Happy Bakers

It's been several months since I've gotten to have the Bitties at my house for Grammie day, I usually go to their house. There is something wonderful about welcoming them into MY domain. As I was walking this morning I thought, "What should we do today?" Mama was bringing the trolley (double stroller), but it looked like rain. I decided that baking bread was always a good idea and we haven't done that for over a year.

They arrived just before lunch so I had frozen bing cherries waiting for them on the counter (which needed to be warmed up, too cold!) Fiona was delighted with the purple cherry juice left in the bottom of her bowl (and Grammie was delighted with Liam's remaining cherries!) But as soon a sausage appeared on the counter it was all about the sausage for Liam!

 

Now I have to tell you about the sweet little apron that Fiona has on in this pix! A couple of weeks ago I got a surprise package from my sister, Sue.

As soon as I saw my old ducky apron I started to cry! I wore this so many times when I was my Mama's A#1 expert helper! So many sweet memories flooded back. I was so pleased that Sue still had it these 60+ years later! (I likely gave it to Cindy when she was a little girl, that is where all of my favorite things went!)

We had a little play time outside... until it started to rain (Yay for rain!), but no trolley walk today!

When I suggested bread making Fiona was still too wrapped up in playing so my first assistant was this very able-bodied boy. Both of these children are so smart and capable! He unwrapped the butter all by himself (Hiam do it! Yes, Hiam, he can't say Ls yet!)

When Fiona joined us a few minutes later she wanted her usual pink apron, "it's so beautiful!" And these obliging Bitties share back and forth so nicely!

They took turns putting in all of the ingredients (Yes, they used that word!) to make the dough! Every once in a while one or both of them would put their hands on their hips and say, "Hmmm!" Makes me laugh!! They did it all, even the egg cracking!

Grammie is always very liberal with tastes along the journey... isn't that what it's all about? Fiona did all of this spreading by herself! Such a confident big girl!

I gave them both a little knife to cut off tastes. Liam was so pleased to spread his own little sample.

 All told we made three loaves: one for eating now, one to go home with the Bitties and one for Grammie and Grampy to enjoy at their leisure! There was only about 3" left of that first loaf by the time we'd all, including Mommy, had our fill.

I revel in these marvelous times that I get to spend with my darling grandchildren! In the last two weeks I've had this treat with big (Ashton) and small (Fiona, Liam and Emmy). There is such a sweetness in being with these marvelous people.

I am such a blessed Grammie!

Park Day

I LOVE taking *my* Bitties to the park! When their Mama was their age I took her and her sibs to the park so I've done lots of parks over the years.

Orem has a brand new park that is OVER THE TOP!  It is the All-Together Playground. It is 1.5 miles from their house so an easy walk for this Grammie and the Bitties in their trolley (stroller). Today was DE-lightful! One of those rare 65º days that come around one-in-a-while in March. We made a quick stop at Target for bagels and Bunny milk and arrived mid afternoon.

I've never seen a nicer park! Let's start with the fact that it is completely fenced in... only one way in or out! Always happy news for this Grammie! There is this wonderful composite soft cushion under every thing.

The kids found so many things that I couldn't keep up with photos of all of them... plus trying to keep an eye on this busy girl! She climbed up, around and exited all by herself.

She is absolutely fearless! She took off her shoes and socks to get down with some serious climbing!

My favorite was when three boys, all older than her watched her climb, successfully to the top of this beehive, ALL BY HERSELF and said to one another that they didn't dare try.

This little pixie-princess has me absolutely smitten!

On our way home, at the corner by Target, Fiona looked at me and nicely asked for a shake! Well, how could I refuse? We trekked across the parking lot to the Wendy's and got baby-shakes and a small order of fries. Were they ever happy little children.

Liam is not one whit behind his sister. He took his first taste of his requested (yes, just 2 and requested!) vanilla shake, smacked his lips appreciatively and said, "Yummy!" with a smile guaranteed to melt any Grammie's heart.

And even though this Grammie walks EVERY DAY I, stupidly, wore the wrong shoes and had barking piggies by the time we got back to their house. I drew up a basin of warm Epsom salts foot bath and IMMEDIATELY had two little foot sore companions, who, incidentally, rode in the trolley the whole time!

Let's just say there is now a damp spot on the carpet right about there!

When Mommy got home from work I showed her the photos and commented that Fiona is fearless. Her response was, YES! You'd never see Liam riding on the canopy of the trolley!

Wait? What??

Well, 10 days ago on Tuesday-last, when the Bitties were at Grammie's house we went for a walk (we usually do) but Grammie's trolley has oddly gotten too small for these two Bitties. We tried several different configurations but nothing was working. Finally Grammie had a bright idea. Fiona could ride on the canopy. It was great sport riding the trolley horse. We made it safely all the way down the steep hill, got this photo and then...

YEAH, IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL 

SOMEONE GETS HURT! 

I changed speed too quickly and that DANG trolley horse bucked her right off, straight forward and onto her beautiful little face. Everything went into slow-mo as I watched her skid and somersault on the frozen asphalt! I quickly scooped her up, called 911-Grampy, and we both, Fiona and Grammie cried! 

This poor little lamb! I was just sick! We got her home, got an ice pack, called Mama and put Healer-Harley on the job! (Fiona says, I love Harley! He helps me feel better!)

This was that brave little face on day 3. We've both agreed that we will never do that again!

Fortunately, we know about Vitamin E and her little face looks almost better today. Only one small scab left on her forehead and new pink skin on her precious little nose. (see photos above)

I'm so grateful that these precious babies are so close and I get to be with them frequently. I'm so grateful that this little precious girl was not hurt badly!!

Quiet Books- Mission Completed

Back in June I posted about Jude's quiet book. At the time I started his book, and through most of the lengthy process of making it, I hadn't planned on making any others. I'd even warned my other children, who have young children, that this was a special one-time project for Jude. But, by the time I finished, and had time to recover, I thought, "How can I NOT make one of these wonderful books for each of my littles?"

But since I was going to be making [a bunch] more quiet books I decided to create digital patterns that I could print on Steam-A-Seam bonding on my computer so as to avoid countless hours of tracing.

My original idea was to make one book for each of the five families (so 4 more books) who have children under age 5, but as I neared completion Camille suggested splitting the pages into two books so her two Bitties could each play with a book at the same time! (Great idea).

I spent the next two months mass producing pages. I had quite a process of making all of the elements for a 2-page spread down to a science. The land, sea and air pages were a must.

As were the shapy-shaper-tons! And this time I did used Velcro instead of the magnets to attach them to the page.

Sandcastle building was also another set that had to be repeated.

Finally, after working diligently for two months I had all of the pages finished and sorted into file folders for each of my sweet grandbabies.

And I can't decided what makes me the happiest about this photo... all of the finished pages or the folded and color-sorted boxes of fabric in my closet!

I've realized today as I have slogged through about 200 photos that I would have had a less daunting task if I had blogged about this while in the process, but I wanted many of the pages to be a surprise. (Erm... next time?)

And since my sweet grandbabies are not ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL the books couldn't all be an exact duplicate of Jude's. I had great fun adding specialized pages for each of the littles.

Here are the pages not previously shown in Jude's book.

I knew that I didn't what to recreate the all hand-pieced Armour of God page. So I printed the pattern I purchased on fabric (sure wish my printer accepted 9" wide paper/fabric), bonded it to felt and used those wonderful tiny magnets again

In my Pinteresting I found this idea then found these fun flip-flop buttons on Etsy. Now comes the fun part... I put them on my bed scanner, scanned them and made up the matching pattern for the big flip-flop pieced from felt. I can't even remember now where I got the idea for the beach bag and smaller flip-flops, but I did the same thing here and made my own pattern. I just happened to have some random strips of hand-dyed fabric from a quilting project done years ago that were just right for the body of the bag. Since the buttons came in a two pack, there are only two of these pages (Emmy and Fiona).

Ah, but now I'd created a monster idea. As soon as I saw these darling fish buttons at WalMart I snapped them up for Miss Annabelle and then used fabric from her baby quilt as the background. I found a cool pelican idea here.

I also loved this sea-themed page. I didn't like some of the element so found ideas elsewhere for the Nemo-themed fish.

Deborah was also pretty excited about this repeat of fabric from Annabelle's baby quilt. I had to piece the little amount I had left to come up with the 2-9" pages!

This bunch of bed-jumping-monkeys caused me a great deal of stress! I knew I wanted to make a Monkeys-jumpin'-on-a-bed page but did NOT want to piece a bazillion little jumpers! I finally found this awesome FREE graphic. All I had to do was cut and paste those little monkeys... well, except... there was neither a Mama nor a Doctor. So I went totally PhotoShop crazy and cut and pasted a stethoscope and medical insignia on the Doctor (found in the plethora of clip art I've amassed over the years) and took a cake out of Mama's hands, changed the angle of her arms and gave her a cell phone. Yeah, I'm sick like that!

I played around printing different sized monkeys on paper until I got them small enough for little fingers and then printed them on fabric, bonded that to white felt and sewed it closed. Each little finger puppet is two sided.

Of course, monkeys NEED a bed to jump on. More clip art from the now defunct HugClub by PC Crafter's. The pillows Velcro onto the headboard and the quilt makes a pocket for the pillows and monkeys.

But all of this was just way-too-much for a single page. The facing page is a little zippered pouch for monkey-storage!

This Harley tic-tac-toe page was a must for the two little families that always come to Grammie's house. When Fiona hears Harley whining as she comes to the door (erm... or pulls up to the curb!) she says, "Harley says- My Nona! I love my Nona! My Nona's here!" (Grammie has taught her well.)

"I love to go to Grammie's house, to Grammie's house, to Grammie's house,
I love to go to Grammie's house, and see that Harley-dog! (repeat)
That Harley does some woofing, some woofing, some woofing.
That Harley does some woofing then we take him for a walk"
(Sung to- I love to go to Grandma's house.)

Another idea I gleaned from Pinterest was this one, but I couldn't find ANY-thing that I liked. So I just made it myself, says the Little Red Hen! I had great fun digitally painting this tree a leaf at a time, found a cute popcorn piece (I don't remember where) and the popcorns snap onto the branches. I used PhotoShop again to create the layers and printed it on fabric. I loved digging into all of the fonts and graphic elements I have to find just the right combination.

I sent Camille to my Pinterest board one night and she found this wonderful idea of adding a little envelope with a personalized note for my sweet baby-children.

I laminated the note, but saved it as well in case I need to print a replacement at some point.

Camille also found this ladybug counting page that I liked better than the counting or ladybug pages I did for Jude.

But I quickly found out that the googley-eyes and glued on dots made Little-Liam frustrated since he thought those should come off too. Bless him!

Since I was splitting two of the books I needed to add a couple more single-spread pages to go at the beginning and end of each book.

Another Camille suggestion-

The letters Velcro onto a strip of loop. I had a serendipitous find with this clearanced Velco at JoAnn Fabrics!

This little page got created on a whim! I already had the numbers printed, cute buttons, zippers, and strips from a quilting project, gone wrong, and ended up with this fun!

So here they are...

Fiona-

The edging is older than her mommy!

Annabelle-

With more fabric from her baby quilt.

Cohen-

Fabric from my cowboy-stash!

Liam-

The boy who loves RED and BLUE. He just petted the cover when I gave it to him.

Emmy-

With fabric from her infant car seat cover!

(And wouldn't you think I'd have a pix of the finished book? Nope, just tons of photos of how to put the binding on wrong! AGAIN!!)

And...

Well, I don't know what this baby's name it! He/she is still a gleam in Daddy-Stuart's eyes!

Actually it is the other half of Emmy's book but her Mama is looking ahead.

All of the fabric used in these quiet books comes from my copious stash of fabric. See!! There is a good reason to hoard... erm, save all of that fabric!

And this time... I really will come back and write up a post about how to bind these up. It took me until the last 2 (of 7) before I could get it right from the start.

(It literally took me 6 hours to find, edit, upload the photos, find the ones I missed the first time, and write this blog post!!)

Bring On The Beach...

... to Grammie's backyard!

Fiona, like her Mama, is very tactile and loves to play in the *soft sand* or dirt. Since Grammie just spread 2 yards (read- 2 Fernando loads) of rich, black compost on ALL of her flowerbeds she [I] needed to provide a less dirty play area for the Bitties!

Enter beach sand! I've seen DIY recipes for play sand on Pinterest so this morning I did a quick search on what ingredients I'd need- other than two eager Bitties! We made a couple of stops to get beach toys and sand.

The table from last night's 3rd Sunday Grammie dinner was still on the deck so I used it to corral the Liam so he didn't topple of the edge.

We mixed the 50 lbs of play sand with 1 lb of cornstarch stirred into 6 cups of water. It made for wonderful beach sand. I plopped Liam right down in the large, somewhat portable (man, is it ever heavy!) repurposed plastic gift wrap container. (Yeah, the gift wrap is hangin' in the dungeon on the floor!)

Miss Bitty unpacked the toys and tried each of them out!

We enjoyed almost 2 hours playing in the sand. Liam finally got tired so I stripped him down to shake out the sand and he was ready for a bottle and a nap.

As Grampy finished the nap routine of putting Liam down Grammie and Fiona cleaned up. I stripped and dusted her off too but then the call of the sand was just too much...

She climbed right in and laid down to have a true beach experience.

Good thing Grammie knows how to strip and dust babies!