I received a lovely card from Melinda! It showed the a beautifully decorated home with snowflakes bringing added beauty to the peaceful scene. Thank you, Thank you Melinda! I have addressed and licked the envelopes for my three fellow members. They will go out in the mail tomorrow. Hooray!! I have matched one word with Bingo. Hoping to increase that number in the coming days??!! perhaps ;) The family is preparing for Christmas... my son will be here for Christmas!! We are so excited about his time "off" from the Air Force. We will pick him up in Seattle this weekend and for that we are hoping for good weather. It has been in the 40's these past few days... no snow .... yet... hopefully it will remain that way until we make the drive over the pass. I hope everyone is doing well and that you are enjoying the your days as you prepare for your holiday celebrations.

If it makes you feel better, Hoboken, my main early labor symptom for my last kid (#3) was extreme crankiness. When we got to the hospital, I told my husband that I'd changed my mind, we weren't really having this baby after all. We looked at each other and said, "But we don't have a name for a girl!" This was the days before ultrasounds and I was sure this baby was a girl. He wasn't, so we had a name after all. It could have been like my brother and SIL - it took them several more days after the birth of their kids to agree on names. That really causes issues on the birth certificate front. Good luck, keep breathing, she'll be here soon.

I'm with those who've suggested creating a dual-purpose room. It sounds like you would use the crafting/project space, so why not set up half the room (or at least a corner) with a work space for yourself, and find some (gently used) fitness equipment your husband wants? Then you could see how you end up using the room before devoting more space than necessary to one purpose or the other. When I'm ready for another area to have to clean and maintain (which won't be for at least a couple of years), we'll finish our basement. We have the floor plan roughly worked out, and one room will be a combined fitness and project room. Right now the fitness stuff is set up in a corner of the unfinished basement and only sees use on the coldest mornings of the year, or occasionally when the kids are playing down there and it's too hot to run outside. I'm not sure it will get much more use even when finished as I'd much rather be outside moving around, but it's nice to have during periods of extreme weather. My sewing machine is now in a corner of our bedroom that's not ideal, but better than having it shut up somewhere. Projects end up all over the house, spread out in the living room or dining room. There's a kids craft table spackled and ready to be sanded sitting in the middle of the living room as I type. I know I would use a project space if I had a designated one, but the thought of having to clean (and decorate!) the basement when I'm still working on the main floors is too much for me at the moment.

Is that the same as one of thoser "self-healing" mats to use with a roatry cutter. I haven't done any real card mnaking but when I need a really crisp fold, scoring is essential. I will ise a NEW Xacto blade and just let gravity be the weight applied... just drag blade along a straight edge to barely scrt=atch the surface, as they say. Found an interesting site earlier today. Not car making but paper crafting and scoring will be required. Check out www.babbledabbledo.com/paper-toys-flextangles! Looks fun and relatively easy.