my cup runneth over. for reals.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ with 20 family members and friends, followed by some visiting with John’s family.

Then a second round on Friday with a gang of friends at our house for our “Annual Day-After Thanksgiving Leftover Feast”. Yum! Just writing about it makes me want more mashed potatoes… seriously.

A few things I am grateful for this year:

• my family
• my wonderful husband
• our growing baby bean (almost 5 months!)
• our dry basement
• craft fairs, loyal customers and awesome fellow crafters
• art, craft and doing-it-yourself
• furry friends
• my tribe of fantastic human friends
• mashed potatoes (can you tell I’ve gotten my appetite back?)

I was at Twist this weekend! I did not take any photos!

It was wonderful, though, and I had lots of fun chatting with customers and friends and my fearless helpers and fellow vendors (why are you all so wonderful and fun to be with?!) — and thankfully some of them captured the day in pictures. You can see a few nice shots on fellow vendor Maeg’s blog, including a photo wherein I appear to be as humongous as the Sasquatch on her t-shirt, but that’s ok — there’s a baby in there (Did you hear?)! I was so grateful to be able to spend the night with my lovely friends, too, so I didn’t have to drive back and forth Friday night/Saturday morning. They showed me the sights in Florence and Leeds; I’m definitley going to have to go back for some swimming this summer!

So yesterday I spent the day lounging and doing not much of anything, in an attempt to recuperate and get some energy back. John and I had a lovely and gluttonous brunch at the Dakota restaurant, followed by movies and tv-on-the-internet and a leasurly stroll or two around the neighborhood. One of those was at sunset and the sky was so darn pink, it was quite amazing! And again, I didn’t take any pictures. I’ll try next time, I really will.

I am so thankful that I sold almost all of my new holiday ornaments (little stuffed birdies!), but now I need to get back into making-mode for Mass MoCA this weekend! My back is still bothering me, though, and I’m trying not to aggravate it and make it worse. I am going to attempt some gentle yoga today; I really need to get back into that. And apparently back into taking photos for you, too. Like I said, I’ll try!

here I am. But sort of wishing I was still here:

with these lovely ladies:

sigh. We had a great time up in the woods and mountains of Maine. It was a quick visit, with a very rainy day for our one full day, but we made the best of it.

We have been friends since High School, and I find it most amazing that we are still in touch. What’s more, we are probably closer, better friends now, after all these years. We can make each other laugh and cry even harder than we used to, and it’s sometimes even harder to say goodbye. Why don’t we all live closer, ladies? I’m so lucky to have Stephanie so nearby, and I think we will get even closer once I’m a mama, too. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could all get together like this all the time? I’m missing you all muchly!

hehe. We had a GREAT time, which may or may not have included moose and lobster hats, lots of snacks, squash and salad, a selection of board games, a rousing round of charades and a dance-off. More photos here.

First of all, thankyouthankyouthankyou for all of the love and support and congrats on our big announcement. It has been so fun to see (here and on facebook!) that you are almost as excited as we are to welcome the little bean to our family! I promise to post updates when I have ‘em, but for now just know that no news is good news and everything is progressing along nicely.

Secondly, they’re everywhere! We have lately been infested with ladybugs. It’s really odd, but it seems to happen every year. Some kind of migration, I guess? Do you have ‘em, too? I don’t mind them, but I feel bad when they get trapped inside. And I hate the way they smell, (and my sniffer is more sensitive than usual — chalk that up to another pregnancy sypmptom they don’t tell you about!) so I hope they say outside!

aaaand thirdly, I’m off this weekend on a little mini-break with some of my best girls! We are headed to Maine, to a little cabin in the woods for a little R&R — and thankfully dear Stephanie has offered to drive, so I don’t even have the 5-hour drive to dread! I will hopefully have some photos to post from the trip next week (I’ve been having some issues with my camera and my computer, but I think they are mostly workable, if totally annoying).

Have a great weekend!

As I write this, I’m just over 12 weeks pregnant. It’s true! A baby! Making it’s way into our lives at the end of April (2010!)!

I have been soooo tired these last few months, and thankfully that has made it a *little* easier to keep this secret, since it takes all my energy to sit down and get anything done, including this blog post. I haven’t been doing much making, and therefore not a log of blogging, but as Penny’s hubby said about her first few months of pregnancy in this post, I need to remember that I have been busy creating something completely different. I might look like I’m just sitting on the couch, but darn it, I’m working hard!

So far everything is going great with out little bean, and we will get to see much more at an ultrasound at 18 weeks. We got to hear the heartbeat a week ago, and let me tell you that was quite an amazing thing. We had an ultrasound at 6.5 weeks, too, but weren’t really able to see anything but a little blur and a flickering speck of a heartbeat. {Little flickering speck, how I can’t wait to meet you!}

I spent the last 4 days in Pennsylvania with my cousin Becky and her twin boys who just turned one on Wednesday. What a fun time that was — they are quite possibly the cutest and happiest children in the world. It was a nice for me to get some baby practice, too, even though they are technically toddlers — both walking now!

Some FAQ about the baby bean?

• No, we don’t have any names picked out (tho some front-runners, which we will probably keep a secret)
• We still aren’t sure if we want to find out the sex until the birth, but I think I would like to, as I am not a very patient person!!
• Yes, we had been trying off and on for about a year, but it finally happened when we relaxed about it and really believed “whatever happens, happens” (my hubby’s favorite mantra). And then it happened! I really didn’t believe it when I saw that plus sign on the test, and I had to wake John up at 6am to tell him! It has been so hard not telling everyone in the world, and we started telling select friends and family pretty early — at 5 weeks. I decided I didn’t want to go through any of it alone, and especially if something bad happened, you know? You know. And also wanted to share the joy and excitement as soon as we could!
• Thankfully I have been feeling pretty good. Super tired and a little moody, but I have been soooo lucky not to have any morning sickness. I am just constantly hungry, but I get full really easily and nothing really sounds good to eat. I have had some heartburn, which is not terribly fun, but I am so lucky not to have much nausea at all that I really can’t complain. I do pee about every hour, and there are lots of other “symptoms” of pregnancy that I’m not going to get into here, but I’ve got ‘em! It’s been quite a ride so far, and I really can’t believe I’m already a third of the way through!

: )

P.S. Just listed my 2010 calendar in my Esty shop! This year it’s “Birds of the Berkshires”; a whole collection of hand-painted likenesses of our favorite New England avian friends. They’re pretty pretty, if I do say so myself. I’m so happy with how it came out!

Hah, I really can’t even call it a harvest, our largest carrot was about 3 inches long, and it was by far the largest — many weighing in at a few centimeters, and the largest beet was about 2 inches in diameter, the rest about 1/2 inch. But, I patiently cleaned and chopped the bunch of them for dinner last night, and they were tasty {added to some potatoes, parsnips and carrots from our first Berkshire Organics box, that is}.

Normally I would listen to my mother’s advice and leave them in the ground until after the first frost (tonight?), to add some sweetness to the roots. But this year I had to get ‘em out sooner, because the plot where they were planted was all part of the big landscaping project (remember Operation Rain out of the Basement? It’s about done, I’ll show you soon!). There are some grass seeds there, now trying their best to sprout before the long winter.

I also had to cut these bad boys down, to make room for landscaping. These three were all that came of an entire package of seeds, though I have to say that bottom sunflower was mighty impressive. Dinner-plate-size!

I got to go apple-picking with some of my favorite folks, too. A perfect fall-in-new-england activity.

This lineup is a few of my apple-picking finds, plus some pears, apples and plums from the afore-mentioned Berkshire Organics box. Not sure how often we’ll have a delivery from them, but I’m thinking every other week will keep us eating well through the winter. I missed visiting a CSA this summer, and being forced to cook something healthy with all that produce that I didn’t even pick out myself. Having to look up recipes and try new things, it’s really one of the best ways to learn to cook, don’t you think?

yup, it’s fall in New England. A nice peaceful rainy sunday here today. Lovely.

Well, the idea is that we will NOT have a moat, at least not one full of water. My dad decided this weekend was finally time to work on a project we had been talking about for years; we’ll call it “Operation Water-Out-of-the-Basement, Part 1″.

We now have a new wall! A wall to keep the water out. We are still getting used to the looks of it, because it is right outside our front door, but I think after the first rainstorm we’ll be blessing it with everything we can think of, thanking it for holding out the flood.  After this worst-rain-ever summer, and after having inches of water in our basement — we have stone foundation, well, half of one, the other half is wood and windows and lovely walk-out-basement niceness — we were about ready for drastic action. I thought about kayaking around in the basement, maybe selling tickets, but I think this is a better solution.

It was quite a weekend’s work, though. I can’t say I envied John and my dad and my brother Brian, who came in for my mom’s Birthday and was treated to some wall-building and stone-schlepping for the day. (Thanks, Bri! and Sarah — up there in the shadows!) The excavator made an appearance and all of our neighbors were stopping by to see what the heck we were doing.

My mom, the expert gardener herself, came over today to assess the situation and come up with a plan for ’softening’ the look of the wall, and to integrate the whole thing into some kind of landscape plan. I’m excited to see what she comes up with, as I’m truthfully feeling a little daunted by the whole project.

In other news, we only have two chickens now, down from three. sadness.

They have been escaping their pen lately (that they share with the goats), apparently not content to stand on goat backs for fun anymore. Sadly, this allows them to be in the yard without us knowing, and when we send Happy out for her walkabout within her electric-doggy-fence yard, she is also in perfect proximity to chase, and perhaps catch, a chicken. {You can’t blame a dog for acting on her instincts, right?}

We had an incident a week or so ago, where the chicken escaped with only some feathers missing, after we heard the commotion and managed to grab the dog and corral the chicken back into the pen. This last time, we were not so quick. The chicken lady was ok and walking after the incident, but must have sustained some kind of unseen injury, because we found her motionless the next morning. So sad. We are actively working on reinforcing the fence to keep the ladies in, and of course not letting the dog out unless we KNOW there are no chickens out. You’d think they’d learn their lesson and not want to get out again, but…. no.

So right now, though, our wall stands tall and strong against any rain coming its way, and our dog sleeps soundly on the couch while the chickens and goats graze safely in their pen. All is peaceful today. I hope it stays that way for a little while.

How cute is he? This lovely man helped me sooo much this weekend at SoWa, I can’t thank him enough. (yes, my lovely hubby John)

We had a great day, rockin’ the crafty goodness with a big group of BerkshireMade‘ers, and some amazing weather.

Now, it seems it is time to get busy crafting holiday cards and such… mostly beacause I just found out I’ll be part of Bazaar Bizarre in Boston this December, which is so super exciting and so super nerve-wracking! It’s by far the largest show I’ve ever been part of, so it’s a little daunting just thinking of how much I should bring with me. Better get busy!

“A Vision of Squam” art show at Artstream Gallery on North Main Street in Rochester, NH is opening today! (Friday the 11th from 5-7pm)

I’m so excited to be part of this show, full of wonderful artworks inspired by the Squam Art Workshops in Holderness, NH last fall. I’m so honored to have my work hanging in the company of such talented artists. I so wish I could see the show in person, and have thoughts of ’stopping by’ on my way to Boston this weekend, but it might just be too far out of the way.  If you are in the area (i.e. on your way to Squam Art Workshops next week?!) go visit! Artstream is such a gorgeous space, owner Susan Schwake is such a lovely curator (and talented artist!), and Rochester is an adorable little town. The show is up through September 30th, and was conceived by the amazing Liz Kalloch. swoon.

In other news — if you’re in Boston this weekend, don’t forget to visit me and the rest of BerkshireMade at the SoWa/South End Open Market; Sunday September 13, 10am to 4pm. We’d love to see you there!