Sending out wishes to you and yours for a New Year full of love, peace and goodness. From our family to yours. Happy New Year!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Love, Summer, Jeff and Eloise
*Pictures from our wonderful session with a dear friend and incredible photographer, Summer Nicole Photography! She has given us some fantastic new prints to put on our walls for 2014! Thank you Summer!
We stayed close to home this weekend, cleaning house, playing with new toys, catching up on laundry (where does all this laundry come from?!), the dogs were given much-needed baths and I worked on a New Years project (I will talk about in more detail this week). I also opened those seed catalogs and started dreaming up our garden plans! I tend to get carried away every year with grandiose plans for my “homesteading garden”. I made my new favorite lentil/feta salad for snacking on Saturday and Jeff made an apple pie and chicken with ground bacon stuffing for Sunday’s dinner! It was a quiet, somewhat busy, after holidays weekend. Looking forward to the New Year and what’s to come.
Hope you had an equally lovely weekend! Joining Amanda over at The Habit!
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eloise: fifty-two weeks… you are a week shy of seventeen months old. A different smile captured. A little more child-like and less baby-like. A year of joy, watching you grow and develop and flourish. I love you, child of mine.
– joining Jodi for the last time this year with the 52 project!
“A single photo. No words. Capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.” – joining soulemama. Happy Holidays!
So, I started in with this advent calendar a whole month ago. I sewed and I sewed, any time Ellie napped, any time we were in the car, any time I could find, I sewed. But as much as I tried, I could not get this thing finished. I wanted to have it done the first week of December. I don’t know what I was thinking. There was no way sewing an advent calendar all by free form and by hand was going to get done in less than a week. So, it became my December project. A treasure we would hopefully have for many Christmas’ to come. Just not this Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I put in the final threads. It was finally done, the night before Christmas. Although we didn’t get to use it for it’s intended purposes this year, this project will truly be remembered for years to come. It was fun, it was tiring, my husband is thrilled the felt pieces are no longer all over our house and I’m really proud I finished it.
Since visiting the library this holiday season and bringing home The 12 days of Christmas, (Ellie likes this version best) Ellie has been obsessed with the song and the book. It was a Christmas song I never really cared for because of obvious reasons. But, after my darling daughter showed such joy over the lyrics. It has quickly become and will probably always be a favorite now in this household (a love and hate favorite Jeff says). I thought it would be fun to create the 12 days as advent caricatures. So what you see in the pockets and eventually on the tree are 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords a leapin’, 9 ladies dancing, 8 maids a milkin’, 7 swans a swimming, 6 geese a layin’, 5 gold rings, 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. The other 13 advent pocket buddies are stars and presents to finish out the vision on top. I got very close to the ways of sewing with felt with this project and I think I may be smitten. I’m sure you will see much more felt (especially the wool kind) in my crafting future.
A wonderful, marvelous, perfect Christmas.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
We had a very nice weekend, making Christmas candies at my parents house, doing a little more decorating around our house, checking out the Christmas lights around the neighborhood, wrapping presents and taking beach walks in the late afternoon. Relaxing and enjoying family. This is what the season is made of.
-joining in with Amanda for weekending!
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eloise: a warmish December evening, just before dark. You sat on this rock and turned toward me, almost as if posing for the shot. We ran down this beach twice this week. You loved every minute of it until we had to go. A California beach baby for sure.
-joining jodi for the 52 project!
“A single photo. No words. capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”
– joining soulemama! Happy Friday!
(Thank you for all the uplifting words from my weekending post. It’s hard to let go of some things when you have a vision of how you want things to be. Your words helped me take a step back and instead, breathe in all the good that’s surrounding me).
When you are feeling overwhelmed and out of sorts and like nothing is going quite like you want it to, it’s so nice to have the beach at sunset to retreat too. Ellie and I did just that this afternoon, before dinner. We snuck away and walked together down the beach. It truly filled my heart with joy, watching this little girl explore the sand between her toes, find mangled seaweed washed onto shore and run (as best as this 16 month old can) down the beach and up and down the dunes. We left all the holiday projects behind. We left the sad, yellowing Christmas tree and the half-finished cards still waiting to be sent out and we walked down the beach. I chased my sweet, active baby girl and drew her name in the sand and showed her shells and pointed out the waves and the gulls and the beautiful sun lowering into the sea. It was a glorious afternoon. A glorious Christmas-time memory I will hold dear.
summerplayshouse 