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Little, tiny 1" square pieces of brightly colored, varied fabrics set against white. My thinking in using really big prints in these little, tiny spaces was that each square would be unique, no two would exactly repeat.

The many faces of the Law girls (and one Larsen girl).

I'm behind on my baby gifts again. And behind on posting. These babies were born in November. . . Oh, well.

Can you spot my little bears? They're the second one from the top right corner! I'm a semi-finalist! Woot woot! This has been a fun challenge to work on. There were 968 final entries and those were narrowed down to 75 semi-finalists. Thanks for all your input, friends. I really love the spacey robot one, too, but I just didn't think it was quite ready. I want to keep playing with it a little. So I went with my gut and entered the bears against the blue/gray background. If you'd like to vote (please, please, pretty please!?!) go to the Spoonflower website contest tab and vote for any and all the ones you like. . . click on them and they turn green. The submit vote button is on the 5th page. You have till April 6 to vote, but why wait? Do it today!

I'm entering a fabric design contest on Spoonflower , Project Selvage , where the winner would get to design a line of baby boy fabric for Michael Miller Fabrics ! But I can only enter one design. Help! Which one should I enter?

For the most part, we're ready. The Christmas tree is up. Lucy helped with some of the ornaments. Little gingerbread village has survived the snackers. Stockings are hung by the fireplace with care. (This was a project three years in the making! I've had the fabric forever.) Christmas cards are in the mail. (Photography by Katherine Wallin , design from minted.com , love their skinny labels !) Neighbor gifts have been delivered. ( Recipe for peppermint bark from allrecipes.com ) Teacher gifts have been given. ( Marble magnets "how-to" on not martha .) The one thing left on my list is to finish Emmie's quilt. This is how it looked in October. This is how it looked in November. This is how it looked yesterday. It is not a hard quilt. It has just taken the back burner, but no longer! I intend to give it to my baby daughter on Christmas and it SHALL be finished. That will be my greatest accomplishment this month. Merry Christmas to all, especially to all you out there...

Lucy likes to do things together. Whatever she's doing, she wants me to be right there doing it with her. And whatever I'm doing, she has to be doing. Lately, if I have the camera out and want to take some pictures, she wants a turn too. So I put the strap around her neck and let her shoot whatever she wants. So you end up with unusual camera angles and unique perspectives and, even more rare, pictures of me! I took this one of Emmie, but its too cute not to post.

Confession: I have only made one thing for my little Emmie. But at least its a good one. . . a receiving blanket. We use it all the time. It's light, but warm. It's a swaddler and a carseat blanket. It soaks up spit up and washes well. And it looks good. This one I did for a friend. They're so fun to make and, um, extremely easy too. Materials: You just need 1 yard solid color flannel (I almost always just use white or off-white, flannel colors tend to be too saturated for my taste), 1 yard of a beautiful print (both of these happen to be Amy Butler designs , you can't go wrong with her stuff), and 1 1/4 yard contrasting or harmonizing fabric for bias binding. . . oh, and I like to add on a little fabric tag (the bears and hearts are both some that I've designed and printed at Spoonflower but you can cut a little piece out of whatever fabric you like, like I did here .) Instructions: Pre-wash all fabrics, and then iron them flat. Place flannel and print right-...

Here's a design principle. . . repetition adds significance to images. Another design tip. . . odd numbers are pleasing to the eye, so arrange things in 3 or 5, etc.

Guess who is two months old today?