I took an unplanned hiatus last week for so many reasons.  Opa arrived last Monday for his annual visit.  We have been having lots and lots of fun. Swimming, fishing, going to the SuperEx, hanging out on Parliament Hill, going to Museums, birthday dinners and walks in parks.  Packing it all into ten days.  He leaves tomorrow morning, we are sad to see him go and only wish that he would make Ottawa his home again or at the very least a semi-annual home.

I also had a crazy pumpkin hat order.  My biggest one yet.  I had an order for twelve hats and they were to be delivered in two weeks.  It was a challenge so I knit my way through the last two weeks, every spare moment I had including driving in the car to all these awesome places.  As much as I enjoy knitting, it was a bit much. So I may not do another order quite that big, but we will see I am always up for a challenge.

 I have also been busy photographing fabulous families.  I do love my job and am happy that I am getting busier and able to share with others.

Although I am not looking forward to J returning to school it will mean that we will have a return to some normalcy around here. Our summer has been chalk full of visiting and mini-vacations with those visitors.  We need to get back to eating right, proper bedtimes and organization.  My house feels like it is a mess and everything is upside down.  What I would really love is a two week extension on summer vacation just to hang out with my kids and do nothing.  What are my chances?

Last Friday night.  Yes, last Friday night, I know I don’t get to blog very often anymore, so it would seem.  I am actually looking forward to the end of the school year and our vacation just so I can get back into my blog full force. Either that or I will have to go back to work to have time to blog as being a Working at Home Mom leaves little time for my hearts desires.

So, last Friday night, a bunch of us got together for an evening of Card Making with A Crafty Mom. There were six of us in total, A Crafty Mom, Myself, Coffee and Commutes, Capital Mom , Gliding Lara, and Two Hands Full and I think I made enough desserts for fifteen of us, but it was all good, I just made sure to eat, I mean bring home the leftovers.

Shannon had a wonderful set up for us, we had five card stations set up with all the necessary tools to put the cards together.  Shannon did most of the labour intensive work we just got to paste and stamp, which is really the fun part of crafting anyway.

In between card making we got to chat and catch up.  It isn’t too often that I get a night out with friends so using the Card Making as an excuse to get together was great.  All of us have children and all of us need that little alone time to not worry about what is happening at home.  Although a couple of the brave Mom’s with smaller children made it solo and got some instant messages on their phones about how the kids were doing with Mom out of the house. For all the fun we had, we will have to find another occasion to get together and make cards for, I am thinking Christmastime, but in November or earlier. And next time we will need to have a few more hands in the mix, with more stories to tell.

As a side note, my blog will be having a birthday next week!!!  We are turning FIVE!  Stay tuned for a few giveaways in celebration!

I have been wondering what to get J’s teachers for their end of year gifts, then I remembered I could make Thank You Cards, something teachers use all the time.  So I teamed up with A Crafty Mom,  who offered a great Valentine’s Card Making Class that I had to miss out on.

If you would like to join us the details are as follows:

Make-a-Stack Class
Friday, June 11th 7:00pm - 9:30pm

Join me as A Crafty Mom and I host a stamping class where you will make five or ten beautiful and unique cards, absolutely perfect for end-of-year Teacher’s gifts.

COST: $20 for a pack of 5 cards
$35 for a pack of 10 cards
(covers the class, the cost of materials, and one white envelope per card)

This class will be simple enough for the new or basic stamper, with a few challenges thrown in for more advanced crafters. You will leave with a pack of 5 or 10 cards with greetings of your choice (choose from Thank You, Birthday, and Thinking of You).  A pack of five hand-made cards makes an extra special gift for an elementary or preschool teacher.  Or use the cards yourself to express that special sentiment to someone you care about.

Please RSVP to me or A Crafty Mom by Monday, June 7th, as spaces are limited.  For more information, leave a comment and I will e-mail you directly.

As I was breaking out the tulle this morning to make a few more Tutus I realized that I never blogged about my homemade Christmas this year, even worse is that I didn’t take pictures of their presents all boxed and ready to go.  And honestly I didn’t make a lot, for my family, as I spent way too much time making stuff for the craft show, that I didn’t leave time to get the family stuff all made.

So, I improvised.  My Sisters got a mix of hand made stuff left over from the craft show, with a movie, a recipe book and a wine guide for making a date night at home.  My nephews got handmade DS cases, made out of neoprene and some money to treat themselves.  And my nieces each got a Tutu with some money to treat themselves.

Apple got a Tutu as well.  Here, I was thinking she was going to love it and I would have lots of pictures of my sweet little girl dancing around in her Tutu with her princess shoes on.  Well, she has worn it once, and that is it.  I love the Tutu, it is so fun and fluffy.  With a Tutu you can be a ballerina or a princess, the choice is yours.  I still remember my Tutu I had as a little girl, I wore it until it was no more.

So for now, all I have to show you is a photo of Apple’s Tutu and hope that in time, she will want to wear it more.  Now, back to making some Tutus for other little girls, who apparently love them.

It is Sunday and I am beat.  Yesterday was the craft show at WO Mitchell in Kanata.  All went well and my Mom even came out to hold my hand for me.  Well, keep me company is more like it.  This is the table we set up.

Most of my little hats went.  And some of the cloth gift bags.

Soothing Bath Salts (extras are up in my shop, if you are local contact me directly to avoid shipping) and soaps were a good hit too.  As were the magnets.  The remaining desk calenders and note cards are up in my Etsy shop .

I didn’t sell as many prints as I would have liked and I do have some Christmas cards left over (which will be up in the shop later tonight).  I did get a good response to my Family Photo sessions, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

Thank you so much to Chatal, Shannon and Caroline (who is still blogless) who came out to see me and show me support. It really meant a lot to me.  And thank you Lynn for making me be creative!

Now back to my regularly scheduled programming.

Life has been a little crazy chez BeachMama.

In September Lynn asked me if I wanted to participate in a craft show.  I looked at what I had around or could get together and said sure.  Well the craft show is this Saturday and although I think I have quite a bit of stuff I am also wondering if I have enough.

I have a selection of fine art prints ready and packaged up.

Some magnets  and note cards I put together.

A good variety of children’s hats.

Some soap and bath salts, coffee cozy’s and a few other things that I didn’t take pictures of.  I am also doing up some cloth gift bags in this holiday print I had lying around.  Tonight will be spent at my sewing machine, I think.

We also fit in a trip to Montréal to celebrate and say good-bye to Uncle Doug as well as a visit with my cousin who came up to share in the celebrations.

Add to all of that, the fact that I had the pleasure of a family photo session with A Crafty Mom and her family (more photos can be viewed here), life has really been crazy.

Hopefully when the craft show wraps up this weekend, I will have much more time to spend here again.

Friday morning as I was so excited to bring the Beach to school, J woke up coughing and hasn’t stopped.  To make things worse in addition to the cough he had a fever, again.  Since school started he has now had three colds.  One a few days before Christmas holidays, the second over the long Family Day weekend and now this third one, at the start of March Break.   Now, I will need a break!

Poor guy, his fever got so high on Friday night that I slept beside him worried that I was going to have to bring him to the hospital.  Thankfully the medication kicked in and it started to come down. He was so hot his hands were like mini hot water bottles, which really made me nervous. This was his highest fever yet at 39.9C (103.8F).

Thankfully, the weather was fabulous this weekend so Saturday afternoon we put the kids in their jackets and headed outside in the backyard.  Despite being 10C (50F) both kids had their Winter jackets on, just in case.  Here are a few photos of the fun.

Apple and J were getting ready to play soccer, with the basketball that somehow got left out all winter long.  I was amazed to find what J and the neighbour’s boy dumped out of the storage bin beside the house before the snow fell.  I should say not impressed instead of amazed.  Next year the bin will have to go into the garage again.

 Here the kids are playing soccer with Hubby.  Apple kept picking it up to bring it back to them, but she was totally loving being included for once.

 J asked me if he needed to shave, I happened to catch the photo?  Not sure where that came from, he asks the funniest questions sometimes.  He actually got out of his pj’s today! I mean, I made him put clean ones on every day, but he actually wore pants and a sweater today, so I knew he was feeling better.  That and his fever broke last night before i went to bed so now we are contending with the cough.

And sweet little Apple.  She is so happy to finally be allowed to run around the backyard.  She was able to a little last fall before the snow came, but all Winter long she had to watch the kids have fun because the snow was too deep.  She is in all her glory.  And I found her a pair of splash pants on Sunday so she wouldn’t get any more of her pants dirty.

And this is what I have been working on this past weekend.  These cute little birds are going to be part of Cooper’s Flock.  I first heard of Cooper through Susan B. Anderson’s blog.  I thought they were cute birds and clicked over to Lucinda’s page to hear the story of Cooper and his flock.  If you are interested in helping out please click over to Lucinda’s blog, but be warned to bring a tissue or two.

About a month ago Secret Agent Josephine wrote a post introducing The Daily Grommet.  You could leave a comment to win one of two Valentine’s goodies.  One was some chocolate sauce and the other was a Homemade Valentine’s Card kit.

I checked out The Daily Grommet and watched a few cool videos. The Daily Grommet is a website that promotes unique and creative gifts using short videos from their creators and a member of the Daily Grommet team.  It is quite neat, if you have a moment you should check it out.

Now, it wasn’t a condition of winning to blog about it, but I really think this is cool so I had to share.  And, oops, I guess I should say that I won!  Which in itself is very cool because I never win anything and my random number came up that day.

To my shock today, a parcel arrived in the mail from Massachusetts (it has been so long since I have spelled Massachusetts, that I am feeling like I have spelled it wrong) with my Valentine’s Art Kit.  So I snapped a few photos to share.  And although Valentines has passed, I could either make up some cards without the Valentine’s words or wait until next year and make up some cards for Valentine’s 2010.

This kit truly speaks to my love of all things paper side, so I will enjoy putting together a few cards at my leisure one day.  Thank you Secret Agent Josephine and Daily Grommet!

For my Birthday I received a gift card to my favorite store.  If I had a lot of money, I could have put it towards a new lens or camera, but since I don’t have a lot of money, I wanted to buy myself something I would normally not buy.  And it had to be paid for in full by the gift card.

So, this is what I bought.

A Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet.  It was on sale, complete with free shipping.

I have but one complaint.  I can’t use it on my lap.   So I have waited until today to set it up and take it out of the box, because I had to clean up my sewing table/craft desk/office.  It took me all week to get stuff put away and tidied up enough that I could sit comfortably and break out the tablet.

I actually moved the sewing machine out of the way completely, which in itself is very bizarre as I sew almost every day or two.  At least a couple times a week.  This is just a temporary situation, until I get this room organized properly.

 I am quite excited about this as Mac’s have several applications that a tablet can be used with.  And most of all I can use it when editing photos.  Will I use it a lot?  I don’t know yet, but it sure is fun.

For the record I am not a drawing artist, but I can scribble now and then.

Ahh, finally I can post about what on earth was keeping me busy in December.  Note to self: do it all in November next year.

The handmade goodies.  So far so good, they are all being enjoyed.  Only two foibles to speak of, one being that the pj’s for the kids were way too long (fine for the kids close to me so I can hem them up, not so fine for those out West, but they are wearing them anyway) and the other being that my Mom and I both thought one of my nephews had a green jacket, so I made a green hat and his jacket is blue!   Not sure how we both thought that, but the green hat looks good on him (still don’t have a photo to share) so he will keep it.

To start with, I decided to do up family PJ’s.  Pink Camo flannel for the girls and Grey Camo flannel for the boys.  I found a pattern that did the whole family, however, in hindsight, I should have measured the kids against J.  I was trying to hide it from him as I did a set for us as well.  Which we all wore on Christmas Eve together.   With the pants I also did a Team T-shirt (which I didn’t show) that has ‘Team XXX”.  XXX being the last name of the family.   I did up some iron on transfers and bought a whack of t-shirts at Wally World.

For the adults, I included my Desk Calendars, I had some trouble getting the guys calendars cut properly, so my Brother-in-Law out West got the square version.   I also attempted my first soap, which turned out neat but I know what I would do differently next time.  So my Sister’s all got a bar of soap in their gift boxes as well.

As well as the Pj’s my nieces and nephews each got a small (read $5) toy and a handmade hat.

Each hat patter was picked with the niece or nephew in mind.  And I chose each colour depending on their snowsuits.  My baby nephew got the cute navy and green one, with three little pompons at the top.  My littlest niece got the pink and white paper bag style.  Which when I put it on Apple’s head I almost kept it for her.  I can do one for he myself now if I want though.  The orange one is for my older nephew, it is the same style as the one I did for some cousins and J.  J insisted that they have the same one.   And last of all (from this batch) is the cherry hat.  This is for my eldest niece and I just thought that the dangling cherries is something that she would like.  That and the fact that her coat is red.

I forgot to take photos of the last two hats I made and have yet to get one of my nephew’s hat (the green one that should have been blue).  But here is a photo of my shy little niece wearing her hat.  She loved it and wouldn’t take it off all Christmas day.  She really hates it when I try to take pictures of her so I have to work at it.  I only have a couple of her face and it usually takes me all day to get to that point.  Funny because all the rest of them love it when I take their pictures.  Hers was a white with flecks of raspberry to match her raspberry coat.

Now what to do for next year?!