A Birthday Mara

Mr. Wiedz's mom's birthday is at the end of the month and since she will be back in the sun in Arizona and I had completed the gift I was making for her we had an impromptu/surprise birthday time this past weekend with the family surrounding #3 and #4's soccer tournament...

Mara shawl using some wonderful yarn I had found at Desert Vista Dyeworks, the color way is called "Arizona Sunrise" which is what led me to *having* to purchase it and it *having* to become a shawl for her in the first place. I loved how the fabric of this turned out. It is so light, yet when it's on it creates such warmth! The drape is lovely and the fiber was dreamy to work with. The colors so vibrant...I'll be stalking their store for more!

Someone is 13!!!!

My sweet #1 is 13 today. Everyday with her has been a gift. I am so blessed to be on this journey with her.

She wanted a float down the river with her dad this morning. So we (I'm the shuttle driver) were up before sunrise so they could float and see the sunrise on her 13th birthday.

Later this afternoon we will pick up her friends, the set from her old school meeting the set from her new school, head to the mall for good old fashioned mall trolling and a movie. Then we'll come home for pulled pork dinner and cake. (#6 helped with cake decorating this morning.)

Happy Birthday to the gift that made me a mother.

:: Yarn Along ::

Joining Ginny at Small Things...

Mr. Wiedz went to the Vogue Knitting Live show in Seattle a few weeks ago for work and amongst the mounds of yarn he brought home for me was a swift!!! I had been wanting one for quite awhile and LOVE the one he got. It's the Super Swift II (ball winder too!)from Paradise Fibers...it's dreamy.

The downside of a swift is now that I have the ability to ball my own yarn so easily I find myself balling and then starting new projects...

On the needles :: right now there is too much on my needles. I've picked Mr. Wiedz's sweater back up. I took a new knitting friend to the yarn store the other day and while there picked up all the yarn needed to finish Mr. Wiedz's sweater so I won't have dye lot issues again. I'm working on my first Milo for #6. I wanted it a little big so it would fit her next fall so cast on for the 3T size. My yarn must be not worsted like the label said because the vest will fit her sometime between 4-5...maybe she'll wear it the first time she goes to kindergarten! Found yarn I know will be the right weight and will be casting on another one...they are great to knit! I started a hat for #4 yesterday...all mama-made beanies were too small for him the other day and he's desperate for a soccer practice hat. #3 will be after that. I also gathered all supplies necessary to make a mason jar cozy for a birthday coming up. Hmmmm, I must have cast-on-itis!

On the nightstand :: Got The Maze Runner (affiliate link :)) on my kindle after seeing the trailer for the movie coming soon. So far great book but I don't allow a lot of time in my day for reading so it's going slow.

Happy Birthday #5 & #6!!!

 

 #5 and #6 both have March birthdays. They are about two weeks apart but for now a joint party is the easiest and neither of them care...so joint party it is!!!

#5 got to choose the theme since #6 doesn't know about such things or care yet, and he picked Batman! Worked for me...some yellow, some pink, some black...we're in business!

We had a great day celebrating our two sweet blessings. And a nice turn out of neighbors and friends and family.

Happy Birthday sweet monkeys!

A Girls Weekend

   

My mom's birthday is January 2nd. And she has "suffered" with that close-to-the-holidays birthday for quite some time :). We don't mean to forget. Personally, I have some of the greatest intentions but that week between Christmas and New Years just flies and before I know it it is too late to do anything. Some years too late to get a card out on time. sigh.

This year at Early Christmas (November) my sister posed an idea to my dad, my sister-in-laws and I. A girls weekend to celebrate Mom's birthday. Sounds great. We were all in. Dad even offered to spring for pedicures.

So after a couple of months of Facebook message conversations and some texts and some trying-to-be-sneaky phone conversations with my dad we had a surprise girls weekend. Not on her birthday...it really is just a crazy time with the holiday and this year the Duck game on her birthday...but for the whole weekend after.

What a time we had. Dad really did spring for pedicures (and manicures!). We ate out. We visited. We made delicious food on our own and ate in. We slept in. We stayed up late. We went to the mall. In the 15ish years we've all been married into this family together we've never done anything without our children and husbands and it felt great to be friends and sisters for the weekend.

Memories to last a lifetime.

And major points for when we forget to send the card on time next year :).

#2's 8th Indie Party

What seems like many, many moons ago I was due with #4 really close to #2's birthday, October 1st. Of course way back in beginning of that pregnancy I just convinced myself I'd go as far as I could so that their birthdays wouldn't be too close to each other. That was the plan until I was 39 weeks pregnant after a l.o.n.g., hot summer. When my doctor said come in tomorrow and I'll break your water it no longer mattered that it was just one day after #2's birthday. We'll have combined parties. They'll be best friends. When they get older they can have separate friend parties. It'll work. Let's have this baby. now.

So this year #2 had his first friends party. When we started birthday plans in September we worked out that the family party would be combined but would focus more on the theme that #4 picked, Batman, and the friends party would have all his siblings attending but would be his theme choice and his "own" party.

So I started with some internet searches for ideas for Indiana Jones parties. Some ladies have done some real big parties but I was able to add some ideas to my Pinterest board for the party. Things I thought were doable with a small budget and not too much time.

I made invitations on my new Creative Memories program, sbcStudio. I found a world map outline online that I copy and pasted, I turned it not so opaque and wrote the info on top of that. I put a brownish colored "paper" behind everything and printed them out. Then came the fun part! I used the stove top to burn the edges making it look like an old map. The boys thought the whole burning process was so AWESOME!

Didn't get a pic of the finished product but we were all very satisfied!

Once we got to party time or nearly so then it was really time to get to work!

The cake I found online and made the actual cake part in my mini baking bowl from pampered chef (I looked for my bowl but they don't carry it anymore...sorry). A little bit of carving when it was cool and the day of the party I frosted it and layed out the little scene. #2 loved his cake! I didn't add the candles until cake time because I didn't think they "went" with it.

We used extra cake pieces from the carving of the boulder to use as stands for sprigs of greenery from the trees outside to finish our scene. Oreo cookies smashed up make up the "dirt".

Party time arrived and we were ready. I had found brown hats at the dollar store which were a good reprenstation of an Indiana Jones hat. I told #2 he was lucky his birthday is the same month as Halloween, lots of good finds that wouldn't be available in say, June. We also had legos out so there could be some building and visiting while everyone arrived.

Then we needed a mummy for our Indie adventures. Mr. Wiedz is completely hands-off when it comes to party planning so a couple of days before I asked him if he'd act as our mummy and he said, "whatever." Well, whatever is not a good answer when it means the next day you are standing in the middle of the living room having toilet paper wrapped around you by five 6-8 year olds! It was great! After they got him all wrapped up he chased them around the yard, even making all the right mummy noises! Yea for an awesome dad!

I had meant to buy silly string while at the dollar store but forgot. The kids would have totally gotten into spraying the mummy...oh well.

After all that excitement we came in to do a little archeology hunting.

I had prepared 3 "fields" to reach into and find all sorts of treasures. If you count plastic spiders, snakes and glow in the dark rats as treasure. Monkey brains (cold spaghetti noodles), eye-ball soup (grapes in water) and snake guts (green jello) were a huge hit with all the boys. I gave each boy a plastic cup to put their treasures into then Mr. Wiedz and a dad that stayed washed them up for the boys.

After cake and presents we decorated treat bags, brown paper lunch sacks that they drew spiders, snakes and other decorations on along with their names. We filled the bags with their washed tresures from the archeology hunt and some gummy rats, gummy snakes (gummy worms really, I wasn't willing to spring for the 3 foot long snakes) and gold chocolate coins (Indie has to find some real treasure at some point). The boys ran around like wild indians until their mom's all came back for them.

#2 was thrilled with his "friends" party and that makes me a happy party planner.

Project :: Coffee Cozy for Miss. Julie

A couple of weeks ago I discovered it was my friend Julie's birthday. Now not only is she a friend now, she was a friend many years ago in college, she is also #1's Girl Scout leader, and just a great person to have in our lives. This particular day happened to also be a Girl Scouts meeting day so I knew we'd be seeing her.

Well, we should have a gift!

After we got some school work finished I headed out to my sewing room and whipped up a coffee cozy. Seriously these things take no time! I have a serious button shortage, especially large, fun buttons so I actually had to pick out a button then find fabric to match it instead of the other way around. The pattern can be found here.

A quick trip to Dutch Bros. for a coffee cup and gift card and we were in business.

The group sibling gift

I shared awhile back about the sweet sibling gifts that have started around here for each birthday. I'm loving this new tradition and want to encourage the thoughtfulness and caring that they each put into their gift. That said, with #5 celebrating his 1st birthday I was a little aprehensive about the time I would have to devot to the gifts. Usually there is only 1 or 2 kids who are "into" gift making. I can handle an extra craft or two. But I knew all 4 would be wanting to create something for their little brother and I didn't think I was up for 4 different craft projects with 4 different "bosses" wanting help and supplies.

So I brought up to the group an idea of doing a gift together. Each getting to decorate a fabric panel and I would put them together in a love-y style quilt. Not big enough to be an actual quilt but just right to be carried, snuggled with, cherished as a gift from his siblings.

During morning nap at then end of circle time we got out the supplies and set to work. The lovely thing about creating for a baby is the abiltity to do it right in front of them so when #5 woke up there was no stress about ruining the surprise.

#2 was having a challenging day so his chair looked like this for a lot of our creating time.

We've been dealing with a lot of copying of artist work around here. As we started our project #1 asked how many letters were in the alphabet and with that figured out had decided on a design that involved letter blocks stacked up in a pile. Wouldn't you know it that #2 started on the same design as soon as he got supplies. To avoid WWIII I turned his square into a truck and told him to figure out another design. While avoiding a huge blow-up between kids I created hurt feelings with #2. So he spent a lot of time being upset.

In the end he was able to pull together a design all his own that he was very excited about. And everyone else was proud of the work they did.

Of course we traced the alligator, then he added the alligator hunter with mohawk and ax and the big net.

Again #4's drawing came with explict directions that it said "a brown boat".

Baby was thrilled with his gift from the siblings!

I didn't take any photos of the complete gift all laid out, but it is loved. I grabbed a bunch of 2 inch pieces from my scrap bags, sewed them together and sewed the long strip that made between panels, trying for a scrappy not uniform look. I just made a quilt sandwich out of stash pieces my mom had given me. There was enough of the Clifford fabric for the back and the binding. I even put it back through the machine to quilt around each panel, sewed the binding on the front and finished on the back by hand the next couple of nights. Getting the top together and quilted took about an hour one evening then the binding was two nights in front of American Idol.

A gift

I whipped this t-shirt up for a friend of #2's from Cub Scouts. The party was this past Saturday. #2 picked out the guitar design, I'm not sure why. While we ran errands the other day we picked up the shirt...I was hoping for a colored shirt since white generally doesn't stay white for too long, especially on a 7 year old boy. It turned out cute and I was happy with it. So was the mom of the recipient...the actual recipient couldn't really care about a t-shirt, hand embroidered or not.

inspired by all my reading at house on hill road.

So we had a birthday...

Even though I was against it. #5 turned 1 a couple of weeks ago. And I will admit to him being a pretty terrific 1 year old!

I've said before that our home here in Eugene is a little on the small side, so the idea of putting a birthday party in here on a likely (it is Oregon) spring day had me a little nervous. So I asked my mom if we could hold the party at her house. Aside from being perfectly large it is closer to a lot of family on Mr. Wiedz's side so I was hoping for a good turnout.

The party was perfect! Little #5 charmed everyone with his cuteness. Little and littler cousins were there from Mr. Wiedz family and both Mr. Wiedz's grandma and my grandma were there.

"Grandma Great" (Mr. Wiedz's grandma) with all of her great-grandchildren.

Great Grandma Ruth with 5 of her 19 great-grandchildren. She was really excited to get to be a great-great-grandma this fall when my niece has her first baby.

We enjoyed our last alligator cake.

And opened gifts.

1.

Not sure how I'll manage to have this baby grow but I am sure lucky to have him.

**I know I'm breaking the "rules" with the above photos of the kids' (gasp) faces but the pictures are perfect and with the loss of my grandma just a few days later these are pictures I will treasure and I'm so glad I took.**

Sibling gifts

The last couple of birthdays have included a new activity around the World of Wiedz. A lot of planning and sketching and hidden making time. So cute!

#1 is the most involved at this point. #2 could care less and really hasn't jumped in yet. #3 was very thoughtful and specific about what he wanted to do. #4 is very last minute about his gifts but so determined!

#3's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and included a couple handmade, sibling gifts.

#4 insisted on making a stuffed shoe. We got home from taking #3 to his speech school ON his birthday and #4 saw #1 finishing her gift and just had to join in! I drew a shoe shape, cut it out of muslin, stitched it together, let him draw all over the outside...

He insisted the green across the shoe reads "happy birthday [#3] from [#4]!" So cute!

Then stuffed it nice and full... I finished it off with a whip-stitch and we were in business.

#1 on the other hand had planned out her gift for many weeks...though it did take us until that very day to get it finished! Our #3 is crazy about soccer so #1 made him a soccer ball pillow. I used this project to finish off a couple of Girl Scout requirements. She was really pleased with how it came out.

So was he!

Since we're all here, I might as well show off the sibling-made gifts for #2 and #4's birthdays many months ago...

#3 made #2 a bookmark (inspired by Soulemama's Homemade Home or The Creative Family, I can't remember and don't want to spend my internet time figuring out which one :)) and made #4 a pillow with a spider drawn on it. He was very proud of both and helped or did the work himself!

#1 used a book from the library as her inspiration for new warmy bags for each of her brothers. Decorated with fabric pens to match them in personality and likes. She sewed them herself too!

I'm loving this new tradition and will work on nurturing it both in creativity and the attitude of giving. Though I may try to get things done before the DAY of a birthday!