Oh I could just cry! Whhhaaaaa!!!

In preparing what to put in this post I realized that I'd deleted ALL of my Christmas '08 pictures on New Years Eve. *sob* I hadn't taken many but there was a great one of Grandpa, my brother Jody, and Thadeus. And another one of my sister holding Thadeus. And they're GONE! I thought I'd put them on the computer but I guess I didn't cause they ain't here no more!
We needed more room on the camera to take pictures of this....

and this.....

I had 9 yr old Logan (former daycare boy) and 8 yr old (current daycare girl) Shaylin over for a New Years party. Ohhh what fun we had! We baked bread, ate large amounts of junk food, watched the new Narnia movie, and exploded pepsi.....alllll over the wall and the ceiling. I didn't realize that semi frozen pepsi turns into a rocket when you try to open it! The kids and I were covered in Pepsi as well. We all had a good laugh over that as we cleaned it up. :o) No harm done except the calender was ruined - good thing it was the last day of the year!

Logan's older brother Tyler (12) joined us at a bit before 2 am (he had his own teenager party to go to first) and then we stayed up a little longer before finally falling asleep. I took them back home at noon New Years day. We had alot of fun that night and I'm sure the kids won't forget about the exploding Pepsi for a long time to come!

I also want to show some of what I've been up to lately in the crafty department.
I got some knitting needles that I'd asked for for Christmas and I started knitting these. I did the pink one first, then the orange and then the blue/green one. It was nice to see progress being made as each one got a bit better.

I haven't knitted since the summer I was 13 and I was amazed at how quickly I picked it back up. I still have sooo much to learn yet though.

I also finished my matryoshka dolls. I clipped and clipped and clipped those darn seams before I turned them and the edges still look lumpy! But they're cute anyways. I actually made a smaller one that was about two inches high but it seems to be MIA. I'm blaming the cats on that one. It may show up one day. I sure hope so. It was the cutest one. :o)

They're just the right size to stick in a little girls pocket. Awwww.

Free pattern can be found on this blog HERE.

And that's all folks! Maybe I'll get more done this weekend - you never know!

Operation Christmas Child

I forgot to mention this yesterday. Every year the daycare children and I work on making boxes for Operation Christmas child. This year one of the girl boxes had room in it still after we'd put everything we had in. So I decided we should make a pair of pants to add to it.

My nearly 5 yr old daycare girl looked through my fabric and patterns and decided maybe we should make a skirt instead. AE picked out the fabric but she chose some thin polycotton that was too see-thru so I decided to sew a lining in it.

Well.... that soon turned into trying to figure out how to make a reversible skirt that would look good worn either way. The result turned out really well. It's a size 4 skirt modeled by a 2 yr old which is why it looks so big on her. I can totally see myself making more of these in the future.

This bread here.....

is the result of today's activities. A few weeks ago I discovered that I could in fact, make my own bread. And it wasn't even that scary. :oP We made bread with mom alot growing up but as teens making bread became Jody's thing (aka Thadeus' daddy). I do declare that I shall never buy bread again. Seriously people, home made bread is a bazillion times better than the store bought stuff! This time I used a recipe I found online here.

292 people left reviews and nearly everyone gave it 5 out of 5 stars - and they weren't wrong! It's totally a 5 star bread. :o) I just need to work on my loaf shaping skills. The middle loaf was way smaller than the other ones. And the third one was a little lumpy on one side.

One trick that worked well was to brush them with melted butter after they come out of the oven so that the crust doesn't get too hard. That's why they look so glossy in the picture. I can't wait until the kids wake up from their naps to have some.