sometimes i wander through my mind

ok, not really.  but i do love tea, and also teapots, and have somehow started a collection without meaning to.  it all began when my seester gave me some yummy tea and adorable teacups for a bridesmaid gift.  later she found out i had no teapot, so she gave me one of those for christmas.  then my voonderbob husband gave me an adorable teapot one day just to remind me that he loves me very much exactly how i am.  imagine my distress when i broke it.  serious llama face.  eventually he gave me a new one, and then my mom got me a seriously cool one and suddenly there are as many teapots as people in our house, and i'm the only one who seriously drinks tea.  for some reason this has only made me like teapots more, perhaps because every time i see one, i think of someone i love.  speaking of love....

on february 3rd, my mr. jonathanly and i celebrated 8 years of blissful marriage.  i have loved every moment of it, even the tough ones, and am thrilled to say that i love him every bit as much and probably more than i did on the day we got married.  i still feel like i've been given an incredible gift every day when i wake up and find my best friend already beside me.  and this year, my wonderful, thoughtful anniversary gift was, naturally, a new teapot.

(as usual, pardon my less than stellar photography)

guest starring the bubby and my mr. jonathanly!

this is coming rather later than i intended it to, seeing as it's christmas related, but it's still fun, so....yeah.

paper chain winter wonderland!

first, of course, you need paper.  we considered coloring ours first (which would look very festive, i think), but in the end we went with snowy white.

you'll also need scissors and tape.

after some trial and error, i felt that cutting one sheet of paper into 8 strips widthwise resulted in the nicest looking loops.  i had the easiest time getting uniform sizes if i folded the paper into 8ths first and then cut along the folds.  this can leave a bent edge on your loops, so if you've got a good eye, you might prefer to freehand it like jonathan did.

after cutting strips, it's a simple matter of making a loop with one strip and then another loop through that loop and so forth.
noah was really good (and really liked) making the loops!

we also made a few snowflakes to add to our wonderland, but somehow i don't seem to have pictures of that...

don't make the chains too long, or you'll have a terrible time handling them.  don't forget to decorate yourself a little during the process.

after you have all the chains you want, (we ran out of time for all we wanted, but still really enjoyed what we had you'll need someone skilled in the stepladderly arts who also has a good eye for draping and looping.  in our house that is unequivicaly jonathan.  (i'm fine on a stepladder, but not so much with the making pretty stuff).

once it's all hung, sit down, drink some cocoa, and admire the loveliness!

aren't they cute!

it makes me really happy that he loves the gloves i made him enough to fall asleep with them on. = )

noah to jonjon after seeing him longboard through the burger king parking lot: "you're pretty cool, daddy". priceless

http://www.collectedbytas-ka.com/

that is all.

so i made a deal with my mother:  every time she writes a blog entry, i'll write a blog entry.  hopefully, you'll hear from both of us a lot more this way.  if you haven't visited her blog, you should.  so she blogged today, so i am.  today's blog:  things i have made/am making.

we'll start with this skirt that i dreamed up months and months ago, and then about 2 months ago, i finally made for myself.  the tree skirt:

here's the tree i penned on it up close:

i'm pretty pleased with it.  it's everything i want in a skirt, it's comfortable, flattering, and cool for the summer, although since i am completely addicted to leggings at the moment, i'm sure this will get worn well into the fall and winter.  kind of on a whim, to see what would happen, i went ahead and listed it on box of happy as a custom item, so if anybody sees it and just has to have one, it's in the shop!

i've always liked october.  my birthday is this month.  and my sexy man's birthday, too.  and it finally starts to seem as if summer in texas may actually go away for a couple months.  i start leaving the windows open and irresistabley wanting to bake a lot and eat soup at every meal.  october is a nice month.  that's all i have to say about that.

and completely unrelated:

i now present to you:

purple car on a saturday morning; a photographic study by noah