giveaway day is here!

we have a winner!

Cricket said...

I love making all my family - sister, niece, in-laws, husband and kids etc all pillowcases for their present to open on Christmas eve. But I also love to embroider, so I have been using little embroidered pieces in zip pouches and embroidering cloth bracelets, too. Those are my three favorite things.

I would love to give your scraps a happy home.

congrats, cricket!!

(i've sent her an email - if i don't hear back in a few days, i'll pick a new winner.)

thanks to everyone who entered - i hope you all have a very merry christmas!

does anyone else have that song, "it's the most wonderful time of the year" running thru their heads? :)!

anyhoo, on with the good part! i'm giving away a u.s.p.s. medium flat rate box packed with fabric and scraps. :)! there's some denyse schmidt, lizzy house, tula pink, lecien, fig tree quilts, alexander henry, michael miller, and more... a boxful of goodies just in time for christmas! also, i'm throwing in a fun egg cup pincushion - handmade by yours truly. i just love giveaway day - be sure to go and check out the other giveaways here!

this giveaway will be open until friday, december 16th at 5 p.m. (i'll ship anywhere in the u.s.) to enter, just leave a comment and tell me your favorite gift to make.

good luck!

missing the rubber stamp...

james called me from his office wednesday evening with some surprising news: he had a letter in his hand from the provost saying his sabbatical application had been approved! WOW! we weren't expecting to hear anything back until january or february! what happens now is that the application goes to the president, who takes it before the board of regents for a vote. my understanding is that, like promotion and tenure, this is merely a rubber stamp, all the important deciders have already decided. so it looks like we'll be hawaii dwellers for 6 whole months next year! i really can't wrap my mind around this until after christmas (only 16 days left to get things accomplished!), so there might be another post in january about this with many more exclamation points, but for now i am quietly amazed and excited - yahoo!

coming soon!

it's that time of year again - giveaway day at sew, mama, sew!!

be sure to check out their listings of giveaways on dec. 12. i'll be participating again, and would love it if my dear family and friends actually entered! plus, they're making it a week-long event, so there will be plenty of time to enter all the giveaways - it's one of the best events of the year, so mark your calendars now!

belated costume-y goodness

hello!

i realized that we never posted a photo of the final halloween results. after much debate (kalei originally wanted to be a vampire - the thought of those big vampire teeth and the resulting drool grossed me out, so i encouraged her to think outside the box), we decided on a fireman, pirate queen (complete with eyepatch), and the return of the red power ranger!

not to be outdone, i joined the kids in costume!

(i thought it was hilarious that my kids didn't know who i was! they just said, "you're a..... doll?" apparently, you have to be above a certain age to know who 'raggedy anne' is.) anyhoo, here i am with kawelo and taralie - don't you just love her costume!? she's the head teacher of our seminary team-teaching-duo - she's amazing!

the kids brought home a huge haul of candy and had tons of fun, and i won an award for cutest adult costume. good times!

one step closer....

james found out this morning that his sabbatical application was unanimously approved by the university's sabbatical committee! from there, it will move on to the dean, then the provost, and i'm not sure if there are more steps beyond that. we are so excited that this might be a real possibility to spend 6 months next year living in paradise! (i hope i'm not jinxing anything by writing about this... not that i believe in superstitious stuff... but i'd better go throw some salt over my shoulder or knock on wood or something, just in case.)

aloha!

politically correct costume assignment

for some reason, our elementary school does not allow halloween parties or wearing halloween costumes to school.

they do, however, have "harvest" parties, and allow the kids to wear a costume to school for the last day of "drug awareness" week. (what do costumes have in common with drug awareness? probably about as much as wearing hats or slippers to school. i still haven't figured out the logic chain on any of these.) predictably, the costumes had to be in line with the school's guidelines. this year, the guidelines were "come as a book character." i was not thrilled. great - i get to come up with two costumes instead of just one! then, i figured the kids could wear their regular costumes because they were surely in a book somewhere, right? but, the school administrators threw in the wrench that the kids had to actually bring the book to school with their costume.

diabolical!

don't worry your pretty head, though, we did prevail. kalei wore her pocahontas jacket, with braids, and took a book about great women in history. koa went as this guy:

i LOVE this book! the illustrations are beautiful and the message is sweet, with some funny thrown in.

perfect for this boy.

koa quotes

bess: come on, dude. let's go! (said to another driver while waiting for said driver to go past.)

the car passes. the driver is female.

koa: ooooooooh, it's a dude-ette.