nathan « GOODKNITS // a knitting & crochet blog

Small Style: Dressing for Santa edition

By Lisa Gutierrez on 12/16/2011

Sunday morning, my mother-in-law emailed me to let us know Santa would be at R.E.I. that day taking FREE photos with kiddos. She suggested we stop by on our way to her house and get a shot of the kids with him. I went through their closet looking for the perfect little combinations and finally settled on a red gingham shirt for Andrew and a green gingham shirt for Nathan. FESTIVE!!

All was wonderful up until Andrew standing next to Santa and the photographer slowly walking to his camera… “NOOO!” He ran away. He actually told Santa what he wanted, but then got creeped out by the guy taking the picture. No offense to the photographer, he was nice enough. My little one is just at the age where #1 DON’T tell him what to do, and #2 Who are you? GET AWAY! Basically, only mommy can take his picture.

Oh well. Nathan looked pretty adorable–

Andrew is wearing: thrifted shirt & blazer, boots from The Children’s Place, pants from Target, pin from Mod Cloth.
Nathan is wearing: shirt & hat from Target, Levi’s pants, thrifted blazer.

Our Christmas Card 2011

By Lisa Gutierrez on 12/12/2011

It was last Christmas when I gifted myself a copy of Print Workshop and the basic tools of a block-printing kit. Over the past year, I’ve made quite a few stamps using my trusty lino cutter, including a crochet-inspired one that I’ve been using on the envelopes for my Lace Love orders. I’ll share that one with you soon, but today I want to talk about my Christmas card!

I doodled this tree, inspired by a drawing in a children’s book, several times and knew I wanted to incorporate it into our Christmas card somehow. I cut a small version on a scrap piece of Speedy Carve and liked it so much, I began drawing it larger. When I was finally satisfied, I drew it directly on a linoleum block and began carving. I found some metallic Speedball ink on clearance at Hobby Lobby one day and took it as a sign. THIS needed to be on the front of my card! I got to work immediately and had my 30 cards printed in a few short hours.

Its metallic-y shiny goodness–which was surprisingly hard to capture in photos–is not the best part of the card. Nope. The BEST past of the card? The handsome little fellas on the inside:

Thrifted blazers, vests, cardigans, lollipops. Informal to the max, but just our style.

You want to see outtakes, you say? But, of course!

I took the outdoor photos first. There was more than one meltdown, I can promise you that. The black & white photo shows what a toddler looks like when his big brother tells him he WILL NOT hold his hand. Oh my word, the tears! I spared you the photo of them BOTH crying because I threaten their treat. When we finally came back in, they got their lollipop prize and were still so adorable, I HAD to take more photos. In our dining room. Lucky I did because I ended up loving one of those the most!

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Did YOU take your own Christmas card photo? How did it go?? How did you “dress it up” for your actual card? I want to know!

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p.s. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway for 100 custom postcards I posted earlier today!

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p.p.s. I totally forgot to mention I’m linking up with The Paper Mama’s Holiday Photo challenge!

Day 30: three wonderful things that happened this month

By Lisa Gutierrez on 11/30/2011

1. We went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Sugar Land. This kid loved it. It’s not so small that you’d get bored, but not so big that you’d get lost.

2. Lace Love was printed and released! Yay!

3. My littlest and I went to a baby shower to celebrate the impending arrival of my cousin’s sweet baby boy. We are all so, so, so anxious to meet him! 2012 will bring newborn snuggles. I can hardly wait!

The end! Can you believe tomorrow is December? If you’re looking for a last minute sponsor spot, check out THIS PAGE. We averaged over 2,500 page-views per day in November. Spectacular! I’ll be debuting a new blog design tomorrow, too.

Day 29: Some place I’d like to visit.

By Lisa Gutierrez on 11/29/2011

My son and I were actually talking about this on our walk home from school, yesterday. He was talking about family traditions and somehow we ended up on quinceanera and he said an alternative to a big party would be a trip to someplace. We went through the obvious destinations a six-year old would like–Disney World, Disney Land, and pretty much any other theme park he could think of–and then he said he might like to go someplace different if he were six-TEEN (heart.stop). Maybe he would want to visit the Eiffel tower. Well. I suppose it’s a date.

–photo source–

Day 21: something I could never tire of

By Lisa Gutierrez on 11/21/2011

crafting with my little one. Oh, the day he asks me to teach him to knit, or crochet, or even sew–that will make my life.

He’s on Thanksgiving vacation for this whole week. Today, we made winter hat ornaments from the tutorial I posted yesterday, by Kate. You should really check it out! My first grader got a hang of it fairly quickly! He even taught my sister how to make them, this evening.