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With summer just now coming to a close, I’ve had to come up with things to do during the afternoon. This has mostly meant playing in the pool. :) But I recently stumbled upon some homemade finger paints and thought that it would be a nice thing to do outside. Plus after Owen was all done painting I could just dip him in the pool to clean him up.
Some recipes I found called for cooking stuff and using different ingredients I didn’t have on hand. I ended up going with the easy water and flour method. :) I pretty much just mixed it up to the consistency I wanted and then added food coloring. I was pretty happy with the end results…
Outside I taped some craft paper to the top of our sand/water table and let Owen go for it! At first I set out all the colors but quickly realized one color at a time was enough. And even though I originally thought they would be used for finger paints, Owen found a brush and went to work with it.
I wondered how long it would be before he put it in his mouth and then answer was 5 seconds. :) But he only did it once. It turns out water and flour isn’t exactly yummy.
Back to the painting…
After awhile Owen decided to carry around his paint…
“Should I set it here?”
“Or just stand here with it?”
My little Picasso…
-Shannon
We already knew that Owen has clear musical talent but now we’ve witnessed his first visual art creation…
I didn’t actually set out to have him draw all over the brick. I was busy doing dishes and I turned around to see him scribbling away. I grabbed my camera to witness his creation and later grabbed this dish towel to wipe it up.
-Shannon
I almost can’t believe it but I finished the baby blanket! I have been working on it since October and finished stitching it together today. I’m happy with the size it ended up being since I really just made the pattern up in my head. After knitting tons of squares (using seed stitch, for those who care) I laid them all out and then stitched it all together. It turns out the stitching took longer than I thought it would but it has officially been finished before the little one’s arrival. Lucas assures me that since I handmade this blanket for our baby that it will be the first thing that the baby stains. :)
So here is the finished product…
It is almost the size of our kitchen table so hopefully it will wrap our little one in warmth for quite a while…
-Shannon
The baby blanket is still coming along with lots of little squares sitting around our place. I hope to start stitching it all together in the next week as we anticipate the arrival of our little one.
It has been really nice to have something like this to work on to help me to think and pray about the baby while also curbing my spending and any wasted time sorting and resorting baby stuff.
I can’t wait to wrap our little one all up in this…
-Shannon
I love to make cards. This is something that most people know about me. So when Christmas approaches I begin to think about what kind of card I will make. Last year was the first time I actually went with a kit. I still assembled it all and added my own touches but it just wasn’t the same as a Shannon Original. This year I decided to go back to my roots and design my own little card.
For our Christmas card Lucas and I always like to pick a great scripture that is the focus of the card. This year we used Luke 2:10 “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” Yeah it makes me think of Charlie Brown but it also reminds me of the spectacular amazingness of Christmas…angels, proclamations, a child born in a stable.
While I try to make and send as many cards as I can, I can’t possibly send them to everyone I know and care about. So I share this card with you…
Merry Christmas!
-Shannon
With Derek’s recent visit and his wife Katie’s growing belly, I just had to pass on some baby goodness. However, Derek was passing through at the beginning of a 6 week trip through the States. Needless to say he didn’t have a lot of room to haul around baby stuff. So what better than to make a Shannon classic…mini-baby album tin…
I was really happy with my paper choices on this one…especially since it had to be gender neutral since Derek & Katie are waiting to be surprised come mid March. Hopefully they can use this for some little pictures of their Little One. I know I can’t wait to see the pictures that this tin will hold. :)
-Shannon
Ever since finding out that Nacho is on the way I’ve felt like I should be making something for my little one. I finally decided to settle on a baby blanket after realizing I just couldn’t bring myself to making a gender neutral scrapbook or something like that. So I picked out some colors of yarn and have been knitting a bunch of squares that I will then sew together to make a baby blanket. So far I have a stack accumulating and especially after this long holiday weekend it is now much bigger.
-Shannon
Recently I received a lovely flower arrangement from work. I enjoyed for as long as I could but then it started to fade away. But as it faded I plucked out the still living pieces and made my own flower arrangement.
I was pretty happy with how it turned out and I might have to start trying my hand at some flower arranging. :)
-Shannon
Recently I have been lacking on the creative end of things. I think this is most evident in the fact that I haven’t posted anything in over 2 weeks! Even though I haven’t been sharing much on here I have been taking small steps in some creative projects. So here are some recent layouts I was able to do.
This first one is from December of 2005 and shows our journey from Missouri to Vancouver. Neither one of us had ever been to Vancouver before, we rented our apartment without seeing it in person, we wouldn’t know a single person in the entire city, we had sold our house, a car and given our dog away. But we were excited for where God would lead us and a short 2 1/2 years later we were surrounded by people who loved us as we moved on. But for now we’ll remember how we got there in the first place…
And another layout that I simply titled “finished”. This summer while Lucas was at Duke he finished his thesis once and for all. We now have a beautifully bound copy (that I am in the process of reading) gracing our bookshelves and it is a constant reminder of the hard work and perseverance Lucas showed. I couldn’t help but snap a few shots the day he printed his copies to send to Regent for binding…
Those are my small steps to share for now but I promise I won’t go another 2 weeks before posting again.
-Shannon
I do!…thanks to a wonderful stash of buttons my mom sent me. These buttons are a collection from both of my grandmas and my mom. She has been keeping them forever and adding to them here and there. This Christmas my sister got a sewing machine and this past year I got one for my birthday so my mom thought it was time to get rid of the buttons. I arranged them by the colors of the rainbow so I could see what I was working with…
Here are a few of my favorites…
I’m pretty sure these were some of my grandma’s…
Along with sorting through my buttons, I also took some time to make some new cards…
A little collection I did with some new paper…
And while I’m on crafty things I thought I’d share some new and some not so new fabric I’ve been using…my pile of neutrals…
The white actually has really small even whiter dots all over it…
And my new favorite black and white…
Some polka dot fun…
And some prints…
Not sure what I’ll use this for but I love it!
Most of these fabrics are from SewMamaSew but I picked up some steals while we were visiting my parents over Christmas. Now if only I could fix my slightly messed up machine and get sewing…
-Shannon
