{pretty, happy, funny, real} - The Spring Edition

I have a sick big boy at home, so this will be pretty short this week.  I didn't want to completely disappear again, though.

{pretty}

I love these pretty yellow flowers that popped out in my garden a few days ago.

{happy}

Miss Elizabeth has made the developmental jump to walk-first, crawl-when-I-fall.  It makes me happy because, at a year old it's time and means she's growing as she should.  It makes me sad because she looks so darn big doing it - what happened to my baby?!



{funny} 

This is sad-funny.  This is my sewing table right now.  Apparently I thought that if I took my whiteboard and made a list of things I need to finish and mend, and then sat it by my machine, that would shame me into getting to things.  Yeah, it's not really working.

{real}

My pretty yellow flowers in the garden - they're on the broccoli.  I have no idea what happened there.  I planted about 30 broccoli seeds, and this is the only one that came up.  It went from having a tiny head (maybe 5 florets) of broccoli to this in a few days.  Clearly my gardening skills still need a lot of work.  I'm thinking I'll just bring the stalks in and put them in a vase and enjoy them.  I'm sure the broccoli is not edible now that it's shot to flower.

I have a bunch of other things to put up, but I have to go get Patrick from school and then we'll see how everyone's feeling.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - The Kitchen Edition

It's been a while since I linked here, but since I've actually taken some pictures this week, I thought I'd jump in.

{pretty}

I scrubbed up my kitchen on Monday. It's needed it for WAY too long and it's amazing how much more counter space I have and how much easier dinner prep is now that I cleared up all the junk.

{happy}

We celebrated Pi Day yesterday (more on that here) with a very tasty chocolate cream pie.

{funny}

I made a salad on Sunday night with lettuce from our little garden. It's funny in that I'm waaay to proud of my 3 handfuls or so of lettuce.

Although if you consider that the view from my garden is this:

 gravel and a 6 foot tall cactus, the fact that anything grows at all is really pretty amazing!

{real}

I scrubbed up my kitchen in part because of this.

My toaster oven picked Monday morning while I was changing the Princess's dirty diaper to not shut off, catch fire, and scare me half to death.  Thank God, the flames were contained within the toaster oven and I was able to unplug it and then throw some water on it.  Scary, though, and a good moment to talk to the boys about what to do if they ever see that much smoke again.

We're enjoying our two weeks of spring here, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s, so maybe I'll get some outide pictures taken before it gets into the 90s and I can't bring myself to go outside much.  I hope you are all having a great week!

Happy Pi Day!

No, that is not a typo.  Geeks everywhere (or at least in the US where we write our dates the right way around) celebrate March 14 as Pi Day, a celebration of all things Pi, circular, and tasty!  What's better for Pi Day than pie in a Pi plate?  Many thanks to my dad for this genius gift.

We chose to celebrate the circle (which the ancients thought was the perfect shape) with chocolate (the perfect food) in the form of a chocolate cream pie.  First, we mixed a simple graham cracker crust and my trusty sidekick, ChefPatrick, pressed it into the plate.

Then we took a break for strawberry milk with whipped cream.  ChefPatrick had an accident last night while I was cooking dinner (I didn't see what happened) and has a big cut inside his lip/cheek and a little but deep cut outside, so Mama is sort of a softie today.

After WordWorld, lunch, and putting the Princess down for a nap, we mixed up chocolate cream.  In keeping with my plan to try more "heirloom" type recipes (more on that soon), I used a recipe from my Mennonite Community Cookbook.  Once the cream cools, we will top it with homemade whipped cream and our homage to all things pi/pie will be complete!

Happy Pi Day everyone!

Big Kids

I'm on a roll (as in, I got back on the blog and posted something), so I'll put up another quick one unless Miss E throws a complete fit in the next five minutes.

As I said before, we've had quite a month here.  My little (middle) boy turned 4 and Miss Elizabeth (who answers quite nicely to Princess) turned 1.  They all look so different to me, even just since Christmas, so for those of you who don't see them often, here are a few pictures.

First, Christopher had silly hat day as part of his Dr Seuss birthday week at school. 

He wore Daddy's hat from Warrior Dash and thought he was super-cool (which he was).  I had trouble getting him interested in a lot of the activities (silly shoe day, inside-out day, etc) but this one he was into.


Patrick turned 4 a few weeks ago, and now thinks he's really big stuff (which he is). 

He had a party with Lightning McQueen invitations, Thomas plates, and a dinosaur cake.  Ahh, the plight of the middle child, always thinking that whatever the oldest likes is cool.  His big birthday present was a play kitchen, which he thinks is pretty much the coolest thing around.  He also got some kids cooking things from my parents, which now means that I can't go into the kitchen to pour myself coffee without him telling me, "Mommy, I want to put on my ChefPatrick clothes and help you!"  Hot mitts are a must for any activity - did you know that?


Last, but very certainly not least, Elizabeth turned 1 a few days after Patrick's birthday. 

She still will not take more than 3 steps, finding it much quicker to crawl.  She has slept all night four of the last five nights, so maybe, maybe there is light at the end of that tunnel that is not an onrushing freight train of exhaustion.  She has a lot to say, but so far only "uh-oh" and "nanana (no)" are somewhat understandable.  Given our family history, though, this is pretty awesome.

I made her birthday dress, which I'll show you next, after I get some better pictures of it on her!

Hope I haven't bored everyone completely - have a great day!

Yes, I'm Still Here

Wow, has it been almost a month since I posted anything?!  It's been quite a month, though.  We were all sick with the nasty head crud (including the little one).  Then my parents came to visit for a week - way better than nasty head crud, but busy nonetheless.  We had two kid birthdays while they were here, and now it's almost halfway through March and I'm just starting to recover.

I did finish my Vogue 8379 dress and I like the way it fits, although I need to try a different hem.  I hemmed it by hand using their method from the pattern and on this fabric it's all bunchy and weird, so I think I will hem it by machine, although I need to be VERY careful not to stretch it like I usually do.  I will put up better pics later, but here is one from when I wore it to church the other week.

I gave up Facebook for Lent, so I think my next post will be a few pics of the kids for those who don't get to see them often :-)

What The Three Little Pigs Taught Me About Sewing

I am working on my eggplant (hopefully not giant grape) wrap dress and had an interesting experience yesterday.  I had it hanging for the last two days so the skirt could stretch before I hemmed it and I noticed the collar looked a little wonky.  I tugged it straight, but it didn't help.  I tried it on, but it didn't help.  Finally I laid it on the ironing board with the shoulder seams matched and saw this.

ACK!  Almost a quarter inch difference in the collar length - no wonder it looked off.  I thought about just leaving it and hoping I was the only one who noticed it, but then the Three Little Pigs came to call.  I tell their story to Patrick at least once a day (he likes to tell most of it) and we always talk at the end about how if you're going to do a job, you might as well take time to do it right.  So, after those sides of bacon guilted me into breaking out my seam ripper last night, here's what the collar looks like.  In retrospect, I'm much happier with it, and now it is ready to hem this evening.

On the docket is Elizabeth's birthday dress, from this (she'll get view B on the lower left with a piped collar with no lace):

and not a moment too soon since she will be one in 15 days. Who said that was OK?

Finally Finished Something

I've been knitting a sweater with this yarn longer than I have been a mother.  Yep, I'm that indecisive.  In my defense, though, the yarn (Jaeger Matchmaker 4-Ply) is yummy but an odd weight.  It is somewhere in between a lace weight and sport-weight and it took me a long time and a lot of false starts to find a pattern that worked, but find it I did, and I love the results.

The pattern is the Lace Saddle Tee from Interweave Knits Summer 2010.  The pattern is shown in a linen/cotton blend with short sleeves, but since my yarn was merino wool, I lengthened the sleeves to 3/4 length and it is a perfect "dead of winter" sweater for here in the southwest.  I made the smallest size (33 1/2 inch bust) and it fits well.  I was a little scared when I finished it that it would be snug, but a good washing/blocking smoothed out the much-frogged yarn and it fits well.  It even stood up to the grumpy-kids-hauled-to-Vigil-Mass test because Daddy had a race this morning, so I'm really pleased.

I went to cut out my Vogue 8379 and realized I didn't buy enough fabric, so I'll place an order for one more yard and wait anxiously for it to come.  Luckily there are enough small pieces that I won't get burned too badly by my cheapskate nature.  In the meantime, I've started goofing with some acrylic yarn from my very small stash to make a pillow cover similar to one of these from the latest issue of Country Living.  Don't ask me why I'm obsessed with it, but I am.