New work in Bronze!

 

A little while back I started thinking about new ways to work when Chickpea arrives, since I won't be taking an official mat leave like last time.  And since I remember pretty clearly the ZERO extra time I had I wanted to think of ways to work that were a little less labor intensive.

I LOVED casting when we did it at school.  

Like, a lot.  

And it's something that I can do I am hoping once we've settled into New Baby Life a little bit that won't kill me or anyone around me.

I carved up these waxes and sent them off to be cast in Vancouver.  Unfortunately there isn't anyone doing commercial casting on the island (at least that I could find) so shipping them to the mainland is my current option.

But the designs are all hand carved by me,  and all of the clean up is done by me, AND some lovely person is casting them by hand.

I am really excited to be able to offer BRONZE as a new material as well.

The colour is gorgeous, these rings are nice and weighty, and they feel good on the hand.

I have two more ring samples on my bench to clean up, probably after the holidays, and some earrings too.

But I am excited, and I hope you are too!

I will post some into the shops in the new year, and get this new series rolling out to stores as well.

xo

Getting ready for Christmas around here, and a DIY

 

We were planning on getting a living tree for Christmas this year, so that we could keep it for a couple of years, and then plant it.

But it turns out that the smallest ones we looked at were $50 and then my mom offered us their old tree for FREE it kind of just worked out that we snagged the free tree.

Their old tree is an artificial 7.5 foot some kind of coniferous looking beast, which in their place totally works, but in our apartment would loom.  Menacingly.

So I just set up the top half and it worked great!

We are working on the No Touching of the ornaments with Sonny.

He really wants to touch them all.  All the time.

We're working on it.

And something else, totally unrelated to the holidays, is this bed railing that I built for his toddler bed.

He's got a convertable crib/bed from ikea and about 4 months ago I think, we decided it was time for him to loose the railing and be able to climb out on his own.

I think it was the getting up at 5 am yelling at us to let him out so he could play that got us thinking about it.

But we couldn't order the ikea railing, that was a beautiful $15 whole dollars online due to warehouse something or others, and I wasn't in a position to drive over for an item less than $20.

That would be crazy.

So I checked out a couple DIYs that I saw on pinterest and made this!

 The felt furniture pads keep the railing from damaging the bedframe, and also help snug the brackets up to make it more secure.

 It's great because it just slides right on, and he can climb out on his own in the morning.

And then in the morning we just slide it under his bed.

We tried the pool noodle wrapped in a towel for a while, but it took up a lot of his sleeping real estate, so this is a better option for him.  

Plus he's a roller.

Before we sorted this out he rolled out of bed a few times.  Never woke up, but would have FLIPPED OUT if he woke up on the floor.

Plus the first night he rolled out, I am not even sure how he managed it, but he got himself rolled out of the bed, turned around and pressed up against the heater.

In, like, an hour.

No roll outs with this baby!

I got everything from the Home Depot, spent maybe $30, and once my father in law helped me cut the corners off the board it took a whopping 20 minutes to put together.

Now I have plans to build shelves for the bathroom!

Heck yeah I do!

Chickpeas and big bothers

This Turkey is going to be a big brother.
!!!
We're halfway to Kiddo number two, we had our ultrasound today and we got to see Chickpea for the first time, and their scan profiles look eerily similar.

Which is pretty fantastic since This Guy is a dream.

We're not going to find out the gender this time.  We've been calling 'it' Chickpea since the stage that they were the size of one and it's pretty much stuck.  Our US tech this afternoon knows 100% what it is, and I was going to let her report it and ask our midwives to not tell us, but I know that Geoff is keen to experience the big birth reveal and on impulse just before we left, I went back and asked her to not report it.  So she's the only one who will know until the Spring when Lil Chickpea makes their debut.

It's kind of killing me, because I want to know SO BAD, and I have a feeling, but I am not spilling the beans and I am going to wait it out like a Mature Adult.

Ugh!

I'll start posting Bump Pictures once I start taking them.  I have one already, but it's terrible!
Actually I might just post all terrible pics as a Thing I Do.

It's my style!
xox

Their due dates are two days apart.  My fingers are crossed that they don't have the same birthday when all is said and done.