They're finished!

...and pictures can now be posted of my creations. I made 3 stuffed animals for Christmas presents this year. One for each of my boys and for my niece, Sadie. I'm pretty proud of them and the boys seem to like theirs. I talked to Andrea before they opened presents on Christmas Day so I don't know Sadie's reaction yet. Thank you Jill for posting instructions on your blog. I had fun and hope to sew something else sometime soon.

Elijah's Christmas Dog and Jeremy's Creature (he calls it bear)

Sadie's Bear

O Christmas Tree

This is the story of the Springthorpe Christmas Tree 2008 edition.

I pretty much always put up the tree the weekend after my brother's birthday. (Doan family tradition). This year that happened last weekend. Now, we didn't put up the tree last year. We knew we'd be away for Christmas and with Jeremy scooting around, what was the point? So I went to put up this year's tree. (We use a fake one, remember that otherwise this story doesn't really make any sense). I carried it up from the storage room only to realise that I only had the bottom half of the tree (about 4 feet of tree). I looked back down in the storage area where I was kept, all I could find was some tree like garland, but no tree top. I kept looking around the storage room (I found the winter boots I'd been missing for Jeremy, but still no treetop). I asked Jonathan (the organiser of the storage room. He told me it must be there somewhere and suggested that perhaps I wasn't really looking hard enough. I looked again. I checked every box and nook and cranny in every inch of that storage room and nothing. Now it was Jonathan's turn. Of course he'd find it, I'm just blind and not really looking right? - wrong! He couldn't find it either. Well, can't we just put it up the way it is and fix it somehow? (that was his suggestion) No. I was really irritated now. Somehow my treetop had been probably thrown away during the past 2 years and now I have no tree. I decided to out. Hopefully to bring back a new tree.
If you know me well, you will know the absolute level of my irritation and despiration when you know where I went...Canadian Tire. I am not and have never been a fan of Canadian Tire. I don't like it. Any one of them, anywhere. It's a terrible, irritating store. It's over-crowded, not well laid out, and has silly Canadian Tire money that just piles up taking up valuable room in your wallet. It also has the irritating ability to carry just about anything that you can only find there and no where else. Of course being the Christmas season and a Saturday the parking lot it is full. Great. I put Jeremy into a shopping cart and headed inside. My first irritation at the store happens almost immediately. The wheelchair/stroller/shopping cart access has a locked lock on it and the seeming only other way you can get in is through the turnstyles...aha, wait, I can sneak through the returns area. As I head down I encounter irritation #2, pushing the shopping cart to the seasonal area is near impossible as the main aisle is narrow and is also taken up by people lined up at the cash registers (they were not thinking clearly when they designed this store). I finally make it to the Seasonal Aisle where the load of Christmas crap is unbelievable. They have this life-size singing Santa that is seriously the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Who would invent and be able to sell this stuff? The price of Christmas trees shock me. There is no way I'm paying hundreds of dollars for something that will be up in my house for 3 weeks of the year every other year. Then I spot it. In the sale bin is a stack of 3 ft trees marked down from $24 to $8.99. I take a closer look. Yes, the pole seems to be the size I need. I take it and go...back down the small main aisle to the narrow cash register lines where everything is at easy access for my one year old (a new Canadian Tire irritation). When my mini-tree is rung in and my Canadian Tire money is taken off the total, I owe $8.60. Perfect and irritating all at the same time. Why is it only at Canadian Tire I can find these things?
I take my mini-tree home, pull it out of the box, tug the bottom stand off and fit my mini-tree into the spot where my tree top was supposed to have gone. It fit. And you can't tell the difference. I used a little bit of moving tape for reinforcement and the job was done. Jonathan helped me get the tree standing in the tree stand (another crappy Christmas product that was a neccessary purchase that I could only find at Canadian Tire a few years ago). Elijah and I decorated the next day...(and you can't see the tape unless you are looking for it.) Really I'd had enough Christmas tree by the end of all of this. I'm enjoying the tree now, a week later, if only I could keep the one year old away from the ornaments, but I think that's a losing battle :o)

A Poem I Found

The sleigh was all packed, the reindeer were fed,
But Santa still knelt by the side of the bed.
"Dear Father," he prayed "Be with me tonight.
There's much work to do and my schedule is tight.
I must jump in my sleigh and streak through the sky,
Knowing full well that a reindeer can't fly.
I will visit each household before the first light,
I'll cover the world and all in one night.
With sleigh bells a-ringing, I'll land on each roof,
Amid the soft clatter of each little hoof.
To get in the house is the difficult part,
So I'll slide down the chimney of each child's heart.
My sack will hold toys to grant all their wishes.
The supply will be endless like the loaves and the fishes.
I will fill all the stockings and not leave a track.
I'll eat every cookie that is left for my snack.
I can do all these things Lord, only through You,
I just need your blessing, then it's easy to do.
All this is to honor the birth of the One,
That was sent to redeem us, Your most Holy Son.
So to all of my friends, least Your glory I rob,
Please Lord, remind them who gave me this job."

Love of Tea

It's no secret that I love tea. I have fond memories of having tea at my Auntie Sue's house as a young girl (and many times as an adult too). I didn't expect my son at the ripe old age of 21 months to love tea too. He's fast. He will find my tea mug and sip at it, saying 'mmmmm' while he's at it. Take a look.

Nostalgia

It's no breaking story that we're into the beginning of the Christmas Season. Elijah is now at the age where he's into Christmas shows (he loves the Charlie Brown one, but for some reason I can only find the case, not the tape...one of the secret vortexes ate it I guess). So I went looking for my favorite old show. The little un-known Bass/Rankin movie, The First Christmas or The Story of the First Christmas Snow. I love this show. And we had it. My Dad make a tape of all the old Christmas Specials when I was a kid and that was one of them. Do you think any of us could find that tape now? Not a chance. First I went looking on You Tube, because that's where I found Rudolph, but it wasn't there. So I went looking on Amazon. 2 sellers had it on VHS (yes, that's right this one hasn't made it to DVD yet) prices began at $40 CDN. Seriously. I guess I'm going to have to be nostalgic another way and hope this one makes it onto a Christmas Classics DVD sometime while my children are still young enough to enjoy it with me.

look out world, I'm learning how to sew (again)

In the spirit of being both economic and retro-homemaker, I've decided that I would like to make my boys their Christmas present this year. (Aside from the books I've already bought through Scholastic and their stockings that is). I've been slightly jealous, but mostly inspired by the cool things that my friend Jill makes for her boys and others (I especially love her toy robots). I've also been in love with the Ugly Dolls for years, but seriously could not justify actually buying one of them for the price. So I've decided that I really should take another more serious stab at sewing. This time I'm without the benefit of my mother's side by side lessons (and her sewing machine) as both are on the other side of the country. So I called upon my crafty friend to tutor me. Now if my life were perfect, I would have my teleporter handy to whisk me away to Jill's home for a few cozy evenings of sewing and tea while the boys played imaginative build and destroy games together. And although life has Jill and I living geographically closer than my mom and I, we are still 4 provinces and 2 timezones away from one another. Jill, being Jill and 2008 being 2008 makes for an online tutorial. Part one was posted today and you can follow it here . I will update you on my own progress as soon as I buy myself a nice pair of sewing scissors.

money, money, money

We've decided to put Elijah on an allowance to teach him about money. The allowance is only for extra jobs he does around the house (not ones he has to do anyways). We started this last night with the idea that he would be able to go to the dollar store at the end to buy something for himself (last night's wage being a dollar plus tax). He did his job and off we went.
Have you ever been to the dollar store with a 4 year old? Oh my goodness, we must have been there for 45 minutes by the time he made his final decision. We had to be sure that he bought what he really wanted because quite frankly I wasn't coming back to exchange anything.
He ended up with a metal airplane kit that we (being me) put together. I thought this was really a cool toy (esp. for the dollar store). What they don't tell you is the instructions are inadequate tiny pictures and that it's a fiddly little thing to put together(I know, I bought it at the dollar store not the science shop, so I shouldn't complain). But it's together now and he's happy now and looking forward saving more money to buy more things another time.