{this moment}

Felix is six months old today!

this week's work in progress...

I am busy this week with preparations for Felix's baptism on Sunday. Last week, I got it into my head that I want the blanket I'm knitting to be his baptism present, so now I'm working like mad to finish it in time. Two people have already said to me, "You're not going to finish it by Sunday, and that's okay." But I'm not ready to admit defeat yet. I'm halfway done already! So now, back to knitting...

handmade wedding decorations

We attended a gorgeous wedding on Saturday night. The placecards (as well as many of the decorations) were handmade by the bride. I thought they were amazing and just had to share them here. Thank you for taking the time to make these things, Corinne! I can't speak for everyone there, but I definitely noticed and appreciated every handmade detail.

boating with Papa

On Friday morning, we met Papa out at Pohick bay. It was perfect weather for boating - warm but not too hot. Henry loved helping Papa drive the boat.


I loved that it was cool enough for Felix to wear the sweater I knit for him.
After playing with Papa for a few minutes, Felix decided he would prefer to hang out below deck...
I positioned him so that he could watch the clouds through the skylight.
Jude was somewhat apprehensive about being on the boat. This is the only photo I got of him because after eating his bagel, he spent the rest of the time on my lap. I'm sure he will enjoy it more next time because he'll know more what to expect.

Henry, on the other hand, relished every minute of it.

He even convinced Papa to swim with him in the chilly water!



The highlight of the outing was paying a visit to the eagle's nest. You can't see it in the photos, but we even saw two baby eaglets.


Let me know if you'd like to go boating with us sometime. We'd love to have other join us!

this moment

Joining SouleMama for this Friday tradition...please leave a link to your "moment" below if you wish!

butterflies & weekend gardening

My mom's Easter present to the boys was a "live butterfly garden." It's great: this little cup of caterpillars arrives in the mail. You watch them eat and eat until finally they get into their cocoons. After a few days, they emerge as butterflies! We enjoyed watching them in their little "habitat" for a few days, and then Sunday we released them into our garden. They appeared to be very happy in our strawberry patch before finally flying away.

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My, how our garden has grown! All of the seeds and plants I bought are doing beautifully. We now have strawberries, carrots, various lettuces, and a blackberry bush in one planter box, and rosemary, green beans, arugula, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, and pumpkins (!) in the other.

Over the weekend, we...

weeded

harvested strawberries

pulled up a carrot to see if they were ready (they're not!)

caged the tomatoes

and built a trellis for the green beans.

If you live in the neighborhood, please stop by anytime for some lettuce! We have more than we could possibly eat ourselves!

I'm happy with our two little planter boxes for this year, but now that I see how well everything is doing, I want to plant a lot more next year! I'll have to work on acquiring some more land...

spring pants for Felix

By now it's pretty obvious that most of my current inspiration and ideas come from SouleMama. I just don't have the time to follow a lot of blogs or read a lot of books, and right now I happen to be reading both of hers almost exclusively.

Her fourth child Harper was born the same time of year as Felix, so when I read how she covered his legs that first spring and summer with handmade, lightweight pants made out of re-purposed sheets and shirts, I decided to try my hand at it.

I used the directions from The Creative Family as a guide with two shirts I got at the thrift store:


Gaining confidence, I decided I wanted to make two more pair with cuffs. I used some thrifted sheets for the main pants fabric. For the cuffs, I used more of that wonderful bird fabric for one pair, and something else I picked up at Stitch DC for the other.

Here are my favorite two pairs on Felix: