You can tell it's homemade...

Don't know what has gotten into me lately but I have been crafting up a storm.  I've found most of these ideas from different craft blogs.

It probably all started when I found a great gift idea for babies...but I can't post those yet because I haven't given them yet! :)

ABC Felt Pillow: (from here)

Most frustrating mobiles ever: (idea from here)

I ended up just making a fixed mobile because I couldn't stop the birds from flopping upside-down.

 

Believe it or not, when I want cute fabric like this, I just buy tea towels from the grocery store.  Yes, there is fabric here in the souqs (old outdoor market type place) but I really don't feel like dragging the kids out in the 110F+ heat to haggle with some guy for a small amount of fabric that isn't as cute as this.

 

Lunch bag from a tea towel:

This idea from here actually said to use a dish towel.  Micah starts preschool in September and she needed a lunch bag and I wasn't very happy with the choices available so this idea caught my eye.

She's already filling it with her "lunch".

 

Yet another lunch bag:

We recently flew on Emirates Airlines (which has the best toys for the kids) and they gave them these lunch bags:

I decided to just cover up the "Fly Emirates" part and Micah would have a nice insulated bag for school.  (I kinda took over the one I made for her previously.)

 

Decoupage name signs:

I had the best time trying to explain to James what decoupage was.  (If you don't know, just look it up.)  I got these blank wood "slice" pre-made signs a long time ago but I wasn't ready to paint them for fear of messing them up.  Then I had the great idea of decoupaging them.  If you mess them up, you just rip off the paper and try again! 

These originally caught my eye because they are just like the nametags we wore at the camp I went to all through my early years.

 

Hooded bear towel:

So this one was a test to see if this was doable for gifts.  Idea from here and here.  (There are little ears on the top of this hood.  Oh, and tea towel scraps contributed to this project.)

 

I-Spy Book:

This isn't really a "craft" but it is a project we've been working on...

This is just one picture from Micah and Levi's custom I-Spy book.  We took all kinds of collage pictures like this including cars, balls, toys, utensil drawer, tool drawer...  The book isn't complete yet because I'm not sure how I want to finish it (with words or without) but I'm thinking it'll be made into one of those snapfish books.

(This was REALLY hard to arrange with a one year old grabbing all the pieces...I gave up on Mr. Potato Head and did that at nap time!)

 

Micah's dress made from man's shirt:  (idea here)

 

I am going to have to slow down on some of my personal crafting because the new year of MOPS started in September and I am the creative activities person for this.  Stay tuned for pictures of all those great activities I have planned!

(But I am excited because I just got all of my fabric for making my first real quilt for Micah's twin bed.  My goal is to finish it by Christmas.  Three months to go...)

Family Getaway to Dubai

We took a weekend trip to Dubai to escape Doha during Ramadan.  We stayed at Atlantis - The Palm.  Included in our room was admission to the water park and the aquarium.  It was a very cool (but short) trip and we are hoping to be able to do it again next year!  Even during Ramadan (no eating/drinking in public) everything in the resort was open so it worked out well!  In the late afternoons, we were able to go to a couple of the malls to shop and then restaurants would open at sunset and we could get dinner.  The kids did great and we loved that the flight was less than 45 minutes!
I've only posted a few pictures here.  If you want to see more, go to my facebook album.

Date Harvest 2009

We were walking in our compound one evening after dinner and came upon a worker from the restaurant who was climbing a date palm to pick dates.  He so kindly gave us some of the dates he had picked...we've lived here almost 3 years and we had never had fresh dates straight off the tree before.  That generous man didn't know what he started!...

After realizing how good fresh dates are - and how cool it is to pick them straight off the trees in our neighborhood - we went on several searches to find the ripe dates.  We tried to find the trees that were in the public areas and weren't in somebody's front yard!  Here are some of the dates we harvested on our own:

 

One Saturday we were driving out and noticed the date palm trimmer coming around cleaning up all of the dead and hairy bits at the base of the leaves.  We stopped the car and James got out and asked the guy to cut off a big bunch of dates.  Of course, these dates weren't ripe yet but we were afraid of losing our chance at these dates since most of the other trees were becoming scarce.  I thought this guy's harness thing was so cool and he was really good at climbing those palms.  (When he worked his way down to the tree in front of our house, I happened to notice when he took off his shirt - for such a skinny guy, his arm muscles were ripped!)

Since our newly acquired bunch of dates wasn't ripe yet, we had to find a warm but shaded spot to ripen them...thus was born the "Dan Cox Honorary date ripening shed" (Dan is the guy we bought the shed from).  It was the perfect spot to keep birds away too.  (The bunch in the corner in this picture is actually not the one the worker cut for us.  We picked those a couple days earlier but they never were good - very bitter if they are picked too soon.)

Micah loved to help harvest the dates when they became ripe.  (Notice the box behind Micah says "Storage"?  That means the box of dishes was supposed to stay in Houston.  Thanks Allied for making us cart around and store this unnecessary box!)

Some of the dates in Micah's basket.

I guess today wraps up date season as we finished harvesting all the dates in our shed.  We froze nearly 30 ounces of dates and that is just what was left over.  We've already made date bars, coffee date bread, date balls, orange-date pinwheel cookies...So between what we ate, baked, and froze we estimate to have had 4 lbs of dates!  All from our neighborhood trees!  Can't wait til next year!!!