swapped

We received a lovely thank you from Melissa and family for our swap package. It was so much fun and I can't wait to take the children to the post office on Monday to unveil our goodies.

Melissa asked how to make the felt journals for the children. So easy! I cut the size felt we wanted, cut drawing paper to a slightly smaller size, then staple the drawing paper together and stapled the felt over top. Then I needle-felted yarn onto the cover for the edge and names. I felted some dots and needled them onto the cover. Next time I would do the cover embellishments first, then the stapling, but it was creative process. You know how it goes.

The headband is a strip of knit 2, purl 2, stitched together at the end.
We hope Sammy and Abby and their parents get lots of fun and some independent playtime with their new toys.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...we love to play family games in the evenings, especially guessing games. Tonight after we finished our birthday celebration dinner with dear friend Claire, we played our guessing game version of charades where one person acts out what he wants the others to guess (remember, this is a 3 year old and 20 month old so we definitely keep it simple).
After moving through the standard snake, cat, chicken laying eggs, I took the position of chair pose, also known as strong pose. After Isaiah guessed "tree," I took a deeper seat, hoping to get a truer shape. "TOILET!" Isaiah yelled out, naming not only a very specific kind of chair, but his favorite throne these days.

And Miel chose to re-enact flamingo pose several times for us, each time putting her boots on first.