Flat Stanley...

In kindergarten here, they read Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown and the make Flat Stanleys and mail them around the world to friends and family.

So far,these are the only that we know he's received. Hopefully in the backlog pile that his teacher has, she'll find some others of his. His almost twin (they're a month apart) cousin Geddy received a visit from Flat Stanley/Nathaniel and he showed FSN a good time in Payson, UT.

Then he and his mom emailed us the pictures, which I printed out and made this layout with.

Nathaniel loved the layout! And someday wants to go visit Geddy and his cool playground :)

Another old layout

Another old layout of Nathaniel...November 2007 in our front yard "raking" leaves.

Old layout...Nathaniel 12 months

My sister, Carrie, asked about my old Storytellers Gallery today and explained that the old one had gotten hacked last year. I told her if she was looking for something specific that I have all the photos of my layouts saved. She was looking for one of Nathaniel in front of the fence at our old house.
I think this might be it...I took the larger picture on his 1st birthday. (I took a picture of him on his "birthday" every month for his first year and then scrapped it, and usually added a little journaling about that month and sometimes more pictures...much more organized that Joshua's first scrapbook). His baby blues just glowed in the pictures I took of him that day.
Amazing how much he has changed in what feels like such a short period of time!

Other craft projects from recent months

I've been doing some crocheting recently...baby blankets and some hats. 
Brian's nephew and his wife had twins in March. A little boy and a little girl!  I had a little boy blanket all finished up :), and I made this cute little "newsie" hat to go wtih it. Then I had to make a little girl blanket and hat, too.

I tried a new ripple wave pattern for the little girl's blanket and it came out cute...I adapted a ruffle hat to make it tinier for her.

Here are some other projects I've done over the past few months, knit, crochet and sewing:

At church they were collecting hats and scarves for various charities this spring...I knit this one with two strands of yarn...my first adult hat.

This is a game I found on someone's blog...probably via pinterest. Using scraps of fabric, make squares, back them with some batting between the two layers and make a matching game. Grace loves this.  Especially when she recognzies fabrics from other things (like her butterfly dress).

This was just a fun scarf that I knit with a "fun" yarn (black, purple blue and turquoise) and a regular turquoise yarn...I loved it, but have enough scarves...so it went into my finshed bag for gift or craft fair. I ended up sending it to a friend from my MTC district whose husband has Crohn's like Brian and had to have a major emergency resection in March. I couldn't give her a hug in person, so I sent her a scarf instead :)

This is a crocheted scarf...or actually three scarves - each a different pattern. Then you braid them together and attach the ends with pom-poms. This was fun!!  It went into the bag for a craft fair or something in the fall. I want to do one in the high school colors, and other variations too, when I get a chance.

This was my big Christmas project this year - a crocheted floor checkerboard for the boys. And I managed to do it without either of them having a clue...I was up late finishing the last few checkers, but it was done and under the tree Christmas morning and they love it...though Joshua has put in a request for chess pieces. I found a pattern on line for crocheting those...as well as patterns for making them out of felt...I think I'll be opting for the felt ones :)

This was Nathaniel's Christmas present. He wanted a knit scarf in his favorite color like Joshua has. Joshua's was made by one of his great-grandma's. I tried to replicated the pattern, but didn't do so well (this was while Brian was in the hospital), so I ripped it all out and did a different pattern that I'd done before and was easy. He also insisted it have a fringe, like Joshua's has...the pattern didn't call for it, but I added it. I started it in July, but pushed it aside to do some other projects...but it did get finished for Christmas too.

This was Grace's present for her 2nd birthday...it was from a pattern my mom has had since the early 80s. It turned out cute...but not as durable as I'd hoped...but she can't use it to climb up on to get into other things like she'd be able to do with my old wooden doll cradle that is waiting to get refurbished for her down the road :)

I started this awhile back...my first cable knit project...loved doing cables! It is also two strands...two different shades of purple. This one is mine! It's very soft...but a little too wide. I was making a matching hat, but ripped it out because honestly, I never wear hats.

This is Maggie's blanket. Maggie is a baby cabbage patch doll that Grace got from her Great-Uncle Brian and Great-Aunt Linda at Christmas. We were down visiting and were able to see them and she was so excited. But problem was, she hadn't really taken any other "babies" and didn't have a blanket for her! So I found this yarn at Michaels, thought it looked fun, adapted a dishcloth pattern to make it big enough and had this finished shortly after we got home. Maggie loves this blanket ;)

And lastly, Grace's stocking. I'd made the boys stockings by their first Christmases, or second at least. Well, this was Grace's third one, but I finally got it done. On hers I added a little bit of lace on the pocket and around the top...so it was a little girlier :)

This is Grace's butterfly dress. I saw this on pinterest and so wanted to make it for her. I had the fabric...the hardest thing was finding the right buttons! I had to enlarge the pattern (it was a hand drawn one that I downloaded from the internet) and tweak things here and there a bit to fit her...the shoulders are still a little too wide, but there wasn't much else I could do with it. I decided that "sew alongs" on people's blogs are not my cup of anything, but the Grace loves the dress :)

This is the Buttefly hat...I found the pattern on pinterest...so fast and easy!!  I made this for Grace out this wonderful yarn from my grandma...and then I made two more a little bigger for two girls in Nathaniel's class that were having a combined birthday party...one of of this yarn and the other out of a sparkly fuschia yarn.

This was my first attempt at a headband and a big flower...Grace is not the most willing model...plus she doesn't like things in her hair or on her head for the most part. The flower came out a little larger than I'd planned :) This went into the gift/craft fair bag too.

This cute little green hat was a baby gift, too, for someone on the Trixie Belden board...this is the side view, the bow goes on the side. The actual pattern from Crochet World magazine has you use a scarf for the tie, but I've just crocheted "strings" for the two ruffle hats I've done. This one I down sized for a baby head.

This was my first ruffle hat...Grace was not happy modeling it that day...then a day or so later when I had the "string" made, she was a little more happy to try it on :)

MSD 2012

It is that time again...time for May Scrapbooking Days on the Storytellers Club website. I haven't gotten as much done as I'd have liked since we just recently moved, but I'll put what I have gotten done up here...and hopefully get some of my other projects posted too.

This year's theme is Around the World...and each day is a different country. I've managed to "visit" Argentina, Switzerland and Italy.  Here are Switzerland and Argentina:

 For the Switzerland challenge, you were supposed to use neutrals...thinking of creams, whites, blacks, grays, tans...I totally thought of a heritage layout. 

So I did a baby picture of my great-grandmother...who was born in 1900. I just recently saw this picture in the past few months.

In addition to the picture, I used Bazzill cardstock, Creative Memories and Fiskars brown inks, some random strand of craft pearls that I found when moving and some old old eyelet/rick-rack stuff, oh and a handful of buttons out of my stash.  Not too sure if I like that collagey button look in the corner, some people do that so well, but I'm not sure I'm one of them.

The Argentina challenge required 2 of everything...I used Storytellers patterned cardstock, photo corners, and cutouts, scrap of Creative Memories patterned paper, acrylic water droplets from I can't remember because I've had them longer than Nathaniel has been around :), and two kinds of alphabet stickers from Provo Craft...Nathaniel having fun at the Primary swimming party last summer.

Cricut time...

I had some time on Saturday to pull out my Cricut and finish up some layouts and make a card I needed to make. 

I made this layout last summer, I believe.  I'd left a space between "our" and "mermaid" for a mermaid sticker I knew I had somewhere...and then couldn't find.  And then I found it - already in use on another layout!

A few months ago, I found the Once Upon a Princess cartridge on clearance...

and it has a mermaid!!

So I made this cute little mermaid and then added the word "little" to the title.

I believe "our" and "mermaid" were done with the Cherry Limeade  cartridge (one of my favorite fonts!)

"little" was done with Lyrical Letters.

I don't like the faces that you can cut out on the paper dolls on the OUAP cart, so I drew my own.

Here's a close-up I tried to take of the mermaid...it's a little blurry, but not too bad.

As I was cleaning Friday, I found this clipping from the paper in May - Joshua had gotten his picture taken after the American Legion ceremony in the cemetary on Memorial Day. I also came across this Creative Memories kit - perfect fit!  There was even a little sticker tag that worked for a journaling block.  I thought it looked fine...Brian thought it needed a title like "In Remembrance" or something.  I decided that I liked just plain "Remember" and this is what I did...I used the Alphalicious cartridge for the title.

I did this layout for a contest at Storytellers.  We needed to use mostly Storytellers stuff...the patterned paper, journaling box, hearts and bazzill cardstock are all from their kits.  We also needed to use something new...which for me was the Once Upon a Princess cartridge - for the flower and some of the title (the rest was Lyrical Letters)

This card card was made using the Old West cartridge. I've been wanting to play with this cartridge for ages.  And I've needed to make this card for a few weeks. One of my favorite authors sent us a lovely package after Brian's surgery and I wanted to send her a card thanking her (besides the email I already sent her).
The bandana paper is something I've had for years from Creative Memories...I think it was my last piece :(

Finally, some scrapping and other time...the hard way

Being as Brian had to have a bowel resection (thank you, Crohn's Disease) last month, and was in the hospital for 11 days, I had some time to not only scrapbook, but also to crochet and knit.  Here are my non-scrapping projects that I finished during our almost 3 weeks away (we had to stay in the Sacramento area for a few days after he got out of the hospital because he wasn't up to the 5 hour drive home and back for his post-op appointments).



This is some vintage (sounds better than old) yarn that my grandma gave me. I was going to make a shawl with it, but there wasn't enough, so I ripped it out and crocheted myself a scarf.




This is a poncho I knit for Grace (my first knitting project that is not a scarf!). I love how it turned out, this was my practice one...I have some sparkly fuschia yarn to make another one for her, but I might have to change my plan since she won't let me put this over her head.
The butterfly is crocheted and took maybe 15 mintues to do...very cute.



This is a baby blanket that I started at the end of my pregnancy with Grace...not knowing if she was a boy or a girl.  I'd completed a pink one already, but started this to be safe.  About a week before she finally arrived, we found out she was going to be Grace not Andrew, so I stopped working on this.  And in the past 20-some months, I've worked on it at various doctor appointments - for me, the kids and Brian.  I finished it while he was in ICU.
Now it waits until someone has a boy :)