Video of giggling Ella

Finished Cloth Taggie Book

Well, I finally finished my cloth taggie book for Ella and am delighted that she seems to love it! We've placed it in her crib and it seems to be doing the trick - she will look at it until she falls asleep for her nap and sometimes after her nap, we will go in to find her looking at it (and talking in her own language - which is mostly just her pretending to read the book to herself).

Here are some photos of the finished product:

Book Project for Ella

Here is my book project I'm working on for Ella. I have about 1/2 of the pages complete. Then I plan to sew them together and bind them all. What you can't see from the photos is all the different things I am using for different textures. I thought of adding these cute fish buttons to the river page, but this is supposed to be a SOFT, blanket like book for Ella so nothing hard.

This is the inside of the cover and back. I made it to resemble the Taggie books.
This is the front of the cover.
Here are the pages.

I must be in Cicely, Alaska

Lately I feel like Chris (from Northern Exposure) when that creative/artistic bug hits. I just can't get enough!!! Completing Ella's pajamas and my first ever sewing machine project inspired something inside me. The last week I've been working like crazy to improve my sewing techniques and this bug just hit me!
I was rocking Ella to sleep for her afternoon nap thinking to myself that I would love to have a nice, soft book for Ella to use to help put herself to sleep for her nap. She does great at night to put herself to sleep, but nap time she still insists that I rock her to sleep. We go through this routine of reading 2-3 books, then we rock with her soft bunny blanket until she's asleep and I carefully lay her in her crib and go about with my chores around the house. I was thinking if she could just put herself to sleep with a book and her blanket, I would have another 30 minutes to my day to get some things done (in theory).
Thus came the BIG IDEA... there are these nice, soft, blanket like books called Taggies Books. Well, they are $13-15 each and I was not thrilled with the so-called stories in them. They consisted of a few words on each page and I just thought Ella would like something more to play with. So I decided to MAKE MY OWN!!!
Well, this idea just got bigger and bigger... I decided I didn't want to make a sleepy time book (we have a ton of those) or a numbers, colors, animal sounds, etc. books - plenty of all of these! What don't we have? A camping book! We keep telling Ella that we will take her camping once the temperature doesn't drop below 50 at night (se we have a while to wait), but she probably doesn't even know what camping is!
I plan to take photos of my book as it progresses so check back here for updates of my own Tagged blanket book. I've already made the cover and back and the first 3 pages. I'm so excited about how it's turning out that I can't put it down!!! Tonight was the first night in a couple of nights that Steve made me put down the material, pins, and thread...

Nature Paper!

Steve just got the word today around noon that his paper he submitted to Nature over a year ago has finally been accepted for publication!!! This is after a TON of revisions and work! YOU ROCK, DR. ROBERTS!!!