Lou Boo Designs

The lovely and talented Meg Walter and I just opened a joint Etsy shop - Lou Boo Designs.  Meg is making darling sundresses and tunics for toddlers, and I'm making notecards and crocheting baby blankets.

Truthfully, could we really call ourselves Mormon women if we didn't operate an Etsy shop?  I think not.  At least, not good Mormon women anyway.  Ha.

One of the nice (i.e. not nice) things about IVF is that you feel pretty crummy a lot of the time.  The medicines I'm on right now are giving me the fun experience of dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and my personal favorite: hot flashes.  If I needed another reason to avoid getting old, I now know how much I'd like to avoid menopause.

But there is an upside to all of this.  While I'm riding the waves of the non-existent deep sea fishing expedition that I feel like I'm on, I've got a great excuse to get lots and lots of crocheting done.  I've made two baby blankets in the last 48 hours.  That's definitely a personal record (and no blisters!).

The only issue I'm running into with these recent projects is that Blake loves each of them and wants to keep them for our (non-existent) someday baby.  An imaginary baby only needs so many non-imaginary baby blankets.  So, off to the shop they go, methinks.  After I take some non-iPhone and sans-Bear pictures, that is.

So if you're feeling so inclined, check us out on Instagram @LouBooDesigns or Etsy at Lou Bou Designs.

A Very Merry Christmas

Blake and I switch off major holidays with our families.  This year it was Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with Blake's.  It's a nice system because everyone knows what to expect and when to plan on us.  Plus, we're able to buy our plane tickets way in advance, which is music to my cheapskate ears.

Blake's parents host Christmas Eve dinner and festivities at their house every year.  The 8 nieces and nephews come.  Iya and Papa (the grandkids' name for Blake's parents) give their gifts to the kids and the kids do a Christmas program.  I think Blake took some great shots of the gang doing the nativity and singing carols with matching Santa hats, but I've got to steal those from him, so I'll work on posting those later this week.

We also exchange gifts with Blake's siblings on Christmas Eve.  We pick names and have a specific dollar limit, which makes shopping and planning so easy and stress-free.  This year we had Tyler and Rebecca (Tyler is #2 of 4 in Blake's family).

I wanted to do some handmade gifts this year, so as soon as I confirmed who we had in the exchange I started working on a blanket.

Now that Christmas is over and there's no chance of my ruining the surprise, I can show the final product.  I did it in a thick, squishy, warm yarn in cream and grey.  The last two photos are truest to the color in real life.

It ended up about seven feet by seven feet - perfect for snuggling up with on the couch.  It's not perfect (don't look too closely at where I joined the yarn!), but I'm really pleased that I was able to complete it in time and that it actually resembles what I'd imagined.

Now I think I need a crafting break!  On to house projects for the New Year.

Secretly 75 years old

I am so behind at life.  Our friends had surprise twins back in February.  By "surprise twins," I  mean that they didn't tell a soul (not even their other children!) they were having twins until the twins were already born.  To say we were surprised was an understatement.  My jaw dropped when we saw the photo of double the baby we were expecting.

So here it is 8 months later and I finally have a gift ready to send off to them.  (Note: these didn't actually take me all 8 months to make, it's just that I was wayyyy behind on starting them.)  Winn and Ellie are getting matching baby blankets.  Grey for Winston and green for Eleanor.  They're not perfect, but they're soft and they're machine wash, and let's be honest, that's what counts most in a baby gift.

I'm slowly teaching myself the ins and outs of Blake's fancy camera.  As you can see below, I haven't really figured it out, but I'm working on the whole idea of white balance.  Here's hoping I can improve enough to not be so embarrassed when I post photos.