Yes, Autumn, there is a Santa Claus...

But Autumn could be slightly more impressed.


It was pretty funny. Tamara and I took Autumn to see Santa on Friday. Autumn was pretty chill about the whole thing, just showed him her nails and her shoes and hung out. No freak out but no real smiles, either. UNTIIILLL, Santa gave her THIS:


I missed the photo op because I was trying to pay but after Santa gave her this lollipop, Autumn totally went back and gave him a hug.


Another stop on our weekend before Christmas train was dinner with Mike's family in Birmingham. We had a good visit. Leah and I coordinated and dressed Autumn and Tyler in one of their matching outfits. Haha. They were pretty active so this is about the best I got of them full body. We'll call it an action shot.


They did slow down a bit. Just long enough for Leah to read them a couple books and then it was off again. Can you believe that Autumn is old enough to go off and play with her cousins in the play room?


I don't blame her for wanting to get away from this face...


Haha, just kidding Uncle Kyle. By the way, do you like Mike's picture taking skillz? He took the one above. We had a fairly uneventful trip home. When we got to Mike's parents' house, Autumn and her P'd partook in some dancing. This is one of the sweetest things ever.


Afterward, she took a bow.


So, after our weekend of visiting, I spent this week working on the last of my gifts. I made this little turtle for my friend Christy. It ended up being a lot tougher than I expected, lol. It was so funny...I had put the turtle's body down while I was working on the shell. Autumn saw it and said, no lie, "What's wrong with it? What happened? I scared!" Mike decided it looked like a brontosaurus and chased Autumn around with it. I admit, it's a gimpy little guy (well, girl, I guess) but I told Christy, who loves turtles, that it was made with lots of sweat and a little blood from where I stabbed myself hand sewing part of it.


Happily, the turtle looked a lot better with its clothes on. I mean, it's still terrible but it has personality, right? :P And, like Mike said, the flower turned out quite nicely, hahaha. And the button is even a Vera Bradley button! Which I didn't notice until Christy pointed it out. :P


I put the turtle (whose name is Henrietta, I think) in front of Molly to see what Molly thought. She was unimpressed which is good. I figure that if the turtle truly was scary, Molly would have tried to take it out.


My other sewing project turned out well. It's an Alabama apron for Nanny. I'm trusting all of you not to show this to her before Christmas, ok? :) Molly approves of this one, too, as you can see from the socks hanging out at the top of the photo.


I'm super happy with how it turned out. The apron took longer than I expected because I've never worked with rickrack. And the pattern doesn't call for any trim. I saw an apron that the designer of the pattern made that used rickrack as the trim on the waistband and in place of the ruffle and thought that would look nice with the houndstooth. I didn't really count on it being so hard! But, after only a couple of take apart and redo moments, everything came out as well as I hoped!


So, that's been our week before Christmas. Tomorrow night we're going to go to our church's Christmas Eve service. Everyone is welcome to come if your church doesn't have a service--it's from 5:30-6:30 at Fellowship Memphis which meets at Crichton College on Highland. I have something to post for Christmas but, in the meantime, safe travels to all and have a very merry Christmas.

Her father's daughter (with captions)

We went to Autumn's two Christmas programs at school this week (I know, it's craziness that she was in a program, time flies!). It was...cold-heart-meltingly adorable. :D And Autumn...well...let's just say she doesn't seem to have my enjoyment of being onstage. We figured one of three things would happen:

1. She'd run away screaming.

2. She'd do what she was supposed to do.

3. She'd suck her thumb and hold her tummy.

She actually did a lot of number three on the first day. Number one never happened, thank goodness. There wasn't a lot of number two, either. There was a fourth option I didn't consider: Autumn staying one place but doing pretty much everything but what she was supposed to do. Here are a few examples. By the way, Autumn is in the middle of the front row. Both days she had on a white shirt with an applique on it so she stuck out a lot. :P Sorry about the view. It was crazy how many people came to this and how early they got the good spots, lol.



I don't know why the end of the credits speed up like that (new software, still figuring it out!) but, anyway, of course, Autumn spent the next 4 hours singing all of the songs from the program. Over and over and over and over again. With hand motions! And insisting that mama do the hand motions! She even sang the songs for Pa D on skype. :P Figures, huh? My ornery little miss.

I'm kinda proud of her individuality. Hehehe. See? There's always a positive spin.

'Tis the Season...

...to take pictures! Every year when we go down to Birmingham, we do family photos. None of the ones of Mike, Autumn, and me turned out well but we got some cute ones of other people. For example, here are Mama Lainey, Papa D, and Tyler looking nice. And, I think this could be Autumn's first documented cheesy "photo smile." Ha!


I love this one of the kids with Brad and Lindsay. I like how Brad is holding onto the car Autumn is on like she's about to take off. She probably was!


All the Colleys! I love having a big family now. I think I've mentioned before that most of my dad's family doesn't really bother with us--with the notable exception of our very awesome Uncle Rex--and most of my mom's is in the Philippines. So, for so long it was just me and my immediate family plus our friends who are like family (you know who you are!). I love that Autumn gets to have lots of aunts, uncles, and (eventually) cousins.


This would be a great photo of the siblings if it weren't for the fact that Mike and I are sitting and leaning oddly.


Since our photos didn't turn out, Mike, Autumn, and I went to Mike's parents' place Sunday to have some potential Christmas card pictures taken. A few of them turned out great. This could be one of my all time favorite shots of Mike and Autumn:


We don't seem to pose very well so I asked Papa D to take some pictures of us swinging Autumn. :D They weren't Christmas card worthy but these are so cute!


By the way, let's all take a moment to go "awwwww" over Autumn's outfit. Teehee. It's so cute! Guess who got it for her? You only get one guess!


I think we'll end on this one. I like it for some reason--we're all looking up at Mama Lainey. And, it kinda tickles me because I look really, really filipina here. Hahaha.


By the way, if you have never gotten a Christmas card from us and would like to, let me know! I love getting cards as well as sending them so I'd love to get one from you! :D You can email me your address at sharaze at gmail dot com.

Thanksgiving Highlights

I'm a little strapped for time (you can see it's midnight, haha) so I'm going to keep this a little short. Thanksgiving will probably come in two posts! I should have done this earlier but it's just been craziness. I'm trying to get a couple Christmas things in the shop before the weekend...here's one thing (more coming tomorrow). I wasn't going to put any of this here but I took a picture I like!


Actually, from now on, most of my etsy updates are going to be on my new blog, sewandscribble.com. It's still under construction but it is functional and I'll probably update about once a week. I'd love it if you'd add me to your reader! If you have a craft blog or business, let me know and maybe we can network a little. Also, if you look in the sidebar of this blog, you can see a widget I've added that will update automatically.

Anyway, to Autumn! And Thanksgiving! This holiday was disconcerting to me because it really highlighted that Autumn is, in fact, a Big Girl. She sat at the Big Girl Table with her second cousins (cousins once removed? how does all that work??) Avery and Gia:


She helped Aunt Lindsay make a dessert.


Totally loved on and played with her cousin Tyler with no prompting.


And absolutely made friends with another second cousin (we're going with that for ease) Brooke.


Autumn romped around and snuggled with all the little ladies with almost no shyness. Occasionally, she even went to a totally different part of the yard than mama and papa!


This picture is out of order but goes with the making friends theme...but Autumn even made friends with some ::gasp:: male relatives! Hahahaha. She's normally a little afraid of tall people, especially if they are guys, so this moment was somewhat epic.


That's it for tonight! More to come, I am sure.

This is it!

My new shop is live!! Take a peek, if you would!




I've got a couple more sets to list and next week I'm going to release some family/calling cards which will be added into some of the sets. Also, we're working on new artwork, like letters! It'll likely be after the New Year before anything sewn shows up in the shop. It took a lot longer than I would have liked to edit the art and actually build the shop.

Definitely let me know what you think!

Also, if I don't get on here before Thanksgiving, I hope you all have a great holiday!

Here are a few things I am thankful for:

Dances


Naps


Friends


Knowing how to fall


Kisses


Giggles


And, really, a whole lot more! :) It's a good life. And I am thankful to you for being a part of it!

Monkeybooks and beginnings

I love to read. Love it. The last two years I've worked on a goal--read 100 books in one year. Last year I made it at 101. This year I'm not going to make it to 100 but I'm not doing badly. I've done a terrible job of keeping track of the books but I'm somewhere in the mid-60's right now. I've hit a bit of a rut because I've read everything on my to-read list that is in the library. So, if you have a favorite book, recommend it to me in the comments! I'll read just about anything except horror and romances (unless they are extraordinarily good and then I might consider it).


One of my big hopes is that Autumn and any other kids we have are also readers. So far, Autumn's on track to enjoy books. It's pretty cool to see her looking through her books on her own, reading to us, or just sitting and reading with Mike or with me.


I think one thing that really helps is that Mike is a reader, too. He's one of the only people I know who reads nearly as much as I do, and as quickly. We both have stories of reading instead of paying attention in class. :P I guess it could be worse--we could have been causing trouble, right??


I guess it's appropriate that we met in a bookstore. Someone in one of the comments, maybe on our anniversary, mentioned wanting to hear that story. It's actually much better in person. :D On paper it's a little boring...my sister and I were Christmas shopping December 2000. It was the first day that the mall was open for holiday hours. My sister is in this pic from Lindsay's wedding:


We went into Lemstone Books which is closed now. Things were pretty dead and I was looking at cd's when this guy came by and asked me if I needed help. I told him what I was looking for and he kind of grinned and pointed right in front of me (this is actually an ongoing thing in our life...I'm not terribly observant, lol). For whatever reason, we ended up talking--I know, I know, Mike talking...to a stranger, no less. But I've noticed Mike has a public persona that he uses when he's working and he's actually quite personable and helpful. I thought he was cute and as my sister and I left (I decided to wait on the cd), I thought "wow, I wish I had met him at like church or school."


We shopped for the rest of the evening and I didn't find anything better than the gift I'd first seen at Lemstone. I specifically told Valerie that I hoped the sales guy wasn't going to be there because he might think I was trying to flirt with him. Hahaha. Well. He was there. And he was just as nice as before. And we ended up talking again for a while. It turned out that he worked on computers during the day (he still works at the same company) and was just helping a friend out for the holidays. It's crazy how little decisions can take life in strange directions!


As my sister and I were leaving, seriously, we were waay out the door and heading for the exit, Mike came running out (by then we'd had the name conversation) and asked me for my number. Awkwardly. And apologetically. :) I'm pretty sure he'd never asked a girl for her number. And, really, I'd never given mine out because I tend to assume everyone is a serial killer for the first few weeks, lol. But he was so cute! So I gave him my number. And three (3!) days later, he called me...and the rest is history!


And, while I'm posting all these old pictures, have one of Miss Autumn...just a couple of weeks after she was born!


Mike, feel free to add or edit! :P

Ug, so behind

We are still here! It's been a super crazy week. I'm still working on getting my new etsy shop and blog going. I have the url set up (sewandscribble.com) but haven't made the banners or started posting on the blog. I'm pretty much done editing all the art so from here on out it's just a matter of getting everything all set up. We've also had some weird stuff come up this week...I'll write more about it later. :P In the meantime, here's my logo! Haha, I'm really proud of myself over this...and I try not to think about how long it took me to come up with and then draw.


I have some cute photos to share but first I've got a funny story. My friend Cathy teaches at Autumn's Mother's Day Out. She does music with Autumn's class on Thursdays so they get to visit together which is way cool. So, anyway, Thursday I saw Cathy on my way in to pick up Autumn and we got to chat in the hall. Apparently, they were in class yesterday singing and clapping and all of a sudden, Autumn stood up and walked up to Cathy. And handed her a booger. Yes. Ahhhh, my little delicate flower.

On to cuter things. Like Samuel!


He's Cathy's little guy who, at five months, is nearly as tall as Autumn. Hahaha! I'm sorry, Autumn. It was really sweet to see Autumn and Samuel interact. Samuel liked Autumn...and me! I feel like I'm terrible with babies so it was soooo cool to see him smiling and wiggling in my direction. And Autumn was so gentle and patted him and brought him his toys when they fell. I like the way Samuel is looking at Autumn here.


Like most kids, Autumn is a big imitator. If I'm sweeping, she gets out her broom. If I'm reading, she wants to read, too. If Mike is vacuuming, she gets out her vacuum. If he is raking leaves or playing games, she wants her rake or her baby computer. Case in point:


I personally like her hair grabbing technique. Note that Cathy is not utilizing it, much to Samuel's relief. Samuel's like, "so...I'm eating. Not sure what all this camera business is about," hahaha.


Actually, last week was a good week for friends and family. Not only did I get to have tea and scones with Cathy and Samuel and Autumn but earlier that week, we also got to celebrate Boppa's birthday! He is 84 years young!


I was playing with the settings on my camera at dinner so most of my pics didn't come out well. I did get a few funny photos of Autumn and the moon. Which she is kind of obsessed with. I blame Goodnight Moon for that. "Ohhhh, look look!! Moon! See? Moon!"


Here she's blowing at the moon. I'm not sure where she picked this up but she will blow a poof of air at random times. Like, at Molly. She'll just be sitting there and Autumn will stand a couple of feet away, yell "MONNY!" and go POOF to blow a puff of air at her. Molly just kind of looks at Autumn quizzically and moves on.


Rubber face bebeh. For no other reason except it tickles me. :P


That's all for now!