Crafty Marty

I have an amazing mother-in-law. This blog post is a tribute to her and all of the wonderful things she has made for us. She is one of the craftiest woman I know. She has made Trevor and I so many things in the short 3 years or so that we have been married. To give you an idea, here are some of the things she has crafted for us:

A beautiful hand-painted Christmas display

Crocheted a baby blanket for Calvin:

A Christmas wreath:

A cute Christmas moon (I had Calvin sit next to things to give you a perspective of size):

A Christmas advent Calendar. This is an amazing work-of-art and must have taken her a looooong time to do. She cross-stitched everything on it:

She even cross-stitched all the pieces that hang on the calendar!
These adorable Christmas pillows. And yes, she stitched this all by hand as well:

Trevor and I LOVE our matching aprons she made us!
This cross-stitch hangs in our kitchen to remind us to always say nice things to each other:

We also really like these two floor pillows she made us. They are really nice quality!

This past Christmas she made us an afghan. She found pictures of our rug and couch and picked colors that would match our front room. I think she did an awesome job and the colors match perfectly!

Now she is working on the mother-of-all-cross-stitches for Calvin. In Trevor's family we just refer to it as "The cross-stitch" and everyone knows what we are talking about. You have to understand that we didn't mean for this to turn into such a huge project. She volunteered to make a cross-stitch for Calvin when he was born last May. Trevor and I thought it would be a good idea to pick a design that wasn't just for a "baby's room" but something that he could hang on his wall while he is growing up (so it would last longer). After going back and forth between designs, Trevor's mom decided she really liked this cross-stitch and said she was willing and excited to do it. We loved the design as well so we went with it. It's the most difficult cross-stitch she has ever done. She even wears two pairs of eyeglasses just so she can see the stitches (because the stitches are so small).

Here's a picture of her when she was just starting out (relatively starting out because I'm sure even what she has done took her a long time to do.).

Here is a video we took of the cross-stitch. I can't stress how amazing this work-of-art is to me. I know she has put in countless hours of work into it the past 10 months she has been working on it. I feel kind of bad even accepting it because I'm sure she wants to hang it in her house, but she keeps saying she wants to give it to Calvin. She said she'll have to make lots of trips to our house to admire her work :).

So this is all really amazing... but what is even MORE amazing to me is that Trevor is NOT an only child. He has 5 other siblings that she makes things for as well! I feel pretty spoiled to have so many nice things. I hope I can do the same for my children when they are older. So, if we haven't said it enough yet, then "Momma Marty, THANK YOU so much for everything you have made for us!!! We love you!!!"