Christmas Projects

Each year I like to make something for the kids for Christmas. As I was looking at the photos of last year's projects (one is similar to what I'm doing this year), I remembered I started a post last year that I never published. So here it is. I will admit, I wish I could have made as many gifts this year, but since tomorrow is Christmas Eve, I will be happy to just get done what I have planned for my kiddos. I'm close! Now back to work!!

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This Christmas (2009) I wanted to make some gifts, but with watching spending and with fabric stores 45 minutes away (Walmart no longer has fabric) I decided I would have to do it from the fabric on hand. Making gifts is sometimes tricky for me - trying to think of something that someone will appreciate and that matches who they are. Right now my main "homemade" skill is sewing, but hopefully I'll pick up some more skills down the road.

Here's what I made:
This is a Tic Tac Toss game for our son, Caleb. (5 yrs old in 2009)

A bib for our son Isaac. (Just turned 1 in 2009)

A blankie and pillow to go with our daughter, Hannah's, baby doll. (Just turned 4 in 2009)

"Grandma's Memory Gameboard/Placemat" This was for my mom. I made it out of scraps from my grandma's (my mom's mom) fabric stash. Memories for her of her mom and for her to make memories with her grandkids. The spring side: My grandma always had a cheery flower bed in the spring and summer.

The fall side: This is the other side of the placemat. My grandma's kitchen was deep browns and yellow.

A gardening apron for my mom. This was actually for her birthday, which is right before Christmas.

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Absence = A Glimpse

If you have been following my blog, you have probably noticed my absence. As much as I would like to blog more, I think that my lack of blogging compared to when me moved to the farm paints a bit of a picture of what life is like as a beginning farmer's wife. I could pass it off to homeschooling, pregnancy (which I'm in my 9th month now), or a variety of other things.

The reality is that any free time I had before we moved to the farm has now been given to the farm: marketing, juggling meat and inventories, deliveries, monitoring our business Facebook page, outside work, etc. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Most of the time I really enjoy farming related things as my "free time" activities. All of this to say though, keeping a journal - which is what I wanted my blog to be for me - has fallen lower on the list. Instead of recording my farmer's wife activities, I'm just doing more of them. :)

If you are a follower of my husband's blog, The Beginning Farmer, you may have noticed the same pattern with his blog since we moved to the farm. He is going to try to get it up and going again though, for farm reasons rather than journal reasons (although it will definitely still have journal type entries), so I encourage you to hop on over and follow along. By the way, it's definitely not because he has more free time than I do. He's just able to get less sleep than I can. And he has a wife who will wake him up in the middle of the night encouraging him to come to bed after he has fallen asleep from working too late.

Also, don't give up completely on me. I hope to sporadically post yet. (If you want to catch them all, you can subscribe to my blog on the right and receive them by e-mail.)