Our many crafts...

Our family loves to craft. We all have our different crafting interests and abilities, but on any given day, you'll probably find each one of us creating something. Whether it's woodworking, porcelain painting, crocheting, sewing, soap-making, or coloring with crayons...we have an abundance of crafts floating around the house every day... I thought I'd try to capture a few of them for you all in the next couple of days, that way you can see some of the things we enjoy making!

This is a mobile that I [Sara] made yesterday afternoon, inspired by a few [entirely too expensive] baby mobiles I've seen lately...it was super easy and fun to make, and cost less than $3! The cream-colored flowers and pale pink hearts are crocheted using alpaca yarn, and the lace is leftover from the heirloom sewing classes I took in Alabama five years ago...I love being resourceful and using things around the house for projects. :)

Guess what?

Guess who started crawling allllll the way up the stairs [currently being remodeled!] all by himself?
Guess who is in need of his first haircut? [some of us are shedding tears over this one...]
Guess who started saying understandable words and is >>this<< close to learning how to walk??
Guess who turns ONE year old today?

That's right, today is an extra-special day for our itty, bitty baby, Spencer! This past year has flown by entirely too fast for us... We just love our little, chubby, happy boy. [He seriously weighs a LOT. Trust us on this one!] Happy first birthday, Spencer!

Today is also little Becca's birthday, and she's turning FIVE! Josh, Suzi, and kiddos are coming over this evening and we're all going to celebrate with barbecued ham and the best cupcakes ever. [They really are the best. Trust us on this one too!]

Merry Christmas!

Wishing our dear friends and family an oh-so-merry CHRISTmas, celebrating the birth and redeeming love of the Saviour of the world! We didn't have a very white, wintry day after all, but the little ones learned that Christmas can be celebrated with or without a covering of snow. :) We also didn't have a family picture taken yet this year...I guess we're just waiting until we can ALL be together [after Ethan comes home...], because we hate leaving anyone out! But here are a couple pictures of the littles for you to enjoy...with the little bit of snow that soon melted. :)

Christmas Waltz

[Source]

Wow. We've been so busy I hardly even noticed that so many months went by since I last posted! Work, new babies, parties, school, holidays, birthdays, and so much more have all filled our days to the max. Hopefully [since this is Christmas...and the work load should be a little bit lighter!] I'll have time to put up some new pictures, especially since we didn't end up putting a picture in our Christmas cards this year. It was as much as we could do to send out cards at all! But that's [finally] all done and the cards are in the mail, yay!

This week, aside from the usual, we've been sooo busy making yummy foods [caramel corn, cookies, salted caramel hot chocolate, homemade marshmallows...yum!], shopping, wrapping pretty gifts, and getting packages ready to mail out. We've made time in the evenings to watch a few Christmas movies together and sing carols...and dream of a white Christmas [which, by the way, probably isn't happening this year...we're still dreaming though!]

Josh and Suzi's little girlie, Eva Charis was born on October 31st this year...Spencer is crawling EVERYWHERE and has a mouthful of new teeth, while Silas has started losing his [his two front teeth and a few more are missing now]...Savannah and Sophia celebrated their 5th birthday with a special tea party a couple of weeks ago, and Stefanie's husband, Ethan, will be coming home from the Middle East in a little over a month! And that's just a glimpse of all the happenings around here...

Frosted window panes

Candles gleaming inside

Painted candy canes on the tree...

It's that time of year

When the world falls in love

Every song you hear

Seems to say

Merry Christmas

May your New Year dreams come true

And this song of mine

In three quarter time

Wishes you and yours

The same thing too.