Toast onsie

Toast onsie
Originally uploaded by craft room

One of our little friends LOVES toast. So for the holiday, I made him this Toast onsie.
Witness - a craft was done!

birthday number one

birthday number one
Originally uploaded by craft room

A year. Unbelievable.
This little being has made every day longer, bigger, brighter.
We did it!

I was talking to my mother about the AMAZING experience.
"Now I know" I said to her.
And she said "yes, now you know how much I love you."

A year later

A year later
Originally uploaded by craft room

A year ago I was pregnant.
The sex of the baby was a surprise. The due date was no where near. And Mom and I went out for Ice cream.

That's not all we did that day. !

Monday is coming

On the eve of "going back to work" day, (for Rob, not me) we are watching "Julie/Julia". The perfect antidote to "Food Inc."
And I am working on a decoration for Amelia's First Birthday. Actual CRAFTING. Wonderful!

Spritz Cookies

My mother made Spritz cookies every year for Christmas.
This year, I thought I would continue that tradition. I have had the press for years but have never actually DONE it.

I have a new respect for my Mom, and the tradition. These are fiddly little cookies!

First you make the dough. Then divide it up, and add the food coloring for the different shapes. Then refrigerate it.
Later, you come back, preheat the oven, and begin pressing out the cookies. If the dough is too cold, it does not come out of the metal tube. If it is too warm, it comes out fast, and kind of ‘breaks’ the shape that you want.
Then, once you have coaxed the dough down onto the sheet, and begged it to stay there, then you can decorate. ! Little sprinkles running everywhere, onto the cookies, off the cookies, down the sheet, onto the floor. It wouldn’t really be Christmas without colored sugar crackling underfoot, would it?

In the end, I learned how. And the results are oh, so tasty! I think I’ll do it again next year. And Amelia will be old enough to help shake sugar onto the floor. (oh, she was probably old enough to do that this year. )

Happy New Year

2009 is a year that many people are happy to see end.
It was a tumultuous year. But rather than catalog the horrors, (which, here to for shall be referred to as "transitions") we will focus on the good, glass over-flowing, wonder that 2009 brought.
All the cliches and all the emotions are all true. Amplified.
We had a baby.
Nothing will ever be the same.

Now that we have seen the year turn to 2010, I will have to begin to temper my comments. I will have to be graceful with my joy, and monitor my gushing, for fear of sounding like a Grandmother instead of a mother. But in the end, she is the best thing ever to land on the planet earth. No one is happier to see her in the morning. Even if she was up 1/2 the night. Her little angel face is a survival mechanism, honed over thousands of years.
Here we go, into a new decade.
We leave "the year she was born". And enter "the year she turned one".
Is that what kids are? The way you tell time?
Happy New Year! Happy New Decade! Happy "year one".