the goose

It started with this goose I found on Etsy. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and wanted one for myself. But, there were two tiny problems with this goose. First, the beak was all wrong. Kate and Spence are Chinese Swan Geese, and have large black beaks. Second, the goose's price tag; $157 dollars. The goose is beautiful, but I honestly cannot see myself spending that kind of money on something made of fabric and poly fill.

So, armed with the picture above and the picture below, I decided to try to make a fabric goose that looked like a Chinese Swan Goose. The Esty goose was made of hand dyed muslin, so I began with two yards of muslin and a box of grey dye. While I was away for the weekend worked on my goose. First, I sketched a pattern using the picture of Kate and Spence's parents. When I laid the pattern out on my two yards of hand dyed muslin, I realized I may have gone overboard on the fabric. Live and learn. I worked diligently. Cutting, sewing, and stuffing the goose. But my goose didn't look quite right. The neck was too skinny, too short, and too curved. My stuffed creation looked like a cross between a small swan and the number 2. So, I went back to the drawing board and made a bigger pattern with a longer, thicker, and straighter neck. At this point I was glad I had extra fabric. I wasn't sure how many versions of the pattern I would have to test before I got it right. I finished most of my goose over the weekend, but I'm still tinkering with the wings. I may make them a little fluffier. Whether I change the wings or not, I love the goose. It captures the essence of a Chinese Swan Goose and reminds me of Kate and Spence. Both of the kids love the goose. Grace said it was, by far, the best thing I'd ever made.

carrey's birthday weekend in the hill country

Weeks and weeks ago, Carrey's husband, Mike, put together a surprise birthday weekend for Carrey at his parents' amazing home near Wimberley. I'd been looking forward to the weekend away since I'd put it on my calendar.

With the weekend finally here, we set out Friday afternoon. We took the round about way to Wimberley via the San Marcos Outlets for a bit of shopping. Actually, we shopped until they closed the stores but we did take a short break from shopping and ate at Centerpoint Station. It's right across 35 from the outlet, and I've seen it a zillion times, but never knew it was a restaurant. From the outside it looks like an antique store. The food was amazing and I will not pass through San Marcos again without stopping there.

Once we made it out to Mike's parents' house, we set up our work stations. We'd all brought projects, and even though it was late, and we were tired, we got to work.

There were tables, sewing machines, cutting boards, ironing boards, fabric spread out, and paper crafts everywhere. It was like a Hobby Lobby exploded in the living room.

When we weren't inside working, we were outside, enjoying the amazing and beautiful Texas Hill Country. And when they say 'hill' they mean it.

I'm thinking maybe these guys figured out how to get past the cattle guards.

We took tons of pictures, ate I don't know how many birthday cakes, and drank Sangria like it was going out of style. I'm surprised that no one has a picture of our lovely red Sangria trough. It was a wonderful weekend.

so much to say

I had a crazy busy weekend and have more to blog about than time to blog. So, here's a quick glimpse at some of the exciting things I'm looking forward to sharing on my blog this week:

This weekend we headed out to the beautiful Texas Hill Country near Wimberley to celebrate Carrey's birthday and enjoy a girls' weekend away.... While we were away, I launched an ambitious project to create a stuffed fabric goose.... By newest and biggest incubator was completely full with 26 eggs.

Early this morning, they started hatching....

bunnies

Last night, I made Carrey a bunny cake for her birthday. Carrey and I are both big bunny fans.

The cake is similar to Grace's bunny cake, but all chocolate. The green grass on Grace's cake was supposed to be edible, but it was very much like chewing on green apple flavored straw. So for Carrey's cake I used chocolate shavings.

I gave Carrey her cake this morning. I think she liked it.

Happy Birthday, Carrey.

This afternoon, I finally finished a bunny I'd been working on for Sammy's baby, Max.

I ordered the pattern here, and love it. It was relatively easy to make, and I'm sure I'll be making more. Easter is still a month away : ) I gave the bunny to Max tonight. I think he liked it. Sammy told me that they have a tradition of naming stuffed animals after the people who gave them to her boys. So tonight we named Max's bunny Cooper. I love it!

tuesday

It's spring time. Which means this is what our back yard looks like. A thick blanket of live oak leaves.
The view from beneath our live oak canopy.

Live oak trees lose their old leaves at exactly the same time they grow new leaves. You can see the new leaves growing in at the top of the old leaves. I've always found this strange. Leaves falling in the spring time. But I must admit, watching the green leaves float down to the ground on a bright, breezy day is nice.

I candled all of my eggs today. Two of the three goose eggs look great. One looks like it started growing, but for some reason stopped. I'm sure it's a quitter, but I'm not ready to take it out of the incubator just yet.

Meanwhile, the bantys are dropping like flies. Of the seven banty eggs I started with, I'm currently down to two. Four just stopped growing and I dropped (and broke) one this weekend. I love hatching the little birds, but I can never actually make it to hatch day with more than one live banty. Strange.

I ate lunch with Grace today. She has a little pink photo album that we put pictures of our family in at the beginning of the year. That way, when she felt like she missed us, she could just open her photo album and see us. We've added more pictures as the year has progressed. When I arrived in the cafeteria today, I found Grace with the album propped open on her lunch bag. If you look closely at the pic, you can see that she was eating lunch with Kate and Spence.
I enjoyed the last few moments daylight with a long run. The sun never really came out yesterday. Instead, it stayed hidden beneath a blanket of clouds. Making everything seem black and white.
But, for a few minutes, at the end of my run, as the sun neared the horizon, everything was golden.

seventy-four

Today is my dad's seventy fourth birthday. We celebrated with a small party Friday night. My dad has diabetes, so he doesn't get to enjoy a frozen margarita very often, but Mindy and I found a recipe for sugar free margaritas that was actually quite good.
After our taco buffet dinner, we lit a few candles on a low sugar pie Mindy made for Dad.

If you look carefully, you can see the flaming pie next to the little boy dashing through the foreground of the picture below.

Happy Birthday Dad.

We Love You.

grace's birthday - day two

Grace's birthday slumber party was a huge success. Everyone was in bed and asleep by 11:30 and woke up happy this morning just before 8:00. No scared girls, crying, or fighting. Grace made pancakes for breakfast and we sent everyone on their way. The entire experience was wonderful. Grace is very lucky to have such nice girls in her life.

This afternoon, Grace and I headed to Painting With a Twist, so that Grace could create her very own masterpiece. Grace was really nervous on the way there. She had no idea what to expect. When we arrived, I was surprised to see the number of adults painting without their kids. The Sunday afternoon session kid friendly, but there were only two other little kids there. Grace felt a little overwhelmed sitting at a table of adults. But, once Grace got a paintbrush in her hand, she was off and running. She never asked for any help at all, in fact, once I picked up a brush to help her blend, and she was like, "Uh, this is my painting, Mom."

Grace painted with absolute confidence and added a few touches that even impressed our teacher. In the pic below you can see her finished product and the teacher's finished painting in the background.

After I took a quick slumber party recovery nap, we headed down to Frank and Angie's for Grace's family birthday dinner. We've been eating dinner there to celebrate Grace's birthday's since she was six months old. Watching Grace and Carter run around the patio area, it was hard to believe how much time had passed since our first dinner there with Grace.
Here we are with our almost-five-year-old son and our seven year old daughter.

happy birthday grace

This morning, our seven year old daughter woke up to find a pile of presents in the living room.

Papa, Carter, and Chloe shared in Grace's gift opening joy.

Ray gave Grace seven yellow roses. He's done this every year of her life. This one rose for every year tradition is going to get expensive as Grace gets older : )
Meanwhile, I decided to bake Grace's birthday cake for the first time. With Mindy's expert help, we managed to create this lovely bunny cake. There are two chocolate layers and two vanilla layers, the frosting is homemade butter cream, and the Easter grass is edible.

Grace had a very specific plan for celebrating her birthday. She wanted to invite a few of her friends and her cousin Ellie over for dinner, a movie, and a sleep over. So that's exactly what we did. Our first festive stop was dinner at Mama Fu's. One of Grace's favorite places to eat.
Next, we were on to the theater to see Tangled. The movie was beautiful in every way.

Seriously, is this not the cutest bunch of girls you've ever seen? Mindy and I had so much fun with these little ladies tonight. And the girls had a ball. During the movie one of them looked up at me and said, "This is the best night of my life."

After the movie, we came home and sang Happy Birthday to Grace, who invited everyone to help blow her candles out.

Finally, the very tired girls posed for a pic beneath the Supermoon. I couldn't have planned a better end to my beautiful daughter's seventh birthday.

Happy Birthday Dear Grace.

We love you.

spring break rolls on

In preperation for March Madness, Ray, the kids, and I all filled out NCAA tournament brackets. We're not really huge college basketball people, but we thought it would be fun for all of us to play along with the tournament.

Ray patiently explained the entire system to Carter and helped him thorough the process, step by step. Grace immediately worked out her own system for picking winners and was off and running. Tonight's the first night of the tournament, we'll see where we all stand after the first 16 games. We've been posing for quite a few pictures this week. Every once in a while they don't exactly turn out like I expected them to.
Today we hit the rodeo. The petting zoo is always one of our favorite parts. Then we took a stroll thorough the show animals. Of course I was drawn to the birds, but I surprised even myself with my fondness for this turkey. Don't get me wrong, he was no Spence, but he did have a plucky personality.
Tonight, to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, we had Mindy's family over for an all green dinner. Our menu included Mahi Mahi (not green, but I made a jalapeno, cilantro, lime sauce to green it up), lima beans, broccoli, green corn bread, artichokes, green rice krispi treats, and green gluten free sugar cookies. We had a great evening, had lots of fun, and the kids were thrilled that we weren't serving corned beef and cabbage.