James Family Blog

Meal Planning

2012-02-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

I really dislike coming up with ideas for dinner, and in the past I haven't had much success with meal planning. But a couple of months ago I sat down and made a meal plan for an entire month, and it has been a great success! Each week I go to the store with a list of the meals and ingredients for the week and then each day I just look at the list and decide what I want to make. Several meals have been crossed off, either because the meal wasn't that great, or because we're dead sick of it!

Currently I'm a few meals short because of crossing off some meals. And there are a few more Adam would happily never eat again, but I'm keeping on because they are super easy to make or because the kids love them. I thought I would share my current meals because there are some great ones on there. I try to plan for six meals a week, which leaves one night for leftovers or breakfast for dinner or going out.

Week 1:

-Bean/guac burritos. I add taco meat and cheese. Probably not as healthy, but more filling.

-Calzones

-Chicken bacon alfredo. We like this better without the artichoke hearts.

-Corn potato chowder.

Week 2:

-Pinwheel calzones. This is the kids' favorite meal, hands down.

-Asian lettuce wraps. This one has been around for awhile, so we're a little tired of it, but it's so simple it stays on the list.

-Chicken/bacon pizza. For this I have a tried a few variations, and the one I like best is to use a Pillsbury pizza crust, spread with ranch dressing, and sprinkle on chicken and bacon.

-Tacos.

Week 3:

-Beef stew. Crockpot meal

-Caribbean rubbed pork chops with mango salsa. We just had these this week for the first time and they are delicious!

-Baked mac n cheese. Oh so yummy!

-Chicken broccoli croissant. This is another new meal that we really loved.

Week 4:

-Pinwheel calzones again

-Beefolay- cook a pound of ground beef and mix with spaghettic sauce. Layer chips, lettuce, tomatos, sauce, and cheese.

-Enchilada puffs

-Super BLT. We use those thin bagels for the outside of the sandwich and it's super yummy

-Chicken Curry Salad.

Alternates that we're sick of:

-Thai tacos. These are delicious. I'm just tired of them. So we're on a break.

-Lasagna

-Burgers

-Cheese steaks- I've tried a few recipes and while they taste nice, it's just impossible for us to cut up the meat thin enough for it to resemble a real cheese steak.

So there's my current meal plan. You can see that I'm a couple of meals short on each week right now. I had a few meals that I just removed, so it's a bit sparse. Time for me to browse Pinterest for some new recipes! As you can see, almost every recipe is ready in 30 minutes or less. I just hate having to do hours of preparation. Since I implemented this monthly meal plan I've done much better at getting dinner on the table for my family, so I thought I would share it.

Yummy, healthy smoothie

2012-02-02T13:44:00.002-05:00

So I make smoothies on a regular basis and eat them for lunch. I try to fill them full of fruits and veggies because as much as I love both fruit and vegetables, it's easy for me to not eat enough each day. This is the recipe I usually use, and it's a good one! One note--I don't actually measure anything. I just throw things in until it looks good. But I tried to figure out what the actual measurements were because I wanted to calculate how many calories were in these. So those are the measurements I'm giving!

Berry spinach smoothie

2 cups raw spinach
1 cup orange juice.
Blend
1 banana
5 pieces of fresh broccoli
5 baby carrots
2 Tbsp ground flax seed
Blend
20 frozen strawberries or 10 frozen and 10 fresh if I have them
1 cup mixed frozen berries
Blend

It's really good and I can't taste the vegetables at all. Adam sometimes can if I put too many carrots and not enough strawberries in, so I just try to make sure there's enough fruit to mask the vegetables. If it's not blending very well, which tends to happen if I don't include any fresh fruit like the banana or strawberries, then I have to add some orange juice. This makes about 3.5 servings. And it's the perfect smoothie for me because I can access all the ingredients year-round.

The calorie calculator tells me this is 135 calories per serving. I never really trust those things, so I'm going to estimate it's a bit higher. But still, tons of healthy food all at once! When I make these I try to make sure this is my entire meal, but seeing that there are fewer calories in these than I thought, that makes me feel better that I always have to supplement it with something like pretzels.

Snow pics and update

2012-01-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

We had a snow storm last week and the kids were thrilled to play in the snow. This has only been the second snow of the season.

Here Katrina is playing with a super long branch that looked and acted like a whip. Very fun for kids and adults, ha.

Katrina hasn't taken regular naps for awhile, so it's been quite unusual lately that she has been falling asleep in the afternoons or early evenings. It always makes her cranky if she falls asleep too late, but she's so cute I had to snap a picture the other day.

Adam and I have both been doing a lot lately, but especially Adam. Once more he is studying for a CFA exam (level II this time), so he's started getting up at 6:30 to study before work as well as studying in the evenings too most nights. His Sunday and Tuesday free time is devoted to his calling (stake financial clerk) and his Woodbadge ticket (five Scouting goals that he has to finish before October). My busy-ness mostly just is self-imposed by my desire to work on my Etsy purses. I have some ambitious goals: 200 sales this year, and 2 or more bridal orders a month. So far things are looking like I will meet my goals, so I'm pleased with that.

First preschool check-in and new dragon

2012-01-11T11:49:00.002-05:00

I never checked in with how preschool went last week. I didn't fit in everything I wanted to, but we had fun with what we did. Here the kids are drawing faces.

We identified everyone's eye and hair colors.

Katrina made sure to give everyone ears and bellybuttons (on our chins) as well as faces.

Daniel systematically opened every single marker and scribbled, then went to the next marker.

This week our theme is healthy living, so we've been talking about exercising and identifying fruits and vegetables. I also talked a bit about serving sizes with her when she wanted me to give her the whole package of pepperoni. I am going to make an activity for her to learn how to set the table.

My sister asked me to make her a dragon for her son's first birthday. I made a bunch of small changes to the pattern. The biggest was cutting down on the amount of hand-sewing and doing it all on machine. This ended up with the dragon's head pointing higher that I wanted, but it's still cute.

With his ears pointed so far back and looking upward, he looks rather wistful. Maybe he's begging?

Hope my nephews likes it!

Carseat ponchos

2012-01-07T22:18:00.001-05:00

One of my least favorite parts of winter is getting kids in and out of carseat while they are bundled up in heavy jackets. Car seat experts caution against putting kids in seats with their heavy jackets because in an accident the jacket could compress and the kid could be ejected. Plus, I hate having to adjust the straps all the time! PA weather is up and down (today we didn't even need jackets) so that means a lot of strap adjustment. Anyway, one solution is to use a carseat poncho. It goes over the kid and they can wear it in their seat without obstructing the straps. Or if they are like my kids, they can just take it off and throw it on the floor! Or use it as a blanket. I decided to make some for the kids.

I made up a pattern and it worked out really well, with just a few adjustments along the way. I still need to add a little button on the top of each, but I figure I'll take the kids with me to choose their own.

These are technically reversible, but the inside is much more comfy, so I don't plan on recerding them.

I knew it was a gamble whether the kids would actually like them. But I was still sad to see how much Daniel dislikes his.

In this picture he was sad because he couldn't get to his bread in his hand. So I put his arms through the slots, but that didn't help much.

Katrina liked hers better. She was somewhat bothered by not having any sleeves.

I asked her to smile but she had just woken up and told me no.

She also wanted it reversed.

These probably won't be worth the time and money I put into them, but we'll see. It's been a mild winter.

Preschool Planning Week 1

2012-01-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

As it is now the start of the new year and Katrina really needs some more structured learning, I decided to do some home preschooling. I'm not sure how much structure I'll want. I don't know how much of our day we will devote to it. For now I'm thinking we'll only spend about an hour on preschool activities, and then see how things go from there. Any time I try to do structured activities with the kids Daniel does his best to cause mayhem, so if it doesn't work to include him we may have to do it in the afternoons while he sleeps.

I've planned a basic theme for this week, All About My Family. I have a few activities for each day. At the end of the week I'll share some pictures from our activities and a report on how it went.

Day 1:
1. Color faces of family with worksheet I made
2. Slideshow of Katrina's life
3. Practice writing her name

Day 2:
1. Family tree
2. Family matching game
3. Practice typing her name

Day 3
1. Slideshow of Mommy and Daddy
2. Color a picture of the temple
3. Some other activity, maybe taking picture in Mommy's wedding dress? (Total Pinterest idea)

Day 4:
1. Look at pictures of Grandparents and talk about them
2. Write letters to granparents
3. Family matching game again

I will report the results of the week on Friday!

Future Olympians

2011-12-31T10:37:00.001-05:00

Adam and I have always dreamed of our children being Olympic athletes.

We're thinking luge.

My kids also really love to pose for cameras. They will run to various places and say "cheese!" Katrina has a hard time not jumping for pictures.

Daniel had an interesting place of choice for his photograph.

I haven't shared a purse on here for awhile. This is a custom order for a family member (sans purse strap). I'm proud of how it turned out. I altered a pattern that I last used a year ago. I think I'll probably make more of this new and improved pattern.

And it has a zipper! All my purses from now on will have zippers. They no longer intimidate me.

Hope everyone has a fun New Years weekend!

End of Year Stats

2011-12-27T09:26:00.001-05:00

I always like to do a round-up of stats each year. This year I have had 6966 visits from 4152 unique visitors. The top countries that bring visitors after the United States are Canada, United Kingdom, Hungary, Germany, and Australia.

The biggest search that brings people to my blog is "Amy Butler Blossom Bag," because of this post here. I also get a bunch for hippopotamus pajamas, pioneer dresses, soft-structured baby carriers, and how to make a purse from a leather jacket. Some searches that amuse me are: "manly tshirt quilt", "scouting widow", "applique nerd," "can't swim but have bathing suit," "close up pictures of things that make sound," "fun with elmers glue," "is it fun to stay at the hospital," "parents of psychopath blog james," "pimp pyjama, "pinkle dar," "who thinks Olivia the Pig is self centered," and "how to make chicken catch a tori." :]

Fun stats to look at!

Christmas and last Christmas gift--dollhouse

2011-12-25T20:59:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

You'll notice our tree has no ornaments left on the bottom half because Daniel kept removing them.

I wanted to share Katrina's final gift. First of all, I made these little dolls. I tried to make little girls with petticoats peeking out.

This is the dollhouse I created for Katrina. I decoupaged fabric and scrapbook on the floors and walls to decorate. Some rooms are a little cuter than others, but overall I think it's fun. I especially like the rug in the living room and the carpet in the master bedroom!

I put together some of the furniture from a kit at Michaels. It was really small and flimsy even after I glued it, so I looked around for other furniture last-minute. I ended up buying some wood furniture on Etsy for a great price. It's very cute and much sturdier that the other furniture. I ended up gluing most of it down because I don't want furniture all over the place in their room.

The middle level has Daniel's room on the left, the master bedroom, and Katrina's room.

The upstairs has a bathroom, and two other mysterious rooms that just have random leftover furniture.

And here it is with the dolls.

Katrina actually didn't really get into it, but today was a very full day with lots of new toys, so we'll give it some time. Daniel went over and immediately ripped the toilet and a chair off, so I may need to use stronger glue! And we just may upgrade to a real dollhouse next Christmas if it doesn't hold up well.

This morning was lots of fun. I played a violin/cello duet at church and needed to be there early, so I got us up at 7 and got the kids up rather than letting them sleep in.

The dragons were a hit, especially with Katrina!

She loved her bunny. Daniel loved his cars for his garage and his ball thing that I bought him too.

We went to New Jersey after church and ate our traditional Eggs Benedict and exchanged gifts with them. The kids had lots of fun and we did too. We will have plenty of things to play with tomorrow!

Christmas Gifts- Stuffed Dragons

2011-12-23T20:57:00.004-05:00

These gifts were fairly last minute. I didn't decide that I wanted to make them until just a few days ago. The reason behind them was that Daniel is obsessed with Katrina's tutus and dresses that have tulle. There is one dress in particular that he likes so much that he sleeps with it. So I decided he needs something that has the same silky and tulle textures that maybe he will latch onto instead.

I used this tutorial from Etsy that I found ages ago but have never had the need for. I decided to use silky satin for the tummy, and instead of felt spikes I made them out of tulle.

A couple days ago I shows the picture to Katrina and told her I was making one for Daniel. Of course, immediately, she needed one too, and has bugged me constantly about it every since.

I took the kids with me to the fabric store to buy the fabric for Daniel's. I picked a green minky for the back. Daniel saw it and grinned and said, "turtle!" so I think he will like it. When he saw the tulle he got excited and said, "dress!"

Katrina's uses two pink minky fabrics that I had in my stash, and of course tulle for the spikes too so hers could be like his.

So hopefully these gifts are winners!

Merry Christmas: Our Year in Review

2011-12-23T14:35:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas from the James family! We have had a great year.

Adam has spent the year studying and writing. Oh, and he had a full-time job too! We were super proud of him for passing the level I of the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) in June. He wrote two study manuals for Kaplan Financial, the series 79 and the series 99, which he did with his dad. Now that both manuals are done, he's hard at work studying for Level II. He had the opportunity to go to Woodbadge (Scout Leadership Training) in April, so this next year he will somehow be fitting in Woodbadge goals! Adam did some calling-hopping this year. He was released as Scout Master to concentrate on his studying and writing, after which he spent some time as Elder's Quorum instructor and on the Scout Committee. Later on in the year he was called as Nursery Leader and the two of us spent just a couple months in Senior Nursery before he was called as Stake Assistant Clerk over Finances.

I spent the year sewing, or at least that's what it feels like. You all know that I have my Etsy shop, and most of my energy that didn't go towards the kids went towards sewing purses. I feel like my skills have really improved and my shop has done quite well! At church I was on the Relief Society Activities committee and spent part of the year as Nursery leader over Junior Nursery, and the rest over Senior Nursery with Adam.

Katrina is 3.5 and really quite a good little kid. I really like age 3 with her, and she doesn't throw nearly as many tantrums as she used to. We have a lot of fun. She still talks in a sqeaky little high voice, and is a little chatterbox. Unlike a year ago, I'm no longer worried about her speaking skills though her ennunciation still could use some improvement. Katrina loves crafts, stuffed animals, and play-acting. She no longer naps, so during the afternoons I send her to our room and stick her on the computer with Starfall.com on one monitor and PBSkids.org on the other. She loves to sing, can identify all letters, and is learning to write a few of them. Her drawings are becoming more recognizable. She learned how to write her first real word using all the letters she can do: H-O-T.

I just wrote a whole blog post about Daniel, so I won't repeat it, but Daniel is our cute litte snuggly boy. He loves to climb and jump on us. He is obsessed with letters and has appropriated the foam bath letters as his constant playtoys. Unfortunately he only knows three of them (H, T, and P), but he's convinced they are all W and likes to shove them in our faces and throw them around. He transferred to a big boy bed a few months ago and took to it right away. Last month he started falling asleep by the door every night but most nights now he goes to sleep in the bed. Thankfully he still naps in the afternoon!

So that's what's been up with us this year! We are very excited for a brand new year with new opportunities. Merry Christmas!

Christmas gift--Fabric garages

2011-12-22T17:15:00.002-05:00

You may remember that I made my nephew a cute fabric barn a couple of years ago. It was a fun gift and I've always intended to make one for Katrina, perhaps a dollhouse. For Daniel and my two nephews this year, I bought some wooden cars off of Etsy, and decided to make some fabric garages to go along with it. I used the same tutorial but changed it up a bit. Larger, flat roofs, no handles, and a different way to fasten that I'm hoping will be easier on little fingers.

Each one has a ramp that comes down from the second story.

I was intending on making the garage door open, but I forgot to do it for the first one, forgot again for the second one, and for the third I decided what the heck, I'd skip it for that one too.

The outsides of the garages have barrels of oil, safety cones, and tool boxes.

These were kind of a pain to make, and I did some things that look funny. I think they're the kind of gift that the kids will play with once and then never look at again, except maybe the cars. Oh well; it's three days until Christmas, so there's no going back now! Hopefully the cars will provide lots of entertainment, even if the garages aren't super exciting. You never know what kids will like, so I don't get too invested in what I make in case it's a failure with the kid.

Some recent videos

2011-12-20T19:25:00.002-05:00

I haven't shared any videos in awhile. Here are some from November and December. Shadow puppets:

Spinning games with Daddy. Unfortunately this is the tail end, when Daddy was getting tired:

Daniel dancing to the piano music.

And the kids jumping off the couch tonight into their "swimming pool":

Answers in advance to one of your burning questions: Does Daniel every wear normal clothes? Yes. Today he worse pants and a shirt for most of the day. But he spends as much time in just a diaper as possible, and occasionally in one of Katrina's dresses. He has pretty bad exczema and clothes seem to bother him, so I let him wear what he wants rather than make him be uncomfortable.

Last week I was slammed with purse orders (hooray!) and this week I am frantically finishing Christmas gifts for my kids and nephews. We can't wait for Christmas!

Daniel is 2!

2011-12-11T19:45:00.001-05:00

Now that Daniel has been 2 for a week, I thought I should share some things about him. Daniel is very attached to both me and Adam, but me especially. As a baby he wanted to always be held and not much has changed! Sometimes he goes through stages where he wants to walk by himself, but even then he insists on holding my hand. (Two falls down the concrete steps outside our apartment have made him a bit afraid of those, for good reason!). But most of the time he's happier being held or even carried on my back in the baby carrier. This clinginess is cutest when he's cuddling in our laps in the evening watching a tv show. It's the least cute when I walk into the room and sit down and he starts crying because he wants me to hold him (and be standing). Church can be really difficult, but sometimes, like today, he happily sits on my lap all of Sacrament meeting as long as he can eat grapes and play with his turtle. He loves nursery but hates the parting at the beginning and screams for a few minutes.

Daniel is extremely attached to his turtle pillow pet that he got last year for his first birthday. It's a smaller-sized pillow pet and is perfect for him. He is happiest when he is sucking on his thumb and holding the turtle's tail in the same hand. He loves to bop his face with the turtle's head, wear the turtle on his head as a hat, and kiss the turtle. In fact, to my great dismay, whenever I ask Daniel to kiss me, he gets a mischievous smile on his face, wriggles off my lap, and finds his turtle, which he then kisses. Then he brings the turtle to me to kiss. So Daniel kisses are especially precious to me because they happen so rarely these days!

Daniel has a few things that he loves to an obsession. Balls, balloons, leaves, oranges, grapes, apples. He can't walk by a leaf without wanting to hold it. He feels similarly about flowers, but we just don't see those quite as often, thankfully!

He has a very wide vocabulary. Most things are food, but at least he can tell me exactly what he wants! He also has some strange phrases. He just said, "Oh, dear me, Nina." He likes to say, "oh, man!" "Oh turtle!" "Oh Daddy/Nina/Mommy/Daniel!" He can say some full(ish) sentences, like when he finds something, he says, "Mommy, found it turtle!" I would say he has at least 100 words that he uses on a regular basis. I'm sure you remember how much we have stressed over Katrina's speech. (She speaks quite well now, she just has fairly poor ennunciation.) It's really a relief to be able to communicate with him so well, especially with his cranky temperament. He sometimes gets really serious and stares at me while going off on a little monologue that has recognizable words thrown into a bunch of jabber. He says Please, Thank you, and Sorry all without being prompted. In fact, I am so charmed by how he says, "More please!" that when he says it I pretty much will give him whatever he wants!

Another thing he loves is jumping. He often will jump as his mode of transportation from one room to another. He has this strange phrase, "Uppee up, jump jump jump!" which he randomly will say and then of course jump. He loves to jump on his bed. He jumps off of furniture. He just started randomly jumping into my arms from stairs and furniture and thankfully I've always noticed in time!

He loves the foam letters we have in the bathtub and is convinced that every single one is the letter W. He counts to 13 and then repeats "erteen, erteen, erteen" for awhile. He loves to sing, especially Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. He also loves Old MacDonald, which makes sense because one of his first sounds was Ee-i-e-i-oh!

Daniel and Katrina get along really well. He calls her Nina or Trina. They often share with each other without being told. If I give him two things he goes and gives her one as habit. They also share pretty poorly at other times though! If we are eating and Katrina or someone else isn't there he runs off to find them, saying, "Table. Table. Eat!" They play together a lot. Right now they are playing catch in the hallway. He seems to be left-handed, and he has a really excellent throwing arm.

He has an aversion to clothes. I am trying extra hard these days to get him dressed, but sometimes if he's having a hard time and starts tugging on his clothes, I'll give in and take them off. He's been developing strange rashes lately and when I tried to put some lotion on his dry skin last week he broke out in hives on his back. I will be asking the doctor about it definitely at his next visit.

Well, that's a lot about one kid, but I wanted to have a little verbal snapshot to remember what he is like at this age! He really is delightful, and we love him lots.

Answered prayers

2011-12-04T13:49:00.001-05:00

I've been getting progressively more and more stressed this week as I've tried to juggle a few things related to my Relief Society Activities calling. We were short on pianists for this Christmas activity and I had to take on two of the pieces myself. Unfortunately, even with all of my practicing, once we got together this morning to practice, it all fell apart. I spent Sacrament meeting trying not to stress about it but failing miserably. The kids were their normal active selfs, but even with taking care of a wiggly Daniel I was able to listen to the testimonies. One of the themes today was answered prayers. As I was praying for solutions to my stress I thought of a few options. One was to talk again to a pianist who originally said no, just to see if her schedule had changed. Another option was to ask a sister from another ward. A third option was to use a recording of the piano part available online. I wasn't really happy with any of those options.

A family had their names read into Sacrament meeting today, and I remembered a conversation I had with the RS president a few weeks ago when she said that a new sister would be moving in who could play the piano really well. I had the feeling I should talk to the new sister. So after the meeting I approached her and asked her how she felt about playing. She kind of smile/grimaced and and I knew that her piano skills must have been exaggerated. She said she might be able to do it, but I didn't want to just transfer my stress to someone else. I was disappointed but then she said that her teenage daughter is quite a good pianist, if I minded having a young woman play. Uh, I don't mind! Apparently her daughter voluntarily spends about 4 hour a day playing piano. I promptly arranged for her to meet with us at our next meeting, handed over the music, and have spent the rest of the day so relieved! I also talked to a few more people about important things, so I finally feel on top of things.

There's still a lot to do but it feels manageable now. I also have to finish Katrina's dollhouse and make three little fabric garages for Daniel and his cousins, so I need to get working.

Daniel's quilt

2011-12-03T17:53:00.001-05:00

Well, I finished Daniel's birthday quilt for his second birthday. It turned out better than I thought it would! He doesn't care about it, but that's okay, he's allowed to be a bit of a stinker. :]

The marching turtles all are made of minky or fleece for some added texture.

Usually I handsew the binding on the back but this time I didn't feel like it, so I machine-sewed. Unfortunately, I did it fairly poorly! I will probably take a seam ripper to it and redo it all. Boo! Should have done it right the first time!

The quilting is all stitch-in-the-ditch or 1/8" from each seam. Fairly simple and easy. This was the first quilt that I used spray adhesive instead of safety pins. I will never go back! Spray adhesive is totally the way to go.

And the birthday party. He loved his pizza and fruit, two of his favorite foods.

He had a basketball-themed cake since he loves balls so much, basketballs in particular. We had to remove it from the table during dinner though because he wanted to hold it.

He got some clothes, a wooden duck, a play nativity set, and a set of four balls that will keep him happy for months!

He also got a really fun remote control car that kept all the kids entertained. It only has one button, so it was easy for them to use.

Another great birthday!

Kind of funny

2011-11-29T20:14:00.001-05:00

I am on the committee planning the Relief Society Christmas program in a few weeks. Our theme is "The Women Who Knew Christ" and it features six women (both scriptural and fictional) who may have known Christ. It's a really sweet program. After each number we have a musical number. I am in charge of the music, so I've been trying to put together all these numbers. Pretty stressful! We are super short on pianists and so I've ended up being the pianist for two numbers, one of which is pretty hard. I hope it works out!

The funny thing happened tonight. My committee chair gave me a call to discuss different things about the activity, and then she asked me to be Mary! I had suggested we ask a young woman or young single adult, but apparently when she was talking to the presidency about it, they thought I would be a good Mary. So I get to be Mary! I admit, it's a little intimidating, but not too much because it's only a paragraph. All of the other parts are a page long.

So anyway, I've got a busy week ahead of me with practicing piano, sewing purses, sewing Daniel's birthday quilt (his birthday is on Saturday), and various other things. Adam cleaned the living room last night and the kitchen tonight, and I cleaned our room and the kids room tonight, so our apartment is much less of a pigsty. Woo-hoo! Yay for not being slobs.

Oh, and another thing. We got to spend Saturday with my brother and his girlfriend down in Washington, D.C. We went to the Natural History Museum and the Air & Space Museum. Daniel was pretty cranky for much of the trip, but he and Katrina still had fun. Daniel was chanting my brother's name in the car on the way home, so he definitely liked his uncle! And Katrina love him. This was actually the first time Adam and my brother had met. It was a great trip.

2011-11-20T22:21:00.001-05:00

Daniel's second birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I decided to make him a little quilt. I wanted it to be simple, so I decided on a variation of a nine-patch that I'd seen awhile back. I found some cute turtle print that I wanted to be the main fabric, since he loves his turtle pillow pet. Well, it has some strange greens in it. And while trying to find coordinating fabric I picked out some polka dot fabrics that had blue and brown. I bought a few different browns and blues and greens to add to the mix. I thought the combination would look good together, but I'm really not feeling it:

This is not the completed quilt top, it's just the blocks laying on top of the green fabric, but this will be sort of how it looks when pieced together. It's just kind of weird. In fact, I am afraid that it's kind of ugly.

I also have some brown to be a border, and I took it out and laid the pieces on the brown. I think I like it better? But I'm not sure. I'm sad that it's not really living up to my vision. I don't really have the budget to get different fabric, so this will need to work . . . somehow! One part that I'm excited about will be a line of marching turtles across the bottom. That might salvage it.

On a positive note, I also made some placemats tonight. The ones I originally made were pretty beaten up, so I need some fresh ones. These came together super easy: two layer of home dec fabric and two packages of skinny bias tape.

Whole wheat blender pancakes

2011-11-17T22:20:00.001-05:00

We had an activity yesterday where we made breakfast for dinner and delivered food storage that the sisters had ordered earlier. We made three different kinds of pancakes. I made whole wheat blender pancakes. The recipe is from my parents. It's pretty awesome because you grind the wheat right there in the blender.

1 ½ cup milk

2 T. honeyor sugar

1 ½ tsp salt

2 tsp bakingpowder

1 cupuncooked whole wheat

2 eggs

2 T. oil

Put milk andwheat in blender. Blend on highest speedfor 4 or 5 minutes or until the batter is smooth. Add and blend on low eggs, oil, bakingpowder, honey, and salt. Bake on hotgriddle. (By adding one additional Tbspwheat and increasing oil to 4 Tbsp, you have waffle batter). If batter is ever too thin, just add tbspflour.

Neither Adam nor I are that fond of pancakes. We prefer waffles but don't have a waffle iron. These pancakes were really good though. We had them for dinner tonight. The kids loved them and even ran back to the table to eat the leftover ones plain!

Calm nursery

2011-11-13T16:47:00.001-05:00

Today nursery was a breeze. Last week was the same. I'm not sure why all the kids were so happy and content, but we enjoyed it! First we started out the day with all the cars out. They quickly moved on to blocks, and those lasted almost half an hour! A lesson, coloring, and snack time took most of the rest of the hour, and we skipped singing time in order to end the day with reading time. I wish every week could be this nice!

Dress inspired by pinterest

2011-11-12T13:07:00.003-05:00

I made a dress for myself this week to wear at our family pictures this morning. I bought two lengths of fabric so I can make this dress in two colors. This is the first experimental one. My goal was to get out all the kinks on this dress so that the second one will be perfect. I am fairly happy with how this turned out.

Here is the shirt that I found on Pinterest that inspired this dress.

To come up with the pattern, I used a shirt and another dress of mine and traced them until I had a shape I was comfortable with. It ended up fitting pretty accurately and I just had to adjust one seam. The sleeves took more work, but I finally figured them out. It's very comfortable. The next dress will be made of a slightly stretchier fabric, so I might make it a little more fitted. This one is closely fitted but not tight at all, just how I like it. But I still feel like it makes me look lumpy.

The draping was the hardest part, since I don't have a dress form and just had to put it on myself and then pin it to figure it out. I think that for the next dress, I might skip out on the buttons. I will also try to cut out the front draping part on the bias if I have enough fabric for the next dress.

I like this shape on me. I normally go for A-line dresses and I think this is much more flattering.

This is what we call Blackmail

2011-11-09T23:39:00.002-05:00

Oh, Daniel, Daniel. We let you wear the purple dress, and you couldn't just stop there, could you?
No, you insisted on putting on every single dress and skirt of Katrina's that you could find. And then wore all of them for at least an hour!

And when you got stuck on the floor and flailed around like a turtle stuck on its back, I had to laugh at you a little. Okay, a lot.

I hope you don't have any permanent issues from me sharing these photos. But you see, I can't really help it. I've just got to share what a funny and precious little boy you are. Even when dressed like a little girl!

Catch-up

2011-11-06T18:54:00.000-05:00

I'm still here! I lost my memory stick and so no new pictures. I wanted to share a couple things I made, like a Professor Umbridge cape that I made for my friend for Halloween, and some Halloween treat bags that I whipped up for the kids before Trunk or Treat. But I never took pictures of the treast bags and like I said, I'm missing the memory stick. I do have pictures of the Umbridge cape, but they are so unflattering to me I'm keeping them to myself. If you really want a glimpse, I posted them on my Toriska Bags blog.

Lately life has been a little trying. I'm feeling really fat. I have awful, perpetual back pain. And to be frank, my depression flared up again. Nothing major or debilitating, just enough to make me really unproductive and life just not very enjoyable. These sorts of things go through waves and I seem to be getting better. I have Book Club at my house this week, so a reason to clean! I've been gradually getting it cleaner these last few days, and I sewed a bunch of stuff too, so I'm feeling better because I'm more productive.

Nursery has been a difficult thing lately. Daniel refused to go to his junior nursery class for a few weeks, and he followed me around in senior nursery clinging and whining and crying and making things miserable. Everyone was sick except me last week, so I got to have a week of break from them, and everything went better! Today was rough in Sacrament meeting, as always, but Daniel went to nursery with only a few minutes of tears, and the kids in Senior nursery were so mild and calm that the two hours flew by!

Tonight we are dealing with post Daylight Savings weirdness and having a late dinner (white chicken chile). I'm going to start on a dress for myself after the kids go to bed. We have family pictures on Saturday and I want to have it done by then.

Wedding gift and Daniel's dr appt

2011-10-17T10:51:00.003-04:00

The other night I realized that I had forgotten to get a wedding gift for my friend's wedding reception the next day. I had reminded myself the entire week but still managed to forget! Great. So my choice was either to run out to the store for a gift card or spend a few hours making something. It seems like an easy choice, right? Well, we had just finished a grueling family grocery trip and the idea of going somewhere was awful. So I raided my fabric stash and used up the last of this beautiful damask fabric.
Four placemats. I looked on her registry and they mostly had blacks and neutrals, so I figured this would be the best bet.

And I made some finger potholders to match.

I hope she likes them!

This morning we had a follow-up appt with the ENT to see about getting Daniel tubes. He had an ear infection a few weeks ago so I was all prepared for them to say go for it. Instead, the doctor told me to come back in 6-8 weeks and if he's had 1-2 more ear infections, then we could get tubes for him. So that means I've been to the specialist twice (with a higher copayment), have a third appt scheduled, and have taken him to the normal doctor 6x for ear infections, plus the cost of antibiotics, pain meds, and have to wait for TWO MORE ear infections with the accompanying copayments and antibiotics before he can get tubes. Because he's almost 2 and so they might magically go away, according to her. I think you can see how I feel about this. But I'm trying to be all zen about it and so I'm hoping that she's right and he won't get any more ear infections and then I can cancel the next appointment (and not have to wait up to an hour in the specialist's office because they are never on time) and not get him tubes.

King-sized bedspread: Completed!

2011-10-09T22:50:00.002-04:00

I'm so happy to complete this project. I've been working on it all summer off and on. A king-sized bedspread is no easy task, and simply putting together the backing, batting, and topper took lots of energy. This evening I pinned it all together and then did the quilting. I only stitched in the ditch, so it was relatively easy. (Ha! Easy!)
Yesterday Adam's parents arrived with the new top for my table: a door! It is so much more stable than my 1/2-inch plywood and has smooth edges, yay! The other tabletop was already bent in the middle. This was how I was able to quilt this bedspread. Well, that, and Adam helped me. I really couldn't have done it without him maneuvering the quilt as I sewed.

And here is the photobomb:

I like this view: it's what I see when I lay down.

Next up will be to make some coordinating pillows. It feels really comfy and I'm excited to sleep with it tonight.

Finished jacket

2011-10-04T22:10:00.003-04:00

Well, I finished my new jacket! It was quite the ordeal. The original way it was cut was huge on me. My mother-in-law, who is an experienced seamstress, helped me take it in all over and make it a lot shorter. She didn't think I should take it in as much at the shoulders, but I insisted, and it did turn out a bit snug at the shoudlers. But other than that, I really like it. I just have to wear it with short sleeves because long sleeves make it too bulky. Oh well.
Looking at these pictures, I probably need to move each button up a little bit.

The inside is a fun gray and yellow cotton, which is why I picked yellow buttons.

(Sorry, I obviously need to clean my mirror!) The pattern is McCalls M5525. I think I would like to make it again in the future with a different fabric.

I'm sharing at Sew N Tell at Amy Lou Who.

Birthday tie

2011-09-29T16:09:00.002-04:00

I made my dad a tie for his birthday and now that he's opened it, I can share it. :] I really, really am happy with it. I did it differently than the last tie I made, and it really turned out nicer.
The last tie I made, I used a tutorial from the Purl Bee. This time I used the pattern at Puking Pastilles (ugh, blogger still hates me and won't let me either highlight things or paste in links. What the heck!). The pattern wasn't perfect, but I made it work. I took out the interfacing from an old tie of Adam's and used that as a guideline in ironing. I used instructions from both patterns plus a mixture of what I found worked better to put the tie together. Even with all the ironing and hand-sewing, I found that it came together really quickly.

I also used covered buttons and cufflink blanks to made him some cufflinks from old ties of Adam's as well.

My dad likes it, so it's success! Now if it only weren't so hard to find tie silk, I could make Adam lots of ties!

Urban hoodies

2011-09-21T09:26:00.005-04:00

Fall really took me off guard this year. Pennsylvania seems to switch seasons without transition. We took the kids to the park at Linvilla on Saturday and we were the only ones in short sleeve there. I wasn't cold, so I guess it was fine, but I still felt a little self-conscious to see all the little kids decked out in full fall gear while our kids were in short sleeves and Katrina was in a skirt. So I decided to go ahead and buy the Urban Unisex Hoodie tutorial that I've been eyeing for awhile. This week is coupon commotion at Joann Fabrics, so I was able to buy all the knits for the kids for 40% off. Each hoodie required a yard for the inside and a yard for the outside. I made them reversible by switching how you attach the band, but for everything else I followed the pattern exactly. I used size 3T for Katrina and 2T for Daniel. They both ended up long and a bit big, but there's room to grow and also room to layer.
I would like to excuse the lack of pants on both kids on the fact that we had just gotten up and taken their pajamas off, but it's currently an hour later and both kids are still pantless. Daniel pulls at his clothes and yells, "Offfffff!" and Katrina will just take her pants off, so it's hard to keep them properly clothed around here.

See? "Off! Off!"

Katrina's doesn't have buttons yet, because I let her pick out the buttons for both hoodies and her heart-shaped ones are currently in her room somewhere.

I have no idea what was going on on the tv.

With the hoods on, they're super cute. Sorry for the shot of our dump zone on the ottoman.

I took some pictures in my light box so you can see both sides.

So there you go! The nice thing is that the pattern goes from 6 months to 5t, so I think I'll get lots of use out of it.

I also bought fabric for a jacket for me and backing for our quilt during the Joanns sale, so I'll hopefully be showing more finished projects this week. I'd also like to be blogging more about everyday family, non-sewing stuff. There's just not much going on! Our life is basic these days with nothing too exciting happening. But we're enjoying it. :]

I've added this to Sew and Tell(http://www.amylouwho.com/2011/09/sew-tell-super-soft-and-girly-ruffle.html) at Amy Lou Who.

Beach Day!

2011-09-10T18:01:00.006-04:00

Today was our first beach day in two years! Somehow last year it just never happened. Two years ago was a pretty awful experience because we forgot the stroller. Three years ago was fun but Katrina was 4 months. So this year, we really just wanted it to be fun. And it was!

First of all, I finished Katrina's bathing suit.
I traced her old one and added some extra to the sides and some extra length. I made the straps a bit long and the crotch a bit wide, but overall it turned out great.

And most importantly, she loves it.

As usual, we went to Ocean City, NJ. Adam's parents came today too, so we had lots of hands for the kids, which was especially important in the water.

I don't have any pictures of us playing in the water, since I was out there playing too. The waves were really choppy. Last time we went, Katrina was afraid of the water, but this time she had tons of fun. And Daniel was in heaven! He kept jumping and saying, "Weee!" The waves were strong enough that I kept a permanent grip under his armpits, and several times the waves were enough to knock me partially over, but he loved every minute.

Afterwards everyone got very sandy on the shore.

Katrina was very proud of her sand castle that she made all by herself, moat and all. She gathered seashells and when we got home, she drew a picture of the beach and glued the seashells on it.

After playing, we ate on the boardwalk and enjoyed the breezy afternoon weather. It was really a perfect day. Plus, we ate some delicious pizza, Polish water ice, and brought home salt water taffy and Johnson's caramel corn. Yum!

Sewing area revamp

2011-09-06T11:05:00.003-04:00

Once again I decided to revamp my sewing area. My side of the living room was pretty packed. Also, Adam has asked me to tailor some clothes for him, and my little desk won't be enough to cut things out on. So yesterday I rearranged everything. It's all moved now, but I still need to prepare the wood that I bought last night to be the top of my new sewing table.

First, my littlest cutie.
And now, my new sewing nook. It feels like its own little room now. Actually, that's what Katrina calls it. She asks me permission to come into my sewing room. :]

The cutting table will go between the two shelves in the front. It's nice and spacious, 3' x 6'. I still need to sand and paint the wood I bought, and then draw some lines on it to help me cut.

This is the next best thing to having my own sewing room! I really am appreciative of our extra large living room. And very grateful for a husband who puts up with my compulsive need to dramatically rearrange every room of our apartment every few months!

Cute moments

2011-09-06T09:24:00.002-04:00

Daniel is getting better and counting and is apparently starting to recognize letters too (when I say recognize, I mean, he's acknowledging their existence, not that he knows what they look like). For the longest time, when we would try to get him to count with us, the exchange went like this:
Me: "1"
Daniel: "2"
Me: "3"
Daniel: "2"
Me: "4"
Daniel: "2"
You get the picture. Well, now he can say various numbers between 1 and 10 and tries to count along when he hears someone counting. He likes to say, "3, 2, 1, blastoff!" Today, he came to the back of my laptop and pointed at the back, saying, "P, I, P, I, 2, I, I, I." I had no idea what he was pointing at, but then I saw that it says, "INSPIRON" on the back. I don't know if it was coincidence or not that he said so many of the letters that are actually there, but it was definitely cute.

Katrina followed him and pointed out all the letters that she knew, and when she got to the end she said, "I spelled!" It was pretty cute too.

Aha!

2011-09-02T09:48:00.001-04:00

I finally remembered the really funny thing about Katrina that I wanted to share.

A few weeks ago we were driving somewhere and went by a cemetery. Katrina got excited and pointed out the window, saying, "Mine checkers game!" I was confused, until I realized she was talking about the gravestones.

"Your checkers game? You mean, your chess game?"

"Yes, mine chess game."

"Oh sweetie, that's a cemetery, it's not, it's not . . . Okay, you're right, it does look like your chess game."

Well, we still have power

2011-08-28T07:34:00.002-04:00

...though we did lose it several times last night. It always came back on in a few minutes though. The wind hasn't been that hard, and mostly it's just been a continuous rain. Last night I took these photos.
That's the swamp in front of my neighbor's patio. They always get it the worst.

And this is the puddle on our side. I was genuinely concerned about the water piling up and spilling over into our patio.

This is the water before I went to bed.

This is over on the other corner of our apartment, and you can see the water all running out into the street. So the water never got high enough around our apartment to be a danger.

And this is this morning. The rain is still going, but it's not very strong. Still not very high winds. And we still have power! We're supposed to get rain all day, and winds too, but I'm not expecting the crazy gusts that I was before. But we have lots of flashlights and water if we need. We even filled both bathtubs up!

Last night there was a tornado warning, but the tornado was northeast of Philadelphia, so I wasn't worried. I kept waking up last night and went out periodically to check on things. I know we lost power once because it rebooted the computer right next to me.

Flooding should be the worst problem in our area, but I don't think will directly affect us. However, all the water in the pictures went somewhere, and I know the ditch where it went. The people with apartments closer to it might have problems. We don't have church today, so I bet we'll go out and do some exploring. :]

Funny Katrina-isms

2011-08-26T21:13:00.003-04:00

I let Katrina play with her dress-up clothes, and when I came back, she had redecorated her rocking horse.
Katrina is super tired in the morning and when she wakes up from naps (on the occasion that she actually takes naps!)

Daniel, on the other hand, is bright and happy (or screaming in impatience because he wants food) after he wakes up.

Last week we moved Daniel into a big boy bed. He loves it! It has excellent jumpability, and both kids things it's awesome. A few nights ago though, we sent Katrina to bed and forgot she had peed in it during her nap earlier. Gross, I know, but she doesn't normally pee during naps and we got distracted by something. Anyway, she decided it wasn't very comfortable, and joined Daniel in his bed. Later on the night, we heard Daniel crying. We went in and found him on the floor, while she slept peacefully in his bed! We moved him to hers, and everyone was happy.

So Katrina has been saying some funny things lately, and I wanted to record some of them.

Today we were on the way to New Jersey, and she was eating a pretzel. She ate everything except the triangle at the bottom, and then asked me if she could pour me some cream. After I put out my hand and she "poured," she said, "don't spill your tea!" I have no idea where she got that!

Later on, we turned the radio to classical music because she said that "music makes me sleep." After she heard it, she smiled and said it was "ballet music." Then she changed it to "princess music."

Katrina and Daniel have a game where they play with my measuring tape or a ribbon or bias tape, and Katrina runs around with the front while Daniel holds the back. She says to him, "Pome on, little, little doggy! Pome on!"

There was something else really funny, but I've forgotten it. If I remember, I'll come back and edit.

Hurricane coming!

2011-08-25T14:09:00.002-04:00

Not only have we lived through an earthquake this week, which was strong enough to rattle our apartment pretty good and definitely rattle my nerves, but we also happen to be in the path of the oncoming Hurricane Irene! Now, we don't seem to be in the direct path, but all the little maps and scenarios online point out the heavy rains and probability of high winds and possibly power outages.

I had a goal this year to do something for emergency preparedness each month. In January we created a pretty awesome car kit. In February our extra funds dried up. Money had been oh so up and down and exciting this whole year, so emergency prep has gone out of my mind. We have plenty of flour and rice! And we have a nice little supply of canned fruits and veggies. But our preparation ends there.

So tonight we'll be heading to the store to stock up on flashlights, a lantern, and possibly a camping stove. My other major concern is water. I also plan to stock up some more on snack-like things for the kids.

Funny story: I was explaining to Katrina that we are buying flashlights tonight, and I told her what a power outage is. She ran into the other room and told me the power was out, and got her flashlight (she insists on going to bed with a flashlight). I explained that if a light was on in one room, then the power was still on. On cue, the lights flickered, and then went dead. I just had to laugh, and said, "Now that's a power outage!" Thankfully the lights came back on within ten seconds or so, and Katrina immediately wanted to call Adam and make sure he hadn't gotten scared at work. :]

Ruffle"Mullet" Dress

2011-08-15T09:30:00.004-04:00

I was moping around last night after the kids went to bed because I didn't feel like doing anything, but didn't want to just read like I had the rest of the evenings this week. I hadn't sewn since Tuesday when I finished my bedspread, and normally I sew every day. On Sundays I don't sew for my Etsy shop, but I do like to sew things for the kids or for the home. So last night, on a whim, I decided to make a new dress for Katrina out of some old t-shirts. I used this tutorial.
The main part of the dress is a navy blue shirt. I picked off some lace from another shirt and used that around the waistband. I used that same shirt for the neckline. This dress is a little big around because I used a size 4T dress of hers as a pattern, and she's really a 3T, so I might add on some straps so it can tighten.

Very simple, very easy. This is the "business in the front" part. :]

And that's the "party in the back!" Rows and rows of ruffles. I used three different shirt for this. Actually, most of the dress is from shirts from my brother that I used to make his t-shirt quilt. He wanted me to have fun with the scraps, and I sure did!

Katrina thinks it's pretty awesome. She's recently had a growth spurt, and many of her dresses are too short, perma-stained, or shrunk in the wash right after I bought them, grrr.

I think this one was definitely a success. :] I kind of want to make myself a skirt in the same style!

Bedspread in progress

2011-08-09T16:56:00.003-04:00

I finished the top of our new bedspread. I tried to take some pictures, but it was a bit hard to get good ones.
I still need to buy fabric for the back and also batting. I bought this fabric online, and if I did it again I would probably buy fabric in person so I could get shades that I liked a little better. I also might switch the gray and white so that the main colors were white and yellow with gray accents. However, these are the colors I went with, and grey will probably be better than white with two little kids around.

I'll be making coordinating pillowcases eventually too.

So what do you think?

Chilling together

2011-08-09T10:51:00.002-04:00

My kids are getting to the point where they are starting to be buddies. Sure, they annoy each other as much as anything else, but they also like to interact and have fun together. Over the last few weeks I've snapped some cute pictures of the two of them.

Over the weekend Daniel became really proficient at climbing in and out of our dining room chairs. We decided to try out normal chairs for mealtimes, and he really loves it. Family meals are so fun with everyone in a chair, and the room seems so much more spacious with the high chair folded up in the corner now. I love my kids getting more independent!

On Sunday Adam needed to deliver a huge ice chest to someone, so he had to take the carseats out of the car. We still have them in the house because the covers needed to be washed, and so yesterday Katrina spent as much time in the chair as she could. I pulled Daniel's chair over and they chilled out in front of the tv for awhil.e

My kids are both thumb-suckers. Katrina only sucks hers through her blanket, and Daniel loves to hold the tail of his turtle while sucking. It's pretty cute!

So here's a funny story: Last night Katrina watched Dora before bed, and they were singing some little ditty that sounded a bit like "Pop, goes the weasel." Katrina kept singing it as she was getting ready to bed, with various syllables, but her favorite was, "Doomba, doomba, doomba!" Adam asked her to say the prayer. For prayers, she repeats after us still. Well, this time she added something in to each phrase. It came out something like this: "Doomba, doomba, doomba! Dear Heavenly Father doomba. Thank you for this day doomba. Help us to sleep well doomba . . . . Amen, doomba, doomba, doomba!" I was trying so hard not to laugh!

Super short new hair

2011-07-31T15:58:00.003-04:00

Last night we did haircuts. Daniel's hair was pretty long and unmanageable, and cutting his hair requires that I sit on the floor in the bathroom with him on my lap while Adam reads him books and entertains him as best as possible. It ended up pretty choppy in the back, so next time we might try clippers. I think that will freak Daniel out though, so for now we're using just scissors.
Daniel is cute with his new 'do!

Katrina always insists on getting her hair cut too when Daniel does. Usually I just trim off a lock or so, but I decided last night to go short, as in a little bob. As haircuts typically do, it ended up shorter than I planned once it was all trimmed. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but Katrina is thrilled. With her hair so straight and thin, it needed something to spruce it up, so after the haircut we went on a mommy/daughter trip to the store for hairclips and headbands, since our supply is fairly sparse. Katrina happily wore several items to bed and also to church.

(Caught by the flash)

She told me on the way home last night, "Daddy is going to love this!" And again in the car this morning, "My friends are going to love this." We kept telling her that her hair is short like Sophia (another girl at church). First thing in nursery Katrina went up to Sophia and said, "You like my hair?" Sophia kept on playing and doing her thing and Katrina said, "You like my dress?" It's really funny to see her interact.

I like experimenting with new things like this but I'll be relieved in a month or so when it's a little longer.

CFA Level 1

2011-07-26T10:18:00.001-04:00

The obsession of my life before June was taking the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Level 1 (of 3) Exam. Well, I finally got the results today, and I passed! I can't tell you what a relief it is to have Level 1 behind me. This year, worldwide, only 39% of Level 1 Candidates passed.

Is this a bragging post? Yes. Am I ashamed of that? No.

Below is the breakdown of my results.

Multiple Choice
Q#	Topic	Max Pts	<=50%	51%-70%	>70%
-	Alternative Investments	8	-	-	*
-	Corporate Finance	20	-	*	-
-	Derivatives	12	-	-	*
-	Economics	24	*	-	-
-	Equity Investments	24	-	-	*
-	Ethical & Professional Standards	36	-	-	*
-	Financial Reporting & Analysis	48	-	-	*
-	Fixed Income Investments	28	-	*	-
-	Portfolio Management	12	-	-	*
-	Quantitative Methods	28	-	-	*

Baby shower gifts

2011-07-23T19:38:00.003-04:00

I have two friends having baby showers next week. At first I thought about buying some cute wooden rattles I found on Etsy, but then my frugality and creativity took over and decided to make the gifts. :] I decided to make more small color books. Unfortunately I couldn't find wooden rings at the store, so I bought some acrylic purse rings.
I decided to make some little blanket lovies attached to rings as well. The boy one is a faux chenille style blanket. There are lots of tutorials for this online. It's time intensive, so I've never wanted to make a large one, but for a little lovey like this it's great.

As it's washed, it will get more and more soft and chenille-like. This one has only been washed once.

Just two kinds of minky for the girl one. Other than the purse rings, I had the fabric and supplies for these gifts in my fabric stash already. Makes me happy I've built up that much of a stash!

And some color books. I decided to go a little a little simpler than I have in the past by using just squares. Unlike the past, I had absolutely no problem coming up with enough fabric for each page. My stash is pretty good now for each color, especially because I save all scraps of fabric larger than a couple of inches.

They are almost exactly the same, just a few variations and the boy one has brown and black while the girl one has white and pink.

So there you go! I actually put these together super quickly. Last night and this morning I was working super hard on a bridal order that's going to Canada, because I wanted to get them in the mail today. Finally I had to give up when I realized I had to undo several things because of using the wrong color thread, and so I gave up and will finish them tonight. They're pretty cute.

Bathing suit post

2011-07-21T10:42:00.005-04:00

Earlier this summer, we were invited to a pool party. I groaned, not because I can't swim, but because I have the same bathing suit I've had since I was 16. Yes, I can technically still wear it, but it's not comfortable because of the weight I've gained since then and the shape changes my body has gone through with two kids. So I started researching to see if I could make myself a swimsuit, since I hate bathing suit shopping pretty much more than anything else!

My research was saddening. There aren't very many companies who make swimsuit patterns. And I didn't have faith that the swimsuits from those patterns would be modest or flattering on my larger body. Then I found this website. It's a website by a swimsuit designer in Australia, catered to other fashion designers who want to learn more about designing swimsuits and working with stretchy fabric. It's not technically for the home sewer with few clothing skills (ahem, like me), but if nothing else in life I've definitely got supreme overconfidence in my ability to figure things out and make it work.

(Apparently I can no longer insert more than one link per post without blogger flipping out, so I can't link the the specific pages, grrr.)

I started with the One Piece Block that he recommends you make for your body. On my first attempt I drafted everything by hand. That took forever. That bathing suit also had other issues because I messed up with some basic arithmetic, and forget to use stitches suitable for stretchy fabric. So this second time I downloaded a free program on the computer called Inkscape and drafted the pattern on the computer. This took probably just as long, but now I have a permanent copy and can manipulate it easier.

I couldn't get it to print out on my home printer, but Fedex came to the rescue!

With my one piece block created, I then had to decide what I wanted. I decided I wanted ruching to hide my tummy. I also thought that a halter would be nice, but I wanted to give my bust more support, so I decided to have an empire waist. I ended up combining the Halter Pattern and the Empire Waist One Piece pattern, and I took tips from the Tweaking for Larger Sizes page. Oh, and I decided to try to gather the front of the bust, though that part didn't quite end up the way I envisioned, but oh well.

I also had to deal with the bra area. I bought some of those bra cups at Joanns, but in the future I think I would rather buy a bra that I know fits and take it apart to use in the swimsuit.

I bought swimsuit fabric at Fabric.com and I bought lining fabric at Joanns. I also bought a swimsuit hook for fastening, and I bought swimsuit elastic. In the future I will just use normal knit elastic, because the swim elastic was wider than I liked. One thing that I had to figure out on my own was how to assemble and finish the swimsuit, since that website only has patterns. Basically I looked at my old swimsuit and winged it. :] It's not perfect but hopefully nobody is looking close enough to see the trouble spots!

I took some self portraits before I had finished the edges, and then after I finished I had Adam take some pictures, but he had the camera pointing upward at me and so my face looks a lot fatter than it is. But I'm posting them anyway because I'm too impatient! Please know that it is a huge thing for me to be posting pictures of myself in a bathing suit on the internet, especially because I am at the heaviest I've ever been except while pregnant!

Dirty mirror, oops.

So there you go! A very fun project. Now I will be making one for Katrina too, but hers will be easy in comparison. No curves!

I am including this post at Sew & Tell at AmyLouWho--for some reason blogger won't let me link to i!

Whoops, time flies

2011-07-17T19:10:00.002-04:00

I just realized I've completely let this blog go! I've been pretty bad lately at taking pictures and I like to have pictures for each blog entry, but this one will have to go without.

We're just having a regular Sunday, lots of naps and denied requests for tv that finally relent into Disney movies so we can have a rest from the tv requests! Daniel has a fever today. A few Sundays ago Katrina woke up from her nap with the same sort of thing, a fever and lethargy, and was fine within 24 hours. I'm assuming this is the same sort of thing for Daniel.

Church today was awesome, mostly because we didn't have to leave Sacrament meeting with Daniel even once, and he wasn't as clingy during nursery. The other kids were a bit whiny, but things can't help but be crazy with 8 toddlers and a one year old. Adam is enjoying being able to go to Sunday School and Elder's Quorum (he's not Scoutmaster anymore because he couldn't keep it up with CFA, book, and a full-time job), and he just was called last week to be an Elder's Quorum instructor on fourth Sundays each month.

Adam and I have been trying to lose weight. I've been pretty successful with improving my diet and eating lots of fruits and veggies. If I can competely lose the habit of eating after the kids' bedtime that will help. My goal is to lose one pound a week and over two weeks I've lost two pounds, so I guess it's working? I was doing better a few weeks ago with waking up before the kids and exercising, but then Daniel started waking earlier, and then I started downloading lots of free and 99 cent books onto my Kindle, and I've been staying up way late finishing books! It's bad, I know, but I seem to have lost all self-control when it comes to finishing books. Have I mentioned before that I have a Kindle? My father-in-law won it in a raffle at a work conference a month or so ago, and since he has an ipad and his wife and daughter have Kindles already, I was the lucky recipient! I've really been enjoying it.

The kids are enjoying the summer time and going outside more. My goal is to get them outside and moving everyday, but sometimes it's hard to do that when it's really hot. Luckily our neighborhood park is in the shade, and if I get them there before noon the heat isn't too bad. Our weather is usually in the 80s, maybe higher in the afternoons but that's usually when we retreat inside. Adam isn't cycling at all because he's working hard on his book each morning and evening, but once he's done in a month he'll be happy to get back in the saddle.

We're kind of in this weird perpetually worn out place right now, because of Adam's book, but once it's over we'll definitely get to breathe again. Plus it will be our fifth wedding anniversary next month, and Adam hasn't taken a vacation from work in awhile, so it would be really nice to get away.

So that's what's up with us. We live a very non-exciting life these days. Especially in this next month, Adam will be really working hard and probably all day on Saturdays. Once that's over, we'll try to go on some day trips to the beach and other fun places.

Oh, and I'm working on Bathing Suit 2.0. I have it all cut out and will work on it this evening. I also got fabric for another suit for Katrina, so I'll be making her one too. I will definitely show pictures, but whether there are models in them or not is up in the air. :] I really hope mine turns out because I have a Relief Society swim party on Wednesday and don't want to wear my swimsuit that I've had since I was sixteen!

Fourth of July

2011-07-05T15:46:00.000-04:00

We had an interesting Fourth of July. Adam and I were determined that we would give the kids a fun and memorable day, since we've traditionally been lame at celebrating holidays with the kids. We first went to the town parade, which we've never attended. The super fun thing about this parade was that anyone who wants to could be in the parade, as long as you showed up early and registered. We decided that next year we will definitely do that so the kids can be in the parade. This year we just watched. There were tons of fire engines and some fun bands, and a bunch of classic cars. Katrina got to meet a policeman and give him a high five. Daniel sat in the backpack carrier for the most part and just people-watched.

Then we headed to Adam's parents so we could see his sister one more time before she flew home. However, Daniel decided to turn into a little banshee, and we only lasted a couple hours before we just had to take them both home. Something is really off about him. He's been excessively cranky this whole weekend. Teething, maybe? I don't think it's another ear infection, because those usually disrupt his sleep pattern at night. We went grocery shopping last night and bought the apples and oranges he's been begging for all weekend, so hopefully his mood will improve with easy access to fruit.

Our plan was to see the fireworks last night but Daniel, even with a late-in-the-day nap, was driving us all batty, so we stuck him in bed and I stayed home while Adam took Katrina. I was pretty sure she would freak out and be too scared to watch, but she absolutely loved them. I think it was a great Daddy/Daughter date and hope that next year the whole family can go!

This week I am just sewing lots and keeping up with the household stuff. Plus trying to not scratch or irritate my many mosquito bites from yesterday. I need to go now and start dinner while the kids are still sleeping. Also need to clean the kitchen first. No time to rest!

Blueberry Picking

2011-07-02T16:41:00.000-04:00

A couple of summers ago we discovered the community gem that is Linvilla Orchards and Farm just 20 minutes or so away from us. They have fruit picking all summer long, and last year we decided to pick blueberries. This year we did blueberries too, but the strawberries people were picking looked so yummy we'll have to definitely go back.

Daniel started out just grazing off of the ground.

Which made him filthy!

Katrina did an excellent job picking and filled almost an entire pound box. A few green ones sneaked in, but mostly she picked the purples.

Adam and I picked the higher parts.

Daniel did a really good job picking the green blueberries, and occasionally eating sticks when his dad pointed the camera at him.

We finished off the morning with a trip to see the farm animals, which include deer, strangely enough! Then we got some lollipops and muffin mix to make blueberry muffins. We also have plans for blueberry cheesecake ice cream, yum!

I took Daniel around in the back carrier, which is always so much easier but pretty hot, and definitely rough going uphill!

We just love going to Linvilla, and this year we didn't even spend any time in their huge playground. We'll be back soon, we hope!

New skirt

2011-06-25T23:55:00.000-04:00

I hate posting pictures of myself but I did spend the evening working on this skirt, and even though I'm not positive I like it, I'm going to go with it and wear it tomorrow.

I found one online that I liked a lot but thought to myself, I could make that! I was buying fabric on Fabric.com this week and since I was trying to get my order up high enough to get free shipping I decided to add a few yards of a clearance yellow fabric. This was super easy. I just folded the fabric in half, and then sewed 8 rows on the top next to the fold using elastic thread int he bobbin to make it look shirred. I could have done more rows of shirring, but I decided to stop there because the skirt was going to be shorter than I planned because the fabric was not as wide as I thought when I ordered.

I then used some white curtain remnants to make the bow and added it to the seams. Then I made little tucks all around.

I feel pretty eh about it, but it's probably my body and weight issues rather than the skirt itself.

YW Camp flag

2011-06-20T22:29:00.001-04:00

I was asked to make the banner for the Young Women's Girls' Camp next week. Their theme this year is Princess Academy and I was given a graphic of what their t-shirt will look like, which is just a crown and some words, and was given leeway to make whatever I wanted. First I was just going to applique a crown in the middle and also applique the words, but then I decided to add a castle and a dragon too, and I decided to paint the words instead of appliqueing them.

You can click on the picture to see it in better detail.

I won't pretend it wasn't a lot of work, because it was! Creating the dragon applique (I traced one from the computer and then had to draw it larger) and tracing and cutting out all of the letters with an exact knife were the most difficult and tedious parts. I am really happy with how it turned out. I still need to iron the letters to set them and add grommets to the top so that they can hang it up easier, but that's all.

Fun with hampers and 18 month stats

2011-06-19T18:12:00.006-04:00

Last week while we were watching a family movie (Finding Nemo), the kids had some fun.

Both kids were thrilled with this game.
I love this picture of Katrina with her big, big eyes.
And this is what I have to deal with every day, off of every possible surface.
This is Daniel, ever day, maybe even every hour. He grabs his turtle, sometimes his orange blankie too, and he cuddles on the nearest surface with his thumb in his mouth, and sometimes the turtle's tail in his mouth too.

Both kids like dancing. We went to a birthday party this week and Daniel had so much fun dancing with Katrina that he kept going after her and grabbing his hands so they could dance to the music together.
Daniel had his 18 month checkup this week, and I can tell he remembers and likes our doctor, because he didn't scream and wiggle nearly as much when she checked all his orifices. He says so many words and is so active and healthy that she had absolutely no worries. He measures:

23.5 pounds (18th percentile)

33.5 inches (80th percentile)

18.5 inch head (26th percentile).

So remember how at his last appointment he had "shrunk" from his previous visit and we concluded his last measurement had been faulty? Well with this appointment, where I watched her measure and she got it just right, he really is a tall and skinny boy. Woo-hoo for some height in the family! We celebrate while we can, because we know that by age 3 he will assume his genetic shortness and join Adam and Katrina and I as Short People.

Words Daniel uses regularly (you will notice a food theme): Mommy, Daddy, water, banana ("manna"), apple, orange, grapes ("mape"), cheese, hot dog, peanut butter ("beebee butter"), doggy, ducky, turtle, blankie, clean up, hi, hello, bye bye, shoe, doctor, baby, happy, help me, more, hungry, hand, arm, Nana, Poppop, Nina, amen, thank you, me, work (all day he says to me, "Daddy!! work. work."), empty, all done, poop, pee, cracker, weee, yay. He is really good at mimicking. Today we got him to gibber fairly well "My name is Daniel. I like to dance!" and also "Happy Father's Day!" He likes to sing Ee-i-e-i-o and Twinkle Twinkle and is starting to use the actual vowel sounds. At this moment he is singing "Ee-i-e-i-o! Turtle. Turtle. Ee-i-e-i-o!"

He is doing much better in nursery and even hands back the props after we sing. He still cries a lot, is demanding, sits on my lap as much as possible, and is generally high-maintenance, but it's not bad when the other kids are in a good mood. If other kids are cranky, then it's pretty overwhelming dealing with him and them.

We're off on a family walk, but I wanted to share these pictures. I'm pretty lame about my blog lately. We keep the computer in our room so Adam can shut himself away writing each night, so I don't have it as accessible during the day and not at all at night. But I will try to do better!

Peg Dolls

2011-06-18T13:52:00.000-04:00

Katrina got invited to her very first birthday party that was a non-family party this week. I had no idea what to get this little 3 year old, even though I have one of my own, so I decided to fall back on a classic, the wooden spool dolls. Unfortunately, when I went to get the wooden spools and balls at the store, they didn't have the same size of balls anymore, so the dolls would have looked funny with too-small of heads. Then I came across this post online, and decided to make little peg dolls. The fun thing about them is that Katrina could help, so she did all the first coats, and then I had fun painting over what she did. :]

Sorry for the lame pictures, I didn't get any daytime pics.

I think her friend liked them. There are lots of little pieces, which is kind of annoying, but both Daniel and Katrina were obsessed with them, so I think the birthday girls will probably enjoy them too.

I had no yellow, which made doing blond hair difficult, and I couldn't have a full rainbow, oh well.

Purse for my mom-in-law

2011-06-12T20:55:00.000-04:00

I'm really happy with how this purse for my mom-in-law turned out.

I have some great pictures of the kids that I'll be posting later!

Bridal order

2011-06-03T23:00:00.000-04:00

I just finished an order of 8 purses for a bride. She picked a few styles she liked, told me which ones to make for who, and basically let me do what I wanted with that. She wanted black, dark silver, and light silver. Sorry the pictures are so bad. Tomorrow when the lighting is better I'll be taking care of the kids and packaging these up to be sent off, so I wanted to get pictures in tonight.

First off, I made three woven purses, the two outside ones are for bridesmaids and the middle one is for one of the moms.

Then I made four flap purses. One is gathered black and silver and the other two are asymmetrical black and silver. I used a fun black brocade for these ones, and all the purses are lined in this brocade. One nice thing about these purses is that I didn't have to do pockets or credit card slots on the insides because the bride had a small budget and a time crunch, so I decided to do her a favor and made these for much cheaper than normal. They were a lot of work though still!

This one is for one of the moms, and it's my favorite. She wanted a black or white pintucked purse like the one in my shop, but I thought that was a little too plain, so I bought some metallic silver thread to make the pintucks. Too bad I was in a hurry and grabbed it without looking at the price, because the thread was $10 and I had to pay full-price! At least I have around 500 yards of silver thread, right?

And this one was fun. I have one like this in my shop. Actually it's my most expensive clutch, so my eyes raised a little when she wanted this one, but it all worked out. She loved the buckle on the original, but that one was one of a kind, so I looked all over to find another one that was unique. I found a great supplier though, so that's great for the future.

She wanted a pop of color. I hope this is bright enough for her.

Horse show

2011-06-03T13:45:00.000-04:00

We have an easy way of keeping track of how long we have lived here. On our very first day in Pennsylvania, Adam's boss gave him tickets to the nearby Devon Horse Show, a world-renowned horse show that is walking distance from our apartment. With a six-week old and after five days of travel, we didn't go that first year, but have gone three times since then. Today was by far the best trip. For one thing, we went in the morning instead of the afternoon heat. Also, we went on a Friday instead of a weekend--huge difference!

Of course most of the fun is walking around and looking at all the shops and booths, eating the food, and playing the games. Most years we've skipped all of that stuff, but this year Katrina wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, so Adam went up with her. She was absolutely thrilled. We also had enough money for her to play one game, so she got to play a game with a guaranteed prize, and she won a little stuffed animal duck. The man in charge was very nice and let her pick more than one duck (higher chances of winning) and then he gave Daniel his own too. As we walked over to our box (his boss owns a skybox, which as you can see from the picture is excellent seating), Daniel sat in Adam's arms saying over and over, "ducky! Ducky!" The kids loved the box and we really enjoyed the breezy, sunny day.

Tomorrow, Adam will be taking the CFA exam. This is a very tough licensing exam that he has been studying for since August or so. It is part 1 of 3, and there is about a 40% pass rate for level 1. This past week he has been taking tons of practice exams and his scores have been consistently good, so I have lots of confidence in him (and he has more confidence than he did a week ago). Unfortunately we won't find out if he passed or failed for about two months, and these next two months will be equally or more busy for him as he writes his exam prep book for the Series 79 Investment Banking exam.

I had some exciting stuff happen this week. I had an independent stylist in Florida contact me about consignment in their boutique, and also about the possibility of using some of my purses in their photoshoot next week for a fashion magazine. So I sent off five items today, and I'm crossing my fingers that something of mine will get used in the photoshoot and that my purses will sell well at their boutique. I've never done consignment before, so this should be interesting. I also have a bridal order of 8 purses that I've been working on, so I will be sending those off tomorrow.

Yay organization

2011-05-26T12:57:00.000-04:00

I saw an idea of organizing fabric into mini-bolts and decided to try it out. I got a pack of 100 comic book boards at the mall and started wrapping last night.

Unfortunately I ran out of boards! The bottom three cubbies still need wrapping.

This is my favorite cubby. It's my purse fabric.

All the nice and neat cubbies.

And the bottom ones, which show the huge difference aesthetically and organizationally.

Sunday pictures

2011-05-22T21:00:00.000-04:00

We had a nice Sunday today. Sacrament meeting went well, nursery was pretty good (Adam stayed with me and Daniel most of the time too which was nice), both kids napped, I got to read a book that I ended up really enjoying. We also had some family time on the patio because it was so beautiful outside, and both kids ran around a bit.

I caught Katrina with a funny expression there, but she was trying to smile or say cheese I think. These two plants we bought from the Boy Scouts. One is a strawberry plant, and I think the other one is flowers. Katrina loves to stare and them and "watch them grow," and so I had to snap some pictures.

Daniel was darling in his little seersucker outfit and loved doing laps around the big bush.

Caught the kids in a scuffle over the dog stuffed animal.

So neither kid really has much in the way of summer pajamas. Daniel just wears normal clothes, and Katrina usually wears a tank top with shorts. I have a stack of old clothes I keep in order to repurpose them, and so I decided to make them some dedicated jammies from some of my old shirts. This blue one was a polo but I cut off the collar to line the sleeve holes.

The only problem is that they are sewn closed at the bottom because I've run out of snaps, and so this is definitely a nighttime-only outfit because you can't access his diaper. Also, it's pretty funky looking, but works just fine for pajamas, so I don't care.

For Katrina I made a nightgown. Now hers has a really deep V-neck, so I am planning on sewing in a triangle of fabric to make it a bit more modest and to keep it from falling off of her, but I didn't want to try to take it off of her after putting it on, so I'll sew that on later.

She really liked the sides of the shirt that I cut off, which included the sleeves, so she stuck her head in the armhole and made herself a chic scarf.

New dresses for me!

2011-05-16T00:22:00.000-04:00

I made myself two dresses this weekend from stretchy knits. I will start with the second dress, because it ended up pretty cute. Yes, the fabric is bright pink!
I pretty much hate how my body looks, but I like the dress.

And here is the second dress, which I only show because what's the use of a good craft fail if nobody gets to appreciate it? The problem with this one was that I followed the instructions for making the pattern fit and added several inches to all the seams, and then tried it on and realized how huge it was, so I had to take in all the seams. The bodice ended up crooked and too low, and so I added some eyelet fabric to try to have a higher neckline. The eyelet keeps flopping open, and I don't plan on fixing it, since frankly, this dress looks horrible on me! I have a hard time knowing which styles will look good on me, but this one is definitely not one.

Anyway, bedtime, tomorrow is going to be a long day, so I need to get sleep.

Phew, Sunday

2011-05-01T13:22:00.002-04:00

Since the camera was still sitting on the washing machine, I snapped some pictures while getting ready this morning. First, my hair immediately after being dried. This is what I not-so-affectionately call my mushroom hair.
Then after I straightened it. I really like this look. I just don't like having to style my hair everyday. At least I know I can like it if I just am willing to put some effort in.

Church today was pretty good. The kids are much easier to deal with these days, which makes it actually possible to make it through church without Adam. Daniel actually sat on the bench from the beginning until Sacrament without getting wiggly! I brought his pillow pet turtle, which is probably why. After that things got trickier, but stickers entertained them pretty well. Daniel has become less shy, and he thinks one of the most fun games ever is running away from Mommy. I had to balance keeping an eye on him with ignoring him whenever he started to wander, because if I wasn't watching, he would only go a short distance away and then come back. But if he saw me looking at him or coming to get him, he's giggle, run, and then cry when I took him back. We had to spend the last ten minutes in the foyer because he was pawing at my diaper bag for snacks and crying. I purposely didn't bring snacks because he's a messy eater and the snacks inevitably get ground into the carpet.

Nursery was all right as well. The kids were in a happy mood, but they also had really short attention spans, so we went through all our scheduled activities quicker than normal and had an extra long playtime at the end. It would have been an awesome day but for Daniel, who was tired, possessive of the balls, and just cranky.

Then the five minutes of torture occurred, where I had to take a screaming Daniel from one end of the church to the exact opposite end (he was mad because I took the balls away). Then to make matters worse, Katrina decided that she had to have a particular foam flower in nursery and wouldn't let it go. I put her in my other arm and walked to the other end of the church with two wailing children. I'm amazed my back didn't give out, but I just locked my fingers together and that stabilized things enough. Katrina started screaming in my ear and repeatedly hitting me (normally swiftly punished offenses) but I just ignored it and made my way to the car. I did have to put her down when she started thrashing, but I got them buckled in finally. Sigh. Everything was fine after that, they calmed down and Daniel fell asleep. A few minutes later Katrina told me, "Nina peed yellow panties," and I groaned as the obvious hit me. She had to pee! It's been a year since we first started pottytraining her, and she's always had an issue that she'll have a total meltdown and then pee her pants. So we eventually figured out that if she started screaming and tantruming, just take her to the bathroom. Well, she's been fully pottytrained for long enough that I forgot to take that into account, and with Adam gone, I didn't even think to take her to the bathroom because I was intent on getting to Junior Nursery. Oh well.

Anyway, we're picking up Adam as soon as the kids wake up, and I'm hoping he had a nice weekend. He talked to me yesterday and apparently he had already finished his major assignment, so I think the rest of the time was probably pretty relaxing. This campground is in a different spot and I won't have to drive through the city to get to it, so I'm happy about that.

Oh, and we heard about our temple today, finally! The Philadelphia temple was announced years ago and it's taken forever to get the land, get plans, and all that. They told us today that groundbreaking is in September! We're happy to hear progress about that.

Another haircut

2011-04-30T21:53:00.003-04:00

My hair has been getting longer and longer and I've basically given up on it. Well, correction: I basically gave up on it sometime in college when I realized that no matter how cute the haircut looks in the salon, it will NEVER work out once I get home. My hair is too frizzy, wavy but not curly, super thick but fine, etc. So I usually just leave it long, let it do its thing, and dream of having a nice haircut and also the motivation to style it everyday. I've paid $20 for haircuts and I've paid $55 and have been dissatisfied with all of them. I actually bid on a haircut in a silent auction in February, but I don't know the person, and after our initial "Let's get together sometimes" I haven't even seen her at church again, so I feel weird about asking her to cut my hair. Today, I had basically no patience, and Daniel contributed to that by literally hanging off of my hair multiple times. I kind of snapped, and as soon as they were in bed, out came the scissors.

Before:
Wow, it was rather unruly, wasn't it?

Cutting off that hair was almost physically painful. After all, I was cutting off the prettiest part of my hair!

And after:

Okay, just kidding. That was just what it looked like after I put it in a ponytail and cut it behind my head--which is very hard to do!

This is the after.

You can't really tell in this picture the incredible amount of layering I put into the hair. I did a little more and then fluffed my hair around and took this picture:

It's late and I don't want to wake up the kids with the hair dryer, so I'll fix it more tomorrow if it needs it. For now, I feel about the same about it as I feel about any haircut: meh. I originally was trying to make it look like this youtube tutorial, but my hair is just too thick and it wasn't working out, so I just reverted to my standard A-line in the front, layered all around look. I would have liked it to look a little more funky like that youtube video, but my hair is too wavy.

Anyway, I told Adam I might chop off my hair while he was gone, and I did! Tomorrow I'll have to figure out how to style it. I anticipate I'll be having lots of bobby pin hairstyles, but I might try flattening it tomorrow.

Gift Certificate giveaway

2011-04-29T08:00:00.002-04:00

Hey all, I am giving away a $25 gift certificate to my Etsy shop this weekend since I'm celebrating my 25th birthday! Head on over to my other blog to enter.

New craft area

2011-04-28T19:59:00.002-04:00

I'm a tad impulsive when it comes to rearranging furniture. Yesterday I decided that my crowded craft space behind the couch was just not giving me the space I needed. We currently don't have a working desktop and Adam has moved his workspace to the bedroom, so we had a free table on the other side of the room. So, with Adam's halfhearted assistance (he's not thrilled about my sewing space taking over one whole side of the living room), I moved everything around last night and today.
Unfortunately all my fabric is on display now, but maybe that will help me keep it more orgnaized.

I've turned the desk into my new cutting area, since before I was mostly balancing my cutting mat on the top of the fabric shelves and that was tricky. However, the shelves were higher and that made for easier cutting, so we'll see how the cutting table is on my back. Oh, and it's covered with games, but I'll be putting those back in the closet so that it's free to use.

Here's the whole view. I haven't cleaned yet since we put the kids to bed, so that's why it's all messy on the floor. We stuck them to bed at 7 tonight and they fell asleep by 7:30! But oh, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!

I've got a custom order to finish and cleaning to do, but I wanted to share. Now the back of the couch is a big wide expanse of nothing, but we'll be putting Adam's bike there. It gives us more room for walking and so that is nice.

Adult Sweater to toddler boy's sweater vest tutorial

2011-04-24T16:10:00.014-04:00

This is my first tutorial, so I'm nervous it won't be perfectly clear, but I will try my best! I recommend you read through the whole thing before starting so that you can see how all the pieces fit together.

I don't have a picture of my husband's sweater before I cut it up, but this is the final product.

First of all, I started with an existing sweater to make the pattern. But you can do the same with any shirt that fits your toddler well. Trace the bottom, sides, and armholes. Eyeball a V where you want the neck to be. You might want to draw in a curved neckline for the faux shirt and collar just for reference. Now trace another V inside that, because the neck ribbing will be added on, as well as a small piece of "shirt" that the collar will attach to. You can kind of see it in the picture. The top shoulder line needs to be fairly short. There are some better pictures of this further down where I sew together the front and back pieces.

You will end up with a pattern piece like below. You might want to measure your V and make sure both sides are equal. I went back and adjusted this pattern piece after I took the picture.

Next you'll need to go all the way around your pattern with your desired seam allowance. I usually use 1/2 inch. You won't need to add a seam allowance to the bottom though if you use the existing bottom of your adult sweater.

Place it on the adult sweater. Put it flush with the bottom of the sweater.

Take a deep breath, and cut into your adult sweater!

Next you'll want to create the pattern for the back pieces. Now for an older child, you might want to make it one piece so that it can slip over their head, but I really like being able to snap it up the back. Trace the back of your shirt. Draw a line down the center. Now you'll want to add two inches to the side of that line to account for overlap and seam.

Cut out your piece, including a seam allowance. You'll notice that the shoulder on the back is wider than on the front. That is because the front will have the neck ribbing and also the small bit of fabric that the collar attaches to.

Cut out your two back pieces. Mine is not flush with the bottom because I just wanted to add some length to the orginal pattern. I did the same with the front.

Now trace a pattern for your sleeve, and make sure to add a seam allowance to all sides except the top because you will cut that on a fold.

Now you have a little portion of "shirt" that goes between the neck of the sweater and the collar.

This is the shape that you will need. You need the bottom to match up with the V of the sweater and then curve the neckline. I kind of ran out of paper but you can see where the V would be.

This shows you how it should fit with the sweater. Notice that I added a seam allowance all the way around. The length of the V on both parts should match up (with seam allowance and everything) . Sorry I don't have clearer instructions for this step, so just eyeball it.

Cut out two sleeves with the top edge on the fold.

And cut out one of the little V things.

Okay, and this is where I get out of order a bit, but I can't switch the pictures around very easily at all with blogger, so I'll just explain as best as possible. To make the collar, I just traced my existing collar, but you can't do that. So you'll need to wait to make a pattern until after you've sewn together the V and the front sweater, and after you've sewn the front to the back pieces. Measure the length of the neckline. Divide that in half. Subtract two inches (to account for the snap placket). That is the length of one side of the collar. For the shape, you can eyeball it or you can try tracing an existing collar. Add seam allowance and cut out four pieces.

K, for the cuffs you'll need to first open up the sleeves and measure the length of the straight end.

Take that length and cut out four rectangles of that length and 2 inches wide. Do not add any sort of seam allowance. Round the corners on two of the corners like shown in the picture.

The final thing you will need is ribbing for the collar and armholes. I cut off the ribbing on the sleeves and collar of the sweater. If your sweater doesn't have this, then you will need to buy some ribbing in a coordinating color. Just ask at the fabric store and they will direct you to it. I don't know the exact lengths you will need, but making them 1.5" wide will work well. With the ribbing that I used, it wasn't quite wide enough, so I used smaller seam allowances on those portions and it worked out well.

Take a length of ribbing, fold it in half, and pin it along the neckline as shown below. Pin it along the right side of the fabric (the front of the fabric).

My section of ribbing wasn't long enough, but the nice thing about ribbing is that it stretches, which helps the collar lay nicely after sewn, so make sure the piece you use is stretched out a bit while pinned. Now take the V piece and adjust the pins to sandwich the ribbing between it and the sweater.

The final portion will look like this:

Sew it with your desired seam allowance. When sewing knits, I use a larger stitch length. Like I mentioned, I actually used a smaller seam allowance here and it worked great. If you use a larger seam allowance, trim your seams afterwards. Clip the seam at the V (If you've never clipped seams, it just helps the curves lay flatter. Don't actually cut through the thread!).

Use a coordinating thread to topstitch. This will help the collar lay nicely and look more finished.

K, I think I accidentally deleted the picture that was supposed to go here, but you'll need to match up the pieces of the front and back at the shoulders. Sew together. Topstitch. Oh, and remember that whole right side to right side thing? Don't forget it. I ended up sewing the back pieces on backwards! Oh well, it's not too noticeable.

Lay out the front and back pieces and stretch out some folded ribbing along the seam.

Lay your arm piece on top (remember, right sides to right sides of fabric, and sandwich the ribbing). Match the middle of the sleeve with the shoulder seam.

Pin. Sew.

Clip the seams. Topstitch.

Now the cuffs. Pin them together and sew along the curved edge fron pin to pin. See where I've pinned in the picture.

This next picture isn't very clear, but you will pin the right side of one of the cuff pieces to the right side of the sleeve. You should have some room on either end, enough for a seam. Fold the ends in and secure them with a pin, as shown below.

After sewing, fold the other side over, fold the bottom edge and all side edges under, and pin.

Sew along all three unsewn edges.

After sewing both cuffs, pin together the sides of the sweater and the sleeve, right sides together.

After sewing, clip seam allowances and curves likes seen below. This will give the seam more freedom of movement.

You can see how the cuffs aren't continuous in this next picture. I liked doing it this way because it gives a little more freedom of movement.

Match together the collar pieces, and sew along the long curved edge.

Clip seams and corners, turn, topstitch.

Pin the pieces to the neckline.

Fold under the edges of the sweater and stitch to the collar. Topstitch the collar down.

You are almost done! Next is the snap placket in the back. You could also use it for buttons. Sew the ends each back in 1". Sew them in place. (My camera ran out of batteries here, but I think I have enough pictures for you to figure it out).

Add snaps. I hate installing snaps. I just bought some Dritz snap pliers for installing several types of snaps. They have terrible reviews, but I wanted an easier solution than hammering. Well, the first pair I made were super poor quality and when I squeezed them together they were made so incorrectly that it was completely impossible to use them. I thought I couldn't bring them back since they were opened, but it turns out I could have. Grr. Anyway, I bought new ones, and before I picked them I squeezed them all in their packages to make sure they lined up! They worked all right. A few kept going in wrong and so I wasted several snaps, but it all worked out eventually.

And here is the finished product! Very cute. The only thing it's missing is a little tie! I might try to make just the knot part and sew it on.

And for proof of how cute it was on my son, here are some pictures.

Hope this tutorial was clear enough, and let me know if you have any questions!

Sharing at Blue Cricket Design and Somewhat Simple.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T13:26:00.004-04:00

Happy Easter everyone! We've had a really enjoyable weekend. Adam has Friday off and then yesterday we celebrated Katrina's birthday, my birthday, and Easter with Adam's family in New Jersey. I don't have pictures for Katrina's birthday yet but I do have pictures of the kids in their Easter outfits.

But first...Daniel's outfit. Daniel had no Easter outfit, and I realized this on Thursday, I think it was. I didn't want to buy him something, and his other church clothes are stained. I remembered that Adam gave me a sweater he was done with, and my idea for a sweater vest was born.

This is Daniel's way cute church outfit that is pretty stained now. The cute and convenient thing about it is that it has a collar and arms attached, and they are a soft and slightly stretchy fabric instead of a normal shirt.
So using that as a template, I created a pattern, and started cutting into Adam's sweater.

I took pictures all along the way of my process. I'm thinking of creating a tutorial. Is anyone interested? I used Daniel's existing sweater vest to make a pattern, but I think I could explain how to make one using just a t-shirt as a guide.

And this was the final result!

And here it is on Daniel:

He looked adorable.

I really like having a church outfit for him instead of the normal clothes we usually have him wear.

And here is Katrina in her outfit.

Ah, and one more thing. I had a request to show off the custom orders I've been making. I keep having brides order bridesmaid bags, which is awesome. First, I had this six-bag order. The bride bought her own fabric and sent it to me.

Then, yesterday I finished these four bags for another bride:

I still have to do some finishing touches and send them in the mail. This week I have three woven bags to make for two other brides, but they are all in frames.

Katrina's Birthday Dress

2011-04-18T23:42:00.002-04:00

I decided that Katrina needed a birthday/Easter dress and brought her with me to the fabric store last week. She ended up picking a fabric I didn't really like, but she was really set on it, and I knew it would end up cute because the pattern was cute. She really likes it.

You can't really tell, but the light purple fabric has sparkles all over it.

I added on these bows after bedtime.

It still needs to be ironed but other than that, it's done. I'm sure Katrina will love it, and the only problem will be getting her to wait until Saturday to wear it!

Happy Birthday Katrina

2011-04-15T09:53:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we had a small celebration of Katrina's birthday. Our big party is next week. This is such a busy month for both ours and Adam's family, so we will be celebrating Katrina's birthday, mine, and Easter all the same day. Katrina loves to play "surprise party," so we're going to tell her that we're celebrating Easter and then show up at Nana and Poppop's and say "Surprise!" I think she'll love it. I had her open two presents from her grandparents. She got a purse and an album of all of her family. She loves flipping through and pointing at everyone.

Then she went and filed it away on the bookshelf, before changing her mind and carrying it around in the purse all evening.

We also took her to a cute little ice cream shop in town and also to the park. She kept telling people that it was her birthday, and when they asked how old she was, she alternated between telling them, "Nina Free!" and "Nina big!"

I took her to the fabric store a couple days ago and we chose fabric for a dress I'll be making her. It's purple and sparkly and she's very excited about it.

I'm so grateful for Katrina and it's so much fun to watch her grow up! Even though she's decided that being 3 means she's Big now, she's still my little girl and I love her very much.

We had to take Adam to a training thing this morning and we woke the kids up at 6:30. I definitely did not enjoy driving back alone through Philadelphia during rush hour. But it went well and we're back home now. Daniel slept pretty horribly last night, so I'm suriving on about four hours of sleep. I'm debating whether to take him to the doctor again today or to wait and see if he has an awful night tonight too. Usually when he sleeps horribly like that, it means ear infection. I just really want him to be healthy! He needs to get over his ear infections long enough to get tubes placed.

Daniel

2011-04-13T11:43:00.006-04:00

If I ever doubted once that Daniel loved me, I would be crazy. This child is absolutely attached to me. Sometimes I wonder if they forgot to cut the umbelical cord! We all have colds and coughs and are taking things easy during the days. Daniel's absolute favorite place to be (and where he is currently) is sitting on my lap, sucking his thumb while he lays on my chest and watches tv. If he's not sleeping or eating, he's usually on my lap in that position. Forgive the copious snot in this next photo, but I wanted to include it because Daniel took it of himself.

He likes to explore things and push buttons, play with new objects in his hands.

He seriously eats all day, practically without break. And he's in like the 11th percentile for weight!

He likes to mimic a lot. He especially mimics Katrina. Some regular words are: apple, banana, water, cheese (both the food and for pictures), Mommy, Daddy, turtle, all done, beep (while pushing around trains or cars). He loves singing still. Adam will sing Twinkle Twinkle with him and if he stops at the last word, Daniel will finish the line.

Our childproofing stuff has broken on our food cabinets and we haven't replaced them yet. That means several times a day Daniel starts crying loudly, waddles over to the cabinets, finds the nearest interesting box or can and comes and throws it at me. I called Adam the other day and he was quite cranky because Daniel had woken him up by throwing a bottle of vegetable oil at his head.

In fact, he just threw a box of rice at me. Okay, I just got him lunch so I can finish. Daniel loves to eat but is also picky. I have a hard time getting him to eat. He loves clementines, grapes, Nutrigrain bars, pretzels, yogurt, oatmeal, and everything else is hit or miss.

I have been cutting his hair with fairly good results. I always end up with long spots, but he turns his head constantly while cutting. Last night I had good results with cutting his hair while he sat in my lap on the floor of the bathroom after his bath. Oh, and Daniel hates baths. He used to love them but then decided a month or so ago that he hates them and screams until we take him out. He also hates the vacuum. Today I shut the kids in my room and vacuumed the living and dining room. When Katrina opened the door when I was done, he ran out and straight into my arms sobbing, even though I was right next to the dreaded vacuum. Both kids hate the vacuum, and whereas Katrina will stand there and cry if you vacuum in the same room as her, Daniel is brave and watches for his chance to make a break for it past the vacuum.

He is very attached to his knit orange blanket that Adam's aunt made for him, and also to his green turtle pillow pet. We took both the Utah and he clutched them constantly. Turns out part of the reason our trip home was so awful was that he had a double ear infection starting. That reminds me, I need to call and make an appointment to get him tubes. Five ear infections in six months is plenty for me.

Happy Monday!

2011-04-11T16:44:00.003-04:00

We certainly have had a rough week with sickness. Adam and I got sick on Friday and were sick all day Saturday with nausea and stomach pain. Then it turned into a full on cold today. The kids have had colds too. I think we're on the mend now though. The kids are extra cranky but it's all right. I keep getting custom orders on my Etsy shop so I am plenty busy this month sewing. I wanted to mention some of the activities Katrina and I have been doing. Sickness, traveling, and my craft show last week have made it hard to concentrate on stuff. Mostly Katrina has just been doing extra crafts because I bought a lot of new craft supplies. A few fun things: -- I gave her a banana and cinnamon sugar and a plastic knife and she went to town and asked for another banana. --Easter gel clings on windows --I bought some pretty buttons on Etsy for my shop, but they ended up being plastic. I gave them to Katrina and let her play with them and match them. She's been carrying them around in her purse all day. So yeah, we could and should be doing more, but I'm happy that at least we're trying to do more things. Now that it's getting warmer we'll try to go outside more. She really likes playing with sidewalk chalk out on our small patio.

Bleary-eyed post

2011-04-06T11:51:00.003-04:00

Confession time: Adam and I really like watching Doctor Who. We like to reward our hard work at night with an episode or two. But last night we got sucked in and went to bed waaaaay late. Much later than we usually do, even on our late nights. About 20 minutes after that, as I way trying to quiet my mind and go to sleep, I hear a pathetic cry from the kids room, and went in to find Katrina crying with vomit all over her. She hasn't shown any signs of sickness since she threw up the other night, so we're not sure what happened. She's fine today. I think she might have just eaten too much chocolate custard right before bedtime. It was pretty disgusting, but luckily everything washed out just fine and since she was sleeping on the floor (her choice) there was no bedding to wash, just some blankets and jammies. Daniel decided he didn't want to go back to sleep, and it was a struggle to get him to sleep. I think I finally fell asleep around 3:30. Then Daniel woke up again at 6:30, screaming, of course. Adam took him out but I didn't sleep any more. Daniel calmed some after he got some baby Motrin. We've scheduled another doctor's appointment today. I have my craft show tomorrow night, so I've been labeling merchandise and preparing my display. Also, I don't know if I mentioned that last week while I was in Utah, I got two large orders for purses! One I sent out already but she is interested in another bag, and the other one is six purses I'm working on now. Plus I had an inquiry into a custom color book and my April is turning out to be very busy! Good news for Adam: yesterday he took the investment banking licensing exam and passed! He is now qualified to be an investment banker. Funny story--that is the exam prep manual that he is currently writing! He's very happy to have passed the exam!

Home at last

2011-04-04T13:45:00.004-04:00

Well, I'm home a from a vacation that was both too short and too long. I had an utterly fantastic time visiting with my family, from Spencer: to all my siblings but one and also my grandparents and several aunts and uncles.

Now here is the biggest reason why the trip wasn't quite as much fun as I would have hoped:

Daniel was a punk.

A cute punk, at least, but definitely a pain and a half. The airplane trip over was awesome, he didn't let out a single cry. Then we got to Utah and there were so many new people and new places and he spent the next three days with his head buried in my shoulder. I carried him in my baby carrier a lot, and the rest of the time I was holding him.

My brother's party was a huge success and we all really enjoyed it. On Saturday I snuck up to Provo between Conference sessions and saw my good friend Emily! She and I were roommates freshman and sophomore years. So fun!! (Also, I forgot to put makeup on before I left, oops).

Saturday night we hung out with my sister's friends and kids and Daniel loosened up and enjoyed himself until he just got too tired and we went home. He got his sippy stuck in his shirt and I had to take some pictures.

Sunday morning we woke up to six inches of snow!

Luckily there wasn't that much snow in Salt Lake and even though my flight was delayed, I was still barely able to make my connecting flight in Cincinnati.

My two flights on Sunday were trips from the depths of Hades and I shall do my best to never think of them again!

Adam and Katrina picked us up late last night and both Daniel and I were so happy to be home. Then Katrina puked all over herself in the backseat. Thankfully Adam cleaned it up when we got home and she hasn't showed any signs of sickness since then. Adam's whole family was sick and since Katrina stayed there for a few days I'm sure she got it from them. I keep putting on hand sanitizer and won't let the kids share sippy cups like they normally do, so hopefully Daniel won't get it.

Well, that was my vacation! I hope to go to our family reunion this summer, but I'll probably go by myself. I'm really grateful my family was all able to meet Daniel, but it made it hard to really enjoy the trip. But mostly I'm just so happy I was able to see my family, most of them for the first time in two years!

I need a vacation!

2011-03-29T18:54:00.004-04:00

(*Blogger keeps eating my spaces so I'm writing them out)I am so completely burned out these days. I'm tired all the time, have no patience, have no motivation, and just feel mentally exhausted. I definitely need a break. Luckily, I'm getting one! I'm going to Utah this weekend to visit my family and celebrate my oldest brother's recent wedding. I hope that this weekend helps me unwind and return home renewed and remotivated to keep a cleaner house and cook dinner. (space) I also am getting ready for my first craft show, just a small evening affair at a preschool in Philly. It's a few days after I get home and so I'm trying to get all the preparations done now. I just got done making a ton of new clutches and business card holders and I feel much more ready now. Pretty much any sewing I get done between now and then is just a bonus. I also have all the packaging I'll need. Basically I just need to design my table! Many of my clutches can't stand up by themselves, so that limits my creativity. I have an 8-ft long rectangular table to work with. I want to have some different levels and not just spread out my bags on the table. We went to IKEA to get some inspiration and there really was nothing helpful. So I need to finalize that and buy anything I need before then. The best idea I have is cardboard boxes covered with fabric to create levels, but that won't help with my clutches that fall over. (space) Katrina's "school" is going about as well as I could expect with Daniel teething and getting an ear infection which means he screams a lot and contributes to that whole sense of mental exhaustion I mentioned already. I bought her a bunch of new craft supplies and a little end table at Walmart for her to use as her own little table to do crafts at. Then I realized that if she does crafts there then Daniel can get his hands on them too easily. Good thing it was only $12! She's been having fun with the playdough and tempera paints and other craft implements. (space) Tonight I was about to just cry and lock myself in my room, but then I got all of the toy food out of the closet and now the kids are playing happily with it on the couch. So I get a little respite. (space) When I get back from Utah I'll tell you how it all went. I'm taking Daniel on my lap, so it may not be much of a vacation. We'll see!

"School" and learning about mail

2011-03-22T12:15:00.003-04:00

I have become tired of how much we watch television and how hard it is for me to do anything productive before noon each day. So I decided that it was time to start "school" with Katrina. I read some toddler activity books, got ideas from a couple of blogs, and set up an excel spreadsheet with lots of ideas of things to do with Katrina each day. Basically I just want her to have experience with some more structured activities and also for her to have the opportunity to explore and learn.

I would like to have three activities each day, two in the morning and one in the afternoon. I divided my spreadsheet into four groups: Crafts, Roleplay, Exploring, and Games. Each day we'll do a craft and something from two of the other groups. This week I had to pick activities that I already had supplies for, but in the future I'll need to buy supplies each week.

Yesterday we tried to have Library book time (failure), outside chalk time (success), and cooking time (failure because we never got around to it). One thing that frustrated both of us was that when I told her we were going to have school, she really wanted to actually leave the house and go on a schoolbus to school. I had to break it to her that it's school at home.

Today I planned that we would learn about the mail and then write some actual letters. First, I showed her a schoolbus I drew and told her that we were going to go on the bus to school. We "drove" on the bus around the apartment. (It wasn't quite as exciting as a real bus, but oh well). Then we went on a field trip to see our mail box. After that we played with a mailbox that I made for Katrina and some letters too. Then we wrote some actual letters to people. Daniel had woken up then, so we all went on a trip to the mailbox to send the letters (which meant getting out the stroller because it's kind of a hike). The kids really enjoyed that. Katrina wanted to go in the stroller too, so we brought the double, or as she called it, the W stroller. :]
This afternoon we will try to make dough together for calzones. I hope it works out with Daniel; I'll probably put him in his highchair and load him up with food.

I hope you don't mind if I share the things I do with Katrina fairly often. It will help give me some motivation to keep it up.

My little prodigy

2011-03-21T18:43:00.002-04:00

Here is some video proof of Daniel's ability to "sing." This is the way he most often sings, but he's starting to jabber sometimes so that it sounds like actually words.

Today was the absolute worst day it could have been. Kids not napping, then waking each other up from naps, timeouts, screaming kids, me locking myself in my room for a few minutes to regroup, then putting both kids in separate rooms to calm down. They finally calmed down while eating sandwiched in front of the tv. Sigh. So glad everyone is happier now. The past few days have been hard sleep-wise and the kids are showing it. Daniel no longer wants to take an afternoon nap, but he's having some problems from lack of sleep, and oh yeah, the six or more teeth trying to sprout through his gums. I keep reminding myself that it's better that they come in now than in two weeks when he and I fly on an airplane together to visit my family. But it's so tiresome.

We're hoping Adam gets home soon. He hurried home, swept the kids away from me into the room, then had to come out minutes later to fix something on the computer for his boss, and then ended up having to go back to work while we dined on Jiffy muffins, Stovetop stuffing, and fruit cocktail. Ugh. It was kind of a stomach-turning combination.

Visiting with family

2011-03-18T11:14:00.004-04:00

My brand-new sister-in-law was in town and visited last night! We had a delicious dinner and our entertainment was the children.
Jessica brought with her a bag of things that were my Grandma Kitty's. My grandma passed away a year ago. Since Katrina shares an initial with her, my mom set aside some fun things, like a purse with "K" all over it, and some K necklaces. Katrina wanted to wear all of the necklaces, so at first I put just a few on.

Then she wanted all the rest, and I decided to allow it. She went around the rest of the night (including dinner) with all these necklaces, bracelets, and the purse on her arm. And yes, she slept in it all too. In fact, today is her fourth day in a row wearing her bathing suit and she still has all the jewelry and purse and has added a ring on her index finger.

I snapped a picture of Jessica!

And I tried to take pictures of Daniel but he wouldn't stand still.

Adam is engrossed in his new phone. I'm excited because I'll be able to use it to accept credit cards at my craft show next month.

We really enjoyed spending time with Jessica!

Fun with Elmer's glue

2011-03-10T09:39:00.002-05:00

I thought I would document Katrina's first time independently using Elmer's glue. It's nothing terribly exciting, but for family who hasn't seen Katrina in awhile, I thought something live action might be more fun than just pictures.

These are the monster puppets that I mentioned yesterday. Katrina is having fun gluing eyes and noses onto some extra felt. Now that I know she can use glue without making a huge mess I will definitely be doing more art projects like this.

More about the kids!

2011-03-09T16:43:00.003-05:00

This blog is in danger of becoming too much about purses and not enough about the kids! So here are a few pictures and notes about them.
Everyday Katrina pulls the pillows off of both couches, piles them on this couch, and this is how she chooses to watch tv. Or she piles them on the floor to make a mountain/nest/castle/whatever her little mind can come up with.

Daniel often looks like this:

And because this is how he looks after eating yogurt, I absolutely hate giving it to him, but he does love it so much, so I just suck it up and let him eat it:

Our childlocks on all of our cabinets have failed and so Daniel likes to rummage through the cupboards. This is one of his favorite things to play with.

The shortening makes an excellent drum.

Yes, he's covered in snot, but doesn't like me to wipe his nose (REALLY doesn't like it) so I let him drip until I can't handle it and hold him down screaming to wipe it off.

Daniel is skilled with music. I know that sounds premature to decide, but he has rhythm and a definite interest in all things music. He loves playing on the keyboard, can shake a little egg shaker thing to a regular rhythm, and likes to sing a monotone "da da da" to the rhythm of "Twinkle Twinkle." He also likes to sing "Uh-oh on no (what ya say)" from a tv show Fresh Beat Band. It comes out a monotone "uh oh uh uh uhhhhh," but I know what he's singing and when I sing it along or when he hears it on tv he gets huge smiles. He also likes to say "Ni-hao," which is funny, but he also likes to say "empty" and "happy," so I think he just likes the sound of those particular words. My attempts to teach him sign language have completely failed except for "all done," but he's starting to say "ahdun" as well as doing the sing, and today I got him to repeat over and over something that sounded vaguely like "hungry" when I was giving him a snack. His language skills are probably going to be better than Katrina's were.

I accidentally posted this post early, so I'm trying to type really fast but not miss anything. Oh, today we made some monster puppets that my sister-in-law gave us for Christmas but I keep putting off because our apartment is a mess and I know how hard it is to do fun things with Katrina. Well, today our apartment is nice and clean, and I decided to try it. We had lots of fun making monsters out of fuzzy socks and a bunch of fun things that were included. Daniel was in heaven while playing with the googley eyes. He also liked to pretend he was gluing things, and Katrina liked to actually glue things with Elmer's glue. But then, it had to be over because it was lunchtime, and Katrina had a knockdown dragout tantrum that ended with her first spanking in a really long time after she swiped at my face, causing me to snap my head back into the tv. Then during her nap she wouldn't stay in her room (and every time she comes out Daniel bolts out too) so I finally stuck her in the baby's crib and put him in the pack n play. After two hours in the crib (she normally would be playing for all this time, she rarely naps during "naptime"), when I was about to let her out, she fell asleep. Oh, and she had to pee literally four times while she was in the crib, so I had to let her out each time. Ugh.

Anyway, I need to start dinner and hopefully Daniel's angelic mood will persist so I can make it in peace!

15 month stats

2011-03-08T15:59:00.003-05:00

I took Daniel to the doctor today for his 15-month visit. He is perfectly healthy (except for his current cold) and extremely wiggly. Unlike Katrina, who insisted that her finger was hurting and so that meant she needed a shot (and the nurse was nice enough to give her a "shot" on the tip of that finger), Daniel does not like shots or the doctor and nurse touching him. Katrina loves to pretend to be "Doctor Nina" already, so she was in her element with the measuring tape, pretending to check me and Daniel. Daniel almost successfully dove off the scale and turned into a rototiller during his checkup. To get the shots into his thighs I had to hold both his hands, trap one leg in between my legs, and then the nurse trapped my knees with her knees because he was still wiggling so much.

Daniel's stats are interesting:

Weight: 21.5 lbs (11th percentile)
Height: almost 30" (11th percentile)
Head: 18.35" (32nd percentile)

When I saw those first two numbers I was a bit taken aback. He's gained less than a pound since his last visit. That makes sense; he's started walking since then. But apparently he has shrunk almost an inch! Both the doctor and I agreed that one of the measurements has to be wrong, and it's most likely the 12-month measurement. It's funny: I've had several people comment to me on how Daniel is big/small for his age (everyone has different perceptions) and I commented with variations of, "Well, the doctor says he's skinny and tall, but he looks pretty tubby and normal to me." So now I know my observations were true. He's completely normal weight for his height after all. It was thrilling to have a tall child for a few months though!

The only concern I have about Daniel is that he doesn't sleep through the night. The doctor said (and I agree) that once he's fully weaned, he'll probably stop waking up. I had planned on letting him wean himself, but I'm pretty determined now that I'm going to have to be forceful. Right now Daniel doesn't nurse during the day very often. Mostly it's just at nights and when he first wakes up. I decided that for this next week I won't nurse Daniel during the day at all and I will also stop nursing him in the mornings. I'll be honest; I mostly just nurse him then because it means I can lay in bed a few more minutes. I think he'll be happy enough if I just give him breakfast right away. Then in a week I will start really trying to cut off the night feedings. We usually let Daniel scream for five minutes when he wakes up and sometimes he'll stop after that and go back to sleep and if he doesn't I feed him. We'll have to work on other solutions. Methods that worked on a younger baby don't work the same on a toddler; they have learned persistence at this point. Letting him simply cry isn't an option for various reasons. Daniel has slept through the night in the past; I have full faith that he will do so again.

Adam is quite busy these days with his work, studying, and a part-time gig he has taken on writing a test prep manual. We are taking the piano keyboard in our room down for the meantime and setting up a little office for him there. Only having one computer has limited him in that he really needs to be at home to study or work. One exciting thing is that it's getting warmer so he can start cycling again soon. He cycled today even though it was still pretty cold so I could have the car. I'm hoping that I can take the kids to the playground again soon; right now it's still too muddy.

New purse for me

2011-02-28T17:28:00.003-05:00

I mentioned it before, but the awesome leather bag I made in August broke past repair. The weight of the leather was just too much for the straps, and one snapped in the worst spot possible. I tried using one of my previous bags, this one, but it has several popped seams I don't feel like fixing and the same problem that I disliked before, which was the inability to expand it.

I've been planning this particular bag in my head for awhile, and when I saw this beautiful blue tweed on clearance at Joanns, I had to get it. So this weekend I cut out the fabric and last night and today I sewed it. It was awesome to see everything come together. My patterns tend to turn out better now than they used to because I can foresee problems and plan for them better than I used to do.

It's a little hard to see but there is a large pocket on the back big enough to carry a normal sheet of paper. I have this extreme dislike of having to fold important pieces of paper, and yet it always seems like I don't have the room in my purse to put them without squishing them. This should solve that problem. I used a button to hold it in place so it wouldn't gape.

Two magnet closures. I like them, but I bought them to use with my small clutches, so I bought the 14 mm, weaker magnets. For this weight of bag, the 18 mm stronger ones would work a tad better. You can also see on the inside where I sewed the handles on the outside, which is a little unfortunate, but that's because I had a hard time decideding whether I would sew the handles to the body of the bag or to the white part at the top.

The inside has a few pockets for holding small toys, underwear, wipes, food, etc.

And of course, the requisite modeling pic. Daniel was taking a nap in my room, so I'm in my pajamas trying to hide behind the purse and the camera.

Here it is with some stuff in it. I can fit plenty more. Yes, it's a large bag, and I hesitated to make one quite this big because I'm getting to the point where I don't always want a large bag. But every time I'm at church or go to New Jersey I have tons of stuff and need a bag this large, so I decided to go with it.

I don't know why, but this little touch with the vertical canvas strips is one of the things I like the most about it.

The sides have elastic on them, and then there are pockets with elastic. It's kind of a lot of elastic, but it works out and the bag can get larger if I need to carry a bunch.

So there you go! I am quite happy with the results. The handles are another thing I'm really proud of, because I've never done handles like this and really just conceived them out of my own head. I'm pretty sure if I looked up directions how to do these particular handles it would tell me to do it the same way, but I'm proud of myself for thinking it up on my own. I think I might make a couple for my Etsy shop. What do you think? I would make a couple of changes (zipper pocket on the inside, make the top part with the magnetic snaps not quite as tall), but it would mostly look the same.

Computer troubles galore

2011-02-27T17:14:00.002-05:00

Wow, a whole week has passed. Well, we've been pretty busy this week so I guess I just got caught up in things.

The biggest problem was that on Thursday the laptop got messed up. First I saw the blue screen of death, then it shut down, and then I couldn't get our profile to load back up, which meant that even though all our files were there, they were impossible to access. About a month ago Adam moved everything onto a shared network, so I knew it was all right because of that, but still a bummer to lose a month's worth of photos.

Then Friday the desktop completely died. That was a lot more worrisome because the desktop is the home to the network. We ended up taking the hard drives out of both machines and buying something to let us get the data off of them. However, the power supply on our external drive shorted out, and the local computer store didn't have any of those. So we need to fix that still. We researched our options and finally decided that Adam is going to buy a new motherboard, CPU, and hard drive (and a few more things beyond my computer lingo) to fix up the desktop, and he completely wiped the laptop and we begun from scratch. Yesterday was strange with no access to a computer (except Adam's work laptop that he was using to move all the data around, and that thing is slow as molasses), so I read two books. They were both kind of lame too. But today my laptop is back up and running, whoo-hoo!

I have a new calling as a nursery leader. We will have three of us in the junior nursery and there will be a fun couple with the senior nursery. Today was pretty good with the eleven kids, so I think only having six or seven junior nursery kids will be a piece of cake, especially when we get a more structured routine set in place.

Finally, I uploaded a bunch of videos onto our computer and picked one of Daniel to share. He's in a kind of funny mood here. I was cooking, which always makes him needy, and he was having fun yelling at me. If you want to see a video of him screaming at me like a Nazgul, and a corresponding video of a Nazgul (from Lord of the Rings), check out my facebook page.

Weekend roundup

2011-02-20T19:25:00.002-05:00

So here is how our closet finally ended up. Adam and I decided to move the stairstep cubbies into the closet and use them as toy storage. This means that we are out of a dresser in our room, so that will need to be rectified. But for now, Katrina has more organization.
However, her room still ended up looking like this on Friday during nap:

Adam roped her closet shut and we created a rule that she can only play with one tub of toys at once. We gave her a serious talk about not taking clothes out of her dresser. Who knows how well it will stick, but yesterday's nap and today's nap went very well and she happily has been playing with one tub at a time and leaving the clothes put. I can definitely tell that she is almost 3 years old because she is much easier to reason with.

On Friday Adam cycled to work for the first time in several months. However, the trail wasn't completely clear of snow and ice. He was getting off his bike to clear the patch but it started quicker than he expected and Adam bit the dust. He was pretty shaken up and skinned up.

However, the worst part is that he messed up his tailbone. Whenever he sits down he gasps in agony. We both hope he gets better quickly because he's so excited to start the cycling season.

So tonight I decided to do a short and easy project that I had been planning for awhile. I used this tutorial to make the dress and used some fabric I bought awhile back on clearance. The dress turned out pretty well. The pattern doesn't specify a few things that could have been helpful, and the neckline ended up really tight. Katrina has always had a big head, and I could barely squeeze it over her head. I'm not sure if that was why, but she asked me to take it off pretty quickly. :[ Oh well, it took me less than an hour total to make, while taking care of the kids, and I used clearance fabric.

The only change I made was to use elastic thread and sewed around the waist twice with that instead of using a casing and elastic. It worked out just fine.

Hope everyone has a great President's Day tomorrow! We spent our Saturday cleaning and so tomorrow Adam will be studying pretty much all day. But we also got to go on a date on Saturday night, so that was great. Oh, and I got a new calling in addition to my calling as Relief Society activities board member: Nursery Worker! We have three leaders and 14 kids. They haven't decided yet if they want to split the kids up or not. Today was my first day, and thankfully Katrina was much better behaved than last time I was in there. Last time she wanted me to play with only her, this time she just did her own thing. Adam had to drop Daniel off so that he could teach his lesson, so Daniel got his first taste of nursery. He was fine as long as I never moved more than half a step away from him! I sure hope that that doesn't last long, because it's hard to take care of other kids when your own is screaming. He has four molars starting to poke through and is doing remarkably well (he's wearing his amber necklace constantly), but he always is super tired during the third hour of church and cranky too.

Kids Closet Organization

2011-02-17T12:27:00.006-05:00

Last night I needed to get out of the house so I went grocery shopping at Walmart and scouted out their storage bins. I almost bought five 34 qt storage bins for $8 each. But then I went to the other end of the aisle and found some 18 gal storage bins for $5. Easy decision! I went ahead and got five. Here is my initial setup this morning. I forgot to take before pictures, so at this point I had already removed Adam's tux and temple suit (inside treehouse), my formals (on top of changing pad), and started the Goodwill pile (on pink dresser that we moved out of our room last night).
This is the right side of the closet, after we had removed some adult clothes. You can't see the bottom of that pile of clothes, but trust me, it was taller than Katrina.

Here is the left side which is about twice as tall as Daniel with piles of clothes we were given that are too big for either kid.

And a brief glimpse at the top of the closet. That bathtub was on top of the stack of too-big clothes, but now it is perched extremely precariously up there. That was pretty much the best I could do for now because I am so short and somehow didn't think about getting the stool out.

K, then I went through the whole left side of the closet and split the clothes into two bins for each kids. There were just so many clothes for Daniel, so I decided to only keep the 2T clothes, and I got rid of anything scratchy, stiff, possibly uncomfortable, stained, or just not to my taste. With Katrina I only kept sizes 4T or below.

This is the Goodwill pile at this point. I also will likely have my sister-in-law look through them because there are a lot of cute clothes here, I just couldn't keep them all.

And here are the two tubs. I was able to squish Daniel's tub down so all the clothes can fit. I still need to go back and take out some of the clothes on the bottom that I kept before I decided to only keep 2T stuff. It's from Adam's co-worker and it's all size 5 or 6. I really don't want to haul it around for four more years.

Then I went through the right side of the closet. I split up the clothes into Katrina's clothes sizes Newborn-12 months, another bin for sizes 18 months-2T, and one bin for all of Daniel's clothes from his first year.

I found more clothes on the left side and so it looked even better at this point.

The Goodwill pile.

These three bins came from that side on the right. I got rid of any clothes that were ugly (we had a surprising amount of ugly clothes for Katrina that we had gotten used on Craigslist or Ebay), stained (anything white was horribly stained; they must have gotten a lot worse in storage because I wouldn't have kept them if they had been that stained originally), or that my kids just never wore. Katrina apparently had twice as many clothes as Daniel in her first year. Oh, and this picture doesn't include the size Newborn and 0-3 months and the bag of shoes and socks. Somehow I squished them all in.

So at this point, this is how the closet looks. I had hopes of organizing it so well that we could move the cubbies back inside here from our room and use them for toy storage (and then I guess get another dresser for our stuff), but there's definitely not enough room. I like how there is room still for more tubs or more likely, for some toy bins. I also have room in the hanging organizer for stuff.

I moved the organizer over and the extra paint, bouncer, and bassinet are squished nicely in the back.

And the top has a few more things thrown up there.

The kids were so excited about the bouncer, which plays music. Luckily that's pretty much the only interesting thing within their reach.

Annnd, here's the damage. I definitely need to clear this out of here before Katrina takes a nap, or else this will all be strewn all over the floor.

And this is a pile of bags and trash and other things that were also in the closet and now I will need to fit them in our closet in our room.

So there you go! One closet organized. I like how there is potential for putting some toys in here. Everything is already looking a bit better in my mind, except the cubbies in our room. I really hate using them for my clothes, and so does Adam. We are thinking of moving it into our closet, which will definitely make things squishy in there, but then they will be out of reach of Katrina completely. She already has been opening them and taking things out and dumped a drawer in Daniel's crib when he woke up. Oh, and now we can't tell her to go get a dress or other item of clothing from her room, because she can't get the drawers open in her dresser. But it's a small price to pay for fewer messes!

Need help with a storage dilemma

2011-02-16T14:51:00.003-05:00

K, I'm turning to the blogosphere to help me with my storage problem. Our apartment is fairly large but it feels like we are bursting out of the seams.

But first some cute pictures.
Sometimes Katrina doesn't want to wake up from her nap.

We let her lay there and just do our normal tasks around her until she decides to get up.

She normally sleeps on the bed, but occasionally sleeps on the floor. She only naps a couple times a week, but when she does, she sleeps for hours.

She is obsessed with her daddy's bike. We took her to the bike store on Monday and let her ride a bike around. We're definitely planning on getting one for her birthday. I drew a bike for her yesterday and then she erased it and drew this:

Definitely a bike!

K, here's the storage problem. Adam and I have embarked on a quest to organize our apartment better and make better use of space. As a part of that, we moved the large bookcase into our room to free up space for his bike, moved a bunch of books into our closet, and I moved some of my fabric and craft storage into those free shelves.

Our biggest issues are toys and closets. We have a storage closet bursting to the seams. We organize it regularly and it gets messy again. It could definitely use another go-through, but we can't put much more in there, so that's not really an option for storing.

The kids' closet is a huge problem. Inside there is a hanging organizer thing that holds mostly just cloth diapers that are too small. On the right side of this organizer are several garbage bags and a big pile of clothes that are too small for the kids. We can't just toss them or give them away because we'd like more kids someday and I'd rather not start over. It is conceivable I could go through and get rid of some of these clothes, but that still leaves a lot. We have considered vaccum pack storage, but I heard mixed reviews about those. Another option is a bunch of storage tubs with the sizes of clothes. Either option could get pricey. I should probably mention that we can't afford to buy much. But I am willing to put some money towards this project.

On the left side of the closet are the bassinet, the bouncer, and bags and bags of clothes for the kids to grow into that we've been given by friends. These clothes are basically inaccessible at this point and in a bunch of random bags and boxes, so there's no organization. The top of the closet has the carseat, some extra blankets, and stuffed animals we're not willing to get rid of yet but aren't played with. We already got rid of a bunch of stuff in the top of that closet.

The living room always has random toys in it. I occasionally go through it with a big plastic bucket and pick up all the random things and try to organize them better. Basically extra toys just get stuffed in the storage ottoman. We've done a couple of toy purges. I'm sure we could get rid of a little bit more, but mostly we just need better storage.

Another issue is that Katrina is currently in a fun phase where she likes to empty out her cubbies (like this) onto the floor so that she can put them all in a circle and pretend she's driving a car, or sit in them and pretend they are boats, or various other things that are super cute and a wonderful use of imagination, but very messy. She also likes to pile up her clothes and pretend they are a snowman, or a sand castle. Also cute, also messy. We have one other dresser, a pale pink, small thing that we use in our room. I have proposed to Adam that we give her the dresser (drawers are harder to open and not as much fun to play in) and take the cubbies. They are unsightly in a grown-up room, so I think we could squish them into our closet. But they wouldn't hold as much. If her closet were organized better maybe we could stick them in her closet. But she can open closets, so that's not a perfect solution. At this point, I'd rather not make it a battle between us and her about whether she's allowed to play with that stuff, because it will be full of tears and fights and I'm of the opinion that if you can removed the temptation you'll be happier than just trying to stop the kid from playing with it. Also, whether I clean it up or make her help me, I still end up doing all the work (if you have a toddler, you know how you have to direct every single move).

Sorry for the mammoth post, I just need some suggestions. Adam is too stressed out with work and studying to brainstorm with me. I really wish I had somebody to physically be here to help me organize things, but maybe you guys can still have ideas that I can use. Thanks so much!

(Oh, and under our bed we have our coffee table, and under the crib we have food storage, and under Katrina's bed we have the packnplay, so there is limited under-bed space. And Craigslist is definitely an option for buying stuff, but remember that we own a jetta and don't have any friends with trucks for picking up furniture).

Kid update

2011-02-10T17:14:00.003-05:00

I tried to put up a blog post with video the other day but for some reason the video wouldn't upload. Maybe because it was a video from my camera instead of my video camera.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few of Katrina's drawings and talk a little about the kids.
These are two people, one of them is the baby. You can definitely make out mouths and eyes and noses.

She wrote on her fingers accidentally and then proceeded to mark them all pink. When I got her the markers I allowed her to have three at once. She requested pink, red, and more red (so I gave her maroon). Pink is definitely her favorite color and she always requests pink straws and often will only wear pink clothes. Or dresses. She spent half of today in a pink shirt and skirt, and then changed partway through to a dress. As I'm writing this she is requesting her dress off, which either means she needs to pee or wants to run around naked and we'll have to wrangle her into clothes at dinnertime.

Daniel is growing leaps and bounds. He is taking little steps everywhere and is just so proud of himself. Katrina was about this age when she started walking fluently, so he's not too much behind her. As for speech, he's doing great. His vocabulary includes "Hi!!!!", "hello" (sometimes), "uh-oh," "ee-ii-ee-ii-oo," "Dada," signing "all done," "happy," and maybe a couple other words. His favorite syllable is "yiyiyiyi!" He loves to imitate and sometimes I can get him to imitate new words. The other day I got him to say "Howdy."

Daniel is still a yeller, but seems to have calmed a bit this past week. I just strive to keep him full and not hungry, because that seems to be a huge catalyst. He nurses once or twice during the day and usually twice at night. Believe me, I'm not happy about the night nursings, but he screams like a banshee and the one time we left him there for more than a few minutes he literally yelled for an hour. My current strategy is to only nurse him for 2-3 minutes and then put him back. Unfortunately, I usually fall asleep!

You can see the bike in the background. That is where our tall bookshelf was, but it's now in our room, and I like how it opens up our cluttered living room a bit. Conversely, it makes our room look better to have a piece of taller furniture.

Oh, here's another picture. I was just struck with this one by her use of patterns. I think these are all people too, one in each color.

So that is the kids for now. We have lots of fun and watch too much tv and the days go by pretty quickly. Goals include watching less tv, getting outside more even though the snow is still a couple feet deep by our balcony, going to playgroup more often, and getting Daniel to sleep through the night again!

Just a couple of projects

2011-02-02T12:24:00.002-05:00

Just sharing a bit of what I've been working on.
Baby shower gift.

Wet bag for the kitchen. It's for baby bibs, handtowels, and the "unpaper towels" I'm making from a bunch of old t-shirts. I have about 24 that are cut out, and they just take a while to sew because of the stitch I'm using around the edges to keep them from raveling. Though now that I think about it, they are made from t-shirts, so they won't unravel. Hm. Maybe I'll just use a straight stitch and save myself some time. I'm making them because Daniel is just so messy lately while eating and instead of using a half sheet each time to clean him, I have to use about ten! Cloth works better for getting messes off of him. So I'm making these unpaper towels which will be used for cleaning him and cleaning kitchen messes too.

And I whipped out a bunch of business card holders for my shop, because they are fun and pretty quick. I have fourteen purses cut out too and will start putting those together next.

Jolena's baby quilt

2011-01-26T23:02:00.002-05:00

Quilt is done!
I really had fun with this quilt. Don't laugh, but I had a dream a few months ago with a similar design to this in it, except impossibly more complicated, and so I made up little mock up in Publisher. I fine-tuned it several times, got wishy-washy about using it, but ultimately went ahead with it. The hardest part was figuring out what kind of fabric I wanted. Then I found this shop on Etsy that does hand-dyed fabrics, and I decided I loved the gradient look.

I used the same navy blue fabric for the borders and backing as I used on my brother's quilt.

The quilting was actually a huge issue, because I decided that in lieu of trying to decide which color of thread would complement all of these colors, I chose a transparent thread I've never used. The thread was so fine that it cause tension issues while winding the bobbin, and then it proceeded to break both of my bobbins. Yes, they actually broke. I was pretty upset. They aren't easy to come by in stores, so I ordered some new ones online for cheap (metal this time!). However, I didn't want to wait several days to finish, so I got out my old machine. Wouldn't you know, that little sucker had no problem with the transparent thread, and I stippled this in about an hour and a half. The final dimensions are about 34" x 44", I think.

I'll be sending it to my sister this week, and hopefully she and her husband and their brand-new little baby boy will enjoy it!

First hair cut and quilt top

2011-01-23T19:55:00.003-05:00

Jolena's quilt top, which I hope will get finished tonight.
Tonight, Adam wanted to cut off the really long ends on the back of Daniel's hair. I was frazzled watching it, so I took over and did the whole thing. Daniel did pretty well (he was in the tub), until the end.

There are a few long spots, but oh well, he's a baby. He also has really straight hair, so it sticks up, but it's cute!

A few pics of Katrina:

And I took pics when his hair had dried a little so you can see better how it will be. The back looks infinitely better than it did before. Before he had two little tails on each side that were really long and getting kind of girly.

Best picture yet.

Picture Catch-up

2011-01-22T11:28:00.007-05:00

I have enough pictures in this post for about five blog posts, because I've been intending on writing several posts that just never got done. So instead, I have a mammoth January post.

Here is Katrina in a Christmas present dress from her grandparents. She thinks it's a princess dress and whenever she's in a princess mood she likes to put it on.
One evening Katrina took all of the fruit out of the fruit bowl and was playing with it. I was fine with that, as long as she didn't try eating all of it. I turned around later, and found all the fruit sitting there on the couch and floor with bites out of it. "Katrina!" I bellowed. Then I realized who the real culprit was.

Since then Daniel has had a real thing for eating whole pieces of fruit.

It makes him happy.

His hair has gotten out of control, we're just afraid to cut it ourselves but don't want to pay the big bucks to take him to a kids hair place or take him to the cheapo place that Adam gets his haircuts, because most of the employees aren't that great.

Daniel has remarkable talent with drawing. Yes, I know he's only 13 months, but he is obsessesed with writing utensils. From the magnadoodle to markers, he loves scribbling. I don't remember Katrina being like that at that age.

Katrina loves dressing up like a princess, which includes her princess headband, princess shoes, sometimes a wand (in this case a feather duster), and a tutu. Or sometimes a princess dress.

One day Katrina decided she wanted a photo shoot. She gave me the camera and posed with Daddy.

Then ran across the room to pose with Mommy.

In between each photo she ran back to look at it on the view screen, then ran back to have another one taken. I started getting silly.

Then she noticed my silliness.

And decided to imitate it!

She thought that pose was a pretty cool one and kept doing it.

She had Woody join in with her photo shoot.

I got a couple action shots.

This one just kills me:

I thought it was hilarious that we have tons of pictures like this, where her pose of choice was a complete non-expression.

We got a few dancing pictures. Oh, and she has wings too that she likes to wear.

She may or may not have gone to the doctor's office and several other places this week in both her tutu and wings.

Katrina likes to draw smiley faces, and I'd say she's getting pretty good, even if all her "happy" faces look pretty straight-faced.

One thing Katrina is good at is smuggling writing utensils into her room. That Sunday bag that I let her take into her room? Yeah, it still had some crayons in it. That marker that I thought was dried out? Nope. I realized this week that the spot above her bed, which has the most art, had more of a theme than I realized.

How many smiley faces did you count?

And finally, I snapped a few pictures of Daniel this morning before writing the post. He's been fairly sad this week, with his molars coming in, and the 24-hour stomach virus we think he got at the doctor's office (ear infection re-check), and then passed to the whole family. But I got a few bright and smiling faces (and excuse the mess, Katrina thought destroying the living room was a fun pursuit while we were all flat on our backs feeling sick).