from Paris to New York, Rachel crafts a baby, a dissertation, and other life adventures.
Happy new year! In my typical fashion, I have failed once again to post anything new while we were away. After sorting through 850+ photos, here are some highlights of our holiday season. This first group is from our stay on Florida’s sunny east coast with Seth’s parents.
Every year for the past three years I’ve participated in an international ornament exchange. It’s mostly between expat women abroad, but some of us consider ourselves “international” even once we’ve moved back to the states. I’ll eventually post a picture of the hand-made one I sent out, but look what just arrived in the mail from Germany!
The ornament is all lace, made by hand. It looks lovely on our tree, amongst the hand-made ornaments my (French) friend Julie made last year, and the snowflake topper I got last year from an expat in Denmark. Thank you, secret elf!
For holiday DIY, or simply decorating blank walls, vintage artwork can add a lot of charm. Check out the Vintage Printable site I just found, where you can download images which are free and in the public domain. Sweet!
Some of my favorites:
Alder Typewriters Advertisement
Christmas Displays and Decorations
Inspired by this product found via Ohdeedoh a while back, I grabbed an old wine box we had laying around, added $4.50 worth of casters, and voilà! Toy storage for the den:
With a little more time and research, we could score some awesome colored skateboard wheels to resemble the $100 original, but for now, we’re pretty pleased with the result.
Can you find a better toy than a diaper box?
Me, circa 1979
Jax, December 6., 2009
It snowed last night for the first time this year, so this morning we put on snow pants and headed out to play in what was left of the accumulation.
Our toddler is growing and growing! We couldn’t get a proper 1-year doctor’s appointment (our new pediatrician is crazy booked), but we were able to get him in yesterday for a check-up. Here are the stats:
Weight: 22 lb 12 oz (55th percentile)
Height: 31 inches, or 1 inch short of half my height! (75th percentile)
So this explains why his 12-month sized separates still fit, but any one-piece article of clothing has to be at least size 18 months. He’s tall and skinny.
I’m getting back to my chapter now (chapter 2 revisions, and I’ve also finished about 25 pages of chapter 3!), but can’t sign off yet without a few snaps of our favorite 59-week-old! Photos from a recent walk:
This is the talking face: “baaaaaaaall” “dooooooog” Other words he can say (in order of appearance): turtle, sock, shoe, blue, please
On Friday my friend Curran and I were audience members of the Martha Stewart Show’s Halloween special. We were told to wear home-made animal masks or dress up as an animal in honor of the Where the Wild Things Are theme, and our masks were no competition for some of the creations we saw. There was some amazing stuff, especially a couple of full-body felt owl costumes. Among the highlights of the show were a black vodka cocktail, furry masks, and Jimmy Fallon having his hand put in a bowl of meal worms.
If you missed it, there should be clips in the next few days found here, and there are already photos on Martha’s blog.
I’m a pheasant and didn’t realize the birds had such a weird face until I googled an image of one. They really look like this, I swear!
The feathers coming out of my hair in the back were the bird’s “body.”
**Squint** Can you see me in the back row? I’m visible just to the right of the woman with the horns.
I’m in this photo, too, but far, far away!
I’m the fourth person to the left of the bunny ears.
I had a blast decorating for Halloween this year, and I think the most fun was figuring out how to make use of things we already had around the house. It wasn’t as all-out-crazy as the Jack-o-Lantern Blaze down the road, but festive nonetheless.
I am pleased with how my Trick or Treat “Wreath” turned out. It took no time at all, really! I was inspired by this one, found via, this blog, although I didn’t find a specific tutorial for one. Adding black feathers gave it texture and depth.
BLACK CIRCLE: I Just accordion-folded some black construction paper then folded them in half to fan out the folds (it took 3 sheets to make the round circle). Then I bunched strips of orange tissue paper and taped each “pleat” to each alternating fold. It was like sewing a ruffle, only with paper and tape instead of fabric and thread.
ORANGE CIRCLE: Then I cut out a round of orange paper, decoupaged it to a piece of cereal box and cut that out. I then added silver glitter to the edges.
TEXT PLATE: The “Trick or Treat” piece was created in Adobe Illustrator, printed, and decoupaged to another piece of cereal box. It helps to cut the cereal box to size once you’ve decoupaged the piece to it, so you are sure it is a perfect fit.
ASSEMBLY: I glued feathers in every 3rd pleat, then glued on the orange circle and text plate. The ribbon should be attached to the center folded paper parts, but I was in a rush and quickly punched a hole in one of the folds instead. I will rehang the ribbon to the center to save it for next year.
These pumpkin candles (larger ones shown above in the entry photo) were surprisingly long to complete. They are really easy, however, and are a great way to use glass jars from your recycling bin. They look almost papier maché when finished. Just cut strips of tissue paper and decoupage them to the jars. Voilà! Check out this blog for the inspiration.
These white candle jars were peeking out from the window to the left of the door. They were the most quickly completed project (and a bit of an afterthought), but I still ran out of time to make an appropriate height of paper tube for the one on the right. Oh well. The left two images are downloads from Martha Stewart. The raven is an image I found online and then reworked in Illustrator (just using the live trace option to create clean lines) and printed out. The candle on the right says “NEVERMORE” but again, could use some reworking (and I would use a smaller font size next time). A cool effect, though. I just taped the paper to glass jam jars.
Hope everyone had a wonderfully spooky holiday!
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