I found these old pictures on our computer and noticed they were from exactly three years ago. Josh has short hair now and no beard, Ivo is a big kid, and I look pretty much the same, just three years more haggard. Oh yeah, this was supposed to be Wordless Wednesday . . . oops :)
I've spent most of my crafting time this month working on a big order for a Waldorf school in Massachusetts. Today was shipping day, followed by an ice cream outing to celebrate our hard work. The Etsy shop and all the crafting opportunities that have arisen because of it would not be possible without the tremendous amount of support and encouragement I get from my family and friends, especially Josh. He is so good about picking up extra slack around the house, and taking Ivo out for hours-on-end outings whenever I have a deadline to meet. And they come home from their walks in the woods with pocketfuls of acorns almost every time. Ivo empties his pockets onto my work table and says, "Look what we found for your dolls. Hats!" I'm so lucky to have my helpers. Josh even helped me think of some new ideas for the shop, which should be freshly stocked in the next few weeks or so. For now we are focusing on getting ready for our annual roadtrip to Petoskey to celebrate the Fourth of July the way Norman Rockwell intended. Cheers :)
For Father's Day, Ivo and I made Josh a book about our recent fishing trip up north. Ivo dictated all of the text to me, and then I picked out the pictures and put the pages together. When I asked him what he wanted the title to be, he said "Moby Dick" because that's a grown-up book about fishing. So here are some excerpts from Moby Dick:
To create the text, I put a slide show of our fishing trip pictures on the computer and as we watched it together I asked Ivo to tell the story of our trip. Then I wrote down his words. This was a really fun project and very easy to make. Ivo loves hearing his story, and Josh said it was his favorite present ever. Here's the whole story of Moby Dick:
We are going fishing.
We bring my life jacket, the rowers, and a tackle box.
We bounce the oars.
In the canoe the fish swim under my seat.
We are rowing.
Papa casts his line.
We see a turtle, a line, and a loon.
All the fishes that we caught is model.
Then we row back to the dock.
We feel happy.
We tried to make the cover look like an old-timey leather bound edition (it looks better in person than in this picture). The binding is a pamphlet stitch, which is very easy and only requires a nail and some string. Here are some good directions for making a book with a pamphlet stitch in case you want to make your own story.
