Confessions of a frustrated sew-er...

I chose a very simple project to motivate myself to learn to sew. I wanted to create a baby mobile to go over Jonas' change table like this one I saw on Etsy. I bought the felt, needle, and thread, and eagerly got to work.

Except after hand-stitching one of the raindrops it didn't look quite right. I asked Matt for his opinion, to which he didn't need to verbally reply because his expression confirmed that my uneven hand-stitching resembled the clumsy handy-work of a child. Blast! I tore the stitches out and tried again. Still that dubious expression. That was it, I tore the stitches out and pulled out the hot glue gun. Anyway here is the finished project, which I think at a distance looks respectfully like the inspiration (insert dubious expression here).

The Bump

35 weeks

Being 34 weeks pregnant...

makes me want to:

1) crush ice with my teeth something fierce (also I have to restrain myself from sneaking a swipe of snow and jamming it in my mouth whenever I am outside)

2) organize everything in the apartment to an obsessive degree (is it weird I have created a catalogue of everything I own and planned exactly where it will go in the house?)

3) soak in the tub every night while I stare at my tummy to see the baby move

The Big Exam

My old grade three class have been in school for a week now and I really miss them. I felt ready to go back to the portable and keep teaching after the holidays ended but the other teacher is back from her maternity leave and so it is time for me to take mine. I have to get ready for a move and a baby within the next 5-7 weeks and while I feel superbly confident teaching a class of twenty-four eight year olds, I do not feel confident in my knowledge or skill regarding caring for a newborn. I have been so busy with teaching I hadn't really slowed down to notice how stealthily the due date was approaching- not until I found myself standing in a delivery room (during a prenatal class tour) at the hospital on Saturday. I admit, I started to feel just a tinge of something like panic. So I will be cramming for a baby, or at least studying baby books feels a little that way, until the big "exam" on March 2.

Here are a few of my teaching highlights from the past four months:

Minimalism Quotes

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupe

"The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less." - Socrates

"Less is more." - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

"One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in." - Francis Jourdain

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." - William Morris

"We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo da Vinci

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." - Hans Hofmann

"We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it." - Donald Horban

Grown-up Stuff

I feel a lot like a kid playing grown-up lately: a degree, a salaried job, a baby, and now possibly a house. Matt and I put an offer in tomorrow morning. I have been rebelling against the idea of a cookie-cutter house with a small yard but the allure of a new home has been too compelling. If the offer goes through (I fully anticipate a counter offer first, so it is definitely a maybe) then Matt and I will still have enough time to choose the colors and materials. We're envisioning charcoal maple cabinetry, pale grey countertops, modern hardware, glossy black appliances, bright white walls and dark hardwood floors throughout (my mom's brows are furrowing with concern right now because she is not envisioning it) which are unconventional choices in Lloydminster so the home will at least be an unconventional cookie cutter.

The After

This is how the Harker boys celebrate a wedding- with moustaches.