Advent Hayley

What does my darling husband do when he goes away for Christmas?!  Makes me my own Advent Calender of course!

He built this in the basement shop without me even having a hint about it!

There are 25 little doors to open with treats in them!

And one of my early treats - cute little Hayley to keep me company!

Named for the super awesome Hayley Wickenheiser, of course!  Yeah, three gold medals for Canada in hockey isn't too shabby!  :)  The girl monkeys are named for inspiring Canadian women athletes, the boy monkeys for NFL quarterbacks!

Aaron

Adrian decided to make Aaron for a very special friend of ours.  She sent us a very generous gift, despite her own challenges at the time.  This friend is a MEGA Green Bay Packers fan, so Aaron would have to be green and gold, of course!

Aaron is named for Aaron Rodgers, the Packers most excellent quarterback, of course!

Our friend has just about the cutest baby ever, and I hope she will like her new Monkey!

Flag Planting

My friend Jeremy Hanson-Finger is the Co-founder and Publisher of Dragnet magazine where they publish online short stories and poems. Recently I got a call for illustration submissions email from Dragnet. So I thought I would take a stab at illustrating something for their next issue. So here it is, an astronaut planting flags on some guys lawn. It's for a story titled Flags by A.G. Pasquella.

Drew

After making the Appleseed, I needed to get my sock monkey fix.  I love the NFL, so I decided to name the monkeys after NFL quarterbacks.

While I was making this next monkey, the Saints were playing the Falcons - so this monkey became Drew [after Mr. Drew Brees] because Drew Brees threw five interceptions that night.

All I have to say is - Drew will be the best Secret Santa gift ever in tonight's gift exchange!

Who is ever going it guess it is a sock monkey?!?!  Bwahahahhaha!

Post Party Report: The party was a lot of fun with great food and great friends. Tim and Rosie out did themselves again hosting their 10th annual Christmas potluck party. Drew was the first present picked. Maybe it's because of the ambiguous wrapping, but I have a say it was a hit because it was stolen eight times during the secret Santa gift exchange.

Appleseed!

When my wife and I found out that we are expecting our first child due in April 2013 we agreed to not rush into every baby store we come across. But because of the excitement about our news I wanted to make something special for our future first born.

So I decided to make a sock monkey and started looking for instructions and online. Upon the first search I came upon some great instructions and the monkeys on this site were super cute. So I went into my wife's sock draw to look for the perfect pair of sock and voila, her green socks with an orange-red strip. It's perfect because Appleseed is our placeholder name for our little fetus. I thought, I'll name the monkey apple seed and I always like green apples and love the colour.

So without further adieu, this is Apple Seed.