lazy day skirt

Sewing a skirt has been on my to-do list for the last few weeks. I had the perfect pattern & fabric...it was just finding the time to drag out the sewing machine.

I thought I'd have time to do some sewing during the day once Little Man started school. Preschool goes from 12:30 to 3pm and I figured Monkey Boy would be napping during almost all that time. What I didn't bargain for was MB's recently acquired ability to scale the side of his crib. After nearly having a heart attack watching him jump from the crib rail, we took the rail down. Of course that meant that he no longer went to sleep quietly during nap time. Instead he was in and out of his crib at least 50 times during the first few days. Eventually he stopped getting out of bed, but then he'd only nap for an hour instead of his usual 2-3 hrs..

But this past Thursday, MB actually went down quickly and stayed asleep for nearly two hours. Woot! His extended nap gave me time to set up my sewing machine and whip out a skirt:

It's my first skirt and I learned a lot. Like next time, omit the yoke- the skirt will fit me better if it simply falls straight from my waist. I also got lazy and instead of hemming the bottom, stitched about 1/2 inch from the unfinished edge and then used pinking shears to cut the excess fabric off. It will probably still fray, but not as bad as a straight edge. Besides, the frayed look is in, right?

Stats:
Lazy Day Skirt
Fabric- discontinued Kaufmann, purchased at Jenny's Fabrics for $2.00/yd
Pattern- Simplicity "Easy to Sew" 4543, view C
Time to sew- approx 2hrs
My changes- I used 1/2in elastic for the waist instead of the called-for drawstring.

Saturday Sky 09.30.06

things that make me happy Thursday

1. Jazz hands as performed by my small men-


2. new shoes-

3. Monkey Boy's toddlerspeak-
"joo-bok" juice box
"peese" please
"try" let me do it
"sowwy" sorry
"cheen" chin
"ambi" Amber
"ba-baab-bee-buider" Bob the Builder
"choo choo" train
"wash" carwash
"alll deen" all done

4. carpooling with my funbus

5. homemade chocolate chip cookie with a cold glass of milk

6. from scratch split pea soup (tonight's dinner) with fresh bread

7. my small men, getting along instead of clobbering each other

The Last Knit

plays with beans

Recipe for 45 minutes of peace and quiet:

Four 1lb bags of beans, all different sizes and colors

One bucket of toy cars/bulldozers/trucks

One large tablecloth

Two boys




(I wish I could say that the 45 minutes was spent laying around, relaxing....but instead I cleaned the kitchen thoroughly. bleh)

sunday, sunday

(anyone else have that tune running thru their heads?)

I woke up Sunday morning with a horrible hankering for a fried peanut butter sannich. My dad is 100% pure Kentucky hillbilly, raised in the deep South where frying food is an art form. When we were little, he would often wake up early on Sunday mornings and prepare a huge breakfast- fried eggs, fried bologna, fried hash browns from scratch, and sometimes fried grits. So yummy and so bad for your heart! LOL

Fried peanut butter sanniches were supposedly a favorite of Elvis'....tho I hear he liked his with tomatoes. Our household favorite includes bananas and chocolate chips. Here's a little tutorial for those who weren't blessed with a Southerner for a relative:

spread peanut butter on two slices of white bread


add thinly sliced bananas and a handful of mini chocolate chips


assemble the sannich, spread butter on the outsides and toast in a hot fry pan,
3-4 minutes per side or till nicely browned and the inner ingredients are melty


serve with a glass of ice cold milk
YUM

After we all gorged ourselves on the fried PB sanniches, it was off to the park for some family time at the hockey rink. Monkey Boy ran around with his new Chuck Taylors on and doing a pretty darned good job of hitting the hockey puck. Believe it or not, I used to be a decent hockey player myself. In fact I played while I was pregnant with Little Man till I was nearly five months along. We always joked that LM would be a natural at hockey because he would have picked it up thru osmosis. But it looks like like Monkey Boy got more of the hockey gene than LM:

(click on this one and check out MB in the background- what a game face!)

It felt soooo good to be back on my skates; I haven't skated since before MB was born- nearly two and half years ago! Luckily the muscles remember even if the reflexes are slow and I managed not to fall on my bum or stab myself with my hockey stick. My goal is to play at least once a week for a couple of hours. Hopefully that will get rid of this last eight pounds of baby flab and tone me up a little.

saturday sky 09.16.06

busted

Too much quiet means only one thing to a mother -Trouble!



The response when I say, "Please get down from there before you break something!"



Kids. It's amazing any of us make it to adulthood.

And on actual knitting news, a mug shot of my Simple Knitted Bodice:


The color is a deeper red than what is showing on my monitor (it was kinda dark for photos today). I'm just into the second inch of lace around the waist. Hopefully it will be clear sailing from here on out.

PS: Is anyone else having trouble viewing my blog recently? Admittedly a silly question, because if you were having problems, you probably wouldn't see this and answer.

make: pizza!

To celebrate Little Man's first day of preschool, we had homemade pizza last night. The Dearest and I recently tried the new Greek Pizza at CPK and found it to be delicious. Unfortunately neither of us likes raw onions and the pizza topping had a lot of raw onions in it. The topping is premixed so they can't take the onions out.

Luckily our local Trader Joe's is always well stocked with fresh pizza dough and all the accoutrements for the making of our own Greek Pizza:

First, make sure your sous chefs spread out enough flour to coat themselves and the kitchen floor as well as the counter. Like so:


Next, toss the pizza dough:

(the Dearest has this down pretty well)


Slap directly on a HOT bbq- 3 minutes for the first side, 5 minutes on the second side (or till it starts to bubble). Flip and toss on a bit of mozzarella cheese. Remove from BBQ when the crust is nicely browned.

Throw salad of chopped seedless cucumbers, cooked chicken, feta cheese, ripe tomatoes & kalamata olives right on the warmed crust. Top with homemade tzatziki sauce.

Cut and eat so quickly that no photos are taken of the finished product.

However, here are the doughboys eating the "pizzas" they made (LM had a snowman complete with eyes and mouth, MB had a 'ghost'/slab of dough):


Yum!

bittersweet

more preschool pics here

Little Man had his first day of preschool today. He was quite excited to go- he'd been asking all last week "is the first day of school in the morning?". I *almost* cried today, but managed to keep my composure. My sweet sweet boy is heading out into the big world all by himself; it's terrifying and exciting at the same time.

And as of today, it's been almost a week since Monkey Boy asked to nurse. He has evidently weaned himself with no encouragement/discouragement from me. I'm happy to have done with breastfeeding, but sad because MB isn't my little nursling anymore. He didn't even nurse as long as LM did- Little Man made it to 23 months and Monkey Boy stopped nursing at 21 months. Those precious days of holding a milky-mouthed babe are over for me.

My boys are growing up.

Saturday Sky 09.09.06

Saturday Sky 09.09.06
Originally uploaded by shizzknits.

the week in review

Sunday:


Monday:


Tuesday:


Wednesday:


Thursday:


Friday:

washing dishes, boy style

It's often difficult for me to the dishes these days. Monkey Boy always drags a chair over to the sink and tries to 'help' me wash- meaning he gets in the way, splashes yucky dishwater all over and spills soap on the floor.

Or he 'helps' me load the dishwasher by taking out everything that I put in. Some days loading the dishwasher is an exercise in how fast I can throw in the dishes and slam the door shut before he comes looking for dirty steak knives.

Fun times, I tell ya!

Yesterday I was doing the dishes and hit upon a solution to keep him entertained while I cleaned. I poured some water and suds into a big plastic bin, put it on some towels in the middle of the kitchen floor and gave both the boys some plastic dishes and sponges. I figured that the towels would catch most of the overspill (and we have tile floors besides).

The boys were excited to play 'dishwashing' and I congratulated myself on my quick thinking as I leisurely cleaned the real dirty dishes. Then I looked over and saw this:

Oh well, I thought, at least he won't need a bath today!

handmade

Little Man came down from his quiet time while I was stringing buttons for a necklace. After watching me, he asked if he could make a necklace too. I gave him a tapestry needle, some embroidery floss and a bag of the vintage buttons. Here's the final product after nearly an hour of intense concentration on his part:


He also used scraps of fabric and some tiny little bells to make his necklace "more beautifuler". There was a lot of skipping and jumping involved in the first wearing of the necklace because LM said he wanted it to make lots of jingles, too.

The best part was when we looked in the mirror together and he announced "Now I look pretty like you, Momma!"

Oh, and here's my necklace (apologies in advance for the crappy flash pic, but I could only take it after the kids were in bed)-



The instructions I attempted to follow were so bad that I eventually just made it up as I went along. After a couple of false starts (and some bad language), it started coming together. LM insisted that I use the blue heart bead (because blue is his favorite color and "momma likes hearts"). I think it lends just the right touch of whimsy.

a little Labor Day lookie & buttons, buttons, buttons

First the video (make sure you stick around for the *end*):

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing

And then the buttons:

When we were visiting with the Dearest's clan over the weekend, my lovely MIL let the boys play with several jars of buttons. There were all different sizes, shapes and colors of buttons, some of which were obviously very old. MIL said that the buttons were from her mom and grandmother. I couldn't believe the treasure trove of vintage goodies she had stashed in all those jars! When she saw how interested I was in the buttons, MIL instantly gifted me with them. Lucky me!

Here's a shot of one bag of buttons....she said these are probably bone or ivory. Anyone know?


I've been wanting to make a button necklace for quite some time now, but I didn't have enough buttons. Now I do thanks to my sweet MIL.

Little Man, like most kids, loves playing with the buttons. He immediately picked out a couple of large anchors to put on a shirt. I'm trying to figure out how to sew them onto either a shirt or maybe a tote bag for him.

labor day love

(click for bigger/more pics)

Loving:
-little boys with swim goggles
-cool, cool water
-potluck yummies
-friendly neighbors
-waterslides
-shade
-fresh breezes
-the smell of woodsmoke
-s'mores

Saturday Sky 09/02/06

And my men, reading together after dinner: