Ready to mail...

That's right... I've finally got those baby announcements ready to mail. Yay!! It's too late for today, so they'll have to go out on Monday, but they're done! And Eliana's not even 2 weeks old yet. Now... how to fit 80 baby announcements into our little mail slot....

It shouldn't come as a surprise...

... but I haven't done any scrapbooking since my little Eliana was born almost a week ago. We have, however, taken a LOT of pictures, so the scrapbooking will happen. I have some ideas I'd like to do, but we haven't printed photos yet. Over 400 and she's only 6 days old. But boy is she precious. She's fairly mesmerizing - sleeping, awake... whenever. It's just amazing.

Well...

I didn't get all 17 PBA finished at craft night last night. It would have been nice, but I didn't. I did, however, get 3 completely sewn and now all they need is a few embellishments. I'm thinking it'll be a while before I get around to them again as I'm supposed to be having a baby today. We'll see. Labor and Delivery at Bozeman Deaconess seems to be the local hotspot today and I'm waiting for them to call back to say that somebody else had a baby and vacated a delivery room for me. Then I can go in and have my turn. I tried going back to sleep - no luck. At least Leif is getting to sleep in, though. He didn't sleep well last night, but I did. Now I'm just at a loss for what to do to occupy my time until they call me back and say it's my turn. Babies... such nerve-wracking little creatures. I'm guessing I haven't even seen the half of it, either. But... again... either I trust God and His timing or I don't. And the truth is that I do. So even while I'm anxious about getting this whole baby thing underway, I know that God already has it planned. He knows His timing, His plans plans for our life and the life of our child, and how He will use them to glorify Himself. Now if I could just get past myself and my selfish desire to be privy to those plans we'd be in good shape. =)

Craft Night

Craft night is tonight. I was hoping not to go - you know, to be otherwise disposed... in the hospital having a baby or something. Well, it looks like I'll be craft nighting after all. Maybe I'll take my sewing machine and sew like a mad woman on those paper bag albums. Yeah... maybe that's what I'll do....

PBA Marathon

I've been making Paper Bag Albums like CRAZY yesterday and today. It's just too fun! I made up a set for the baby's first year to send to my family since they won't be around to see most of her first year first hand. Then I just had so much fun cutting paper I've got a slew of albums ready to be assembled and stitched. 5 PBA completed and another 7 to be finished. I'm having too much fun. At least it keeps me busy!

Flower Storage

While my inner mother is a bit discouraged after today's Dr. appointment, my inner martha is pretty excited about my new silk flower storage. I got the idea from two peas to store silk flower in jewel cases.

I haven't made a cool storage box for the jewel cases yet, but at least I got my flowers in them. Makes it pretty easy to flip through flower inventory by color quickly. I've been wanting to do this for a while now and today, well - today was the day.

Candy Thermometer Conspiracy

Someone is conspiring against me. I don't know why, but they are. They've gone and bought all the candy thermometers in Bozeman. It's a weird thing to be sold out of at Walmart, but for Walmart, Target, AND Baker Street (which is a baking supply store) to all be sold out? I call it a conspiracy. I own my own candy thermometer and haven't even been able to find that one, so they might have come and stolen it, too. Maybe today I will try Albertsons in Belgrade. The thermometer swipers can't have taken all of those, too, can they?

2 peas milestone

I just made my 1500th comment on 2ps! Milestone... Obsession, call it what you like. =)

All Ready...

Okay, so I have 80 baby announcements ready to go, envelopes addressed (I love printing labels - will HAVE to do this for our Christmas cards from now on!), stamped, and ready to be stuffed. 40 of one kind of announcement, 40 of another. Come on, baby, come out and play already!! The world wants to meet you! (And Mommy spent so very much time making adorable announcements... people want to see THEM, too!)

To Do Today....

My parents expect to arrive around 3:00 this afternoon. Prior to their arrival, I need (or want) to accomplish the following things:

1. Move the pile of decorations in the guest room. CHECK
2. Make the 2nd guest bed. CHECK
3. Go to Kenyon Noble and buy a shelf bracket.
4. Reinstall the lowest pantry shelf and relocate the food from the table to the pantry.
5. Empty and refill the dishwasher.
6. Clean the kitchen.
7. Watch Martha Stewart at 1:00.
8. Dust the house.
9. Vacuum the basement rooms. CHECK
10. Clean the craft room (at least the sewing table).
11. Wash, Dry, and put away laundry.
12. Make a batch of rice to go with dinner.
13. Do my hair and makeup.
14. Tidy bedroom.
15. Water plants.
16. Make sure the basement bathroom is clean and has toilet paper. CHECK
17. Tidy and clean the front bathroom.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now. We'll see how much I can accomplish in the next 3 hours. I should have gotten some of this done a long time ago. Yep. Procrastination. Let's see how efficient I can really be.

Pies and Yogurt and Applesauce, Oh My!

Domestic goddess that I am (or maybe just a nesting 39-week pregnant woman), I've been baking up a storm in the kitchen this week. It started on Saturday with bagels. Kendra and Zac and Lily came over, so while Zac and Leif were working in the basement, Kendra and I made some bagels. I like bagels and they freeze well... plus I wanted to play. So we made some plain, onion, and apple cinnamon bagels. The plain and onion bagels turned out great. The apple cinnamon need to be tweaked a little more.

Then I decided to make my own yogurt. I'm hoping to be able to make most of Phoebe's baby food myself, either dehydrating for reconstitutable purees or freezing or canning. Martha had a segment about making your own yogurt, so I decided to give it a whirl. My verdict: it's cheap, easy, and you know exactly what goes into your baby's food, then. Plain yogurt is NASTY. But add some fruit and some sugar (or vanilla) and you've got a pretty good thing going.

Sunday I got the craze to make pies. Don't know why - I don't like making pies. But for some reason I just HAD to. So I made a no-bake cheesecake and 4 mini cheesecakes as well as a strawberry pie and 2 mini strawberry pies.

I also made up a bunch of taco meat and froze it so we'd have ready-to-go meat after the baby is born, when I get a hankerin' for tacos, as I have so often. =)

Last night I really wanted to make salt-water taffy. But, alas, I seem to have lost my candy thermometer. So, after adding "candy thermometer" to the shopping list, I settled for making some crockpot applesauce instead. I probably won't be ambitious enough to can it, but it will freeze.

Oh, and I made some strawberry sundae sauce (though I'm sure it will be good on pancakes, too) while I was in the kitchen. It's just one thing after another, it seems.

I also completely reorganized the pantry and the whole kitchen. Poor Leif can't find anything anymore! But it is a much better way of organizing things, if you ask me. I did end up with one cupboard that's completely empty, though, so I'll have to see what I can do to remedy that. Haven't decided what I want up there yet.

So... we'll see what I'm up for today. I really ought to get down to the basement and tidy up before my folks arrive tomorrow. But I still have a couple apple pies on the brain... We'll see, I guess. We'll see.

Baby Mobile

This is the baby mobile made by my friend Catherine for our nursery. I needed a way to attach it to the crib, so my project today was making a mobile frame. I think it turned out nicely and the mobile is just too cute. The stars are origami and she included some extras that I put over the changing table in the armoire.

self portrait

Taken in the airport on my way to Texas in March