A Handmade Christmas, part 1

Last year every single gift we gave was made by hand.  From the photographs to the frames we built.  We did a fake wood learning tower for Henry and a felt house.  People got reusable grocery bags and muslin tea bags.

And, frankly, it was a lot of work.

But the principle of it was great and it was a lot of fun.  We're doing a mostly-handmade Christmas this year.

Lowell is building a mini-workbench for Henry and I have been inspired by all of the car playmats.

The time it takes to applique all of the things like Jill did on her blog seems overwhelming.  There are some great fabric ones on etsy where it is one yard of fabric with the pre-made design backed onto a cute print.

But, I think that I will design my own fabric and print it using Spoonflower's printing services.  I have designed fabrics in the past and been pleased with them.  Plus, if I design the fabric I can then make it personalized just for Henry.  It can have his library, Daddy's work, our playground and the grocery store.

I'm pretty excited and realize this is going to be a lot of time in front of a computer designing it!  But, I will be so proud of it when it's done.

-Meghan

Colors of Autumn

So, I decided to go outside and capture three shots:

One looking up (couldn't help but want to do a long exposure and spin around with this one!):

One looking down:

And one looking out:

I think I got a lot of colors of the season.  Another fun thing to share later this week is that our playhouse is getting close to being done for the season and H loves it.  Totally adores it.  He plays in it all the time and really likes the old school plastic kitchen I picked up at Goodwill.

-Meghan

Starting the Playhouse

When I was a kid my dad built an incredible playhouse. It was up on stilts and had a sandbox underneath it. I remember playing with my friends and cousins in the playhouse, making food from pinecones and acorns. We spent a lot of time in the sandbox underneath the house. I moved away from that house at the end of elementary school, but I have a feeling that if I had a space like that when I was in middle school I certainly would have gone and hung out there to talk about boys, far away from where my mother could hear.

I have a small house; under 1200 square feet. So when it is anywhere above 50 degrees we try to head outside. For my son's second birthday my dad designed a new playhouse for us. We worked all last weekend on framing and starting the siding. The walls and porch still have some work (all of the work) left, but even now it's already become a place that I have to drag Henry away from in the evenings to go take his bath.

We have some more great ideas about how to diversify the playhouse as a mock root cellar and hidden storage as a shed, but right now I want to share some of our pictures and processes.