Molly Piper

Super cute bracelet, right?

My friend Tiffany makes these! She co-operates a wonderful company called Legacy Bracelets. When Felicity died, she offered to make me one to honor the family God had given to me.

At first glance you’re probably thinking, “How does that bracelet represent your family?”

Oh, just wait…

The bracelet actually flips inside-out to display whatever images you select! It’s a portable brag book. Or a portable honorarium. Or maybe both.

You can visit their website and read their FAQs, but the basic concept is:

• You browse the pattern selection and choose the design you want for the outside of the bracelet.
• You submit your photos and/or text you want included to Legacy and give them any special instructions (there are 7 tiles in all).
• They do all the cropping and color treating.
• You get your bracelet shipped to you!

I seriously love mine. If you’re trying to think of a creative, heartfelt Christmas gift, this might be the one. Their order deadline for Christmas is 12/10, so order one SOON!

PS-I have the classic design, the Tiffany.

PPS-They didn’t ask me to blog about them. I just wanted to. That’s kinda how I roll on this blog anyway. And I really love this product (“I love your product, man,” in my best Melissa McCarthy voice).

Christmas 2007 was a dark one. I had buried my daughter 3 months before, almost to the day. We took off on a wild 6-week road trip all over the East Coast to get away, to escape.

But there was a little beam of light in the Advent season of 2007. That was the year I received an Advent basket.

What’s an Advent basket?

An Advent basket is a gift-a-day walk through the Advent season (December 1-25).

How do you do one?

1. Collect little knick-knack gifts for each day of Advent (so, 25 gifts altogether).

Now’s the time to start gathering fun little things for your basket! Start watching the dollar bins at Target, Michaels, etc. The items don’t have to be Christmas-related. When I did an Advent basket for a friend last year (pictured above), I tried to do a variety: Christmas-related stuff, snacks, bath & body stuff, a bottle of wine, a CD. The little pocket Advent chart was from Target, and I stuck a little sheet in each pocket with one of the names of God inside and a verse.

2. Wrap them up, and label them 1-25.

3. Include instructions for the person to open a gift a day, starting with Day 1. (On December 1st, open gift #1, on December 2nd, gift #2, etc.).

4. Reveal your identity somehow in gift #25 (on Christmas day).

5. Arrange for someone secret to deliver the Advent basket to the person before December 1. This was a really fun part for me! When I did mine, I found someone a few steps removed to do the delivery so it really threw my friend off! She had no idea it was from me.

6. Pray for that person especially during Advent!

Who should I give one to?

Only you can decide who your Advent basket is going to be for. The one I gave last year was for my friend Christy, who lost her mother unexpectedly a few months before. She was in the beginning stages of her grief journey, just like I was in 2007. And I remember so well how much joy that little basket brought me during Christmas of 2007. It was like each day I had a little something to wake up for. And the excitement and guess-work of wondering who it was from made it all the more exciting.

So, I won’t tell you who to give a basket to, but I’d encourage you to think of someone who’s had a particularly hard year, or someone who’s not looking forward to Christmas for any number of reasons. This is your chance to share the joy of Christmas with them this year and lift their eyes to see Jesus.

When I got my basket in 2007, it was from a family I know and love. When I opened their final gift on Christmas day, I just wept. I was so touched and humbled by their love.

Go ahead, try it!

I’m not one of those people who particularly likes to shop for Christmas stuff in October, but it’s a good idea to start looking for fun things now! And even if you don’t start the actual shopping now, you can be doing some brainstorming and praying about who you’d like to give an Advent basket to.

I’d love to know if any of you:

• have received an Advent basket in the past.
• have ever given an Advent basket to a friend.
• have never heard of this idea.

Today marks Orison’s last day of being a preschooler. Tomorrow he enters into the 13+-year commitment of being school-aged.

Technically he’s been doing school for a couple years, but it was preschool. This rite of passage into Kindergarten feels much more significant.

So last night we had our first homework assignment. However…

• school hasn’t even started.
• somehow it was me & Abraham doing the assignment.

The assignment was to construct a little “All About Me” box with a few things in it to help the teacher and other students get to know each other. Cute idea, I’m totally behind it. But when I think about the assignment, I keep thinking about it from my perspective, because I ended up doing most of the work!

Part 1: Find a suitable box.
Part 2: Wrap said box (because I couldn’t just schlep him off to school with a bare cardboard box with Amazon labels all over it). I chose to just use a brown paper bag so he could decorate it in his own style (AND I didn’t have enough of any one kind of wrapping paper).
Part 3: Decorate the box (we did this together today).
Part 4: Help him think of things that would be good for the box. (Which also means steering him away from some of the more, um, how do I say?… creative ideas he came up with.)
Part 5: Print out a picture of our family for the box.

This is getting kinda labor-intensive if you ask me! Last night it took me and Abraham working together about 15 minutes to get the box wrapped. I turned to Abraham at one point and said,

‘Welcome to the world of school-aged children. This is just the beginning, you know. Soon there’s going to be science fairs and colonial bizarres. This isn’t going to end for a looong time.’

Now, I’m not complaining. I value education. I value that I have options and I’m not homeschooling right now. I value that he’s going to a school where he’ll learn new and wonderful things.

But I realized last night that soon I’ll be doing homework for with 4 children. (Sigh…). I am entering into the world of the school-aged mom.

This week I finished up the twins’ room! Now we just need two babies to come live in it!

Thanks to my small army of volunteers, here’s how it looks!

This is the girl crib:

This is the boy crib:

This is the boy dresser: (see, Jenny, I need your expert dot-placing help!!!)

Here’s the breakdown:

Jenna helped me sew the bumpers. She was the most patient person while I went from learning how to thread my sewing machine, to making my own bias tape, to finishing the final seam. We finished these bumpers a couple nights ago at 12:30am!

My friend Carol (who doesn’t have a blog) sewed the sheets with/for me. She’s a long-time friend of my husband’s family, and I’ve loved getting to know her through the years. Our times together are always special and really fun!

Abraham gave new life to two old dressers with his awesome paint job! I love how they turned out!

Jenny helped me with the vinyl transfer on the wall (“He gives”). Neither of us had ever done one before and it was kinda funny. She also did the dots over the red (girl) dresser. Everything she touches turns beautiful.

Danielle designed and ordered the “He gives” vinyl for me. She’s amazing.

If you look on the red dresser, you’ll see 3 little canvases. They were painted by my friend Andie. She made a second set for the other twin, but after we found out that Twin B was actually a boy, she offered to take them back and repaint them to look a little more boyish. She’s still working on the second set, and I’m so excited to see them (no pressure, Andie! I mean it!).

And also on the red dresser is a figure of a woman carrying two babies. That came from the amazing women at the Real Hope for Haiti Rescue Center, Licia and Lori! When my parents-in-law visited them a couple months ago, they gave this to them for me and told them that this type of figurine is very popular in the Haiti markets, but it was the first time they’d seen one with a woman holding 2 babies! Thank you, Licia & Lori and the whole Zachary clan. You all amaze me with your work and your hearts for people and God!

Now the countdown is ON! 3 more days!!!

Last week I told you about Abraham’s talented cousin Sunny.

Turns out Abraham’s family brings a lot of talent to the table. This week, I just couldn’t help but share about his cousin Miriam, who is currently working on a Masters in Jewelry & Silversmithing. And she’s doing it in England. How double-cool is that? (And to add to the coolness factor, she gets to spell it “Jewellery” while in England.)

William Morris Necklace by Miriam Rowe

Anyway, she has a blog where she’s asking for quick opinions and impressions on her Masters pieces. I think they’re so creative and beautiful. She’s amazingly talented.

She also has a page for selling her beautiful wares.

If you have a few minutes of browsing time today to check out some amazing art, head on over. Feedback is always valuable for the artiste, I’m told! (Of course, I wouldn’t know, I’m an abominable artist.)

And maybe if enough of us give her traffic, she’ll agree to do a giveaway or something. That’d be cool! Go check her out already!

My husband’s uber-talented cousin Sunny has a very informative step-by-step post about how to make this homemade tent.

I think this is so adorable, and totally want to make one. I was thinking it might have to wait until Christmas, but it’s somewhere on my radar, at least.

I just LOVE this thing!

What crafty projects are on your wish-I-could-do list?

I’m getting this post up during the final minutes of Thanksgiving 2009!

My mother-in-law posted a video of some of our racous family moments today if you’re curious. (Bonus! You’ll see footage of Morrow walking and dancing. Aaand… you’ll get to see my awesome dance moves during a kiddy dance party with Orison and his cousin Grace.)

I mean, who wouldn’t want to see that?

I decided to finish the night quietly, knitting a pair of mittens for Morrow. The weather’s gotten really cold, really fast! So while Abraham sleeps (the lump in the back of the picture) I post on my blog and knit.

I’m thankful for a quiet end to Thanksgiving 2009.

On Saturday, we celebrated Morrow’s first birthday. Hard to believe that it was one year ago that he came into our lives.

We had a nice (read: brief) birthday party for him and sang “Happy Birthday” at 12:22pm, commemorating his entry into the world to the very minute. It was sweet to celebrate that. And it was a good thing he wasn’t born at 3:30 in the morning or something!

For me, the weirdest part of reflecting on a year going past is that I haven’t been pregnant for a whole year. For most women, it’s all about getting used to being pregnant and all the changes that entails. For me, I’ve been trying to get used to this whole not-being-pregnant thing. I suppose back-to-back pregnancies’ll do that to you.

For those of you who wanted to see pictures of the completed sweater I planned to knit for Morrow, here he is modeling it in it’s nearly-completed state. Obviously he’s got some growing to do to fill it out! I suppose that’s the reality he lives with when he’s only in the 15th percentile!

But I’m really pleased with how it turned out. I still have to sew the zipper in (I already finished weaving in that long end in the picture).

Anyway…here’s little Morrow Johnner:

He’s one of the brighest spots in my life. His sweet little voice, his funny little antics, even his whining… it’s all amazing to me. I’m so thankful that I’ve gotten to be his mother for one year so far. I pray to God to give me many more years with him.

Morrow’s birthday is sneaking up on me, coming quickly on August 22nd. I usually try to knit something for my kids for their birthdays, so here’s what I impulsively decided on this morning at the yarn store:

[photos by Loop Knits]

It’s called the Playground Hoodie, and the pattern is by Spud and Chloe, a relatively new yarn brand that I’ve been reading all kinds of hype about and have been eager to try.

Morrow’s sweater will have a zipper sewn in for front closure. And the contrast color I chose is a lime green.

Good thing about it is that it’s really thick yarn and should knit up quickly. I don’t exactly have a lot of time. So I should probably stop blogging about it and actually go start it!

Don’t tell Morrow, though. It’s a surprise.

In my delusions of homemaking grandeur, in which I am perfectly organized and endlessly motivated and nothing ever happens to derail me from my perfectly-laid plans, I imagine myself doing all kinds of things.

I have dreams of being a crafty woman. Everything I touch would turn beautiful.

Something about Valentine’s Day is pretty to me. I like the colors, I guess. Soft pinks, shades of red, all offset with some white… so pretty. Yeah, I know it’s a Hallmark holiday, but I like love. Love is good.

I’ve come across some Valentine’s Day projects in the past couple days that have me dreaming… that’s probably where it’ll end, though.

These are the ones that’ve caught my eye particularly:

Skill level: Easy

I think these heart doilies made out of napkins are adorable (via Martha Stewart, the one who inspires many of my delusions):

Skill level: Intermediate

If I were a scrapbooker, another one of my grand delusions, I’d be all over these 3D paper decorations.

Skill level: Are-you-freakin’-kidding-me

All of this is made of cake. All of it. Not much more to say about that, except not gonna happen. Major props to Bakerella on this one.

What are your favorite Valentine’s Day crafts? Nothing’s too remedial to share (trust me, I’m the world’s worst artist). But if you have mad skills you’ve been wanting to show the world, I promise I’ll still like you.

Happy crafting, whatever shape it takes this week!