Starting with a Thankful Heart (and photos, as promised!)

Today was one of those days. You know the kind. The day when you throw your hands up in the air and wonder, "Really?" But, when all was said and done today, it turned out find. I'm tired, but still thankful for a good number of things:

1. The packages to the aunts and uncles are in the mail - complete with little kid-made dough ornaments with the tags for a splash of holiday cheer!

2. Little Sister did her shopping for Mr. Music before we picked him up from school. No lines at our favorite locally owned shop, though I was happy to see a number of shoppers!

3. After dinner we had an impromptu hacky sack circle which was just hilarious. Neither of us adults are any good at it (despite hours and hours of it in high school and college . . . very sad, really), but we sure looked like superstars compared to the 4 year old and almost 2 year old! Mr. Music is great at getting hit in the forehead and Little Sister kept us all on our toes by running around in circles and randomly crashing into one of us for her turn with the footbag (which she would then pretend to throw, but really just hand off to the next person). It really was a fun time and we all had sweaty faces afterwards to prove that "circle kicking" CAN be a workout if done with the right people (especially when those people are under the age of 5).

4. Despite icy roads and icy hills, we accomplished all of our errands safely. My favorite trip was to the post office (the first stop to the first post office of the day) when I picked up our package with the book's award stickers!!!

This is our award certificate for the Moonbeam Children's Book Award - isn't it fancy? You can see the stickers in the corners. I'll get a photo of a sticker on a book ASAP.

Even the envelope the certificate was sent in is sparkly!

Here's the actual Bronze Medal! The center moon part actually spins, so it is really quite cool. I'm still trying to figure out appropriate framing of it.

5. I finally have photos to share with you of our big Christmas sewing adventure (although if you are a relative of mine, I'm going to ask you to use your self-control and please go visit another site without viewing this next set of photos - they are Christmas gift related in nature!).

See how the bag folds flat so nicely? That's because we used a canvas bag as a template! This is one of 5 different fabric combos. It just so happens that I bought this fabric in Italy in 1999. I used some of the fabric for bedroom curtains when we lived in North Carolina - but now I've reused it all for reusable bags!





If the bag could stand alone, it would look like this (we filled it with reference books!). We have since added straps made of the same fabric, but I haven't gotten a photo of the bags with straps yet!