At Last.

It's been a long time. What an amazing day yesterday was. Hope at last.

bunk bed

bunk bed
Originally uploaded by jinxy515

I love this bunk bed for the boys room. It's from Decoration ideas for modern living, circa 70's. We are planning a making bunk beds like this for the boy when he gets big enough.

Afternoon hike

One of the things that we love so much about living in Austin is being surrounded by nature. We are ten minutes away from so many wonderful hikes. This afternoon we took a long walk before dinner. This is one of my favorite ways to spend time with my family.

big boy underwear

big boy underwear
Originally uploaded by jinxy515

The boy is potty training. He has decided that he likes this use of his "big boy underwear" best...wearing two at a time on his head. He sure is a funny little guy.

best friend cardigan

best friend cardigan
Originally uploaded by jinxy515

I'm finally finished with my cardigan. It's a bit funky in the areas where I increased the stitches and the pattern was so vague that i had to redo the sweater a few times. Over all I'm happy with it, although, it sure does add some bulk. I knitted the size small and ended up using 3.5 skeins. I have enough yarn left over to make the Aspen hat which is exactly what I am working on next. Now for the buttons.

i heart copco

Love these tea kettles that i discovered in an old cake decorating book my mom gave me.
A quick search on ebay and i'm now the proud owner of a funky, circa 84, yellow tea kettle.
I also discovered that Copco made some very cool enamel baking dishes that look very much like what Michael Batali is doing for Crate and Barrel at half the price.

Thanks and stuff...

These are the thank you cards that I sent out. They were inspired by an article called "photo play" in the January 08 issue of Living. There are some wonderful ideas for other projects to make using photos. I want to make the accordion gallery and bottle cap magnets.

Also, found another excuse to make more sugar cookies without actually having them around the house to eat. My dear friend Tanya's daughter had a birthday party and I volunteered to make daisy and butterfly cookie favors for her. They turned out allot better than the ladybug cookies I made for the baby but I still need more practice. I still need to work on the consistency of the icing to really get them to look better.
I've also been busy knitting Twinkle's Best Friend Cardigan. My mom first taught me how to knit when I was a eight but I only made a few things. I didn't actually pick up the needles again until two years ago. I've made very simple square things, this is my first attempt at a sweater and I'm almost done!

party girl

So, we celebrated the babies birthday this past weekend. It's hard to believe that she is already one year old. I was busy, busy, busy trying to get all the decorations and party favors done, which is not easy with two little running around. Thankfully my mom flew in early in the week and she helped me get everything under control.

Here's a picture of the birthday girl with the cake and cupcakes that my mom made for her.


My mom did such a great job. The cake was so adorable that I couldn't bring myself to let the baby eat it...so she just blew out the candle. The cake is still sitting on our kitchen counter.

These are the sugar cookie party favors and ladybug tags that I made.


I also made the birthday banner and tissue paper pom pom's. I first spied the idea for the banner over at Petunia's lovely blog and fell in love with it. We had a great time hanging out with our friends and family and celebrating our babies special day.

Ladybug

So, the little munchkin is already turning one next week. We are having a small party for her with a ladybug theme. I came across this idea for an invitation. I liked the idea of the wings opening up to reveal all the party details, but I didn't want to use brass tacks. I decided to keep the wings one piece and sew them instead. I changed the invite quite a bit but here is the finished product.I barely got the invitations out on time....tomorrow I'm working on a birthday banner and a table cloth. There is so much to do!

hooray for the weekend

The weather was absolutely perfect and such a great break after the rainy and cold week we had. We were in need of some fruits and veggies, so we got up on Saturday and headed out to Boggy Creek Farms .

They hold a farm stand market on Wednesdays and Saturdays and sell the organic produce that is grown on their farms. They also sell fresh eggs, organic coffee, goat cheese, goat milk, ice cream and a few other goodies.

The little guy loves going there! When he is not chasing the chickens around, he likes to makes his way to the sand pile to play with the trucks and get covered from head to toe in sand, it's hard getting him to leave.If you are in the Austin area check it out, just be sure to get there early, everything sells out fast. After that we headed to the Sunset Valley Farmer's market. Since we moved here to Austin we've had a hard time finding a farmers market that has as much produce as the ones in California, I was so happy to find this one. There was a great variety of merchandise and produce and we came across M. Schopper Ceramics.I loved the color combinations of her pieces and her prices were so reasonable. On Sunday we decided to have lunch at Guerro's, and hang out at the park and be lazy. It was relaxing weekend and just what we needed to gear up for a busy week.

home is bliss

My life took an unexpected turn in the summer of 2005 with the birth of my son. I never anticipated that I would be so profoundly changed by that event. I had always enjoyed my career as a designer, but all of a sudden I found myself longing to spend more time at home with him and be the kind of dotting parent my mom had always been with myself and my brothers. I found it difficult to juggle a career and motherhood, and feel like I was doing a good job at both. I started entertaining the though of becoming a stay at home mom. When we found out that we were expecting baby number two, we decided to get our butts in gear and move out of state. Moving away from my parents and brothers was one of the most difficult decisions that I've ever had to make . We lost the wonderful support system that my folks provided us. We miss so many people and things about our life in California, but if we had to do it again, we would not change a thing. I feel so lucky to be blessed with two beautiful, rambunctious and energetic kids. Mostly I'm happy to spend every day nurturing them and getting to witness every little thing they experience.