Egad, we’re almost there!

Gifts are made and wrapped. My sister just flew in from LA (yay!) Kids are nestled in bed, if twitching and awake from all the excitement. Sata’s going to be getting here late this year.

I just finished making breakfast for tomorrow. Over the past few years I have learned it needs to be a holiday for MOM too, so I bake ahead. Here’s the recipe if anyone’s interested. Merry Christmas!

Pumpkin Bunt Cake

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 Tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt6 eggs
• 16 oz pureed pumpkin, fresh or canned
• 2/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup brown sugar

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour a bunt pan.
• Mix the first 6 dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
• Beat the eggs until foamy.
• Add the pumpkin, butter and brown sugar and mix until blended.
• Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix.
• Pour the batter into the bunt pan. level the top of the batter so it is evenly distributed in the pan.
• Place in the oven and bake for 60 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a butter knife into the cake. If it comes out clean the cake is done.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

You can glaze it or serve as is. Enjoy!

This photo is totally for me…it is our downstairs bathroom in a rare state of clenliness. This is the one the girls and guests use. Here it’s clean and shiny, a Christmas miracle!

So, I made it a whole week with no sick days. I know, incredible. We haven’t done that since Halloween. It has come to and end. Big-sis is sick this time. This does not bode well. She doesn’t get sick nearly as often, but when she does…lets just say two Christmases ago she spent a whole week with a fever of 105.

So we did quiet things today. Made cards and read books. The one above are circles punched out of an old Knit Picks catalog. We’re using them as gift tags. These ones below are the ones the one we’re mailing. We’re hoping to get them mailed out by Wed.

By far the fav around here is the Wise Men. In case you can’t read it it says “They did not wear hats, they wore towels”.

Little-Sis woke up this morning insisting that she needed cards for all her “kids” at preschool. She’s just learned to write her name, so I came up with these. Yes, it’s the same art I used for the Doggie Bookplates. Can’t help I, I love these dogs.

These would work as tiny cards for kids, or as gift tags. They’re all in a PDF and can be printed in color or black and white. Enjoy!

I have to say keeping up the advent calendar this week has been crazy. We’ve had a slew of meeting, ranging from PTA to pre-school pageant. It is like every group or organization we are in had to get in a December meeting this week.

I haven’t even finished attaching all the numbers to the calendar. A project leftover from last year. Things done and undone, right?

I try to balance fun stuff with things that relate to the Christmas story. Tonight the girls got star stickers. We talked about who followed a star, and what they were looking for.

Here are some of the other things we have done. Some of them are cards to follow clues to find something, or cards for an activity.

• Make teacher gifts
• birthday candles
• Make cookies with mom
• straw tied in a present- we talked about how it felt, and what kind of bed it would make for a baby
• write Christmas cards
• Then the old fall-back, M&M’s

OK, I admit. I spent all day yesterday hanging out in my jammies. Sat’s debate meet went great, but after 12 hours of running back and forth I was pooped. I didn’t even knit.

This afternoon the girls and I worked on some holiday stuff. Big sis still wants to be the first librarian in space. We used her date stamper to make wrapping paper:

I love simple wrapping papers, and this is perfect. It’s red and white, and no mess to clean up.

Handmade Holiday is rolling along. Here’s the updated list of Handmade Holiday folks:

• Billingtons
• Crafty Bits and Bobs
• Kathryn Ivy
• mk carroll
• Rosie
• Tara

Be sure to stop by the flickr group. Amazing!

Tomorrow I’ll add some more ideas of what to make. Right now the husband and I are going to watch Transformers and I am going to rework a yoke on a sweater for little-sis. Every time I start to knit for them they insist on growing!

Oh, and check out the Flickr badge to the right.

I am taking a few days off from the crafting, if you can call it that. I coach debate and Saturday our team is hosting a meet. I just found out we are going to have about 220 people there. I just ordered the pizza. 50 pizzas are very expensive.

I’ll update all the Handmade Holiday additions on Sunday. Until then I get to listen to a lot of teenagers discuss military options in Iran, plea bargaining and US, and health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa.

And in case you are wondering I am a lifelong member of the NFL, since 1989!

Another Wreath-here’s the how-to

Yeah!! Rosie over at www.rosieknits.com just signed up to participate in Handmade Holiday. Check out her blog, lots of snappy things!

Personally I am rolling along on the gifts. I had lots of good knit time on the DC trip this weekend, so I now have a cardigan done for little-sis and half a sock for a family friend. Deep calming breath, it will all get done.

Need an idea for what to make? Here are some smaller projects I’ve come across. Have a good idea for a simple handmade gift? just e-mail me and I’ll add it to the list. (becca (at) handmademom dot com).

• Portfolio from Amy Butler - I think I might make one of these for big-sis. She’s writing a book-a-day right now. This looks like something she would love, and I can make in an evening…perfect combo. Have I mentioned I love her fabrics:

• Knitty’s winter issue always has tons of great quick gift ideas.
• Did you say baby? Here’s a pattern for a knitted baby kimono over at The Complete Fabrication. Too cute.
• For the kids this year we are doing lots of books. I am including a set of my Doggie Bookplates with each one. If I have time I also plan on making a busy bag to hold them….right, time…

We had a great weekend. It’s one of the things we love about Richmond…we’re close enough to get to most of the cities on the east coast to make for easy time for a weekend trips.

Sunday we went to all the memorials…Lincoln, World War II, Korea. Tucked away we also found an old one for the World War, before there was a second one.

 Eventually it started to rain, so we had lunch and cut out. Stopped by Ikea on the way home to look at kitchen cabinets…we just started the addition on the kitchen last week. I’l post a picture of our current one ASAP so you can see what we’re living with.

Some of my favorite things:

• Mexican Hot Chocolate at the Indian Museum-it had hot pepper in it so it was spicy
• Tiny bookstore at the Lincoln Meorial-all Linloln all the time
• Sculpture at the Library of Congress-I really wanted a book about the archetecture of the Library building. You know, something explaining all the details. They had a great booksotre, but nothing about the building itself. Like this:

The husband and I are on a road trip to DC. Want proof:

Us looking goofy

So far we’ve been to the Indian Museum, Library of Congress, Capitol Building Grounds…basically all the things we don’t get to do when we have the girls along. No dinosaurs this weekend.

Library of Congress

Indian Museum

More Library

So far the Library of Congress has been my favorite. As a kid my dad was stationed at Ft. Meade MD for three years, so we did DC quite a bit. At the time he was working with the national guard and one of the guys was also a secret service agent at the White House, so when we visited we got to see all the inside stuff, like the oval office and the security rooms in the basement. I am sure now that would all be totally off limits. Even then security was pretty tight…I remember my little sister’s Kermit the Frog doll getting frisked.

So we always had to go see the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum. Yawn. The Library of Congress is amazing. I had no idea the architecture was so incredible. These are all of the Jefferson building.

My dream is to one day have some need of checking something out to read int he main reading room…historical knitting copywrite anyone?