bella turned eleven yesterday.

yeah, i know.

her gifts. marty gave her a house key and i gave her this.

my mother is the only person i've ever known harder to shop for than this small girl. she loves to read so you could get her a book or two but it's hard to compete with the library we have in walking distance given the pace in which she ravages books. the only other two things she's interested in would be a stable of animals and more hours in the day so she could draw more pictures of animals. to this end i also got her some proper drawing gear—sketch pads, pencils, colored pencils, pink pearl erasers, an art bin for storage—because to date she's been fully content drawing her horses on the backsides of scrap paper with nubby, eraserless pencils. it's certain she gets this contentedness from her mother which aside from good health is possibly the best gift one human can pass to another.

note: the knitting army logo was made and donated by designer extraordinaire, tracy dorsey.