First Things

I'm having trouble figuring out where to begin. I'm not in the mood to spill my whole "story" about what got me to the here, this, now. That would be too gushy and pretentious anyway. So I guess like the title of a fabulous book by Buddhist monk Pema Chodron "start where you are"...

I will be littering in words of wisdom, reviews and the like on lots of books on this blog. I can't help it, I'm a librarian. I'm also a reviewer of child rearing books for Library Journal. It's a lot of fun. I get fabulous books on everything from sleep issues to surrogate parenting arriving at my doorstep every few weeks. I read them, write up a little review and even get to keep them. I get to relish my copy long before the book even hits the bookstore shelf. It's a great way for me to keep up with my (future) career as a libararian once this stay at home mommy gig is up:)

Besides books, I plan to share a lot of my crafts that I work on. It's my creative outlet and keeps me sane. I sell premade scrapbook layouts and mini albums on ebay. I also do custom orders for people and have really had a great time with that. People ask me how I have the time with two small children. I *make* time for it. I find the hands on approach of scrapbooking and making other crafts very relaxing and rewarding.

My latest craft was inspired by the Christmas issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. It is making these fun little crafts (pictured above) with cookie cutters and scrapbook paper. A lot of why I love to scrapbook so much is the paper. There is some truly wonderful stuff out there. I love that so much of it is already distressed and vintage looking. That's the look I like! So I went out hunting for some metal cookie cutters. I looked on ebay, but the shipping cost is what always gets me. I'm glad I looked long enough, because I came across a wonderful little store called Sweet Concessions. They have everything you could ever want for cookie and candy making. They had (literally) 1000's of cookie cutters for every occasion. It was so much fun. They even have classes. I'm sure I'll be back.

So back to the craft. I just traced the shape around the cookie cutter onto scrapbook paper. Then I cut the paper and glued it onto the cutter. How easy... and so much fun! I thought about putting them on my tree, but then I remembered I had this fabulous container from Besta (my grandmother) that she used to have up at Christmas. The cookie cutters happened to fit perfectly. Viola! We even found in the container a little metal charm that says "This I'll Defend". I looked up the meaning and I guess it's the McFarlane family motto. Besta's maiden name was McFarlane. Neat find!