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Happy Birthday Anne

Dear Anne,

Today you turn 4. Each day I have been blessed to watch you grow into an incredible little person. You are bright, imaginative, smart and inquisitive. You challenge me every day in new and creative ways. You force me to stretch my imagination and my patience. I love that I get to be your mama, it is has been the biggest and best adventure of my life. I have huge hopes and dreams for you, but mostly I just want for you to be happy. Know that mama and daddy love you to the sun and back (as you like to tell us).

Love you!

CIMG1599On her birthday, 4 years ago!

DSC_0650Today, bold, beautiful and 4 years old!

Love,
Mommy

Blessed

Sunday I was struck with a tragedy…quite literally. I was struck by the needle of my precious sewing machine. OUCH!!!!! In case you missed that I will say it again: OUCH!!!!

I’m fine, I just barely missed bone and nail, so only the fleshy part of my finger was struck. Unfortunately that did some damage to my sewing machine. She is now in the shop for repairs.

She will be receiving the full spa treatment for the next week. I know what you are thinking, “Isn’t the title of this post ‘Blessed’?”

Why yes it is! Here is how I am blessed. This week off from modern technology has given me a chance to plug in a recent amazing gift I received. Here’s the box it arrived in:

Do you know what I received yet?

Here is another picture to help you along:

Do you know yet?

Well I will tell you. One of the 2 women who inspired me to quilt, gifted me her Singer Featherweight 221 three weeks ago. I have to say that when her son (my dad’s best man and vice versa) asked me if I wanted it, I simply burst into tears. I didn’t really have words. I have admired my Grandma Irene’s quilting for years (and for that matter her son’s quilting and her daughter in-law’s too).  It was her crazy quilt that got me hooked on the idea of having to make one and she is the person who saved fabric for me for years and years to I could make one.

I fired the Featherweight up today and it sewed like a dream. I couldn’t even believe how amazing she sewed. I looked up her serial number and based on that I figured out she was manufactured in 1949. When I am 64 I hope I am working as well as this sewing machine!  Grandma Irene, thank you so much. She is being well loved and well cared for. I am anxiously awaiting the day that I can teach Anne to sew on this beautiful machine. I just can’t imagine a better one to teach her one (when the time comes of course).

I decided to work on some Half Square Triangles that will be for a tablerunner. I’m in a secret swap and this seemed like the perfect kind of project to give her a test run on.

Here they are all done. I made 40 total and while I was sewing I learned how to wind the bobbin, thread the bobbin and thread the machine. It is such a cool learning process.

So, I may have sewn my finger and busted my Janome, but on the bright side I got to sew on this incredible machine gifted to me by an amazing sewist.

Happy Tuesday!signature

Anne’s First Day of School

Last Thursday was Anne’s first official day of preschool. I really did struggle with the decision to start her at 3 almost 4 and go for two years or wait until next year. What tipped it over the edge was her wanting to go because all of her friends were going to school. She is 6 months younger than most of them, so she will be a year behind them when kindergarten starts but I figure the socialization and the ability to make new friends is always a good thing.

For her first day of school I wanted to do something special. I made her a dress for her first day, she picked out the fabric of course, and I also made her a special book…

It is a basic fabric covered Composition Book, but what makes it special is what I wrote inside. When we were home in March my mom gave me this box of papers that she had been saving for me since the beginning of time. Inside it was 6 different sets of papers all stapled with the same set of questions. Each of them were answered in my mom’s handwriting but the answers were mine. Close as I could figure I answered them from Kindergarten until 5th grade.  I decided it would be fun to have Anne answer the same questions, but instead of loose leaf papers that could get lost, I wrote them all into this notebook so I could see how her answers change year after year.

Here are the questions:

My Name Is:
Today Is:
I am ___ Years Old.
I was born on___.
I have ____ hair and ____ eyes.
I am ___ inches tall and I weigh ___ pounds.
I like to wear ____.
Usually I feel ___.
I am happiest when ____.
I am sad when____.
I get angry when ____.
I  like ___, ______, _____, _____, _____, and ____.
I am good at _____.
I am not good at ____.
I want to learn ____.
If I could go anywhere I want to go, I would go to ____, because ____.
If I could be anyone I want to be, I would be _____, because ____.
If I could have anything I want, I would want _____.
If I were an animal I would be an _____ because_____.
I live in _____ with ____.
I have responsibilities at home ____, ____, _____, and ____.
Draw a picture of your home and family.
I go to ________ (school).
My favorite thing about school is __________.
I don’t like _________.
I have responsibilities at school ______, _______, and ________.
Draw a picture of your school.

Lot’s of questions! We spent the morning answering these and Anne was so excited to draw in the special notebook!

I thought you might like to see a couple of her answers!

The cutest pictures of the day though are the ones in her dress all ready for school! But then I might be biased about that 🙂

We also got one picture before heading into the classroom.

Shortly after I took this picture we went into the classroom and signed her in. She was amazing, she found her own name tag without any help! Yup, she can read her name!  After we were done with hand washing she immediately told me that she was ok and that I could go home now.  I was torn between being proud of my independent little girl and a bit crushed at how quickly I was dismissed. I went home, had lunch alone for the first time in almost 4 years and then spent my time sewing and waiting for 2:40 to roll around so I would have an excuse to get back in the car and go get her!

This whole school thing really is a whole new adventure for the both of us!

A BIG Weekend

This weekend was a big one for us. My hubs came home which just made Anne and I so happy. We went to a wedding, which is always fun, but the most fun had to be…Anne finally mastering riding her big girl bike! She rode her bike around our block 3 times once with me chasing after her and 2 times with her daddy chasing after her (I was in too much pain to keep going).

It was one of those super proud parent moments!

When you look at her little legs you can see just how much effort she has to put in to pedaling!

A look of concentration and a bit of trepidation!

Our initial goal was to get to the corner, can you see the pride in her face that she made it. We went back to her daddy and then she wanted to go to the corner again, only instead of stopping she rounded the corner the second time and kept on going!

As I said, it was a BIG weekend for us. Some hand sewing happened too. I’m halfway done with the binding on the purple quilt and I made a few hexies too. You can see my pictures on Instagram, which I finally joined! Here’s the link to me: http://instagram.com/sewbittersweetdesigns#. If you follow me, I will follow you right back!

Anne’s Not A Box

Yesterday Anne had more testing on her kidneys. When we do these tests we stay home all day, and she has to be relatively inactive (basically no running around wild like most days for a 3 year old).  We needed some nice calm activities. We started with a drive to our favorite berry stand and picked up some raspberries and blackberries and gorged ourselves on them. Then we busted out the paints!

Then Anne found a box! And we both remembered an awesome book we read at the library a couple of weeks ago “Not A Box” by Antoinette Portis. So what did we do? We painted Anne’s Not A Box!

And here she is, with it all loaded up and ready to go! By the way, she informed me “It’s not a box! It’s a Rocket Ship!” LOL

Anne was relatively calm and had a fantastic day! Seriously, if you have a young one with an active imagination, I highly recommend this book and making your own “Not A Box”!

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