Hello again

Wow, it's hard to believe I haven't been on here since November... but at the same time it isn't... There are a few things that have kept me away.

• PINTEREST!!!! I mean seriously it's a black hole of awesomeness that eats up hours and hours of my time!
• Problems at work. My TA got burned out balancing work and school, and for a few months now I've been stringing her along trying to fix a problem I had no chance of fixing. She stepped down this Friday, and now I am left without a partner. There are two perspectives, but I have to wait til tomorrow. Change is always scary... especially when 20 little ones are counting on me to provide them with consistency.
• Personal life... that's as far as I'm going with that on the great wide blogiverse :)

And true to my categorizing brain, they turned out to be three P's.  The three P's of non-blogging. Coulda been a preacher or something... oh wait, I'm a teacher... duh.

WELL. Here I am! And I've been up to ALL kinds of stuff since November!!! It's hard to know where to begin! I'm gonna start with today's big accomplishment. My sister requested that I make my fabulous niece Emilia a quiet book. They will be moving to Siapan soon, and the little (almost three) nugget will have hours and hours of boring plane rides on the way.

A couple weeks ago, Annie, said sister, came over for a crafty day, and we made the cupcake page.

 Complete with removable cupcakes, which will go in the oven. (Haven't made the oven page yet...)

Today I worked on the zipper pages.

 All of the zippers are functional :) I found them on a recent trip to the Goodwill outlet store in St. Louis. That's right I'm still thrifting :)

 I used tee-shirt paint for the letters... Was going to embroider them, but I have the paint so why not?

 I hand sewed all the zippers on... It took me about 4 episodes of Dr. Who. (That's right, I'm a Whovian :) Holla back if you are too! I only have Netflix though, so when I ran out of episodes I went back to the beginning and started over, in season 5... oh Amy and Rory.... gotta love it. Still miss 10...)

But anyway... Here is something I am still working on... mostly because seaming drives me batty, and I have to put it down regularly.

 It's my first motif afghan. It's going to be for our living room in the spring and summer. I started it last Spring. I hope to have it done soon... eh... but the seaming, seaming, seaming, endless seaming.

Also, I made this necklace for my bestie Tara for Christmas...

So, I'm still here... still crafty as ever... still a sparrow under His watchful eye. We are still working on our nest... but it's coming along slowly. We will be starting on the bathroom this Spring for sure, and thank goodness. I am so ready to have a proper shower and short hair for summer :)

ALSO!!! I have been going through great pains to revamp my classroom (which of course involves DIY's). I went to a really cool teacher training (have I mentioned yet how much I love my job, problems and all?) in Edwardsville, and my bosses asked me to bring back ideas. Me, bring back ideas, bah! They didn't know what they were getting into... or perhaps they did. But I have a few of my big projects done, and I'm really proud of them. Will post them when I can.