Only Steve

could make de-boning turkey soup into an anatomy lesson.

Steve cooks on Sunday. We had a turkey carcass in the fridge that absolutely had to be used by Sunday. I helped him make soup. This meant that he got to do the yucky job of separating out the meat from the bones after the broth had boiled for several hours. H started pulling out bones and naming the parts to the kids. He pointed out all the different parts of a back bone and talked about how it related to a human back bone. He even told the kids what part of the body the wishbone is, something I didn't even know. (It's the bird's collar bone.)

Sarah and Joshua were fascinated.

I just had to laugh. Only Steve would find a way to make bird bones interesting.

Everything is Cuter When It's Small

Especially houses.

It opens up to show a little front yard and a wild wallpaper. This is a doll house I made for one family of nieces and nephews. There are four kids all under eight in the family. I think they will enjoy this. I followed the pattern on the blog UK Lass in the US.
I made mine a little bit bigger, 5x5x7 rather than 4x4x6. If I were to make one that size again it would be a 5x5x8 because of the construction method the bigger side would be easier to work with. I will be making another one for Libby because I think she would fall apart if she doesn't get one complete with a bunny family to go inside. (She's sitting on my lap reading as I type and just giggled and danced at the very mention of it.) I will also be doing either button tabs or velcro tabs in the future because the elastic was so hard to work with and I'm having a hard time with one loop in particular. I am also making a little barn (shown in the same link) for my nephew for Christmas.

If you do want to make one of these, keep in mind they take a long time to make. I invested over six hours in that house yesterday. I think a second one won't take quite so much time, but I don't think I'll save much more than an hour if I'm lucky.

They are worth it though. :) This house is the epitome of cuteness.

All Done

With the Christmas dresses anyway. I still have several more projects to do.

Sarah looks cute doesn't she?

She says thank you.

She likes to curtsy too. I think she's the one that taught it to Libby actually. Notice the cummerbund just like her sisters? I'm feeling particularly clever these days. You should see the doll dress that looks exactly like one of Libby's summer dresses right down to the orange ribbon. (You probably will after Christmas. It's a present.)

oh and spin. Every girl loves to spin. She has a bow in back too.


We started a little later than I wanted to when we headed out, but the positive side was I got sunset pictures.

Another mouth to feed

This is Leo.

Leo is just your average orange tabby. He's also a bit camera shy so this is the best I've got. It's not even Caterday worthy. We'll have to work on that.

He's technically Joshua's cat. We had a friend who had managed to acquire too many pets and asked us to take one of their cats for them. They offered the cat that Josh had bonded with this summer. He's cuddly and playful, not mean in anyway. He also doesn't really like Peaches, but he'll just have to deal with that.

If it weren't for the fact that his litter box stinks to high heaven all the time, I'd be 100% for the little guy. I can't handle litter box stench. Joshua is required to clean it out every morning and we're using expensive "multiple cat" litter. Not helping. What's also not helping is the fact that the cat keeps missing. How can he not know his butt's in the wrong place?

As soon as he's fixed (Thursday) he'll be more of an indoor/outdoor cat and hopefully that will translate to less litter box stench. I need less stench.