Hallowe'en

Henry had a very nice first Hallowe'en. He helped carve some jack-o-lanterns at Grandma and Grandpa's and then he got in his hallowe'en costume and helped hand out some candy. He really liked to see the kids coming to the door.

Henry pulled himself up to standing

A first today! Henry was sitting and used the bathtub to pull himself up to standing! He's only done it once though - I had to help him a bit to get up to the window.

Dino Puppet

Henry has been LOVING the puppets in his Baby Einstein Video so I wanted to make a real puppet for him. After scouring the internet and the library I could not find a single free sewing pattern for a puppet so I had to come up with my own.

I managed to make one that turned out pretty well first try I think. And it ended up looking like a dinosaur so I decided to make it a dinosaur. It was really simple to make once I had the pattern figured out. I would like to upload the pattern on here as a contribution to the craft blogging community but not sure if there's an easy way to do that.

Henry likes his new puppet but not as much as the ones in Baby Einstein.

Getting into trouble

Henry is still just slithering but he is getting pretty good at it and pretty fast. And of course now he is getting into things! One of his favourite things right now is opening and closing the drawers of the TV cabinet. And it has resulted in pinched fingers a couple of times! Have to do something about that. His other favourite thing is crawling into the space under his exersaucer. He can crawl out but sometimes gets a bit upset about being in there before he remembers that.

Vegan Cream Soup

I tried a new recipe today for leek and potato soup. It was in our local paper and it uses cashew cream. I've enjoyed cashew cream with vegan desserts before but never thought of doing this. Before I would just add soy milk in place of the cream and the soups have been good but never as good as this. This soup turned out really creamy.

I just put 1 cup of raw cashews in water overnight (in the refrigerator) and today I rinsed the cashews, blended them up with just enough water and then added it to the soup - I need to try some more cream soup recipes now. It was filling too!

Nice Fall Weather

We have been having very very nice weather since Sunday. Henry and I have been doing our best at getting out for lots of walks while it is still nice. Today we were out in the backyard doing some gardening in the morning and in the afternoon we went on a long walk through Waterloo Park and had a look at the animals while we were there. Henry is giving animals lots of smiles these days.

Out in the backyard reminding me that he doesn't have to stay on the blanket anymore:
And meeting a goat:

Slippers for Henry

I made some slippers for Henry. The same style as his leather Robeez but I used an old wool vest so they'd be just a bit warmer. I used a pattern from the Sweet Booties book which was a terrible pattern. I thought the pattern looked too wide but I went ahead anyway silly me. Anyway, after lots of tweaking the finished product they are ok now. Not in love with them, might try tweaking a smidge more. Next time I think I will just try copying the Robeez.

Henry's First Chair

I finished a chair I've been working on for Henry. It's made from 1 and a half 2x4s so material cost is low. And it was fun to make. But as I was making it I was thinking of all the ways I could make it better. But that's ok since Henry will probably want more than one chair at some point. I've already started work on the second chair which will have no screws showing!

Here he is sitting at a darling little Ikea desk that my mum found on someone's curb for us.

Henry Slithers

Henry has been slithering for about a week now. He is still far from crawling and will mostly only attempt to move if he has a toy about a foot away from him that he wants to reach, no further. But we are all having fun with it and hope he learns to crawl too.

He is also teething right now, can feel the first tooth poking through. We've had a few cranky nights and days.




Here he is slithering after the camera

Blanket Bin Version 1.1

I finally got around to modifying the first blanket bin I made. It is still humungous but at least now you can reach into it! And I figure it will make a great toy bin. It can stay in the basement maybe and lots of big toys can just be thrown in for tidying up.

Thanksgiving and Oktoberfest

We had a very nice Thanksgiving weekend. Henry got to wear the lederhosen I made for him at our Oktoberfest Party on Saturday. We also enjoyed our homemade pretzels, beer nuts, saurkraut, and beer.



And we spent Sunday and Monday in Mississauga. Had a delicious turkey dinner on Sunday and went on lots of nice walks enjoying the fall colours. We went to 16 mile Creek in Oakville on Sunday and on Monday went to Forks of the Credit with a stop at the Cheltenham Badlands first to show Eliza ans Steve how cool they are.

16 mile Creek:
Cheltenham Badlands:

Forks of the Credit:

RIM Park

The weather was beautiful yesterday. Warm and Sunny. Henry and I went a walk in Hillside Park and Henry smiled at the ducks. Then he played in the backyard, ate a lot of dirt, while I did some knitting while wearing just a T-shirt. And after dinner I wanted to continue making the most of the nice weather so we went for a walk at RIM Park. But by then it was quite a bit less warm. And there were almost no fall colours there.

But the awesome part of going in the evening is we saw white tailed deer which we've never seen before. And I had no idea that white tailed deer were so different than other deer. Their white tails are huge! You couldn't see the tails much when they were just standing there but when they were leaping away they had these 1 foot long bushy white tails sticking straight up. It was really cool.

Quince Wine

We started some quince wine yesterday. We decided to try this this year instead of quince jelly and luckily there was a recipe in our First Steps in Winemaking book. First we picked the quince from the bush in our backyard. Before we started we were planning on having enough for one gallon, hoping we might have enough for 2 gallons. It turned out we had enough for more than 10 gallons! That's over 200 quince! Luckily we decided to do 5 gallons because it was tough dealing with just that many. The rest are still in our garage, maybe we'll do something with them later. But after processing 100 quince, I am a bit sick of them right now.