Giving Much Thanks

We had a fun crafty bloggy playdate this morning. Jen from Upcycled Education came over with her little O. My kid isn't even in "real" school yet and I'm loving school breaks as a chance to connect with our scattered friends. Jen and I were talking about all sorts of blogging things that crafty bloggers love to talk about-- how this, that and the other work. She's scheduling some super fun crafty posts as she's about to head to her mountain retreat for a few weeks. I'm hoping to get to tell you more about her place soon. She's set it up for her own family to enjoy-- crafty and comfy and beautiful, and then she's made it available for vacation rentals, too. If I'm going to spend the time and money on vacations these days, I'm going some place with character. And hers looks like one of those places.

Since she was bringing little O with her today and I also had Juju, my godson, to help entertain my own two... the holiday crafting has finally begun. I've held off as long as I could-- the kids try to pull out Christmas stuff all year long and I resist because I want to feel like doing Christmas stuff at Christmas. The kids were totally happy to use a tapestry or canvas needle and thread to string cranberries. It's something I've never done before-- honestly, I don't think I've ever held a real, raw cranberry until I bought these. I love cranberry juice and cranberry sauce. I'd just not seen the real thing.

The kids were at it off and on for a few hours. And it was 95% less messy than I expected. Looking around, I don't see cranberry juice on anything. How's that possible? My kitchen table is already battle scarred from a thousand projects, so I wouldn't have thought to cover it anyway, but even if it were worth worrying about, the cranberries didn't do any damage.

Even M at 2.5 was able to string a few, but mostly she liked rolling them around and then wearing the strings the big kids had made.

I feel like I'm swimming in cranberries in my sewing area, too. Garnet, actually. My cousin and her husband had their first baby last week and I'm doing a garnet and black nursery for them. I'd started quite a while ago and a million things have slowed me down, but now that baby Luke is here I've got to get this shipped to them. I know he's not likely to actually sleep in his crib anytime soon, but I'm sure his Mama is ready to see it all put together. And now that he's out and we know that he is a "he" I can scrap any plans for ruffles I might have pondered adding at the last minute should the opportunity arrive.

Strange that I'm doing two nursery sets this year. Both are for a "Katie". And their babies are boys named "Liam" and "Luke".

I made two crib sheets with this fantastic tutorial and tried them on M's bed just to check the size and make sure they wouldn't spontaneously disintegrate or something. Isn't there always that irrational fear that something will be grossly wrong as soon as you hand it off to someone else? Or is that just me?

Cranberries and holidays and sewing for new babies. Life and craft and reflection on what has changed. On my kitchen table and on my sewing table. So grateful for all of it. Hope you get to do some heartwarming crafty things over the coming days, too.