area, or we have to size up the onesies so they are long enough to go over the larger cloth diapers.

So I took it upon myself to make a couple extenders!

Gradient Dyeing (or 'Ombre' Dyeing) a Woven Wrap Using the Siphon Method

When I made my first DIY woven baby wrap carrier, I decided that I didn't want to dye it (at least not right away). Part of my reasoning was that the baby was already born and ready to be worn when I made my first wrap, and I was antsy to get started wrapping him, and partially it seemed a little daunting... so I just kept my wrap natural. I've worn my baby in a "natty" wrap for the past five plus months, and I love that wrap. The one thing that's not ideal about my natural wrap is that it's hard to tell which rail is which, so learning new carries requires extra close attention, and tightening can be a little tricky sometimes, too.

When my sister in law mentioned that she might like me to make a woven wrap for her, though, I decided it was a perfect opportunity to do some experimenting with dye. I asked her if she'd prefer a certain color, and when she said she'd maybe like pink, I fell down the rabbit hole of different dye colors and methods and I neglected all my responsibilities doing research.

So, after lots of research and planning, I decided to go with a gradient (or "grad") dye, rail to rail.