Roses Are Blue...

Another stop on the trip...

Have I ever mentioned how much amazing stuff my stepmother finds when she goes thrifting?  She has the best luck.  And she is incredibly generous with her finds which makes me lucky too.  So when we got to Chicago there was a stack of goodies waiting in the guest room for me.  She found all of these hoops (and this is only half!) for one dollar.  I don't think I've ever even seen a hoop at my local thrift shop...  I am going to make some wall hangings with them a la Purl Bee, although I think I will add some embroidery.  As if all of this wasn't enough, my stepsister (who has apparently inherited the thrifting gene) also left me a box full of this amazing paper.  I think she's crazy to give this all away but I am thrilled to be the recipient.  The first project will have to be a stack of thank you cards.

The Pinwheel Mobile Goes Round And Round

Pinwheel Mobile, originally uploaded by Alana.

About a hundred years ago I got married. (It was actually less than 5 years ago, but man, it seems a lot longer.) We decided to have pinwheels as our wedding favor. We were getting married at my mom's house up on a hill where it was always very windy and it seemed like the perfect little thing. I got excited about the idea but I couldn't find any pinwheels on the market that were right. Kara then got the idea to make them out of origami paper, pins, and wooden dowels. It was a good idea except for the fact that they were VERY labor-intensive. She ended up making every single one herself. Like 125 of them. Each one more beautiful than the last. It was the most lovingly insane thing she has ever done for me.

Fast forward a couple years. While I was flipping through a back issue of Martha Stewart's Baby magazine I saw an article on making baby mobiles out of paper. It included an adorable one made out of pinwheels. I was a little sad because my son was already well past mobile stage and it would have been so perfect and at that point we were not sure about having another baby. Well we did. And from the second  "pregnant" showed up on the digital test screen I started thinking about making this mobile. Being the procrastinator that I am I left it until right before my due date. Willa decided to show up a week early so it didn't get done. When Kara came up for Christmas this year she not  only distracted my kids (and hers) so I would have a solid hour to work on it, she also gave me a self-healing cutting mat and a rotary cutter as a present. (Score!) And now Willa has a little pinwheel mobile above her crib.  And all is well.