My new favorite thing....

I have never tried to carve a stamp before, but apparently it's the 'norm' to have a hand-carved unique stamp for your letterboxing team. I didn't want to have some cheapo store-bought stamp representing my team! Well, my family is my team, so I designed a stamp based on one of our treasured wedding presents. The gift is a matted and framed image of a house made from the letters in our names (Mike and Emily). It's a really cool gift, and I thought I would use the same idea for our stamp, except I used only the first letters (M, E, T, A) in our family's names. Wow - I just noticed that those letters spell 'TEAM'!!! Wow... interesting! (of course they could also spell 'meat' or 'mate'... hmm...)

Here's my initial drawing:

I then had to reverse it and transfer the image to a stamping block. I decided to use a linoleum block instead of rubber because it already had the wood backing attached and I didn't want to deal with gluing rubber to wood. Here it is all carved out... there's already some ink on it because I couldn't wait to try it out!

And here's what the stamp looks like. I put a heart in the middle of the house because our house is full of love... sorry - a bit cheesy, I know.....

That's all the craftiness I've been up to this week... well actually, I'm still knitting a gift for some friends... they may read this so I don't want to post a picture until they receive the gift. I've been knitting or reading in the painfully slow carpool line this week at Taylor Anne's school. Here's what I'm reading: I wish I had read it maybe 10 years ago! Oh - wait - it was just published last year! Doh! I've been a fan of Barbara Kingsolver's for years... (The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams) how did I miss this one when it came out?

I've been so busy with this chicken saga stuff... I was interviewed yesterday, and photographed today for an article in the Raleigh News and Observer. The article will be in the North Raleigh News section on August 8th. I hope the article will paint a positive light on our issue. I also visited Town Hall and talked with the Town Clerk about getting on the agenda for the Commissioner's meeting August 19th. Apparently I have to send her a 'letter'. So I wrote that today, and will hand-deliver it tomorrow along with a packet of information for each of the commissioners to review. If you want to read more about my ordeal to have chickens, follow the link above or on the sidebar.

I love reading the comments all of you leave here, and sometimes I don't recognize the person who left them. So I go and check out that person's blog... well I just saw this (again) on Amy's blog and it had me laughing out loud (again) and grinning from ear to ear (it was my 2nd time seeing it - but it's been a few months). Mike came in and I had to show it to him... I'm not sure he 'got' it. I think this is my new theme song too, Amy! So, I leave you all today with:

The Mom Song: