A Sneak Peak of Christmas Gifts

Hello again! I thought you might be interested in the Christmas gifts I am currently making for my family. 

At one point over the summer, I casually mentioned to my daughter in a rather nostalgic frame of mind that I might make her a nightgown some day. ALL my kids (except the baby) jumped at that and immediately began saying, "Yeah! Mommy is going to make us pajamas!" So I decided to go ahead and tackle that project as part of their Christmas gifts (at least for the three oldest). 

I've finished my daughter's nightgown pictured below. I am not an experienced seamstress, so I learned a lot while making hers. Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out. She'll never notice the slight mistakes I made during the process. 

Another gift that I am making for all my children (including the baby) is a Christmas tree ornament. I was lamenting this past Christmas that my children didn't have personalized ornaments to hang on the tree like I did when I was a child. Hanging up my special ornaments was one of the highlights of the decorating traditions for me. I had eyed buying personalized ornaments online, but to get anything really nice, the price was too expensive. So the idea came to me: Why not make them special ornaments out of felt?

Each child is going to get an ornament related to the meaning of their name. This one is for my oldest, and his name (first and middle combined) means "Little Gift of God." I put his first name on the front and the year he was born on the back. I think he's going to love it as much as I already do!

I will be posting more pictures of pajamas and ornaments as I get them done. For now, I hope you enjoyed your sneak peak! What are you making for your family this year? Happy crafting!

Magnesium Helped Heal my Cavities

I know, I know. If you search long enough, you can find hundreds of posts about the latest and greatest health breakthrough. "Take this and it will solve all your health problems," they all seem to claim. Well, I give my testimony simply as a suggestion to others who might be struggling with cavities in their teeth. Perhaps this will help you as it did me.

I've traditionally had excellent teeth throughout my growing up years. I was late in my twenties before I had my first cavity and it was only a minor one at that. But during my fourth pregnancy, I started having significant pain in my back molars and sure enough, a glance back there confirmed my suspicions: I had cavities. Cavities in pregnancy are not uncommon, but that was of little comfort at the time.

After researching the issue for a bit, I decided to try to heal my cavities naturally before running to a dentist. Studies show that many people are deficient in magnesium, and since magnesium is one of the key minerals for strong bones (and teeth), I decided to try taking a quality magnesium supplement. After a week on the magnesium, my cavities cleared up on their own! After I had my baby, I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. She told me my teeth were in excellent condition.

And this was not an isolated event. I've since had some cavities return (when I was not taking the magnesium) and I easily cleared up my problem by returning to the supplement. I do not pretend to believe that this will solve everyone's teeth problems, but it's worth trying if you are suffering from cavities.

Playing Peek-a-boo

My bookends were playing peek-a-boo in the yard today. They were so cute together, and I just happened to have my camera with me. These pictures are too cute not to share. Enjoy!

Dollhouse Quiet Book: Part 3

Hello again, everyone! Here is my final post for the dollhouse quiet book I made for my daughter awhile ago. 

Here are the pages for her wardrobe and bedroom. I got many of the ideas for this page here. The rest, I made up on my own. I made the wardrobe extra big to allow for more outfits to be added later.

You can't see it in the picture, but there is a removable pillow tucked under the blanket on the bed. The teddy bear is also removable.

Also, from that same website I got the idea to make a garden page and swimming pool page. Only, I made my garden page very different from the one featured there. You can look at the original idea here. My little girl loves to make her doll meander down the stone path, stopping here and there to admire and water the pretty flowers and look at the insects. 

And this swimming pool page is a big hit with her as well!

Here is the back cover. I decided to hint of living the country life, so I added a cow in a pasture scene.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these ideas! I'm very pleased with how the whole book turned out and so is my little girl.

Dollhouse Quiet Book: Part 2

Here are the next few pages in the dollhouse quiet book I made for my daughter.

This is the living room and office pages I designed. There were no templates for these, so I used a couple of coloring pages to give me ideas for size, proportions, etc. My daughter especially loves taking the pillows on and off the couch!

These next couple of pages are the laundry room and bathroom, both of which I did use templates for. You can find the template for the laundry room here. I had to shrink the template for my purposes, and I added the accessories like the broom, dust pan, etc.

 This is the link for the bathroom template. My little girl loves this page as well.

I hope these pages inspire you to keep thinking creatively!

Dollhouse Quiet Book: Part 1

This is the first part in a three part series on a dollhouse quiet book I made for my daughter awhile ago. I'm not going to post any templates this time around, but I will provide links to the templates I used from other sources. Some of the pages I just created on my own.

Here is the front cover of her book.

Here are the kitchen and dining room pages. I used the templates from imagineourlife.com, but also added my own ideas. I made a number of food items in addition to the ones provided by the templates such as a pizza, a pie, and other various odds and ends. My little girl loves playing with these pages!

Stay tuned for more pages and posts to come!

A Life Update

Hello everyone. As you can tell, it's been over a year since my last post. Having a baby and going on a 6 month furlough in the United States (without my computer) does complicate things. But I do apologize for letting this lapse for so long. I'm here to announce that I'm planning to start back on blogging.

I've been working on revamping my personal planner system, designing new pages that better fit my current needs and lifestyle. One of the things I've added to my planner is a weekly reminder to post on this blog and some pages for planning future posts. I hope to blog once a week on Tuesday evening, so you can check back weekly for a new post (Lord willing!).

Other things that have been going on in my life:

My youngest child is 10 months and we are currently working with him to get him to sleep through the night without needing to nurse.

I am working through a new Bible study by Lysa Terkeurst called "Finding I Am." So far, it's been excellent and I highly recommend it! It's been very rewarding, challenging, and inspiring... and meeting a long time need. I'm going through it by distance with my sister in law.

We are now back in our host country and are settled back into our house and church community. I'm grateful for the many ways the Lord has directed us this time around, as we had many questions about returning. But for now, the Lord has made it clear that He still has work for us to do here.

Well, that's enough random updates about me for now. Hopefully next week will be a more organized post. Blessings!