Fall Swapping Season

Several of the forums I participate on have swaps going on all the time. I may have shared here before about the 12 days of Christmas swap -- that one is lots of fun & I'm looking forward to signing up for it again later this year. Recently, I've participated in a 'Pampering Mom' swap, and my parcel arrived today: It's perfect for me. To fit the budget for the swap, I listed a few books I was missing in various series and said I'd be more than happy to have them in good used condition. What a pleasant surprise to get not one, but both of the books I needed to own the complete O'Malley's series! Along with a bookbag from a seller of great products on both Etsy & Hyenacart - Beneath The Rowan Tree / DaydreamBelievers. We love Lori's designs, and I'm happy to have this great tote for my library books. Things just kept getting better, as a pair of earrings I'd been wishing for were also in the package, along with some velour face wipes (like reuseable/washable cottonballs), and several sample/travel size soaps. I'm also expecting parcels in a couple other swaps -- one that supplies me with knitted goods & I pay the knitter in an equal amount of yarn!, and another that was a crazy mess of requests, offering & matches. I've sent off a baby carrier, and a couple sets of gift bags, and will be receiving many WAHM-made goods in exchange, but not from the same people. In sewing forum swaps, I will soon be sending off a batch of aprons, and a parcel of toddler clothing ... guess I should get back to the sewing room....

A challenge from a fellow seamstress

SewingMel over at SewingMamas has issued a challenge -- you can follow along at her blog here.

I'll be working thru the planning & execution of starting Finn's fall wardrobe. He's finally at the point where we have very few hand-me-downs in size 4, so it's time to seriously tackle getting the bulk of his wardrobe made.

Tonight I'll begin the planning stage -- taking everything out of the dresser & closet, seeing what fits & what Finn has for fall.

A perfect summer saturday

Yesterday, Dave took Finn adventuring while I worked on putting up a light fixture, shelves & thread rack in the sewing room.

After they returned, we all went back to the splash pad, had some icecream -- softserve is not a good choice when it's 33 degrees celcius out. (that's 91.4F)

We left the park and went to watch a ship come through this section of the Canal -- Finn loves to see the lift bridges go up, and the guys on the ship waved to him while we were watching.

Wordle again

Have you played on www.wordle.net lately? Go play, it's fun! I did a couple today ... http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2218733/cj http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2218751/fdls

Did you know?

That somewhere in this region, someone thought it would be a good idea to send the street sweeper down my street at 11:20pm.

Now, at the old house, this wouldn't have bothered me one bit, the house was further back from the road. New house, closer to road, older windows. More noise coming in those windows. And now, at 11:25pm, it's coming back to do the other side. Fun times.

Good thing -- the street will be cleaner tomorrow. Maybe I stayed up too late ... if I was tucked in bed at the back of the house, I wouldn't have heard a thing.

Huh. Imagine that.

Montreal. Toronto. Hockey Players. Millionaire Golfers.

Click This.

No matter how it goes from here .... 24. 11. It's a good day today ... have to see if I have a Habs shirt that's not in the laundry already.

Moved In.

You'll forgive yet another long absence from my blog ... we've been moving.

One thing we're trying to do as we unpack is to put all our books in one room. At the old house we had books in every room on smaller shelves. Now, we think we'd like to have them all together.

However, we don't have bookcases yet -- I think they'll be here tomorrow. Until then, a friend unpacked the books for us, and they are piled in the den/TV room/library.

I must confess, most of these are mine. I read a lot though ... and many of these are full series of books. It's nice to go back and read a series from beginning to end, without having to wait for them all to appear at the local library.

dotCA off to a great start for 2010

Come shop! http://hyenacart.com/dotCA/

Great new talent ... all Canadian.

A conversation with a small boy.

(Earlier today, we came up with the idea of giving all my son's diapers to a baby for my son's birthday -- since he'll be 3 and a 'big boy'. He was totally on board, 3 hours ago.)

Just now, the little guy & I were chatting, and he asked me to retrieve an out of reach toy.

Me: I can get that if you tell me what you're going to with your diapers on your birthday.

Small boy: I can't tell you.

Me: Why can't you tell me?

Small boy: It's a surprise.

Right. I have a feeling the surprise is going to be that he's changed his mind.

Craft supplies & ideas

Now that we're in week two of providing home child care, my meager supply of craft items is quickly being used up.

I've got construction paper, tp & paper towel tubes, some empty kleenex boxes. I've got lots of little photos cut out from magazines, lots of scraps of fabric. There's also empty thread spools.

We've got crayons, glue, pencil crayons.

I've got a laminating machine to make things like these stained glass projects. But we need more ideas ... things that are fun, suited to a wide range of ages (1-4 year olds), and that don't use any expensive materials.