Timothy Teacup

Oops! I forgot to share the awesome mascot/stuffie made for me by Peachcake!

Here's Timothy Teacup:



And the whole package:



She added some yummy teas and a delicious walnut chewy chocolate candy. Thanks, Peachcake! She even came to my meeting of the Chicagoland Craft Collective so we could exchange in person. At the meeting, we practiced some of my personal fave embroidery stitches. I prefer doing the chain stitch, while Donna is a master stem stitcher. French knots are tricky too, but once you get the hang of them, they are awesome. Here's a post from one of my new favorite blogs about french knots.

I got wrapped up in a giant project uploading all of our family photos onto flickr. Good Heavens! We've taken a LOT of photos! It could be that we've actually taken a normal amount of pictures, it's just that uploading them all makes it seem like more.... I ordered one of those bound books you get from those publishing services with some of our pictures from this year. I hope it looks good, I'm not so much into organizing photo albums and scrapbooking, although I do like to page through pictures.


And totally outside of crafting and collecting: I came upon this article in Slate. So do you know the Aunt Jackie dance? I guess it's the latest thing in Harlem. Last year's big craze was the Chicken Noodle Soup("with a soda on the side".) I totally missed that one, which is not surprising, since I'm a 39 year old housewife in the middle of outer-suburbia. Those kids are really having a blast. Here's a school principal entertaining his school last fall with the "let it rain" move. That's probably the only move I can do too. I need a very supportive jogging bra if I really want to take up this sort of dancing, but my daughter is trying it out. My son is getting to that middle schooler age where he is too cool for silly moves like these. I have very few opportunities to test out dance moves since we only go to weddings every couple of years, and I'm of the "Love Shack" era. These songs with their "old school flow" are really stuck in my head now.