I received these in the mail from Christine last week. She is the sweetest!! It was totally unexpected, such a surprise. Thank you Christine!!

See, she sent me the beautiful book The Red Tree. I love the images in here. They are so inspiring. I wish I could create such beautiful images. And look! Her goccoed notecard. It’s just the kick in the butt I needed. Once I saw her card I finally drew something that I wanted as my first try with my little blue machine. Now I just need to go to the store and buy some paper to print it on.

I just have to say I don’t know how come I’m so lucky to connect to such kind people. It amazes me. Five years ago I could not have imagined finding new friends through the internet. And yet here I am, with such thoughtful friends. I am grateful for all of you, all those who comment and all those who lurk, all these people I’m connecting to. I do read every single comment. Each one brings a smile to my face and I’m sorry I don’t reply to you all. But thank you, thank you all!

I’ve been feeling crappy but I have been surprisingly productive. I’ve sewn up a little top for Isabelle from the Japanese craft book ISBN 4579110544. It’s very adorable but I’m afraid it’s all wrong. I could not figure out what I was supposed to do for the neckline. It’s supposed to be gathered and have a tie. I had no clue how it was supposed to be made so I improvised and put in a buttonhole and threaded the tie all around the neckline and pulled it to make it gathered.

And the pockets don’t look right either. They are supposed to be more gathered and ummmm…not lopsided and funky.

And the sleeves. Yes more gathered. Mine look all wrong.

I didn’t know about the seam allowances and just fudged my way through it all. I would like to make more clothes from here but I must really know what the directions say and not just go at it blindly.

Does anyone have a clue? Here is page 1, page 2, and the directions from the beginning of the book. Anyone read Japanese? Any suggestions would be most helpful!!

Oh and of course taking pictures always involves miss grabby!

I was talking to my mom the other night and she was saying that I don’t post videos of Isabelle much anymore. So here is a video of her eating cereal this morning. Yeah…pretty mundane stuff. But I think it’s adorable. And you can hear her say na. She’s started saying it for Angelina Ballerina too in addition to saying it for Noddy.

Oh and see the picture. She’s trying to put the spoon in her neck. Have I mentioned she does that? Hee hee!

Oh and what other Isabelle news do I have? Oh she had a doctor appointment on Monday and got shots. She now weighs 26 lbs 9.4 oz and is in the 80% growth percentile for height.

And other news, yesterday we had a rough day. In the wee hours of the morning Isabelle felt very warm to me. And then she woke up early at 7:30 am in the morning. We are NOT morning people. We aren’t usually up until 10:00 am but she would not go back to sleep. I pretended to be still asleep but she wouldn’t have any of it. She was fussing to get up. It turned out she had a fever. All morning she wanted to be held. We gave her some medicine and she was back to her happy self by the afternoon.

If Isabelle is going to eat the food, she isn’t picky about where it is. Like when she dropped the Cheerios on the floor. So the other day I look down and Isabelle was sucking on my skirt. Turns out that earlier that day she had dropped some food on me. It had dried and stuck and she saw it and I guess she was trying to finish it.

Go read cute baby #4, knocking over lego box.

Sometimes Isabelle does the funniest things. I don’t know where she found this q-tip. They are usually in a drawer she has no access to. But find it she did. And stick it in her nose she did. Then she walked around quite triumphantly with it dangling out of her nose. Don’t worry. I took it away from her after snapping some pictures of course.