Runaway October

The theme for the Back Tack 4 Swap that is. I know my part­ner has received her good­ies, so here’s an almost full reveal of what I sent.

Gold {some­thing that sparkles}:

A sim­ple neck­lace made with hemp and fair trade glass beads. I bought enough to make one for myself too. I also included an altered jour­nal which had a lit­tle bit of shim­mer to it.

Frank­in­cense {some­thing that smells or tastes good}:

These are home­made soaps and an assort­ment of itty bitty choco­late bars. The soap was fun, easy and such a blast to make, even Declan helped. We will be mak­ing more soon.

Myrrh {a lit­tle some­thing for you}:

Another beau­ti­ful Emme­line apron, com­plete wth pock­ets (with extra good­ies inside) and dec­o­ra­tive stitch­ing. This is the 5^th one I’ve made, still not one for myself yet. I need to learn a bet­ter way to pho­to­graph an apron. Not pic­tured are 4 lit­tle Otedamas that are just adorably addic­tive, both to make and play with.

That’s all for now. We’re off to the Tamale Fes­ti­val today, and maybe a lit­tle craft fair that I heard some buzz about. I’ll let you know.

Finally.

I have a ten­dency to get in trou­ble with swaps. The fear of my part­ner not lik­ing what I make liter­rally freezes me up until the last minute. Then it’s a mad rush.

This time it was dif­fer­ent. I knew what I wanted to do, but my pay­check was late, so I com­pletely missed the dead­line. But it’s been wrapped, boxed and shipped as of last night! Go me! Only what… 8 days late?

Back Tack 4 was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the ope­ness of the cen­tral theme: Gold Frank­in­cense and Myrrh

This time there are no colour, size, or mate­r­ial restric­tions, all we ask is that you take the theme and run with it, and make 3 items accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual out­lines below.

The first item is some­thing that sparkles [the Gold part]- cards, dec­o­ra­tions, calenders.….see where your imag­i­na­tion will take you. [It doesn’t need to be gold]

The sec­ond item is some­thing which has some sort of sen­sory aspect to it [the Frank­in­cense part] — either smell or taste. Baked goods? Short­bread? Choco­late, soaps, the mind can run free here, but be mind­ful of cus­toms reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Sealed food stuffs are gen­er­ally ok, but check with your part­ner before send­ing anything.

The third item is a small gift for your part­ner for Christ­mas [the Myrrh part] Per­haps a small item for the tree, or mantle­piece. Quiz your part­ner to see what their them­ing is for this Christ­mas, and tie in your gift! or make them some­thing they might like to use through the year — a cal­en­der, a purse, a scarf.

Here’s a sneak peak. When my part­ner gets her pack­age I’ll post more photos.

 In the  mean­time, check out the Back Tack Flickr pool. Lots of gor­geous good­ies! And my part­ner, Kristin’s, beau­ti­ful blog: Kleas.

I’ve been feel­ing quilty lately. Baby show­ers seem to be the best inspi­raion for me. I gives me a dead­line and an excuse to give a gift that will last instead of some­thing that will be used for a month or two and then donated.

I have few baby gifts that we still use now that my youngest is a year. One of them is a small sam­pler quilt that my mom picked up at at a truck stop some­where out­side of Payson, Az.

Here’s the ver­sion I cre­ated. I think it turned out really well. I had a cou­ple dif­fer­ent quils in mind when I des­gined this. Purl­Bee lists a great tuto­r­ial. Crazy Mom Quilts had a beau­ti­ful ver­sion. Don’t for­get this sassy one too.

I used 6or 7 dif­fer­ent greens that I picked up at JoAnns. The brown is a super soft linen blend. The back­ing is Alex­ader Henry’s Giraffe Cross­ing.

When I asked the mama-to-be what her nurs­ery theme was she said giraffes and out­doorsy col­ors. I hope it fits in okay. If not I know quite a few boys here that would be happy to keep it!

(That’s my 6’2″ brother for size reference!)

My chil­dren — They are healthy, ornery and intel­li­gent. My life is hec­tic, full and amaz­ing with them in it. They have thought me to be patient, to look at the world through dif­fer­ent eyes.

My hus­band — Though our mar­riage is still fresh, our part­ner­ship is any­thing but new. I am thank­ful that he is by my side, help­ing and sup­port­ing. He is the may­on­naise on my sand­wich of life — with­out him every­thing would be too dry. 

My mother — Cur­rently she is furi­ously scrub­bing “her bath­room” which hap­pens to be the main bath­room that a cer­tain mostly potty-trained lit­tle boy pees all over. She’s also made break­fast and cleaned the kitchen this morn­ing. Our house­hold would come to a grind­ing stop with­out her in it with us. Some may dread hav­ing their mother come to stay with em, but we absolutely adore her.

The rest of my fam­ily — Every one of them rounds out this lit­tle slice of life that I call my own. Were they not here some­thing would feel amiss.

The rain — While the mud in my dirt back­yard is not fun, I am happy to have the rain wash every­thing away. It gives us a chance to hun­ker down and enjoy time as a fam­ily while drink­ing hot spiced cider.

I am thank­ful that we are healthy, that we have a home and have food to fill our bel­lies. There are needy fam­i­lies who can­not say that they have health, wealth or hap­pi­ness like I can. Though money can be scarce most of the time, I am rich. For that I am eter­nally thankful.

Now… where’s the turkey?

Wow! It’s been awhile. When I picked ‘Run­away Octo­ber’ as my blog name I wasn’t kid­ding. Things just pick up and move so fast this time of year.

- Our nor­mal com­puter is down for the count. I believe I need a new power sup­ply for it, but funds are very lim­ited. It’s much harder to blog when you don’t have your nor­mal setup, with pro­grams and FTPs and the like. Trust me.

- Rowan turned 1 year old last month. He has 8 teeth, and is def­i­nitely on the move. He still prefers to crawl, but he’s got it down and I bet he stops crawl­ing entirely soon. He just walked all the way across the bed­room, as a mat­ter of fact. He seems to walk bet­ter hold­ing some­thing in one hand, like it gives him a mission.

- A fel­low bloggy friend just had a very large benign brain tumor suc­cess­fully removed. Be sure and visit her and send her well wishes.

- My Christ­mas craft­ing is not going as well as planned. I get so stuck when try­ing to think of gifts for every­one. Then I start wor­ry­ing about mak­ing every­thing per­fect. Then I worry that the gift will not be liked and I’ll find it a Good­will in a cou­ple of months, etc etc. I’m also find­ing that hand­made does not mean cheaper. 

- We are all get­ting over a dou­ble round of the stom­ach bug. It’s so hard to watch kids be sick, and pukey sick is even worse. I guess you never really think about learn­ing to puke, but it’s so obvi­ous when some­one doesn’t know how. Declan is a very loud and vio­lent puker.

- Speak­ing of Declan, we took him to the doc­tor to have a wheezy cough looked at.  It turns out it was asthma. He’s cur­rently tak­ing Orapred and thrice daily breath­ing treat­ments of Xopenex. He’s doing much bet­ter. Thank­fully he’s not on a full time reg­i­ment of meds. The Xopenex is $45 a week alone after insurance!

- I’m woe­fully behind on my Sun­day Stash. I don’t know if I’ll get caught up, but hope­fully I’ll stay on top of things.

That’s all for now my pret­ties. Hope­fully I’ll be a lit­tle more reg­u­lar on my posts. I try, I swear. A blog is a lot of work!