Finished Gratitude Embroidery

Do you remember the Gratitude Embroidery project I've been working on? Well, I FINALLY finished it! The embroidery part anyway, I still need to figure out getting it framed......

From top left:
Jesus is the Way, Truth, Life
Cross
My Boys
Wedding Rings (marriage)
Family
Phone
Birds
Music
Ice Cream
Lake Cavanaugh
Tea
Gardens
Friends
Sal (sniff, sniff)
Yarn
Glasses
Trust
Bicycle
Quilts
Rainbows
Chips and Salsa
Mail
Sewing/Embroidery
Lollypops
Our Wedding Day
Camera
Church
Love
Water/Streams
Mountains
Bugs (good bugs)
Heidi
Books
Sun, Moon & Stars
Mom & Dad
Candles
Clothes
Communion
Fruit
Pamela
House
Electricity
Trees
Sunset/Sunrise
Teddy
Flowers
Daniel
Bible
Car
My Birthday

That's a pretty good list and I had so much fun doing this project!

November Fun

We did a lot of fun things in this month of November...went to my parent's home twice, celebrated Thanksgiving with family, visited friends, decorated the Butcher's Christmas tree with the whole family, went for a hike in the woods again, and lots more little things. Here's some collages of our month...

Going to my parents' home in the autumn means delicious apples off my dad's trees, and raking leaves into piles for jumping. My dad did not rake for a couple weeks before we went to make sure there would be a lot of leaves for the kids to rake and jump in. They loved it and we got a beautiful sunny but chilly day to play in the leaves and munch as many apples as we could!

Heidi discovered a bag full of fabric scraps in my mom's sewing stuff and mom lets her play with them when we go over there. Heidi's favorite thing to do is dumpy them all out. She also found a basket and decided that was more fun for the scraps then the bag. She was so funny!

The boys love to play outside at my parents' home, even when it's raining! And my parents are remodeling the guest bathroom to fix some leaking walls and other issues, and replaced the toilet.....it's sitting in their backyard right now and is very tempting to curious little boys! (David said he was making "yucky soup" for Liam, LOL)

We took advantage of a dry Sunday afternoon to go back to the trails in Snohomish. It was still muddy from the near-constant rain we've been having, but other than wrecking shoes, we had a lot of fun going down the right hand fork of the pathways. This is definitely a fun place to explore!

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the Butcher family gathered at Bill and Carol's for some family time decorating their tree. Liam helped put lights on, Pierce got the honor of putting up the angel this year, and everybody had a good time!

And, here's a few pictures that didn't fit anywhere else. David has been into building "robots" a lot lately, the kids enjoyed a snuggle together on the couch, and Heidi took Stella for a ride in her baby-sling.

Hope you all had a wonderful November!

Nancy Drew

***update, the blog hop has been postponed until March because of issues with the fabric being available. I will still be on the list for the hop, so I will keep updating and talking about it and let you know the new dates soon!***

Have you noticed the button on the right side of my blog?

I am going to be joining in the blog hop fun in January with the Nancy Drew Is a Clue! Blog hop and can I just say that I am super duper excited?!?

I have a bunch of Christmas sewing to do, three kids to mother, a slew of house hold chores that need to be done each day and yet I am so incredibly impatient to get the fabric and start on my ideas for this hop!

My mom's been involved with other blog hops that MDM Samm (sewwequilt) puts together and I think the idea is just fabulous, and when mom told me the next hop was going to feature Nancy Drew fabrics, well, I just had to jump in!!! I loved Nancy Drew books as a young girl and I can't wait to share them with the kids when they are finally old enough, so this is a perfect theme for me to join in with!!!

I'll probably share some peeks to my project as I get the fabric (it's so much fun!) and get my projects done.

But mark January 14th on your calendar, because that's the day I'm featured in the hop! The hop runs from January 7 to January 17 and I am excited to see what the other participants do with their Nancy Drew fabric!!!!

The current blog hop is "holiday lane" pillows and they are so fantastic! I am loving how everyone took the same basic pattern and have made such unique pillows!

More of October!

Here's the rest of the pictures from October. We sure had a fun month!!!

Here are pictures from the second pumpkin farm we went to. This one was for a MOPS wide playdate, so we got to see Nicole and Pierce, Julia and Knyves, and a lot more ladies/kids from our MOPS group. There were free hay and "train" rides, animals to look at and pumpkins, of course! The weather cooperated and we had a lot of fun!

After the MOPS playdate, we had about an hour until we needed to go pick up Jon, and were already pretty close, so we just went to a third pumpkin farm and played around there until time to get Jon. This one had a goat who could pull a rope with treats attached up to himself overhead.....and a maze made out of hay bales. Each Pumpkin farm has it's own special attraction and we really enjoyed going to several this year!

I made tooth tins for the kids for when they lose teeth. We are very gently doing "the tooth fairy". The kids know it's like santa and not real, but having fun with it all the same. I was hoping to make a tutorial on how I made these....we will see if that ends up happening with how busy I am in the next couple of weeks.

David did some tracing in school, his name, age, favorite color and favorite animal. I got new dishes with money my parents gave me for my birthday (JCPenny's "Pearl" collection----a 12 setting, 72 piece set for $100!!!!), the kids made faces (not sure why there is not one of Liam), and I arranged all the pumpkins we've collection on the table, alongside the shamrocks we were bequeathed when my inlaws had to move out of their office.

And lastly, here's the kids trying on their costumes on the 31st. Heidi ended up refusing to wear any costume, but had a little fun playing in them and dancing with Liam.
Jon took Liam and David trick or treating in my inlaws' neighborhood and they had a lot of fun.

Alot of stuff in October

October was a pretty big month for us. Heidi and I had our birthdays, we had a fun pumpkin farm playdate, David got his haircut (his own choice too!), and much more.....

Here's Heidi and my joint birthday party with my inlaws. It was a ton of fun. We did an ice cream sundae bar with three kinds of ice cream, three kinds of sorbet and a plethora of toppings.

In the same week, we saw TWO sets of double rainbows. I managed to get pictures of the second set...and yes, the double rainbows brought lots of "I just don't know what it means!" jokes.

 I made Heidi a felt "paper" doll for her birthday:

David's hair cut (the patch is because I accidentally poked his eye badly....I felt awful)

 This collage has a bunch of "miscellaneous" stuff.....I worked on scrapbooks at my last Craft Day, I've been working on my decorated cork board (I still have to attach the fabric), Liam lost his first took (and Heidi had to "show her teeth" too), we went out for an autumn walk, had tea and discovered that Heidi should be in gymnastics...

And lastly, my MOPS table went to the Pumpkin Farm for a playdate. It was a lot of fun. We ended up going to three different pumpkin farms this year, and Craven Farm is my favorite!

I've got more pictures of stuff we did in October on my camera, so I am going to get those up in another October post! I've got pictures from the other pumpkin farms, pictures of the "tooth tins" I made the kids, and much more!!!!

FMF: Roots

I seem to be on a write-every-other-week kick lately.......I don't know, it's just been hard to motivate myself to write lately.....I blame it on the weather & my clumsy and slow desk top computer (which is what I have been using alot lately because it has a printer).

Anyway, here I am. This week's word is "Roots". I had two thoughts almost immediately. One was roots as in the things and people in your past that work together to make you who you are. And the other, strangely enough, was the roots that show when you've had your hair dyed. Funny, I know.

So, anyway.....here we go:

I have my "main roots", the childhood home where I grew up, friends and family that helped shape my life. They are a deep, beloved and important part of me. Precious.
And then, there are the other roots.....the threads which hold me to the people and places I've spent pieces of my life. Places and experiences...People who have come in and out of my life and left indelible impressions on my heart 
Some roots are long and wide, others short and slender. But each one is part of me. I wouldn't be ME without them.
Some roots have their touch of painfulness, others their eternal sweetness. But none can be discarded or cut off, not can be truly forgotten or completely ignored. Each root has taught me some sort of life lesson and painful or sweet, I am grateful for each one.

Five Minute Friday is a group of writers who get "together" each friday to spend five minutes writing about the same topic. Go see more here.