Celebration, then Sickness

ATC Valentine: "So---That's where that guy eats!"

Warm strawberries for a sick boy.

Well I have been the Mama trenches these past days, home with a sick Sylvan. We have read off and on(sometimes from My Father's Dragon, one of my all-time favorite read-alouds), listened to Mary Poppins on CD twice (Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on repeat for awhile, because it brought a smile), one tiny puzzle, lots of coaxing to keep drinking fluids, some auditory hallucinations on his part, putting up towels to cover the windows and taking them down, re-supplying the sick table with books, washing mud off the toy tractor treads so they could be brought in and driven on a sick lap, etc. Thanks be to my loving partner who knows how much I need sleep to function, and let me sleep by myself in the guest bed last night.

What I've been knitting, while being with the sick one.

A gingko leaf bookmark and present.

So, before all this, last weekend I had my birthday. And it was lovely. The perfect sort of day filled with family, a few very special folks, and a lot of crafting.
We weren't that many in number, but we certainly made quite a bit of mess. We had a fabric ATC table and a collage ATC table in the next room.

One of us made a special ATC for Maine's senator, Susan Collins.

The theme was Valentine's Day, could you guess? (And if you need still more Valentine's inspiration after this post, check out Tollipop who is offering a Valentine's freebie! Adorable.)
We ate cake twice.
There was this, a cake appetizer: gingerbread muffins with whipped cream and crystallized ginger.
And later we ate this,
Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake from Cook's Illustrated (March/April 2006) frosted with my mom's own recipe for peppermint frosting (crushed up peppermint dust added to white frosting), which gives such a pretty pink color.
The cake was perfect and moist.
Is it any wonder we didn't have much appetite for the lovely birthday dinner? Which thankfully was all prepped and ready to be eaten the very next day. Yay for a crafternoon birthday party!