full time mother

Its official. I am now a full time mother, wife, knitter, blog reader (mostly mother). I have been playing with the idea of returning to work part time when my maternity leave is up in the middle of July. I now know that it is not an option for me. Prior to Jude being born I was a full time Substance abuse counselor at a women's homeless shelter and I LOVED it. Even before Jude was born, back when I felt those sweet little kicks and rolls in my stomach, I knew that it would be a while before I could return to work full time.

After many hours of stress and prayer I found out today that due to low numbers at my former work they could not offer me a part time position, it had to be full time. Since that is out of the question, I am now officially a full time mom. I knew it was the right thing for me when i felt giddy with excitement rather then disappointed when i found out.

The facility is keeping me on call so I will occasionally fill in for counselors who are out sick which i think will be a nice way to keep my foot in the career door while I'm working on my family. So for now I guess my days well be filled with more of this:

Mothering my beautiful baby boy

Source: flickr.com via bocozoo - Rita on Pinterest

Getting my knit on

Having fun with my husband

Source: beautyineverything.com via Dagný on Pinterest

Drinking absurd amounts of tea

Working on the Hope And Heritage shop

And if I'm lucky, laughing with my sister and friends until our sides hurt

what everybody's working for

The weekend.

I used to look forward to the weekend mostly because it meant I was not working. Now I love the weekend because it means my husband is not working. I love being able to spend time together as a family and watching our son Jude bond with his dad during his waking hours. Since my husband usually returns from work around 6:30 and Jude gets ready for bed at 7 they don't have a lot of bonding time together during the week. Here are a few photos of last weekend in Encinitas Ca. and why I LOVED it. It helps that we live in such a beautiful place.

Going to the beach

This is an illegal mural put up under an over pass in Encinitas Ca. Not sure what I think about it but it definitely gets your attention

Spending time with these guys

baby feet! I made these pants from an old sweater on this tutorial.

During our day out we stopped at this yarn shop. I could spend SO much money in this shop. There are rooms and rooms that look like this. At the back of the building there is a giant room full of work tables and pattern books.

Chicks

I realize that not everyone celebrates when they actually follow through with something that they had been talking about/planning on doing, but we do. After months of talking about raising some baby chicks to produce our own eggs we have finally done it and we are VERY excited. After a few phone calls to local feed stores to find out who sold aracauna chicks we finally found someone who did. We headed out to the local feed shop and spent some time looking at all the different chicks.

The man working at the feed store seemed a little confused when we questioned him to make sure we bought the chickens that lay the pretty blue eggs.

He was even more confused by use when I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. You can guess how he responded when he went to put the chickens in the trunk and i told him we were going to carry them on our laps. If only he knew that we were keeping these teenage chickens inside the house.

A few more months and we will have fresh pretty blue eggs every day!

the big start

I am so excited we finally have a good supply of items on our new etsy shop. We spent all day yesterday taking product pictures. After many hours of planning, fabric shopping and sewing, we finally have enough items made and photographed to make our shop look real. Here are a few of the things we have added

we have a pretty wide variety of burp cloths. Our goal was to make burp cloths that fit snugly on your shoulder and to make them in patterns that might encourage dad to burp the baby as well.

Each time we make more wraps I am SO tempted to keep them all for myself.

We posted a few nursing covers. The perfect way to bond with your baby through breastfeeding while being out in public.

junk/bargain hunting

I recently attended a baby shower for my cousin in Little rock Ca. On the way to the shower my mom and I stopped by an 'antique store' in the area. The place was called Orbit and was not your normal antique store. It was more like a well organized junk yard with lots of antiques and vintage finds mixed in.

If you had the money and the ideas I'm sure you could find lots of unique decorating items here. I bought a lovely set of antique plates for 15 dollars! Here are a few pictures. My camera died after the first picture so I used my moms and dont am not sure how to get rid of the date at the bottom.

These are old camp stoves just piled in one of the many out buildings behind the shop

One of the buildings contained a whole pile of antique and vintage sewing machines. It would require a bit of digging but there were some great things in there.

There was something so fun about the way they organized everything with like items, even out in the middle of the junkyard (not pictured are piles of tubs, washing machines and old bicycles.)

This might be my favorite picture. Yes, that is a box labeled skins with vertebrae sticking out of it.

If you want to shop here you need to be prepared to wear closed toed shoes and to be very confused by the pricing. Nothing in the 'shop' is priced and the shop owner seemed to care less if anyone bought anything and was perhaps even a bit annoyed at people walking around his place. It was well worth the effort regardless of buying just to see how some old men

(who i'm pretty sure are hoarders) displayed their treasures.

Baby wearing

I love wearing my baby! It makes me so happy to have so close to me. It makes me even happier to have him calm and content while I run errands or go for a walk along the beach.

My baby seems to be happiest while I am baby wearing, and this makes me happy.

Even my husband can particapte in baby wearing and get in some quality baby time while getting some fresh air.

Because we love these baby wearing wraps SO much we made some for our Hope and Heritage shop. Like this one with a cute fabric strip on front. The bubbles say cute things like 'one big crazy family' and 'I love my family'.

My baby modeling some of our new product for us.

Mothers Day

Today I celebrated my first mothers day. The last few weeks have been busy with relatives visiting from Canada and lots of work going into preparing items for our shop (more on that later). Today's mothers day activities were the perfect way to relax and recharge. After church my husband, son and I took a drive to our local lavender fields to meet my parents. We had never been before and were pleasantly surprised by how pretty and tranquil it was.

We also visited a farm behind the lavender fields that was owned by a Messianic Christian commune called the "Twelve Tribes" where we sampled their organic produce (featuring a delicious kale/grapefruit juice) and one of the young girls took us to see their new baby goats. The hill behind the lavender field belongs to the commune and provides the community with their own Haas avocados.

The lavender fields had this lovely tea house and gift shop with a porch and lookout point.

We ended the day with a delicious picnic lunch overlooking a small field of lavender. I have been trying to eat dairy free but I couldn't resist this lovely cheese.