Blankets by Grandma

My Grandma Mitzi makes these GORGEOUS baby blankets for her great grandkids. I have a green one for Ethan, a pink one for Cadie, a yellow one for Jo, and now a blue one for Charlie. The blue one is a beautiful new pattern she did with little sheep on it, and I love it! I had to make sure and take pictures of Charlie with it.

(Charlie is in awe of the stitches...)

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Charlie at One Month

Happy one month birthday, Charlie! He sure is a sweet boy. He sometimes sleeps all day long and sometimes he seems to never sleep during the day. Fortunately, he is a good night sleeper though, sometimes going for 6-7 hour stretches! Way to go, buddy :-D He is growing every day, his tracking is getting a lot better, and he definitely knows the sound of my voice. What a cutie pie!

Just for kicks, I thought I would look up old pictures of my other babies at one month old. 

Ethan

Cadie

Jo

It's funny, I think Ethan, Jo, and Charlie look super alike, and Cadie looks like her own little person. I love my kiddos!

Fluttershy Amigurumi

Hooray, I actually finished a pony amigurumi! I found these incredible patterns designed by a very talented nerd, and every time I pulled them up my kids FREAKED OUT, begging me to make a pony for them! I tried a Rarity pony and, well, let's just say she might be the sister we hide in the closet forever :D I really worked hard on Fluttershy to actually use markers and check off my progress on the pattern and she turned out SO MUCH BETTER. I also thought the eyes and the butterflies were going to be a GIANT PAIN to hand sew together, but they turned out to be really fun! JoJo carries both of the ponies around everywhere and snuggles them all the time. She seems to be right at home in our house! (Click here for the Ravelry page)

Cadence Shawlette, Part 2

I finished my second shawlette, this time testing the pattern I had written down from the first one. I made a few modifications, and I think both are lovely in their own way. I have had a great team of testers working on trying out the pattern and the response seems pretty good so far! I'm awaiting the rest of the pieces to be finished and I will release the pattern around August 1st. Enjoy!

PS - I noticed today that my blog has 22,200 page views! That's exciting!

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Life With Four Kids

Wow, what a world we live in now! I thought adding JoJo was a piece of cake, we were already in our kid groove and it wasn't a big deal to add a third kid to the mix. It's not really quite been the case with #4 though. Charlie is great, he's a good sleeper and other than not gaining weight very well at first he has been fabulous. Our lives have changed quite a bit, though. For one thing, our oldest had a really hard time transitioning. We don't know if it was because he's not the only boy any more, or if there was something else bothering him. Hubby ended up being at home for three weeks straight too, since his parents came to visit, and we have never had him home from work that long before. Life was really, really hard during a lot of those first few weeks. Now hubby is back to work, visitors are back home, and we are slowly getting back into a routine. It finally hit me yesterday what our lives are going to be like. Someone ALWAYS seems to need something, and if I don't keep up with dishes or laundry regularly we don't have any clean clothes or dishes. It takes about 10 minutes to get everyone in and out of the car and we are forever running out of bread for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I'm pretty sure I always smell like baby poop and breastmilk too, I'm just so used to it that I don't smell it any more but I'm sure my friends notice it. Our playdates have become more limited and our grocery trips a bit longer. Life is chaos. And I have to say, I love it.

Cadence Shawlette

I have been out of knitting projects for a lit while now and hadn't really been knitting since Charlie was born. I decided to check out the clearance section of yarn at JoAnn and found an interesting yarn in a couple of colorways I liked, so I picked up two. It looks hand dyed and hand spun, but since it's by Bernat I'm guessing it's machine made. I tried the first one, called "Ambrosia," and messed around with making a basic shawlette. I think it turned out pretty good, especially considering I had never made a shawlette before! I am almost done with the second colorway using the same overall pattern with a couple of changes, and I am working on writing it all down so I can release my very first pattern. We'll see if anything comes of it, but for now I'm really happy with my new accessory!

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My Crazy Family

I had a good friend of mine come over when Baby Charlie was only a few days old and shoot some pictures for me. As fun as it is to take newborn pictures, it's a little too high pressure for my own newborn and I'm always afraid I'm going to mess it up. I traded my friend the Loch Ness Monsters for a photoshoot and we had a lot of fun with it, and he was kind enough to shoot some of our entire family.

Resource List for Readers

Hey everyone! I finally decided to sit down and write a complete resource list for my readers. These resources include everything from links to the photography classes I have taken and gear I use, to my favorite knitting podcast and designers, to the number one scrapbooking system I use every year. The  trick is that the only people able to see this list are my email subscribers. I plan on sending out only one email per week with an update on the blog posts I did that week, along with a few other tidbits of information here and there (like my upcoming podcast!) I promise not to spam you, and you can unsubscribe any time without hurting my feelings. To subscribe, just click here or fill in your email address on the right hand side, and you will be directed to my favorite resources to inspire your craftiness! Thank you to all my readers for supporting me so far, I hope this will make it even more enjoyable for you each week. Blessings!

Emily