Rainbow Gnome Adventure!

Yay!  Remember our little gnome baby we sent along with our good friends who just moved?  Well, we just got our first installation of the "Rainbow Gnome Adventure" pictures!  It's so fun for us to see where this little guy goes and we also feel like we're traveling right along with our friends, in a way.  Becca says that it's making the sight seeing pictures a lot more fun for her kids too so we all win!  Okay, well "winning" for us would involve their family moving BACK here, but since that's impossible we'll take this.  Here are the pictures.  The captions are Becca's descriptions:

"On our hilarious muscle car (whose bonnet is so huge it looks like it should growl)."

"Just as we'd entered Utah (Colorado behind Nina)"

"In Arches National Park (stunning)"

 So wonderful!  Thanks so much, Cullis family...we are looking forward to hearing more from you guys...

Another update from that same post:  I made another little hat for Owen, and actually did it right this time (here's the pattern again)!  I love how it came out, although I still have a lot to learn...in particular with my finishing skills.  Most of the things I've made so far all end up having at least one loose piece of yarn wriggle it's way out after a few days so I've definitely got to work on that.  Not bad so far, though I'd say.  Both kids are wearing their hats regularly and we're getting lots of compliments so I'm patting myself on the back despite the flaws:

I'm also excited to finally be able to show you the baby gift I put together for my brother and sister-in-law, who are expecting their first next month.  I finished it a while ago, but they just had the shower this past weekend and my sister passed it along to them.  I saw the idea on Paint Cut Paste forever ago, and just loved the idea.  I was so happy to be able to make one for these guys...I got a list of friends from the couple but didn't tell them what we were up to..I then emailed everyone, asking them to send me a message for the soon to be parents.  I put all of the messages into a keepsake book and took snippets of what everyone said and incorporated them into a wall hanging.  I love the idea of giving a book and a wall hanging...it felt like a nice, complete gift....the paper behind the sun on the wall hanging is the shaving cream marbled paper I shared with you back in September:

Finally, I have to say this at the risk of losing you as a reader but HAVE YOU EXPLORED PINTEREST YET?  It's. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.  It took me a bit to figure out how to utilize it, but now that I have I love, love, love it.  It's basically like a pinboard for anything that interests you and since it's online it's easier to keep it organized and there is endless inspiration on there.  I basically now have a running list of things I'd like to do (I try not to pin things that would be impossible for us to accomplish..only things that I can either do now with what I have in my house or that would only require me to go get a couple more supplies).  I feel like I always have backup ideas ready for those days when I feel totally out of ideas myself.  I've tried out so many so far and some flop for sure but many don't and they've all at the very least given us something new to try for a few minutes.  So, if you haven't already then spend some time on there looking around and see if it helps you out as much as it has me...it can be a huge time suck if you aren't careful but I've already found a way to use it in a mostly helpful way as opposed to at "wasting my time" kind of way.

Anyway, this is one of my favorites of our latest Pinterest adventures....colored ice glass!  It looked pretty cool and we ended up with a unique snowman when we were done tossing them around!