Relentless Toil

All is calm, all is bright

I am in a lull between celebrations: I do Solstice, Hannukah, Christmas, and Cheesemas. Cheesemas is our annual all-you-can-eat cheese festival, usually attended by 30+ cheese-loving revelers (and always one cheese-hater, my dear friend A, who is so loved anyhow; plus, she always recommends the best wine). It won't be a big do this year -- 2008, good in some ways, has been one of our most challenging years ever, mostly because with it being the kiddo's first year of day care (and remember her first years we spent vigilantly sheltered from germs due to micropreemie concerns) we are battling almost constant illness. I am still not quite right after that stomach flu earlier this month. But I am lucky to enjoy everything that matters this year: family, friends, a warm home, lots to laugh about, darn good food, and fun crafts to keep my hands busy and my mind calm.

These (above) are some ever-so-tiny tiny quilted tree ornaments that I made for co-workers and my daughter's pre-school teachers. They were quick and easy, and photograph pretty well against our woolly rug!

Now I have to get ready to get the family to the airport to welcome one of our very very very best friends. I've waited for her visit all year and then some. I'm feeling like a very lucky lady.

What the advent calendar looks like this year

I made this advent calendar last year, and I'm so glad I did. It was a big project but my hope and expectation, particularly with several little personal symbols of our family represented as ornaments, is that this calendar will be a family tradition forever and keep getting passed on down through the generations. My mom made a similar one when I was in utero. I loved it. I still love it.

I have close-ups of each ornament -- you can find them here, or by clicking the picture below.

This is Dorothy Trotters eating a sandwich.

Maya and I drew this on Day 6 of The Stomach Flu to Beat All Stomach Flus. We all got it from the pre-school. Pre-school, we miss you. Sandwiches, we miss you. We are doing that bananas-rice-applesauce-toast thing, plus Gatorade and saltines; Pedialyte for the girl. At this point it's really not so bad (heck, we can now go professional as stomach flu sufferers and stomach flu victims' nurses, I should think), but MAN are we frustrated! When this is all over I am going to eat a burrito the size of my head.

Save some room in your stocking...

...for a dolly or three, now available from ye olde etsy shoppe.

I have been painting and painting and painting and painting! And decoupaging. I had never done decoupage before this past weekend, but really, it's pretty much the simplest thing.

My new source of entertainment is Whatever, Martha on Fine Living. Most of the Fine Living network shows drive me up the wall (which is a very modest, humble wall). And I do love Martha. But so far, this show is goofy, lowbrow, snarky fun.

They're like a choir, right? Only they don't sing.

I have been painting some more wooden dollies. If you would like to paint your own, perhaps it would be helpful for you to know that I get my dollies in bulk from craftparts.com, and if you're going to go red, Delta Ceramcoat is the only way to go, among all the acrylic craft paints out there. Red paint is tricky and usually requires many coats. With the Ceramcoat you'll only need 2 thin coats. I mixed in a smidge of black to make some of them look like they've got a bit more iron in 'em.