Little Gifts for a Friend

I was able to meet up with a good friend the other day, one that I have not seen for almost 10 years! It was great to see her, and she looked EXACTLY the same from the last time I had seen her. It was amazing. It was also nice to meet her daughter. How did we reconnect, you may wonder ... well of course, through Facebook. :-) It turns out that she is living only about an hour and a half away from us and so we planned a late lunch on Friday and had a good time catching up on the events from the past several years. To add to the fun, we are both expecting our second babies later this summer so I planned a little gift for her baby-to-come as well as a gift for the big sister.

Baby gift ...
I found a great tutorial online, of course, from one of my favorite crating websites, Sew Like My Mom, for these adorable little baby friendly bean bags. They were just too stinkin' cute not to make, so I did.

And then a gift for the big sister ...

4th of July Fun

We went to Kilgore for the 4th of July weekend and celebrated with Jeff's family. It was a good time but by the end of the long weekend my pregnant body was completely worn out from the 4 hour travel there and back.

Here are some pics from our family weekend.

A celebration of everyone's birthday for the year. :)

Me and baby at 34 weeks!


And a new pair of shorts for Wesley.

He loved them and by the end of the weekend he was exhausted too!

Contest Entry...

I've been organizing my favorite crafting pages and blogs and saw today that Create & Delegate is having a giveaway! I love this kind of stuff! So this post is part of my official entry to win. :)

Future Projects

I have a couple of projects on the horizon that I'm so excited about! It's the Four Corners Nursing Top from Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings book. I love what she's put in this book and I'm so excited to make my way through several of the patterns and ideas. I've decided to make the Four Corners top x3, and large enough to be a maternity top before the baby's birth. Once the baby's here I plan on taking them in to fit the shrinking me, hopefully. :)

Here are my fabric choices for the three tops.

My other project is going to be this...

... and here are my fabric choices.

And I have another fabric combination, but it's for a friend who's expecting a baby girl, so I'll keep that one under wraps until I'm done with it and have given it to her. :)

Crafting ADD

I know others will identify, but I'm having major crafting ADD as of late. I stumbled across a fun project on YouTube from The DIY Dish ladies for a cute and simple handbag, which I promptly made for my sister (hope you love it, Jen!) and then another project from them for an adorable bird pin cushion. I've been eyeing pin cushions at the store every time I go but I just hate the thought of spending $3.99 for one. Ridiculous, I know, but I'm glad I held out because I then got the opportunity to make my own and with this same simple Joel Dewberry patter I'm thinking of making several more as holiday ornaments for a themed tree. :) Nice to know that occasionally there is a method to the madness.

So here are some pictures of my latest projects, as well as a couple of myself that I took in the mirror, just to get a few maternity pictures on record for this pregnancy (which I have none of until this point, shameful, I know).

This was my first attempt with this bag and I've learned for next time that I might want to add some cotton batting between the two layers to thicken the bag up some, and I'll shorten the strap length. For this bag I did add in three pockets, which isn't part of the tutorial. I like to have more than one place to put things in my purse and figured my sister would appreciate this too.


Joel Dewberry Pin Cushion Design

My mother-in-law gave me a bolt (yes, a whole bolt!) of this gorgeous toile upholstery fabric in green (pictured for this project) and in red. I wish the fabric was cotton because then I'd use it for a few clothing projects I have lined up.

Me and baby #2 at 32 weeks. :) And yes, I really don't want to know the sex until the baby's birth. I get asked this question all the time and it's really not that hard, at least for me, to wait until the birth. I will know sooner rather than later and I love the thought of learning all about my new baby, in all ways, in those first few moments after birth.

Apologies for the water spots on the mirror. This was left over from Wesley's version of cleaning the mirror, sweet boy. :)


And an almost complete project...

... from this to this, so far, with a little to go. :)

My pictures are pretty bad, I know, but that's because I take them all on my iPhone. Its really time to invest in a good camera, hopefully before this baby comes along.

Revival

There have been lots of things going on in the Stanglin household the past several months. My blog has fallen to the back burner but I am going to try and revive it. We'll see who cares to follow. :)

I think all of our friends and family know by now that we're expecting baby number 2 in mid-August. We're getting very excited and next week I'll be 30 weeks along, with approx. 10 weeks to go. Wow! Wesley has been in Mother's Day Out this semester and loved it so much!!!! MDO let out a week ago and we're not sure what we're going to do with all of this bottled up, little boy energy for a whole summer. Our first plan of action, in that regard, is to send Wesley to Gram and Poppy's house for a week. Yes, I said a week! Jeff and I are so excited at the prospect of having time alone, more than just the few hours in the evening we get right now, and we plan to take some of that time to catch up on missed dates, on movies, and to learn more about the city(s) around us, all things that are generally too difficult to do when you have a 3 year old and have to plan things around a still much needed nap time.

Beyond that, Jeff has been busy with work.; He's been well received at his new campuses and always gets such great student feedback. For the spring semester he taught seven classes!! He's currently in the middle of teaching a May-mester class and will be done at the end of this coming week. Thankfully, he has June off.

I have also been very busy. Five births attended so far this year, lots of postpartum work for several families and then about seven Hypnobabies classes so far. It's been fun but also tiring. Thankfully my pregnancy has been fairly uneventful. We did have a recent scare with the Gestational Diabetes screening. My midwife gave me the wretched glucose drink a couple of weeks before I was scheduled for the screening and in between that and the actual day, I forgot her instructions to only drink half of the solution. I drank the whole bottle... YUCK!!!! Thought I was going to throw up right away but managed to keep it down. We realized this a few days after the screening was completed and came back that I was over the level. Those few days before realizing my mistake were quite intense and emotion though.

The other recent activity that I've been doing is crafting up a storm. I'm including a few pictures of my recent creations. It's been a great stress reliever for me and I've been able to create some fun things for the baby.

Dickens on the Strand

When we were living in Dallas, one of our family holiday traditions was to drive to see the 12 Days of Christmas light display along a block of 12 houses in Lake Highlands.  It's something we always enjoyed and once we moved here we realized we'd have to replace that tradition with something new.  Our replacement tradition has been found!  

Last weekend we went to the annual Dickens on the Strand event in Galveston.  It was great.  So many people in period costumes, lots of great music, food, drink, little shops set up expescially for the event.  It was great!  Here are some pictures from our day there.