love thursday

Today is cold and dreary....looks like rain but I doubt there will actually be any. Weather aside, here's what's I'm loving this week:

-recipes off the internet; I've found so many great, yummy recipes by consulting the great Google god. With such a huge variety of recipes to choose from and an almost instant way to sort them, I've pretty much given up on using my cookbooks. Yesterday in a fit of purging, I cleaned off the bookshelf in the kitchen, boxing up all the cookbooks except one or two favorites. Boy there those books dusty. I guess it's been a while since I've used them!

-purging our stuff. It feels great to look over a formerly cluttered shelf and see it clean & organized. Our house will never be model clean, but I prefer 'homey' over 'musuem-like' any day.

-homemade buttermilk biscuits, warm from the oven & spread with Plugra.

-playdates

-taking the boys to get our 'popcorn popped' aka going to the chiropractor. Monkey Boy always laughs and laughs when he's getting adjusted- he says it "twickels". Little Man claims that he is taller when he leaves the chiro's office.

-fresh blueberries

-warm sheets out of the dryer; even better is pulling on a warm pair of jeans out of the dryer!

-listening to Little Man count as he gives me 15 kisses in a row

-my "little helper"; LM has been taking the ornaments off the tree and putting them in a pile to 'help' me clean up:

-hanging out with friends at LPK on Wednesday nights. Great conversations, funny ladies and lots of laughs. The uninterrupted knitting time is a bonus.

-Monkey Boy's fascination with big shoes:

What are you loving this thursday?

things i want to do

I've never been one for making New Year's resolutions...I find it silly to resolve to do something when you know that you won't be able to keep the resolution longer than a few weeks (or days, even!). But I do think about the things I'd like to change in the new year, and here are mine for Aught Seven:

-take a photo a day. The results will be posted on my Flickr stream since I doubt most of you will want to see a photo every day here.

-get more creative with my photography. Take the time to stop and catch images that I normally don't. Alot of this has to do with the fact that I always have the small men with me. It's really hard to pull over, jump out of the car and take photos when the kiddos are screaming in the back. Kinda kills the inspiration, y'know? But I want to make the effort this year.

-spin more. My poor spinning wheel hasn't been touched in at least four months. She looks pretty forlorn sitting in the corner of the office. I have some really lovely rovings that are just dying to be spun up so I need to start spinning again.

-get rid of some of the clutter in my life. It seems like every surface in our house is covered with stuff, most of which is never going to be used. I've already started purging the toys and it feels good to see all the empty shelves.

-knit a lace shawl. The Dearest got me Victorian Lace Today for Christmas. It's so inspiring to look through the book and see all the gorgeous shawls & scarves. I really want to knit at least one project from this book.

Those are the biggest things I'd like to get done this year. No really resolutions, more like good intentions.

What are your good intnentions this year?

more from NYE 2006

For NYE, we attended the annual neighborhood progressive party and ate waaaay too much delicious food. There were three stops: appetizers, main dishes, and desserts. By the time I got to main dishes, I was already full from all the scrumptious appetizers. I managed to shovel in a bit more yummy tortellini....and of course I was able to find a bit more room for the desserts.

A couple more snaps from the party...

my little party goer


this photo cracks me up because R is holding both sippies AND booze


desserts YUM


watching the ball drop in NYC at 9pm local time (perfect for the kiddos)


more 'snow'!

more pics here if you're interested.

And what did we do on the first day of 2007?

cleaned the kitchen


took down the lights


played

I think this evening will involve dinner, playtime with the kiddos and maybe even some knitting. Hope your first day of 2007 is wonderful, too.

happy new year!

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Snow on New Years Eve? in Southern California? Yup!

all the fam-damily

We visited with the Dearest's side of the family today....he comes from a rather large Irish Catholic clan (he's #9 of 10 kids). When they get together, it is always a loud, fun and exhausting day. There were easily 30 adults at the party, at least six or seven teens and a whole passel of little kids.

Little Man and Monkey Boy loved playing with all their cousins. It's interesting to watch the older kids showing the young ones how to play....

Also fun to see the teenager who is 'too cool' take the time to blow bubbles for the littles....

There were cupcakes, gifts for the birthday girl, and lots of running around. I'm sure SIL's house is a sticky mess, but it was worth it to see everyone having so much fun. Thanks, A, for having us all over!

Finally, a photo of Little Man and Monkey Boy on their favorite toy of the day, a red plastic slide...

Some more photos here.

happy birthday to the monkey

newborn monkey:

2yr old monkey:

happy happy day to my littlest monkey man!!!

love thursday (the holiday edition)

loving-

- making cookies with the boys for gift giving

-listening to Little Man explain to Monkey Boy how the gears on the train set work

-the sweet, luscious smell of top of Monkey Boy's head when I'm rocking him to sleep

-gift cards (new boots for free! woot!)

-being lucky enough to have a wonderful MIL (mother in law) who will watch the small men for a couple of hours so I can hit the mall for after-Christmas shopping

-my new jacket

-the smell of bread baking

-hearing the wind and rain on the windows while I'm snuggled under a quilt with my knitting, watching a Law & Order, CI marathon

-my lil' photog:

-the Dearest (who uncomplainingly put up with my crazy family all year long)

-clean kitchen counters (we'll see how long that lasts)

-my new iPod dock for the van- thanks to the Dearest who was probably tired of hearing me complain about not being able to use my iPod while driving. Love it- now I can listen to audiobooks in the car, too.

And what are you loving this thursday?

FO Report

FO Report: Monkey Boy's Christmas Eve Sweater
started Dec. 12, 2006, finished Dec. 22, 2006
Pattern: from Mrs. Bea's Rainy Day, size 2yrs
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino (5.5 balls)
Needles: Addi Turbos (US7), Crystal Palace Bamboo (US8), Crystal Palace Bamboo DPNs (US8), cable needle
Pattern talk: This is an easy pattern that produces a lovely sweater. The pattern calls for cabling on the front, back and sleeves. Each main cable is bracketed by a purled diamond repeat:

The pattern is really well written and they provide a chart that's color coded for each size (red is size 2, blue is size 4, etc.). I used stitch markers to make sure I didn't get off on my count, but the repeat is very easy to remember and at the end I wasn't looking at the chart nor the pattern.

The front, back and sleeves are all knit separately. The shoulder seams are joined with a three-needle bindoff on the public side, creating a decorative ridge a the shoulder. Sleeves are set in and seamed, then the sides are seamed. Finally, the neck is picked up and knitted.

My Changes: I decided not to cable the back of the sweater (who looks at the back?). I also didn't rib the neckline. I just followed the pattern on the front and let it curl. Though if I had to do it again, I would probably rib the neck so it doesn't curl over.

I'm super happy with how the sweater turned out. It was a quick, fun knit and I like the way the Cashmerino cabled so nicely. One ball of yarn had a knot in the middle (urgh), which is crazy annoying, especially since Cashmerino isn't cheap! I ended up having to join yarn in the middle of the row and you can see that if you look closely at the photos above. Check out the left shoulder-ish area, near the sleeve seam. I washed the sweater again after these photos and the yarn relaxed a bit so it's not nearly so visible now. Other than that, I'm really pleased with the FO!

the madness descends (an epic post)

As the child of divorced parents, I spent most of my teen and early adult years celebrating two Christmases: my mom would do Christmas Eve and we'd have Christmas day with my dad. Things got hecka more complicated when the Dearest and I got married- I remember one year we were at my Mom's on C.Eve till midnight, then up at 9am to go to my Dad's, then we hit the In-Law's house at 2pm. It was all a bit much.

Once we had kids, we tried scaling things back. We still did C. Eve at my mom's and at least one Christmas Day celebration with family. One year we did my Dad's house, the next year we went to the In-Laws'. But as Little Man got older (and we added Monkey Boy to the mix), it got harder and harder for us to make it out of the house on Christmas Day. The kids really didn't want to leave their new toys behind to be dragged to someone else's house for a turkey dinner.

So we decided that we'd still to Christmas Eve with my mom and we'd spend Christmas Day at our home, making our own traditions as a family. The Dearest's parents are very understanding of this and don't expect us to make it on Christmas Day (tho we will be attending a huge family gathering later this week involving all the out-laws....probably 30-40 people).

My Dad, on the other hand, is another matter. His health is getting progressively worse and he hasn't had a driver's license in at least 5 yrs. We always make the effort to include him in our Christmas Day, but he often pulls his passive-aggressive act and refuses to play along. Some years we can talk him into attending and some years he begs off. When he does attend, it involves the Dearest going to pick him up & drop him off....a trip of nearly an hour each way. Bless the Dearest- he never complains about my crazy relatives!

All of this is a long-winded explanation of why I have so many photos to share. So here goes:

Christmas Eve:
We had a visit from "Santa" (aka our neighbor Frank). All of the neighborhood kids were gathered at one home and Santa rang the doorbell....

yummy cupcakes and Christmas decor


little man enjoys a cupcake


monkey boy meets Santa (photo courtesy of Jen)

Then it was off to Grandma P's house for a traditional turkey dinner and much gifting:

"it was a hit and we didn't even take it out of the box"


monkey boy's favorite gift

Back home for a late night....boys wanted to play with their new toys! So they were up till 10:30pm. Monkey Boy did NOT want to go to bed without his train & ended up falling asleep with the train in his arms.

Christmas morning was filled with fun surprises, including seeing Santa's footprints in front of the fireplace. Little Man said we should be very careful that we didn't get any of the magic powder on our feet because it would make us fly like Santa's reindeer.

And this:

was very quickly reduced to a pile of torn paper and empty boxes. (more Christmas photos here) Monkey Boy's favorite gift involves his trainset:

While Little Man is really enjoying his new Leapster games:

The small men were quite spoiled but loved every minute of it and so did I! Christmas is ever so much more fun with little ones.

ETA: I will be posting a FO report on Monkey Boy's sweater tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I get to it).

all aboard the cookie train

lots & lots of photos from Christmas Eve & Christmas day. An epic photo post upcoming. Another FO report on Monkey Boy's sweater upcoming.

This for now:

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do you hear what i hear?

small men in handknit sweaters
ready for christmas eve at grandma's house

merry christmas to all!

merry christmas from the two hyperactive elves

truth in advertising

Wendy over at Knit & Tonic has a cool pattern for kids called the "Drive-Thru" sweater. The pattern says it's a quick & easy knit- something that's great for kids because they grow so fast. I really liked the intarsia-ish yoke because it's not too girly but still provides some fun color. So I bought the pattern and the yarn and after about a week of knitting, produced this:

(the serious pose)

FO Report:
Started 12/08/06, finished 12/19/06
Pattern: "Drive-Thru" sweater by Wendy at Knit & Tonic, Size 6yrs
Yarn: Swish superwash in Copper, Baby Blue, Capri and Deep Ocean
Needles: Clover dpns for the sleeves and collar, Knitpicks Options circ for the body

My mods: I pretty much followed the pattern as written. It's knit from the waist up, then you knit each sleeve and add them onto the body (leaving a hole at the 'armpit' area that is later mattress stitched together). The colorwork is super easy and the most fun part of the whole sweater. Luckily I know how to knit both Continental and English at the same time, allowing me to knit with one color in each hand so the colorwork went very quickly. But even if you don't know how to knit with two colors, there's only a few rows of color knitting involved so it's not that difficult.
Had a couple of issues with my short rows on the back- I'm never good at short row-ing on the purlside of a garment. There were some pretty ugly holes that I was convinced I'd have to duplicate stitch over, but somehow they disappeared when the whole thing was washed. Yay!

The only difficulty I really had was binding off loosely enough for the sweater to fit over Little Man's enormous noggin. My first try at binding off (done with a needle two sizes bigger than the one called for) was way too tight. So I tried again with an even bigger needles and leaving lots of yarn with each cast off stitch. That seemed to work and it fit snuggly over LM's head. I went ahead and washed the sweater last night. Then, when I tried to get it on LM this morning for the photos, it wouldn't come anywhere close to fitting. Evidently it had shrunk a bit in the wash. While he was away at school, I picked out the cast off edge (and noted that Swish, even tho it's superwash, still felted a bit at the CO...it was quite a chore to pick out) and cast off a third time with the lace castoff. This gave me a very stretchy bind off and it fit with no problems over my small man's huge blockhead (he takes after me in the big-headedness dept.). Wendy's pattern does say that one should bind off "very loosely"....and she means it!

All in all, a great pattern and I'm already working on a second sweater for Monkey Boy in different colors. The Swish yarn is great- I love that it's superwash. It's quite soft and it hasn't pilled or fuzzed after two washes (I partially machine dried the sweater then laid it out to dry completely). Little Man says he really likes wearing it, too. It's "soft, not itchy":

This is going to be his Christmas Eve sweater....I'm still working on Monkey Boy's (stuck on sleeve island LOL). If I get MB's done in time, I'll post the photos of the small men wearing them together.

thanks for all the good wishes

I am feeling ever so much better.

Not 100% yet, but today is a vast improvement over yesterday. The Dearest said he knew I was feeling bad yesterday when I called him around noon and begged him to come home early.

I've been taking it easy today....the only thing I really had to do was carpool the kids to school. That wasn't too bad, and I was able to rest most of the day. Unfortunately the house has really suffered- I shudder every time I go down to the kitchen. Sometimes I don't know what's worse- being sick or having to clean up the mess after I've been sick? I'm putting off the big cleanup till tomorrow.

Plus there's still the issue of Christmas gifts to make. I have three more tote bags to throw together for the neighborhood kids. I'm hoping to make those tomorrow night when I have a little more energy. Other than that, my Christmas shopping is done. Tho I will have to hit the local big-box store on Friday for last minute supplies (I don't even want to go near that place Saturday or Sunday). Maybe I'll be recovered enough by then to brave the crowds.

And thank you for all the get well wishes I got thru comments and emails....I thinkthat good energy has definitely helped me get better faster.

sick

teeth hurt from sinus pressure
monkey boy has croup - woke me up at 1am (right after i fell asleep in little man's room) with that lovely croupy cough. spent 20 minutes in the steamy bathroom and put him back to bed with the humidfier on high
woke up at 7:30am and spent the entire morning on the couch while the small men watched massive amounts of tv
slept fitfully to the tune of Lazy Town and Maisy
woke up at 11am, realizing that little man has lunch bunch today and needed a lunch so he could leave at 11am
crammed together a lunch and took little man to the neighbors while wearing my pjs
monkey boy followed behind wearing one shoe and his footie pjs
spent another hour & half sleeping while monkey boy watched Polar Express
gave mb crackers & choco milk for lunch
just put mb down and realized i have so. much. to. do. and no energy to do it
going back to bed

wake me up with i'm well.

kids' christmas crafty-ness

Have you been to visit Kiddley yet? I've been subscribed to the feed for months now and am always inspired by their crafting projects. December has been filled with one great crafty idea after another.

When I saw these 'dolls', I knew the small men would enjoy making some. I printed them out, two to a sheet, and put out some cut up scraps of Christmas themed paper, yarn, glitter glue and markers. Little Man spent quite some time cutting and gluing pieces of paper to his 'doll'- he had to get the 'clothes' to fit just right. Monkey Boy was more interested in eating the glue sticks & using his scissors to cut little flaps of paper, but the project held their attention for over an hour. Here are LM's finished ornaments:

(unfortunately, MB cut his little doll up so we don't have a FO to show for him!)

The boys crafted long enough for me to stamp and address all our Christmas cards, as well as start some bread in the bread machine. We've had our bread machine for years; when we first got it, I used it all the time. But after the little ones came along I pretty much stopped baking. However, I've been having the craving for freshly made bread lately so I broke out the bread machine, dusted it off and threw in some ingredients. MB was quite interested in the whole process...

bread success!

Well, my bread machine failed me today. The loaf of bread it produced was shaped like a bowling ball and just as dense. Not so much toothsome as toothbreaking! I think the machine waaay over kneaded the dough so it didn't rise much.

I was so disappointed with the outcome that I went online and found a recipe for Crusty White Bread and started another loaf right away. I used my Kitchenaid stand mixer instead of the bread machine to do the dough. After rising and being baked,the bread turned out perfectly:

The recipe I used was pretty good- the bread is nice and crusty with a soft interior. It's quite tasty, too (some white bread recipes are sooooo bland!). We'll see if the loaf makes it to the morning so I can find out how it tastes the next day. If it's still good, I might end up making a couple of loaves every week for sandwiches and such.

love thursday, one day late...

loving:

-cool Fall days and foggy nights

-rainy evenings

-Wendy's Drive Thru pattern (I'll post photos of the WIP later)

-the sound of laughter as the small men chase each other through the hallway

-handknit socks

-finishing my Christmas shopping online (now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the packages to roll in...much better than fighting the crowds)

-Trader Joe's fish sticks & homemade tartar sauce

-how the Dearest bathes the small men every night so I can clean up the kitchen and get some 'me' time

-exuberance:

more photos here

-finding the small men engrossed in their Leapsters after I get out of the shower:

Yarn ahoy!

Ahoy! Intrepid Yarn Aboard2 explorers Lewis and Clark showed up at my doorstep yesterday, bearing many goodies from the wonderful Margene at Zeneedle. There were so many goodies that I can't believe the box actually shut! So here is the haul-

beautifully packaged with a little card


a cute little fabric pocket stuffed with a noepad, fun post-its,
yummy mints and a Yarn Aboard-themed file from Carolina Homespun
(Margene, how did you know that I'm always looking for a nail file?)


cuticle cream (my cuticles definitely needed this!) and bath salts


sweetly decorated candies (I had to hide from the small men) and a fun
sheepy ornament (already hanging on the tree)


beautiful fabrics for the stash


Christmas-y lollies for the small men
(they were eaten within moments of this photo being taken)

and the grande finale:

a skein of Socks that Rock in Dutch Canyon- luscious colors and the yarn is so soft!
Can't wait to get knitting on this!

Margene, thanks again for all the wonderful goodies!!! And thanks to Amanda for making this swap possible!

Now, my turn to pack Lewis & Clark up and send them on their way....who will they visit next?