I've always loved arts & crafts but don't usually have the time to pursue it. I've started trying to make time for little projects, mainly card making, and wanted to share a fun book I stumbled across. I was perusing the arts & crafts area at B&N when I found a book by Aranzi Aronzo called Let's Make Cute Stuff. Oh, is it ever cute stuff, very Japanese style, and easy to make felt projects. Here are some projects that I've tackled so far:
1 & 2 are cards that I made borrowing some of the "mascots" in the book. I loved the little monkey and I thought it would be cute to see him hanging from a balloon (a la Curious George).

3 & 4 This was described in the book as a business card holder (and if you've lived in Japan, you know how big this is!) but I made mine to carry all those annoying store cards. I got tired of them sucking up space in my wallet so I keep them in this cute little holder that makes me smile everytime I pull it out.

5 This tissue holder was too fun of an idea not to make. My boys like to pull the "tongue" out while I make the appropriate sound effect.

There are several other projects in the book I'm hoping to try out as I find the time. If you get the chance to check out the Aranzi Aronzo series of books, please do. They're fun to look at.

SNOW DAY! We finally had our first real snow and the boys had a blast!

PS. Ciao Amalia!!! Che bella sorpresa vederti qui sul mio blog! Un bacione a te!!

I is for ice cream!

I was assigned to bring a snack to Dominic's class for "I" week. I had planned to just bring in cups of Italian Ice, until I bought a new cook book two weeks ago and saw this idea. These were super easy and so fun to make. They are Ice Cream Cone Cup Cakes and, as the name suggests, you fill the cone with batter, bake, then top with an obscene amount of icing. I'm sure most kids only ate the icing, but, hey, at least it's another "I" word, right?

For those of you who DON'T read your Christmas cards (I say that laughingly!) or who aren't in my address book, I am PREGNANT! Woo hoo!

This scan was taken at 8 weeks. I had another appointment today at 12 weeks and heard a reassuringly strong heartbeat, so baby is still baking away in there. My due date is around mid July.

We are THRILLED with this news, of course!!! We were pretty anxious and held off on sharing the news at first, but things have been going so well that we're starting to believe this is really going to happen. :)

I had sooo many cute pics of Christmas projects we did that I wanted to post, but time got away from me. I can't believe tomorrow's Monday and we're back to the grind! Oh well...2009 will be an exciting year and hopefully I'll do a better job updating this blog. No promises, though. :)

We were lucky to be able to head back to Texas for the holidays. The trip was too short but fun. We can't wait to go back in June!!