Heroicism takes new form in Baby Soldier, a new character Cam has created about his little baby sister. Baby Soldier has quite a superpower too, she can thwart the evil plans of powerful villains without ever leaving the comfort of her swing just by spitting pacifiers at them!



After losing reams of paper to comic characters, and spending ages every night picking that same discarded paper off the floor, I came across a tutorial for these lovely little handmade twig books. Perhaps this is the solution I have been looking for!

Gyspy is starting to develop her own little personality. She can finally stay awake for a decent amount of time and has so much fun swinging in her bouncy chair watching her sibs playing throughout the day.



I finally broke down and got her a proper place to sleep. It was hard to find an infant hammock that would last through the toddler years, and I had to rearrange my whole bedroom and take out half the furniture just to make it fit. But the Kanoe looks so pretty and comfortable that it was worth the effort. I love to see it swinging in my room and wish they made one my size!

snapshots of my week

There is over a foot of snow outside and a sick baby inside. The kids have made their snowmen, their snow fort, their snow thrones and now we are inside trying not to get restless.

It helps that we had a Christmas tree to set up, and snowflakes to cut out.



It helps that Campbell doesn't mind keeping an eye on his baby sister while he reads the Lemony Snicket novels so that I can take care of the other children.



It helps that their father is helping them make a very cool castle out of paper, and that when he is not available they can play Cathedral together, and that when they are tired of Cathedral he tapes together an entire room-full of newspaper so that they can color in castles, knights and dragons.



And it helps that at the end of the day they all (for the most part) go to sleep nicely. And that I am left with a moment of peace, rocking Gypsy in the soft glow of the Christmas lights.

This is the hutch I picked up off the Freecycle list last month.



I wish I had taken a picture of it all put together before I took everything apart and started working on it because it was so truly horrid! The person I got this from must have had it in their kitchen for a very long time because the whole thing was sticky and entirely covered in grease. There was dirt and all sorts of things stuck to that. I ended up taking almost the entire thing to pieces and scrubbing it all.



This is the bottom painted but not assembled. Some of the fiberboard backing couldn't be salvaged so I had to cut that off completely.



Now that it is finished I wish I had done a more careful job with it because I actually like the way it looks and don't mind having it in my house. I wasn't very careful when I put it together and think I may have actually glued some of the pieces together crookedly. I also should have painted it with a gloss but didn't want to spend the money so found some eggshell in the back of one of our closets leftover from the previous homeowners. I also replaced the knobs with some white ceramic ones from Target. That oyster color is actually kind of nice and I am thinking about matching it this summer when I paint our Living Room.



It is not very sturdy and probably won't last too terribly long in our crazy house, but for now it looks kind of pretty and is doing a great job displaying my favorite cookbooks- and hiding the kid's messy schoolbooks behind those bottom doors!