Searching For The Good

Market and McDonalds

2011-09-16T18:59:00.001-05:00

Perhaps not two things I'd normally put in the same sentence, but that's how our day worked out. :)

This morning was not-a-million-degrees, so we decided to head out to the farmer's market. I called Mom to see if she wanted to come along and she said my nephew had a school holiday, so they both joined us. We loaded the boys into the wagon (maybe not necessary, but they loved it), and Boo into the stroller (which we hardly ever use, so she was thrilled) and headed out.

It was awesome. I've really missed going to the farmer's market regularly.

And I brought home some pretty, pretty veggies.

(In addition to what's pictured, we also brought home corn, sweet potatoes and a bunch of pretty little apples. And Mom picked up something called a lemon cucumber...which is a cucumber that looks surprisingly like a lemon. Go figure.)

We hung out at the park for a bit. The boys exploring and finding treasures in the dirt.

(Bug with an eraser shaped like a cat.)

Boo ran around trying to keep up, and beelining towards the mud.

So I ended up holding her a lot. She was not pleased.

(This is the first picture of Boo where I think she looks like me at all.)

Then it started getting hot and we were hungry, so Mom suggested we move the party to McDonald's - a rare treat! This is the first time we've been since Boo has been even kind of mobile and she jumped out there like an old pro.

(I was right there ready to catch her the whole time. Honest.)

She ended up making it up to the fourth step before it got too steep. My nephew was so amazing with her. He cheered her on the whole time she was trying to climb, and helped her down when she thought she was stuck. Very sweet.

Bug didn't stop moving once. ;)

(Haha. While tagging this post, I realized that ALL of the veggies were already listed. Guess we have some solid favorites.)

Bug's Bread

2011-09-16T18:41:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, Bug asked to bake bread. And then proceeded to do it by himself. I measured out the ingredients for him, but he did the rest all bu himself - choosing the recipe, getting everything ready to go, and watching and questioning the entire process. (We used a bread machine, though might do it by hand next time.) He even told me that baking bread was "more fun than watching tv" - high praise!

Terrible photography aside, the bread turned out great! It was SUPER yummy! He was so very proud of himself. :) (And I'm super proud of him, too!)

We devoured the first loaf of bread pretty much immediately, so he asked to bake another loaf. So my 3.5 year old baked two loaves of bread in one day. I can see us making this an addition to our daily non-routine.

The recipe we used:

1 cup water
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons yeast

It turned out so light and fluffy and tasty. Mmm...bread...

Sashiko Sneak Peek

2011-09-16T00:19:00.000-05:00

After having done a bit of embroidery (and looking at waaaaaaaaay too many pretty things on flickr), I decided to try my hand at sashiko again.

I really think I love it.

I definitely love the way my first two projects are working out. Sneak peeks only, because they're going to someone who sometimes reads the blog. Sorry. I'll post some pictures of the completed projects after Christmas. ;)

Fire Relief

2011-09-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post to introduce an idea...

Texas has caught on fire, which is alarming. And it's been a helpless feeling to catch little bits of news and see photos of places that I knew enveloped in smoke and fire. As yet, no one I know personally has lost their home, but friends and family of friends have lost everything.

A friend put me in touch with a woman helping with relief efforts near Bastrop and I've gone to work. (And it looks like there's some help coming from a post on one of my flickr groups - <3!)

Picked some fabric and started making necessities bags.

The idea is to stuff them with things like toothbrushes, soap, etc. I know it won't be much in the long run, but maybe a bag of needed items, crafted with love, might brighten someone's day just a little bit.

Rock Gardening...Sort Of

2011-09-15T23:51:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week, we finally (finally, finally, finally!) got enough of a rain for it to cool down a bit in the evening. So we took the opportunity to head out into our poor, deserted yard for awhile. I dug out the last bit of my sun-cooked summer garden failure, Richard and Bug picked up random bits of junk from the yard, and Boo bee-lined to her favorite - the rocks.

She was having so much fun shoveling them that I tried to get a picture that captured her joy.

At first, she kept looking way over my head and past me whenever I called her name.

And giving me this weird fake-baby half-smile. I don't think I've ever seen this expression outside of this series of pictures.

And then she started talking to me, presumably about what she was working on. Boo is very vocal, just not so verbal, yet. (And someday she's going to hate me for taking this picture.)

And then she just ignored me and went about her work.

Bug was having fun, too, looking at how metal shavings behaved on a magnet.

Desert Critters

2011-09-15T23:39:00.001-05:00

We have, in the past year, learned a bit about differences in wildlife between Houston and Phoenix.

There are things I miss, not being near Houston: deer, frogs (which are here, too, just not in the same abundance), squirrels (I've seen one, here), vultures, hawks, mosquitoes big enough that you can see them coming (versus the sneaky, painful microscopic version here)...all sorts of things. Which is not to say that I haven't been impressed by the wildlife here. I've seen a roadrunner, more rabbits than I ever saw in Texas, a jackrabbit, wild lovebirds...all sorts of things.

But.

There is one bit of desert wildlife that I am not at all thrilled to have met.

Look a little closer.

That's right. That's a scorpion. A LIVE one. Thankfully, it didn't come from my house...though Richard was kind enough to bring it by to visit. He wanted Bug to see it.

As I recall, our conversation went something like this:

R: "I brought something home for Bug to look at."

Me: "Oh? What?"

R: "A scorpion."

Me: *stunned silence* "What? Not a live one."

R: "Oh yeah, it's alive. Don't worry it's tiny."

Me: *beginning to freak out* (Because the tiny ones are dangerous, you know.) "What?! What are you going to do with it once he's looked at it?!"

R: "Let it go."

Me: *now in full on freak-out* "NOT HERE?!"

He assured me not, and said that he hadn't expected such a strong response from me. Holy crap. A SCORPION.

And, yeah, it was tiny. And maybe a little bit cool. But, holy crap. A scorpion. *shudder*

Oh, Hello!

2011-09-11T02:45:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been ages and ages since I've posted, and I feel pretty terrible about that. Which is partly why it's been so long since I've posted. You know how that goes, I hope.

Our Arizonaversary was the last week of June, Boo's first birthday was on the 4th of July, and the one year anniversary of my sister's cancer diagnosis was shortly after that. It was kind of a lot to handle emotionally, as it turns out. I had all these great blog posts written out in my head and every time I tried to sit down to write any of them...I just couldn't do it. I think, at the one year mark, there was just too much I was still trying to process.

And then, it's just been kind of busy, too. Which seems kind of insane because on any given day I'd be hard pressed to tell you anything useful that I'd done. And yet, stuff has been getting done. ;)

So...I'll start working on some posts. :)

Craft Hope Bracelets

2011-06-18T18:01:00.001-05:00

So, we did make some bracelets for the Craft Hope project back over Memorial Day weekend. Given that we were working with three fairly little kids, it actually went really well.

The five year old made one bracelet to keep for himself, and then decided that he'd rather do other things. The two three year olds were all over making bracelets, though. My niece made quite a few, all with certain friends in mind, so ended up taking all of hers home. Bug decided that he wanted to make a few for specific people, one for himself, for me and his uncle, and the rest went into pile to mail. So, mostly my sister and I made bracelets for Craft Hope. The kids did seem to think it was a really neat idea though. They asked lots of questions about "the kids who don't have stuff" and Bug wants to know who - exactly - will be getting the bracelets that he made.

We ended up with 24 to put into the mail.

We all worked on the big pony bead bracelets.

It was fun watching the little kids pick out their favorite colors and color combinations. And trying to make nice looking bracelets with combinations of colors that the little ones weren't picking for themselves.

These smiley face beads were fun, but the holes were too little to work with the big not-sharp needles that the three year olds were using, so I ended up putting these two together after bedtime.

And I love these. I may have to go back and make myself one or two like this with the beads that I have left.

I'm looking forward to seeing the recap at Craft Hope. It sounds like a LOT of people have been sending in a LOT of bracelets.

Chrysalis #1 - More Blocks and a Completed Top

2011-06-18T17:20:00.000-05:00

I finally uploaded the rest of the Chrysalis blocks.

(I seem to be missing a photo of one of the blue blocks. Hrm...)

Once the blocks were done, I got them all trimmed up. That's always fun. It makes for pretty trash. :)

And then I started playing with the layout for the top. I knew that I wanted the squares to alternate yellow and blue, but with some of the inner squares being green, there was the chance that it was going to end up looking kind of clumped by color.

Bug took the camera and got this shot while I was laying things out. Not a bad photo for a three year old!

The final layout.

Miscellaneous June Gardening

2011-06-18T16:50:00.001-05:00

Mom found a giant zucchini last week. This sucker was tucked away beneath a tomato plant.

(And that's Bug's "Whoa. This is heavy." face.)

This is a good example of what we're picking on a daily basis. Less zucchini and squash. Mom usually picks those (3-4 a day!) in the morning. That bowl of yellow tomatoes is not small. I think it's a 3 quart bowl? I'll try to remember to look next time.

Still not coming up with many green beans, though the cucumbers are starting to come along nicely.

And, look! Green bean teepee!

It's filled out quite a bit more this week, and the little sweet pea flowers that Mom planted in there are starting to bloom. So there are some pretty little purple flowers tucked in there now. Those are carrots in front, radishes on the side and cucumbers on the back. And, behind the sunflowers, potatoes. Awesome, isn't it? My mom's green thumb just blows me away.

And look at how tall the sunflowers have gotten!

They're 11-12 feet tall, now.

I loved seeing this guy tucked in with the bright yellow ones.

And a better picture of the corn.

Puts my little dirt patch to shame.

And Summer is Here

2011-06-18T02:34:00.000-05:00

There is absolutely NO denying it. Summer is here.

That photo was taken in the evening. In the shade. It's getting stupid-hot and we've got a long way to go yet. WHY does anyone live in the desert?

Fossils

2011-06-18T02:32:00.001-05:00

Richard walked into the house the other day, paused and asked "Why is my child wearing skulls on his shirt?"

"Because he says they're fossils."

Is it just me, or does he look much older than 3.5 in this picture? When did he get so big?

Corn

2011-06-18T02:17:00.000-05:00

There's corn in my mom's garden! Corn!

This is particularly impressive given that my mom's backyard is not all that large, and the corn itself takes up something like 16 square feet of garden space. It's a tiny spot, really.

This picture was taken earlier this month, when we were happy-dancing that there were three little ears of corn coming up. We thought that might be all there was. At last count, about four days ago, there were 41 ears of corn. Forty one. There had been 35 when I'd counted three or four days earlier. Looks like we might be feasting after all!

And that's not even considering the tomatoes. There are two tomatoe plants and it's possible that one of them is related to kudzu. It's taking over everything. It's completely overpowered a rosemary bush, is stretching over the second tomato plant and into the sunflowers on one side, and is just about to choke the life out of a zucchini plant in the other direction. It's crawling up the fence and has spilled over the garden wall to cover half of a large planting of lantana. I'm picking tomatos every other day and routinely filling a large mixing bowl just off of the one plant. It's insane.

Mom and my sister are both off of nightshades for the time being, and there are way too many tomatoes for me and my family to eat by ourselves. We're snacking on as many as we can, but I've started cutting them up and freezing them, too. So far we've put away 13 pints, and I'm pretty sure that I have about that many still sitting on my kitchen counter waiting for me to deal with them.

In terribly exciting news, the sad, sad little tomato plants in my garden have actually bloomed. I noticed today that one of them actually has four tiny green tomatoes on it. I was so excited that I almost fell over. Tomatoes from my own backyard! I mentioned it to Bug while we were making dinner and it stopped him in his tracks. He wanted to go see and pick them rightthatverysecond. I'll try to get some pictures of these plants for comparison.

Barnslig Skirts for the Store

2011-06-18T02:02:00.001-05:00

In this last little burst of sewing, I've gotten a few new skirts in the store. (They're listed at both froglovesmonkey.com and on Etsy.)

I love this Barnslig print from Ikea. LOVE it.

Every time I think I've decided which part of the print I love the most, I move my eyes and land on another bit that makes me happy and THAT'S my favorite bit. (The lion! No...the elephant! Wait. Is that a giraffe? I love the giraffe!) I am pretty partial to that lion, though. ;)

I've only listed skirts in a few girl's sizes, but have plenty of fabric in case anyone needs a different size.

I'm tempted to make another mei tai out of it, too. I so love Boo's.

Chrysalis #1

2011-06-18T01:49:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a new, crib-sized quilt. As much as starting another project kind of makes me cringe a little, I'm pushing ahead with this one, anyway. It's actually for the shop, so its work and not just play. ;)

I bought some of Moda's fabulous Chrysalis fabrics and just love them. I was kind of worried that they were going to be too girly or too...something...but they're really quite awesome. Butterflies and flowers, but the prints and colors are just great.

I wanted to do something that would really focus on the prints, so decided to pair them with solids. After much hemming and hawing, I chose yellow, turquoise and green. It was a difficult choice. The orange and brown are great. Perhaps I'll use orange and brown for the second quilt. Hmm...

The squares are simple - again, to focus on the prints.

I'm not sure that the individual blocks really give a good idea of what the quilt looks like put together. And the quilting is adding something nice. I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I wasn't able to get it quilted all at once but, well, real life and all that. I'm quite please with how it's coming together, and can't wait until I can post a picture of the finished product.

Giveaway Prize

2011-05-30T20:29:00.000-05:00

Lynn, if you want to be surprised by the mug rug you've won, look away!

Everyone else...check this out. :)

I muddled over quite a few ideas and pulled out many, many different fabrics before I settled on the Giveaway Day winning mug rug. (And, truth be told, there was a point that I wasn't certain that I was headed in the right direction with this design. Thanks to Mom and Benah for the encouragement.) I wanted to work in as many of Lynn's likes as possible, but it also needed to work as a whole. After messing with some other layouts, I came back to doing a small log cabin. Largely because I heart them so much myself. I wanted it to look kind of traditional, but not be just a log cabin square bound as a mug rug.

Choosing the fabrics was fun. My initial plan was to work through the color scale of orange to yellow to green to blue and, ideally have the colors move from lighter to darker shades. And it looked silly. So I moved things around a bit until it felt right, and ended up dropping the blue fabrics out completely. And then most of the green. It just wasn't gelling right, and the mug rug was going to end up a massive log cabin square.

So, focusing on yellow and orange and a touch of green, I came up with:

And a fun green on the back, where you can see the quilting a bit better.

I hope it suits your tastes, Lynn! :)

Putting the Kids to Work: Craft Hope, Project #12: Orphan Outreach

2011-05-28T21:27:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Deb over at Works In Progress, I discovered Craft Hope.

I've been looking for an organization like Craft Hope. There are many days that I'm reminded that, as little as it feels like we have some times, as tight as our budget might be, we are SO SO SO very lucky to have the lives that we have here. And I like the idea of being able to share...something...with someone else who might need it. I can't donate large funds, but I can make stuff with my hands and my heart.

Enter Craft Hope.

For their Project #12, they're sending bracelets to Russian orphans. I can make bracelets. Bug can make bracelets. My niece and nephew can make bracelets.

So I picked up a big bin of beads and some elastic cord (which I had, but not much of) on my way over to hang out at Mom's today. Bug and I gave them a trial run and I think that we have a stunning Memorial Day craft. :)

Man-Quilt: The Beginning

2011-05-28T21:07:00.000-05:00

(I haven't forgotten about announcing secondary winners for the SMS giveaway. Promise.)

Once upon a time, I was involved in a fun quilting bee. Life happened and I fell behind. I caught up again. But I TOTALLY FORGOT that January was my month to send out fabric. D'oh. I scrambled to get some fabric ordered, but by the time it all arrived it was a little late to get stuff out. We talked about pushing me back in the lineup and the way life worked out, I kind of slipped out of the bee. (As far as I know there were no hard feelings.)

After much debate, I'd determined to send out fabric for Richard's quilt. He picked out the fabric and we talked about what he was looking for in a quilt. He decided on a wonky square-in-a-square.

But then there wasn't a bee to send it out to, so the fabrics just kind of been hanging out...

Reopeneing my store and gearing up for Giveaway Day had me all crafty and wanting to be productive. So I pulled out Richard's fabric and decided to start working on that.

I cut strips of fabric.

And then I started to sew... I was able to get three done the first day, and three the next afternoon. They were going fairly quickly and I'd hoped to get a few more finished, but the three year old had other plans.

And the Winner is...

2011-05-26T15:02:00.000-05:00

Thank you all so much to everyone who visited the blog and decided to enter the giveaway. It was much more popular than I expected it to be and I'm thrilled that so many of you decided to follow the blog as well. Hopefully you'll stick around a bit and enjoy it. :)

Before I announce a winner, I want to say that I wish I could have chosen everyone. Seriously. The comments that were posted were so much fun that I wish I could make a mug rug for everyone who took the time to enter, but I'm afraid that postage would kill me. That said, I AM going to chose more than the initial randomly chosen winner. There were a couple of comments that put such a clear picture into my mind that I can't NOT make those mug rugs. I'm going to announce those winners in a second post, though.

So. For the moment that you've been waiting for...

I used Random.org to choose a winner, but I'm not certain how to post the screen shot. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Our winner is...#34, wooLynn, who said: "What a great giveaway! I like greens, blues, yellows, orange and natural linen but not red and no pastels. I would use it on my craft table maybe for coffee and a snack or to place my rug hooking scissors and hook. Log cabin with various widths or a random type of patchwork would be cool."

I'll be contacting you to get your address and I'll get started on your mug rug as soon as I hear back from you. I'm really looking forward to creating a mug rug for you - the ideas are already starting to flow!

And, everyone else, watch for the second post. I'm going to mull over the other entries and narrow down my favorites, then make another post later today.

Thank you all!

Giveaway Day!

2011-05-23T05:43:00.000-05:00

Welcome, welcome to everyone who's visiting as part of Sew, Mama, Sew's May Giveaway Day!

Up for grabs today is your very own mug rug. Don't know what a mug rug is? By definition, it's a quilted piece of artwork larger than a standard coaster and smaller than a placemat, used as a resting place for a beverage and a snack. But often used for many other things. ;) (I'll be honest. I have one next to my computer that I use as intended. And one next to my sewing machine as a resting place for my scissors so I always know where they are.)

This mug rug will be made JUST FOR YOU, based off of a short list of likes.

What do you have to do to enter? Easy-peasy. Just post here on the blog with a few things that tickle your fancy. "I love orange and hexies and want to use the mug rug as a resting place for my cat's food bowl." (I'd be sure to add a waterproof liner!) Or, maybe "Polka dots make me shout with joy and I really like anything round. But I don't care much for blue." Or even "Elephants are my favorite animals. Ever. And I kind of like stripes." You get the picture. Just make sure that I have some way of contacting you if you win. Blog followers get a second entry, free of charge. Just post again letting me know that you are. (New blog followers welcome!)

Entries will be accepted from right now through May 25th (I'll close submissions in the wee hours of May 26th) and I'll get working on the mug rug as soon as the winner has been contacted and responded, so that it can go into the mail quickly.

Good luck and have fun with all of the giveaways! (And be sure to check out my TWO giveaways at frog loves monkey! You have lots and lots of chances to win there!)

Bug Cam

2011-05-21T19:23:00.002-05:00

I love these photos. The "Is this thing on?" check. Makes my heart smile.

Solo

2011-05-21T19:18:00.000-05:00

Meet Solo.

It was not my intention to get another cat after we lost Pie. Our pet losses have been high this past year: Hope adopted abruptly just before we left Texas, Emma left behind, Elliott and Lili succumbing to a hereditary heart defect, and then Pie giving in to his age. I kind of thought we'd give Chin a go at being a single kitty, keep our hearts open and if the universe decided that we needed another cat, we'd take it in.

Enter the three year old.

Not long (at all) after Pie passed away, Bug floored me. We were playing with a very affectionate Chin when Bug told me "Miso needs a friend who isn't dead".

...ouch.

I put in a call about a cat I'd seen on craigslist that spoke to me, and the kids and I took off to meet him. Solo. So named because he was all alone in the world when the family we adopted him from found him. Though lots of people prefer to think it's a Star Wars reference. ;)

He was a pathetic little baby kitten when he was discovered. The family he'd been living with already had a cat and a dog and had no intention of keeping him, but took Solo in, fed him, cleaned him up, got him to the vet, etc. He was ten months old when we met him (and there goes my "no more kittens!" rule, right out the window) and the three boys in the family had gotten quite attached.

The woman we adopted him from felt that we were a good match for Solo (Bug took to him instantly and was very gentle - yay!), but I wanted to talk to Richard about it, and I hated the idea of taking the cat while her oldest son was at school. Not getting to say goodbye is hard. I wasn't going to do that to someone else's kid. We went home, I talked to Richard, she talked to her son, and we went back that evening.

Solo has been a real sweetie, and fit into our house very quickly. I expected it to take a few weeks before Chin and Solo were okay with each other, but they'd stopped hissing at one another by the end of the second day, and were tentative buddies the day after that. Now they're inseparable.

Solo is still very much a kitten - very active and playful - but also quite mature and thoughtful. He'll attack anything that moves (so he's not a good bedroom kitty at night), but if he knows that there's a person beneath the movement, he will NOT put out his claws. Bug can use him as a pillow, and Solo's okay with it.

(That's an early morning sleepy-face, not sad.)

I'm glad he's here.

Mug Rug Swap - Round 4

2011-05-19T01:41:00.001-05:00

I got involved in the Mug Rug swap on flickr just in time for round two. (And I'll have to look back to see just what I've posted about that...) I didn't really need another hobby, but I think I might be hooked. They're great. Tiny little quilts, big enough for a beverage and a snack. Relatively quick to put together, small enough that you can experiment and they have the potential to be stinkin' cute.

...so I'm still going with the swap. ;)

This is a blind swap, so I'm not at liberty to name my partner just yet. Soon. For now, I'll say that I was a little bit stumped on what to do for her. She gave some really great information and I didn't expect to get stuck, but I did. I latched on to her love of "kitschy" and decided to run with it...only, how exactly would SHE define the word? I did some flickr stalking and fabric eyeballing, and ended up with this selection:

(Warning: crappy night time cell phone photos ahead!)

The Alexander Henry chicken fabric was something that I came across at Joanne's and didn't even realize what it was. But it tickled me, so I abandoned my previous kitschy idea and let the rooster lead.

I was pleased. Sort of.

I posted the pictures as a sneak peek to the group (which is suggested). It was well received. But it just didn't feel quite right for it's intended owner. I stalked some more. I eyeballed some more. I went back to my original plan (and ended up with another Alexander-Henry-found-at-Joanne's fabric), and then abandoned it again.

I settled on bunting. Because it's kind of fun, the design appeared very clearly in my head and (most importantly), my partner says she likes bunting.

I posted another sneak peek.

These photos were also well received. And I have it on good authority that the person I'm making this for will be pleased. So I'm ecstatic.

My original binding plan (polka dots) really, really, really didn't work out. WAY too busy. So I settled on black. I think it frames it nicely.

It's kind of hard to tell in the photo, but I've quilted the front with big fluffy clouds. It seemed to fit. :)

The back is quilted separately, straight lines. I didn't figure I could go wrong with a little straight line quilting. And I totally stole the tagging idea from some of the other swappers. Had a stamp made up and heat set the ink on twill tape. Brilliant. Tagging is normally pretty stressful, but I love this. It's easy-peasy, and I think it's super cute, too.

And, this time, I've gathered a few things to round out the package. In addition to the mug rug - which I hope she enjoys! - I'm sending a mug, some teas in flavors that her profile suggests that she'll enjoy, a tin of sentimental candies and an Arizona-themed postcard. Can't wait to see what she thinks of it!

First Harvests

2011-05-19T01:15:00.000-05:00

In addition to the sunflowers, Mom's garden has already started producing a fairly nice bounty. She's collecting a good number of tomatoes, zucchini and squash daily. The radishes are ready too, though I'm really the only one who seems to be eating them - and I've learned to like them only because Bug enjoys picking them so much.

It's been a lot of fun to go over every day and help to pick the ripe veggies. And even more fun to take them inside and immediately turn them into lunch.

We also picked and cooked a number of the radishes, though I forgot to take a picture of them. I was pleased to discover that cooking radishes mellows them quite a bit. First attempt was tasty, though a bit bland. I'm looking forward to experimenting now.

And, even though they're not quite ready yet, Mom let Bug pick a couple of carrots. We all agreed that they were quite tasty.

Sunflowers!

2011-05-19T01:09:00.000-05:00

My mom's garden is AMAZING. (Well talk about mine later.)

One of the many things that she's growing this year is sunflowers. Thanks to craigslist, I stumbled across a gentleman who was looking to rehome some that were growing wild in his yard (volunteers from his own garden) and came home with many. All of mine died. Mom's are doing quite well.

The first to bloom though, was one that grew up wild in a random pot, from a seed that fell from a bird feeder.

It's gorgeous.

And tall! Bug was so excited when the sunflower finally bloomed that he actually let me take his picture with it. I'm not sure what's up with the affected smile. ;) For reference, Bug stands right at three feet tall these days.

Pie

2011-05-19T00:37:00.001-05:00

At the end of March, we lost our beloved kitty, Pie. He would have been seventeen years old in April.

This has been particularly difficult for me to talk about. Probably because it's May and I have yet to really let myself grieve. Probably because we've been in Arizona for almost a year and I have yet to really emotionally handle much of anything that's happened over the last year. There is a lot of grief and anger for me to deal with and I've kind of put my energies into dealing with what was in front of me, instead of why it was there or how I felt about it.

But we're talking about Pie.

Pie came to us the summer of 1994, when Richard and I moved back to Houston. We sublet a little apartment for three months while we looked for someplace to live and volunteered with the Homeless Pet Placement League that summer. They brought Earl Grey into our lives. He was 2.5 years old, fluffy and full of awesome. He also adopted a tiny, flighty, homeless kitten...Pie. And I do mean that Earl adopted him. After a good bit of time and a whole lot of coaxing, I was able to get close enough to the kitten to snag him and get him into our apartment, but he didn't let anyone else near him. Just Earl. Earl, who cleaned him and cuddled him and played with him. I'd never seen anything like that before. It was amazing.

Several months later, Earl came down with a bug of some sort. He was still owned by HPPL at the time (though I was fairly certain that we were going to be keeping him at that point), so they took him for a whole week to get him to the vet. Pie freaked. That poor kitten was lost. On the sixth night, he finally approached me, and I sat on the kitchen floor with him for a very long time. After that, he was my baby. It took another year-and-a-half before he let Richard touch him.

Fast forward. We had many cats come into our lives and leave again under various circumstances. Earl had obviously been an outside cat at some point and eventually turned into and indoor/outdoor cat at our house. When we took in a litter of kittens (he was about ten at the time), he started spending more and more time outside and finally took up residence (on his own terms) with a family who lived down the street. I still put food out for him and he'd come over and say hello when I was outside, but he let it be known that he was his own cat thankyouverymuch. Pie became our old man.

When we moved to Arizona last summer, he was showing his age. He'd had a tumor of some sort in his tail for years. We had it checked out and it wasn't cancerous, but he was going to lose his tail if they removed it (which they wanted to do because it had a tendency to swell and then explode like a giant blood blister, which is as disgusting as it sounds), but he was getting more frail and there was a fear that he wouldn't survive the surgery.

I think it's safe to say that pretty much everyone was shocked at how well he'd handled Bug. I mean, Pie was pretty much the center of my home universe and he was kind of used to being king of my heart. He didn't care much for change, and certainly hadn't cared much for the various kittens he'd been exposed to. That Bug latched onto him and they became buddies was somewhat amazing.

Pie was awesome with Bug. Just awesome. Bug could do anything to Pie, and Pie would take it. Body slams, using Pie as a pillow...whatever. It would make my mother cringe to watch, but Pie loved Bug and Bug loved Pie.

When we moved into our own house, Pie got to start spending some time outside. Really, only because he was too old to get over the fence, so we knew he'd have to stay in the yard where we could see him and where he couldn't get into too much trouble. He loved eating the weeds, keeping tabs on what Bug was up to, and acting like he could take on the neighbor's giant, barking dog. It revitalized him.

(Hovercat!)

And then...he got sick. Fast. We woke up one morning and he'd been throwing up. The best I was able to tell, he'd jumped up on the counter and decided to drink the sugar-water that Bug and I had mixed up as hummingbird food. I thought it had just upset his stomach, but he just didn't get better. Even when he stopped throwing up, he just never got his strength back. It wasn't much of a surprise when we came home from Mom's one night and found him.

I miss him so very much.

Pie (1994-2011)

'Make Life' Hair Pillow

2011-04-13T23:44:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I ordered my very first fabric jelly roll. Make Life. I loved it and had this vague plan of what I wanted to do with it to make something really nifty for my mom. I started sewing things together (thank goodness, not cutting anything!) and very quickly realized that I wasn't feeling the project. It was just kind of wrong. So I put it aside.

Then my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and my mom and I discussed using the multi-color text fabric to make her something really awesome for her healing room. It turned out that the colors she used in there worked perfectly to make something really pretty...but by then no one had any more of that fabric (who was willing to give it up without me signing over my firstborn), so I tried to figure out what else I could do.

When my sister started losing her hair and decided to shave her head, someone said something about a hair pillow. I was given a little baggie with a handful of my sister's gorgeous auburn hair in it. When it came time for clean-up, I bagged the rest as well.

Eventually, the Make Life hair pillow was born.

Front:

Back:

Quilting:

Finished!

Two issues with the finished project:

1 - I made it a little too large. With the way the hair compressed, the finished pillow is plesantly squashy, but a little thin.

2 - The hair pokes out of the pillow! I'd hoped that the quilting would prevent that, and it does to some extent, but I probably should have put another layer of fabric inside as another barrier.

Prickly or not, I'm thrilled that she really likes it. :)

Erm...

2011-04-13T23:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, really. Just a lot going on. I've written a bunch of posts in my head that will probably never actually get posted on the blog (I MUST remember the draft feature!) and have a bajillion (more or less) photos to sort and resize. On it... ;)

Conversation from the Backseat

2011-02-25T19:52:00.000-06:00

While we were out running errands today...

Bug: "Daddy, what's that?"

Richard (who was driving): "What's what?"

Bug: "That."

Richard: "What's 'that'?"

Bug: "THAT."

Richard: "WHAT 'that'?"

cBug: "THAT! What I'm pointing at!"

100th Post

2011-02-21T23:31:00.000-06:00

I'll admit that I've kind of been holding on to posts for a little while of late. There's been a lot going on, too, but watching those post numbers creeping towards 100 had me wanting to do something to acknowledge what kind of feels like something of a milestone. Except that I really haven't been able to come up with anything that felt right.

So perhaps the best thing I can do to celebrate hitting 100 posts is to just keep on posting?

frog loves monkey blog

2011-02-18T17:52:00.000-06:00

The shop has it's own blog! froglovesmonkey.blogspot.com

It's still in a fledgling state, but will be growing. :)

Bug on...Bugs

2011-01-19T01:41:00.000-06:00

This afternoon as we were digging out the backyard, we uncovered a live grub. (This was a better find than yesterday's small, dead worm.) I picked it up and showed it to Bug, who recoiled and declared that he didn't want to see or touch it because it was "too yucky".

I commented that some people eat grubs. Bug thought this was fascinating and asked if I could cook the grub for him.

Me: "You don't want to touch it because it's too yucky, but you want to eat it?"

Bug: "I want to touch it with my mouth."

Grubs were NOT on the menu for today... (Though I did find a decent sounding recipe should it come up again. The idea kind of turns my stomach, but I'd try it if my kids really wanted to.)

Yummiest. Lemonade. Ever.

2011-01-18T01:17:00.000-06:00

It went too quickly to get pictures!

Mom and Art went to California to visit his family awhile ago and came back with a LOT of absolutely beautiful Meyer lemons. (Which I think I have a photo of somewhere... hrm...) We've been using them, but not all that quickly and Mom was kind of worried that they were going to end up going bad before they were used.

Richard and Bug to the rescue!

After last weeks orange juice, they were ready to squeeze. :)

Turning the lemon juice into lemonade fell to me. I was kind of worried about messing up - even though I know that lemonade is basically lemon juice, water and lots of sugar - so I poked around online a little bit and looked over a handful of recipes to see where the similarities were. It pretty much ended at lemon juice, water and sugar. ;)

Richard and Bug squeezed just shy of two cups of lemon juice. I boiled two cups of water, dissolved one cup of sugar into that and, AFTER the sugar was dissolved, poured the lemon juice in. Once that was nicely combined, I added four cups of cold water and decanted into pitchers.

Even though I only used half of the sugar recommended by a large portion of the recipes that I'd seen, it was still REALLY sweet. Richard ended up watering his down whenever he poured a glass. I kind of like my sweet. ;) (As a note, Meyer lemons are sweeter than other varieties, so the 2:2:1 ratio should result in a not-as-sweet lemonade if using different lemons.)

Enjoy and I'll try to get some pictures next time. We still have lemons!

365 Day 3: January 4

2011-01-04T14:35:00.001-06:00

365 Day 2: January 3

2011-01-04T00:41:00.003-06:00

365 Day 1: January 2

2011-01-04T00:41:00.000-06:00

Conversations from the Back Seat

2010-12-29T23:58:00.000-06:00

A conversation with Bug:

Bug: "I don't like fingernails."

Me: "You don't like fingernails?"

Bug: "Nope. They're not good."

Me: *pause* "You mean to eat?"

Bug: "Yeah."

Easy-Peasy Truffles

2010-12-26T15:36:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone had a really nice time celebrating their winter holiday of choice. :)

We had a really great time and I'm looking forward to sharing some pictures a little later. Right now I'm just too wiped out to resize photos, so I'll talk about food instead. No pictures because it was all DEVOURED, but I made some yummy truffles to contribute to the holiday food selection. It's becoming a bit of a tradition. :)

I know that this recipe came from somewhere, but it's been a few years and I couldn't say where. Apologies. I'd like to offer credit where it's due.

These truffles are SO STINKIN' GOOD...and remarkably simple. You need baking chocolate - in a form that will melt - and cream cheese. Whatever amount of cream cheese you want to use, have double the amount of chocolate. Or equal parts of two different chocolates.

Melt 1/2 of your chocolate. I do this on the stove so that I can watch it, but I suppose you could do it in the microwave and just keep an eye on it. You don't want it to burn.

Once the chocolate is melted, mix in your cream cheese. (I tried this over low heat this time because I was using a block of cream cheese and it worked out okay. Just watch your heat.)

Once the cream cheese and melted chocolate are mixed together, put it in the fridge to cool. About two hours.

When the chocolate and cream cheese mixture have set up a bit, remove from the fridge and melt the last half of your chocolate. Form balls of the chocolate and cream cheese mixture and dip in the melted chocolate. Set aside for coating to harden and then enjoy.

I tried something different this year and used almond bark for the truffle innards and Wilton meltaways for the coating. They turned out nicely when the finished product was stuck in the freezer, but I wouldn't recommend it for truffles you'd like to leave out for the grabbing. The almond bark had a lot more oil/fat in it and never really solidifed the way I'm used to. Luckily, the meltaways hardened and held the truffles together. Next time, I'll just spring for the good chocolate to begin with. (In the past I've used both Hershey and Ghirardelli. Both work beautifully.)

Skirt in Action

2010-12-21T10:18:00.000-06:00

So it turns out that my niece likes the skirt I made for her birthday. (Yay!)

She was wearing it when we went over the other day and I tried to get a picture...but three year olds rarely stand still...

Felt Eggs and a Sort-Of Tutorial

2010-12-21T10:12:00.000-06:00

I've been in love with play food for awhile. We started collecting it when Bug was about eight months old. (We got an awesome crocheted set of fruit and veggies from my friend Crystal at Loin Cloth. I highly recommend asking her for a set.) When Bug got his play kitchen for Christmas last year, we added a fairly good selection of wooden food. We've never managed any felt food, though I've been eyeballing it for awhile. It's just so cool looking!

After having read a million and four tutorials on making felt (not felted...still out of my league) play food, I decided to take the plunge and try to whip some up in time for Christmas. I'll split what I make between Bug and his best friend back in Texas, who's been really into his kitchen and store set-up.

Here's my take on eggs. And I aplogize if I'm essentially repeating someone else's tutorial. I've read a lot of them and absorbed a lot of tips from different places but ended up winging it. Not trying to steal from anyone. :)

I started with two sheets of off-white and one of yellow-orange poly felt. I would have preferred wool, but it was outside of my budget.

On one sheet of off-white felt, I drew egg-y shapes. I managed five, though with better planning I think I could have gotten six to fit. Sorry, no photo of that step.

I found a round lid that was a good size for the egg-y shapes, and cut circles out of the yellow felt. Pinned them in place on top of the single sheet of off-white.

Because I thought it would look nice, I used a zig-zag to stitch the yolks in place.

When the yolk pieces were almost sewn into place, I paused and stuffed just a tiny bit of stuffing beneath. I was thrilled to discover bamboo fill but, again, the poly stuff was in my price range. Wool roving or small fabric scraps would also work. Or you could just leave them flat. That looked nice too, but I wanted them a little puffy.

Once all the yolks were sewn into place, I pinned the second off-white sheet of felt to the back (to add a bit of thickness and make them a tiny bit more stiff) and stitched just inside the lines I'd drawn. When all of the eggs had been sewn together, I cut between the stitching and the drawn lines and...voila! Eggs!

Mud Day

2010-12-21T09:45:00.000-06:00

Bug was playing with a bucket of water at the new house a few days ago. Lots of splashy fun and I was kind of surprised by how relatively clean he managed to stay.

And then there was the clean up. In which the bucket of water was dumped out. And we had MUD!

He had a blast!

Check out those shoes. They were the only pair he had that day...

Finished: Set of Pajama Pants

2010-12-21T01:56:00.000-06:00

I actually should have posted this one a few days ago.

A friend of mine contacted me awhile back and asked about getting some pajama pants made for her family for Christmas. Three matching sets - for herself, her husband and their two year old son. We talked about it a little bit, it got put on the back burner for awhile, then was revived and turned into a real project.

She picked the most awesome fabric and Joanne's had it for next to nothing...until I went to the store the following morning and discovered that the sale had ended the previous evening. The fabric was going to cost four times as much as we'd expected. It took a week to hunt down the fabric in the proper amount for three pair of pants and, after talking to the store manager, another two or three days before we were able to get it at a reasonable price. (Lesson learned? It doesn't hurt to ask!)

I only managed a decent(ish) picture of little E's pants - and even that one was taken at around midnight so the lighting is terrible. I loved how the pants turned out though (and I LOVE her fabric choice!). She received them quickly and seemed very, very happy with them. (Yay!) I can't wait to hear how they work out.

Ohmigosh...winnings!

2010-12-19T22:14:00.000-06:00

You read that right...winnings! With an s!

Sew, Mama, Sew had a Giveaway Day on December 13th. I first learned of Giveaway Day last time, during May. There were so many neat giveaways but, even better, it was a great way to learn about some great new blogs. I wanted to take part this time but there's been more than just a little bit going on here lately. So I perused the lists and looked at blogs and entered a few giveaways. And won! Two!

The first was put on by ex libris handmade, for a custom bunting. I'm really excited about it. I think that it'll be awesome to hang up in the playroom at the new house.

The second was put on by Affectioknit, for a beautiful handmade felt ornament. I love these and was so excited to see my name listed among the winners!

I'm looking forward to May's Giveaway day, when I can give back to someone else.:)

A Gift for Grandma

2010-12-13T00:51:00.000-06:00

So that charm pack that I received with my mug rug? It's already been chopped up and rearranged and sent to Texas as a Christmas gift for my grandmother. Initially, I thought that a set of placemats and coasters would be a great idea...but I was limited to the charm pack and some Kona red. I considered a couple of hot pads and coasters, but that seemed...small? So I decided on the table runner.

I tried a disappearing nine-patch for the table runner - three sets with the blocks rearranged more or less at random. There was a pattern, but I certainly couldn't explain it verbally.

Close-up of part of the front. Pretty prints. :)

I quilted around specific blocks, which is easier to see from the back.

Twelve squares were turned into a set of coasters.

I LOVE the way this turned out and have been eyeballing charm squares to make another...

Mug Rug Received

2010-12-13T00:14:00.000-06:00

A few days ago, I received an awesome little package from Hope (GoingSewCrazy) from the scrappy mug rug swap. It was amazing! The mug rug is super duper cute, and she included some amazing goodies.

The mug is super cute - Richard said we need to find three more to make a set - and the fabric! Bug was so excited to see it in the box that he snatched it out of my hand and kept asking "Is it fabic? Is it mine? Can I have it?" He ripped the wrapper off before I could get a picture of the charm pack all together. It's Moda's "12 Days of Christmas". I don't usually go for holiday themed fabric, but these were awesome all together.

Here's a picture of just the mug rug. Check out the cute cloud quilting. :)

(And now I can say that my little robot mug rug went to Kendra. You might recognize the name from a June bee block post. I thought it was super cool that, from a pool of something like 120 people, I was paired with someone that I "know".)

Bug's Obession

2010-12-12T23:51:00.000-06:00

This is what we see from the kitchen at my mom's house. A gorgeous orange tree that Bug has been eyeballing for almost six months. Now that the oranges are actually *orange*, he's been chomping at the bit to eat one. Daily, he'll exclaim "They're ripe!" We tested one a week or so ago and it was still pretty bitter. This week, they're MUCH better. And he's been eating as many as we'll allow him to have. :)

A Birthday Skirt

2010-12-10T19:05:00.000-06:00

I have so much to blog about that it's not even funny... But I'll tackle it one post at a time, yes? :)

Nearly two weeks ago now, my niece turned three. She is a sweet, amazing, smart, beautiful little girl and I wanted to give her a really amazing gift. Lucky for me, even though she's discovered Disney's Princesses, she also tends to be a fan of NON-Disney stuff. She also loves purple. A lot.

I went around and around trying to decide what to do, and kept coming back to a t-shirt that I'd set aside to "do something cool with"...but I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do. At not-quite-the-eleventh hour, I decided to make her a skirt. It was remarkably simple and went together super fast.

It was cute...but lacking something. So I appliqued a little flower on the hem. I free-handed the flower (which was scary as crap to do on a finished garment), and was really happy with how it turned out.

The applique is finished, but rough on the edges so it'll fray a bit in the was and with wear.

I haven't heard yet if she liked it or not. (But I enjoyed it so I'll probably be making some more anyway. ;) )

Mug Rug Finish!

2010-11-21T02:44:00.001-06:00

(First, I know...I totally dropped the ball on NaBloPoMo. But that's not the point of this post.)

Because I don't have *quite* enough on my plate, I decided awhile back that I REALLY wanted to take part in the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap. I watched the last round come to close, drooling over all of the terribly creative and oh-so-cute things that people thought up and I HAD to get my name on the list for the holiday/everyday round!

This is a blind swap, so I know who I'm making for (though I can't say yet!), but not who's making one for me. Very exciting!

I was lucky to be somewhat familiar with the photostream of the person who's name I was given. Not saying any more than that so that I don't drop too many clues, but I was at least vaguely familiar with some of what she's done recently. It was kind of cool to see that I'd drawn her name. :) And the questionnaire thing we filled out gave me some ideas that I probably wouldn't have come up with strictly from looking at her photostream.

After a bit of thought, I knew which fabrics I wanted to use, but hadn't entirely settled on an idea. Tonight, I cut into the fabrics with a plan in mind...and then watched the mug rug take shape on it's own. It's totally not what I had initially planned to make, but it just came together so nicely that I ran with it.

Given the green stripy fabric, straight line quilting seemed the best fit. I did a stitch-in-the-ditch at the edge of each white strip and then eyeballed the interior stitching lines so that they wouldn't be quite even. It seemed like a good idea since the green stripes and the robot are both a little bit wonky and not-straight. It's backed and self-bound in the green fabric. My initial plan was to hand stitch the binding in place, but I kind of liked the idea of visible, light stitching. Doing it by machine kept the stitches even and, I hope, seem a little more "robotic".

Or maybe I'm just talking out my ear.

At any rate, I'm pleased with how the mug rug turned out and I hope that my partner likes it, too. We still have a few days before it has to be in the mail and I'm contemplating a holiday themed mug rug as well. (She didn't specify one way or the other.) I've got an idea for that one too, but the way this one took off on it's own, I'll have to see what happens when I start working with the fabric...

(This mug rug finished at 7 1/4 by 9 1/4 inches.)

Now it's REALLY Official

2010-11-12T21:33:00.000-06:00

We signed the paperwork on the house this morning. It's OURS.

*big silly goofy grin*

We spent most of the day over there, mostly kicking around and doing little things. We changed the locks on the doors, mowed the lawn, tested different paint colors on the wall. Having done that with a two year old helper, I really should have taken some pictures today. (Unfortunately, my batteries died.) Bug played in the yard all.day.long and had a blast. Boo rolled around on the various pallets we made and watched her brother play and laughed at us.

It was pretty awesome. :)

Simon's Cat

2010-11-11T20:14:00.002-06:00

I love Simon's cat.

We Have A House!

2010-11-10T21:49:00.000-06:00

We have a house, we have a house, we have a house!!

Ahem.

I'm a little excited about this. ;)

Contract negotiations ended today. Tomorrow is a holiday, and we close on Friday morning.

I'm totally jazzed. :)

3x6 3rd Quarter - Complete!

2010-11-09T18:25:00.000-06:00

This post is a smidge belated, seeing as Q3 ended in September, but I just recently wrapped up my blocks and received my last package.

The blocks I received from Beehive 5 of the 3x6 Sampler Bee:

Aren't they amazing? I keep getting mesmerized by them. They're all so pretty individually, and I love how they look all together!

Here are the blocks that I sent out:

My tester block, in my colors

For smoochee

For bessiemae

For nikkipeterson

For quiltygirl2

For miesmama

For woolymama

I had so much fun with this (even though I took waaaaay too long), I can't wait to get started on my Q4 blocks!

Four Cousins - First Top Complete!

2010-11-08T23:53:00.000-06:00

Remember these?

Given the move and the new baby and a gajillion other things, it's taken awhile, but I finally got them all chopped up and put back together.

Bug's quilt top is done!

More on the process later...

Camera: Found!

2010-11-07T23:21:00.002-06:00

Good news - I found my camera!

And we went out today (to the dinosaur museum!) and took a gajillion and four pictures. Which I might be overstating just a wee bit.

And, now, I'm sitting at the computer, typing one-handed and trying to move as little as possible because I have a finally-sleeping baby on my shoulder.

So, the pictures will have to wait until tomorrow. Again. Sorry.

How to Pet a Kitty (Link)

2010-11-06T23:55:00.000-05:00

My camera is still MIA, so tonight I'll be phoning in my post. Sorry about that but, if you have a cat, this should make you laugh until you cry.

A friend of mine posted this link from The Oatmeal... "How to Pet a Kitty".

Enjoy!

Farmer's Market Win, Farmer's Market Fail

2010-11-05T22:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve misplaced my camera, so no pictures with this post. Sorry. You’ll just have to deal with exposition today.

As per usual, we headed out to the farmer’s market today. Just me and the kids, and we planned to hit two of them.

The first was a weekly market that we’ve made it to once before. Not huge, but a nice combination of farm fresh produce and artisan items. Everyone’s really nice. Bug got to pet baby goats and the honey guy recognized us. He even remembered that Bug doesn’t get to eat colors and talked him out of buying the green honey stick.

When we got there, we passed by a little girl eating a carrot and Bug decided that he had to have one. I was all for that but, I kid you not, I couldn’t find a single carrot in the market. I’m sure I just overlooked them. We got some pictures with the 180 pound pumpkin, bought some cheese curds, and decided to go check out the second market.

I don’t think the second market happens regularly, but it was listed as a farmer’s market so we decided to go. Turned out to be in a kind of ritzy part of town and not far from the awesome railroad park. I loaded Boo into her stroller and Bug into his mei tai and headed in. There were two other kids there, both older then ten. I kept getting sideways glances. The first table we passed was a woman selling knitted kids caps. Cute stuff. We stopped to look and she asked Bug something about what animals he liked. He said he wanted a carrot and everyone within earshot laughed. Because there were no carrots there. There were $30 kids t-shirts BeDazzled with licensed characters, but no veggies.

We passed by a really neat looking little shop that Bug and I both wanted to go check out, so we did. It was bright and colorful and fun, and pretty packed with stuff. Given that I had Boo in the stroller we didn’t go to deep into the store and we moved really slowly so as to not get anywhere close to the displays. We were finally acknowledged five or ten minutes later, when a woman who worked there finally stepped into the room, breezed past us and told me to be careful because the stroller was a tight fit.

We ended up walking over to the Trader Joe’s in the next parking lot to pick up carrots (Bug said he wanted the “biggest carrot I’ve ever seen!”), some tomato candy (because we’ve all but finished yesterdays) and some more French bread. The people there (customers and employees) were awesome. I’d drive across town for that, but we’ll be skipping the “farmer’s market” there from now on.

Yummy Foods

2010-11-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

(I really will get back to posting on other topics soon. Honest.)

We hit up the farmer's market this afternoon as a family. It was nice to have Richard with us, and he seemed to have a good time. We indulged Bug's honey obsession, though it was difficult to pick which flavor to buy. He got a few honey sticks as usual, including an acid green sour apple flavored one. I don't even want to *think* about what's in it to turn it that shade of green. It was a one time thing though, and he didn't eat that much of it, so I'm just going to let it slide.

For the bigger jar, after a taste test we decided to bring home the desert wildflower honey. I want to say it's from prickly pear, palo verde and chrysanthemum, but I might be making that up. Richard was really, really fond of the mesquite, but Bug and I kind of liked the desert wildflower a little bit more, so... We'll get mesquite next time.

We also picked up a really beautiful honey dipper. Walnut, I think. (I'm not looking at the tag and the screaming baby in my lap is keeping me from looking for it.)

Ooo. We also bought a super yummy chimichurri. No idea what we're doing with it yet - though I'm thinking that it might involve the french bread and goat cheese from the last few markets.

Teeny Tiny Food

2010-11-03T18:31:00.000-05:00

Mom and I took Bug and Boo out to the farmer's market today. (Town and Country this time. Liked it.) It ended up being Teeny Tiny Food Day.

Tomato candy. (Organic heirlooms this time.)

And crabapples! Partially because I've never had one before, but mostly because Bug thought they were cute. They're crispy and tart - apple win!

We also bought some yummy kalamata olive hummus, but ate almost all of it in the car on the way home. It was that good.

Then we stopped by Trader Joe's because I've never been. Picked up some veggie/flax chips (eaten with the hummus in the car) and two mini loaves of french bread.

I don't think I've ever thought my groceries were so cute.

Cat's Claw

2010-11-02T20:34:00.000-05:00

This morning, Bug was in the yard with Mom for awhile. He ran in shouting "Cat's claw, Mommy! It's a cat's claw!"

He's pretty excitable about finding our cat's discarded claws, so I expected him to deposit one into my hand. Except that he always calls those "kitty moons". Today, it was a plant.

Yay, Mom, for teaching him what these deserts plants are called!

NaBloPoMo

2010-11-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

Thanks to A Day in the Life of Val, I've discovered NaBloPoMo. It's essentially NaNoWriMo for blogs. With no word count. Which is a good thing, because a couple of years ago I attempted NaNoWriMo and it was a total disaster.

So, here we go. I'm pledging to do my best to blog every day this month. I'll even try to put up decent content. ;)

Off to upload some pictures, and then I'll have some goodies to talk about...

Greeeeeeeeen!

2010-10-30T01:26:00.000-05:00

Tonight, Bug and I did a mini home pedicure. Meaning, we sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and I painted our toenails. Green. Because it's Bug's favorite color. :)

Farmer's Market Day

2010-10-23T17:38:00.000-05:00

I didn't even know that peppers came in purple before today, but I found this little guy at the farmer's market in downtown Phoenix. Or at the urban market next door, rather.

The farmer's market was AWESOME. So much yummy food and beautiful artisan items.

I really intended to only go and look around today. Kind of get a feel for the market. But then we ran across a woman who was selling, among other things, hand-knit socks for kids. Wool socks. For five dollars. And they were cute.

Bug didn't pick the pair I'd have bought had he not been there, but I'm glad that he was able to choose the ones he liked.

He'll have some (cute!) toasty toes in those this winter!

We're also enjoying some yummy tomato candy (as Bug calls them) today.

Egg Bread

2010-10-21T00:26:00.001-05:00

Oh yes, the bread machine and I will become VERY good friends. Two loaves in one day!

Egg bread! SO soft and yummy!

3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Place all ingredients in bread pan as directed by manufacturer. Select
Light Crust setting.

This recipe yields 1 loaf.

Recipe here, again.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

2010-10-20T16:32:00.000-05:00

Today, I took on the bread machine. And won.

1 cup warm water
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups bread flour
1/2 cup oatmeal -- not quick-cook
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Combine ingredients in bread maker per your manufacturer's instructions.
Select "Basic/White" bread setting; crust color as desired.

This recipe yields 1 loaf.

Recipe found here.

It's really yummy (we've already devoured almost the entire loaf and it's been out of the bread maker for about twenty minutes!) and I want to make more right this instant. The house smells SO good.

An Awesome Gift

2010-10-20T04:27:00.000-05:00

The ladies from the Live Laugh Bee completely surprised me this past week. They made a quilt for Boo!

It was such a sweet gift, and such a surprise. Knocked my socks off. And made me cry.

Love that polka dot binding!

We ALL love the quilt, and it's getting plenty of use. Boo has napped on it. Bug has slept under it and periodically steals it. I curl up on the couch with it. (Well, with it over my legs, anyway.) My sister even got to use it at her most recent chemo treatment.

This quilt is loved.

Two Months of Sew Bee Wonky

2010-10-20T04:09:00.000-05:00

Sew Bee Wonky - Another bee that I'm not behind in! If you don't consider that I haven't done my October blocks yet. (But I just got the fabric?)

For August, Kellie requested wonky houses.

I can not describe how much fun this little block was to put together. I stressed over it for way too long, so worried that I was going to completely mess up her little bits of fabric and then have to figure out how to fix it and make it work. No need to worry. Pretty much anything goes with wonky houses, and they're so stinkin' cute.

For September, Paige requested wonky log cabin blocks. (Yay!) She sent some of the most delicious fabrics.

Yep, that's Mendocino in there. I heart Mendocino. And check out those awesome little bicycles!

The only thing I had trouble with was making the blocks big enough. Even though I was careful not to cut into the long strips before I had to, I still ended up a bit shy. The first blocks needed one more strip. The second was considerably smaller.

Next up...more wonky stars. :)

Live Laugh Bee - Catching Up

2010-10-20T03:47:00.000-05:00

Aside from two blocks this week, I haven't actually done any sewing for Live Laugh Bee in a little bit. All caught up, if you can believe it! (Well, sort of. More on that in a moment.) I just never got around to posting pictures.

Here's what's been going on:

Kelly requested confetti blocks. I LOVE the blue fabrics that she picked out. Blue, black and teensy little bits of gold in some of the prints. Very pretty. And she's planning to quilt with sashiko stitching, which should be gorgeous.

My second block came out a tad small. I ran out of white fabric and couldn't find any in the right weight to sub in. She requested that we just send small blocks if that happened.

Then Sarah requested wonky log cabin blocks. I think wonky log cabins are my all time favorite. Super easy to put together, lots of fun to put together, and I always love the way they look. Sarah sent a TON of fun batiks to choose from, too.

Of course, as soon as I finished Sarah's blocks I realized that I had done them wrong.

*headdesk*

She wanted then wonky, but with traditional styling. You'll note that I intermixed the blues and greens instead of putting blues together on one side and greens together on the other. Gah. Lucky for me, these will be simple enough to rip apart and put back together properly. Also lucky that she sent so much fabric in case I need to add a little more. She also said that we could add some of our own fabrics if we have any that tie in, and I know I have some blue and green batik.

Ursula's blocks, for October, have been so much fun. She sent out the same fabrics that I have waiting to turn into my nephew's quilt. She requested flying geese blocks for a little boy's quilt. It was so much fun getting to play with these fabrics and seeing how they look with the various solid colors (which I still have to choose for my project) before I've cut into my fabric.

The other blocks turning up in the flickr group look great. I can't wait to see how she puts them all together!

Modern 12 Bee Block

2010-10-20T03:24:00.000-05:00

Ohmygosh. I can't believe that it's taken me so long to post a blog update. SO much has been going on and I keep taking pictures and writing mental notes on posts and then I never seem to have my hands free when I'm awake enough to actually do anything with all of that information. Or, at least not when there's nothing else that seems to need my immediate attention.

So, here's a tidbit. And I'll try to get the rest of the goodies posted in a more timely manner.

Today, I did a bit of catching up.

Back in June, I foolishly (considering that I was supposed to have a baby in August) joined the {Modern 12} Bee. It just sounded like too much fun to pass up. We started in July, which was when I actually had the baby..and I've been behind ever sense. Unfortunately, this isn't the only bee I got involved in this summer and I've been a little bit better with catching up in other areas.

Sooooo....I'm four months behind. And, I can barely believe it, but the {Modern 12} ladies have been more than nice and beyond patient with me and haven't kicked me out.

I HAVE actually been working on the blocks. Just not making much headway. So today I dove into September's block and, working in fits and starts throughout the day, managed to get it done this afternoon.

Kristy requested a multi-colored wonky star on a field of gray.

I've been seeing more and more of these stars (and have another to put together for another bee), and haven't really been able to decide how I feel about them. I think I like them. It was certainly fun to put together. Wonky, but it didn't take too much extra figuring to make sure that it worked out properly. And Richard liked it so much that I'm contemplating requesting wonky stars from the bees that will go towards making his quilt. Maybe alternating with log cabins? Would that look cool, or just be entirely too busy? Hmm...

Anyway.

I quite enjoyed putting this star together and I hope that Kristy likes it. If I had just a tad more of the gray fabric, I'd send her a second block. I liked it that much. :)

Now to finish with the hexagons and get a second backlogged block completed...

KCWC: Days Four through Seven

2010-10-06T02:14:00.001-05:00

You'll note the obvious lack of photos in this post. There's a reason for that.

I had almost ZERO time to sew over the remainder of the week.

Hrm... Perhaps the week that my sister started chemo (so I was worried), that my husband had some big work things (so I was juggling two babies) and while (still...) looking for a house (so I was otherwise swamped) wasn't actually the best time to take on something else. Who knew?

On the plus side, while there are still no finishes to photograph, I DID get a new dress for Boo almost completed, and got a little bit of hand sewing done on my hexagons.

Still have a big "look at the pretties!" post and a new "whoa...that was wild" post to put up when I can find a few minutes to sort out the photos...but right now it's bedtime.

KCWC: Day Three

2010-09-23T10:58:00.000-05:00

Challenge fail, redux.

We were gone all day. Mom and I took the kids out so that Richard could get some work done.

I was able to get in a bit of hand sewing late in the day, but still no finished product.

I WILL get this dress done!

KCWC: Day Two

2010-09-23T10:55:00.000-05:00

Challenge fail.

I wasn't able to eek out even enough time to turn on the iron, much less get anything sewn. Boo's half-done dress is just sitting here, mocking me.

In my defense, Boo needed way more attention than the dress. She was very uncomfortable and cranky all day and needed to be held and rocked and sung to pretty much constantly. Poor teething baby. Two months is too young for teeth, I tell ya.

KCWC: Day One

2010-09-21T13:24:00.001-05:00

I was able to put in maybe an hour and a half (somewhat broken) on the challenge.

I'm really close to having a new dress finished for Boo. It's the same style as the last one I made for her, but I've made a few adjustments so that she should get a little more wear out of this one. (She's already almost grown out of the first! Yikes!) Since I hadn't taken notes on the first dress when I put it together, I spent more time than I would have liked basically reinventing the wheel. I've got at least one more planned and I expect that it should go together much faster.

If I get my hour in for Day Two, I should have a finished product to show off!

Kid's Clothes Week Challenge

2010-09-20T12:48:00.003-05:00

I have SO much to post about - with pictures! - but have been having trouble finding enough spare time to blog it all. This one's just going to be a quickie, so that I can get the goal out there.

I'm taking part in the Kid's Clothes Week Challenge, from Elsie Marley's blog.

Let's see what I can get wrapped up for the kiddos!

A Little Bit Beautiful

2010-09-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

(I know, I never posted Library, Part II. We're headed back again today. There will be more library talk. I'm sure you've been waiting with baited breath.)

So, we're still looking for a house. It's been a long and rather frustrating process - looking at houses until they all start to blend together in our minds, making a decision, putting in an offer only to find out that someone else has put in an offer the same day and we didn't get the house. Gah.

Bug has been pretty amazing through this whole thing. We've been asking quite a lot of him, going to look at houses, spending hours and hours and hours getting into and out of the car over and over and over again. He eventually gets tired of it and goes into toddler meltdown but, on the whole, I think he actually handles it better than I do some days. He certainly doesn't let it color his observations like I tend to do.

At two, Bug has become a house connoisseur. He's seen so many houses and heard so many observations that he'll walk up to a new house, look around and say "Nice yard" or "Nice tile" and mean it. Some of the houses we've been into have been pretty nice. Others...not so much. Being two, Bug doesn't so much care about the not-nice aspects of the houses. If they've got a big room and he's got some energy to burn, he'll run around and flop himself on the floor or whatever he needs to do. More than once, this has resulted in a cry of "Not on the floor! This carpet is yucky!" from me.

The other day, we were at one of the not-as-nice houses. The house itself was pretty awesome, but it needed some massive overhaul, including the carpet. Boo was fussy and hungry, so I parked myself on a relatively clean spot to nurse her. Bug was running in circles and checking things out and eventually came to sit next to me. He had a cup of tea that he popped the lid off of so he could dig out some ice and I asked him to please not put the lid on the carpet.

Bug: "Is this carpet yucky?"

Me: "Umm...it's kind of yucky."

Bug: (Looking around and surveying the room again.) "It's kind of yucky. But it's a little bit beautiful."

Me: "What?"

Bug: (Smiling.) "It's a little bit beautiful."

And, just like that, I was able to see that the house wasn't so yucky after all.

I love that my boy can find that beauty in things...even if it is a hot, tired, cranky kind of day. <3

(Back to posting pictures soon. Promise.)

Library, Part I

2010-09-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

It's just after 2pm, but we're planning to head off to the library. Soon. Assuming that we can get Bug into clothes. (He's having an "I want to be naked!" day. With his newly updated cloth diaper stash, he's been enjoying running about in colorful pants and nothing else.)

I've been feeling a little guilty about the reading that I haven't done, but I'm putting those feelings away right now. I've started on Persuasion, though I've been reading Bug's books more often. As it should be, I suppose. :) I've also been reading a few cookbooks of Mom's, and I don't feel that that's wasted time at all. But the library books and impending due dates are starting to stress me out a little bit, so I'm just going to drop any feelings of failure and take most of them back. I'm planning to keep Candide and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters for a little longer.

The plan for today is to look into some non-fiction, since fiction is feeling a tiny bit frivolous right now. A friend turned me onto Friedensreich Hundertwasser, so I thought I'd see if I could find any books on him. And hopefully something on the Gee's Bend quilts. (Which is where the other conversation began.) I was able to see the Gee's Bend exhibit when it went through Houston a few years ago and it was AMAZING. I didn't have much appreciation for quilting at the time and (although I'm ashamed to admit it) wasn't expecting much. It completely blew me away. I could have gone to see them a thousand times and still been awed.

Here's hoping we come back with some awesome stuff!

Today I Love...

2010-09-05T15:10:00.000-05:00

...that we spent last night catching up with an old friend and her husband. (Oddly enough, who also just made the Houston-to-Phoenix move!)

...that Bug requested tomatoes for lunch today, and we were able to walk out into the yard and pick some for him to eat.

...that I get to spend this afternoon ticking fun things off of my to-do list with my family. (We have planned: library, fabric store, storage building.)

...summer skirts, and that I'm wearing pre-pregnancy clothes again!

Totally Stolen Idea

2010-09-02T02:34:00.000-05:00

I keep thinking of tiny little things that I want to post, and then wondering if it's worth it to put up a post for something so small. I'm going to activly decide that, yes, it is okay to post something little. Sometimes those are the cool posts. :)

I'm also going to totally steal an awesome idea.

Jeni, over at In Color Order, does this super-cool thing at the end of each blog post. She lists things she loves and good things about her day. I love that. I love the idea of closing each and every post by taking just a moment to think about, identify and honor the little, good things that have happened. Jeni also includes a picture of her bunny, George, in each post but I don't have a bunny. I have four cats, but we're not going to go there just yet.

I'm also not going to steal Jeni's format (though it's a good one!).

So. Here we go.

Today, I loved...

- A touching conversation with Bug*
- Having a fun and leisurely lunch with my mom and Bug while we were out running errands
- That there are pomegranate trees in the yard of the house we saw and put a bid on (!) today
- That I got to spend an hour-and-a-half with Boo while Richard took Bug to the park
- That I got up the nerve to RSVP to two playgroup events (I'm terrified. Really, really terrified.)

*The conversation with Bug...

We were at the store with my mom, headed to the register to check out. They got distracted and stopped to look at something, so I went ahead to start checking out so that they wouldn't have to wait in line. A few moments later, I heard Bug shout and, shortly after that, he and Mom came around the corner. Bug came up to me and wanted to be picked up and said "I was sad and yelled and you weren't there."

Me: "Oh, I'm sorry. You were looking at something and I knew you were with Grandma so I knew you were safe."

Bug: *giving me a hug* "I'm safe now."

More Goodies

2010-09-01T03:48:00.000-05:00

I got more good mail today. :)

In addition to some fun fabrics for bee blocks, I received...another block from the 3x6 Bee! (I'm amazed that half of my group is sending things out at the halfway point. Boy, do I feel like a slacker!)

This pretty came from Jennifer:

I was way too impatient to press it before taking a picture.

And look at this! A bib for Boo! It arrived at the same time as my sister's cancer diagnosis so I was a little distracted and didn't blog about it then. Bad of me, because I really love it. It's so cute!

I espcially love the squirrel fabric.

This was a surprise gift from Christine, who is also involved in the Sew Bee Wonky bee. And, today, after I mentioned how much I liked the squirrel fabric, I received a second package from her - with the fabric scraps that she had left! She even told me what it was ("Squirrels Treasure Map", from Timeless Treasures "Frolic" line) and where she bought it, so I can get more. How awesome is that?

Blocks Received

2010-08-29T21:12:00.000-05:00

I've been doing some sewing, but don't have any new finishes to show off. I DO have some good mail to show, though!

This first one, I've actually had sitting on my sewing table for awhile. This block arrived from Rhonda (as part of the Quilt Block Swap) just as Boo was born, and everything went on the back burner at that point. So I just got around to taking pictures today. Oops.

I still owe Rhonda her block. (Oops, again.) I've also dropped out of this group, so it will be my last block to received and to complete. As my first "real" block swap group, it was great. (And not to take anything away from the LITJ ladies! That swap is special on a whole different level!) But it seems that my requests for non traditional blocks and enjoyment of nontraditional fabrics kind of threw some of the other members for a loop. And it was pretty frustrating to put time and effort into blocks not knowing if or when the other half of the swap was going to take place. (Not that I've never been on that side of it. Like I said, I still owe Rhonda her block.) I like the group. Perhaps I'll rejoin after a while. But, for right now, with my sewing time so constrained, I'd rather focus on other projects.

One of those is the 3x6 Mini Bee. I originally signed up to take place in the fourth quarter swap (knowing that I was due to have a baby in the middle of the third quarter), but somehow ended up on the Q3 list. I probably should have asked to be removed, but I got a little too excited about it and stayed on. My blocks aren't complete yet (halfway through Q3, gotta get moving!), but the first of the blocks started to arrive yesterday! All I can say is WOW! These women do some beautiful work and I'm really super excited to be a part of the bee.

For Q3, I'm part of Beehive 5. My color requests were red, orange and white. I can't WAIT to see all of these blocks come together into a finished project! (I think I may combine the 3x6 blocks with my month in another bee to make a big quilt.)

Becky sent this pretty.

And I received this from Elizabeth.

I was especially geeked by the daisy in the center. They're my favorites. :)

More Books

2010-08-23T21:24:00.000-05:00

We took another trip to the library today, this time with Richard and Boo. Much busier today, but we got there with the after-school crowd. It was still really comfortable though, and with Richard there we were able to take turns alternately reading and playing in the children's section and looking for books for ourselves. Nice.

I picked up three more books.

Candide, by Voltaire. Because the last time I read it I was sixteen and it was in French. I'm fairly certain that my comprehension will be better this time around. (When I showed it to Richard he asked "In English?" If he thinks I could still get through it in French, I'm REALLY doing a good job of pretending that I remember anything I learned in school.)

Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint. Largely because I haven't read anything by him yet.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Jane Austin and Ben H Winters. Because...c'mon. I fully expect this book to be made of win.

Now to decide what to read. I have too many options.

Book Notes

2010-08-22T20:06:00.000-05:00

I finished reading the first of my new library books yesterday. I started with Adventures of the Artificial Woman, by Thomas Berger and I have to admit that I almost scrapped it. Which kind of says a lot because I haaaaaate walking away from a book before I've finished it. Something about time invested and what happens if it gets good/interesting/redeems itself/whatever but I'll never know because I didn't finish it?

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

(I'm not planning to do a big in depth book review or anything here, but I'd kind of like to keep my thoughts somewhat on track. Spoilers abound.)

I didn't think that I was familiar with Thomas Berger. But I do believe that I read Arthur Rex some years ago and enjoyed it. And I'm familiar with Little Big Man. So I didn't discover a new-to-me-author as I'd initially thought that I had.

Adventures of the Artificial Woman was located in the science fiction section. So I was ready to suspend a good deal of disbelief. But the author lost me on page twenty-seven. I'm not kidding. Page twenty-seven. That's really early in a novel that runs just shy of two hundred pages.

The subject matter of the novel is easily summed up by the very first sentence. "Never having found a real woman with whom he could sustain more than temporary connection, Ellery Pierce, a technician at a firm that made anamatronic creatures for movie studios and theme parks, decided to fabricate one from scratch." Well, actually, I suppose that statement is erroneous, as Phyllis is complete almost immediately. And just as immediately strikes out on her own. 'Round about page twenty-eight or twenty-nine. So, really, the book covers her emancipation and life on her own, her reunion with the man who built her and what they do once they're back together again.

Anyway.

The way the novel is written, life is pretty much exactly how it is in real life, except for the building of an anamatronic woman - which put the book soundly into the sci-fi section of the library. And then, on page twenty-seven, it all kind of goes to hell. I suppose that the author intended for his readers to be as surprised as his protagonist by the realization that *other* people had anamatronic spouses, too...but it didn't work for me. I felt like I was being asked to suspend a WHOLE LOT of disbelief when it turned out that all of the spouses invited to a dinner party turned out to be robots masquerading as human. Granted, the dinner party consisted of two other couples, but it kind of read as if the three of them were pretty much the ONLY other robot spouses out there, so that they were also the next door neighbor and gym buddy of Pierce was a bit too much of a stretch for me.

So, I was ready to pitch the book out the window before I got to page thirty. I grudgingly decided to give the author a little bit longer to redeem himself, but I realized after finishing the book that'd I'd felt mistrustful the rest of the read. And I stopped half-way through the last chapter to tell Richard that I felt like I was about to be set up for something ridiculous again at the end of the book. That didn't quite happen, but I was left feeling pretty lukewarm about the whole thing.

The premise was interesting enough, but neither of the two main characters was sympathetic. In Phyllis's case, I suppose that makes sense. But Pierce wasn't strong enough or likeable enough or much-of-anything enough for me to really care much about what happened to him.

Eh.

I'm not really irritated that I spent the time reading the novel but I'm probably not going to search out another book by the same author anytime soon.

Better luck next time, I hope.

Tiny Little Garden Suprises

2010-08-21T01:23:00.000-05:00

Is that not the cutest little tomato ever? Keep in mind that it's that small looking in the hand of a two year old. It was tiny.

Bug and I spent a little time in the back yard yesterday afternoon - something that we don't do nearly often enough. He loves to be outside. LOVES it. But it's so incredibly hot during the day that we usually end up putting him off until it's pretty late in the evening. My step-dad seems to be immune to the heat though, and ends up going out to do yard work in spurts throughout the afternoon. Bug often goes outside with Pop-Pop. I love to watch them together - he follows his grandfather around like a puppy - but I do feel guilty for not being out there with him more often.

But we were out there yesterday...

And we found these tiny little tomatoes, which was a fun surprise.

My mom's back yard is an oasis. Seriously. It's gorgeous out there. Green and just wild enough to be very pretty but not feel like a park. Very friendly feeling. Relaxing.

Bug and I were walking along the planter than runs along the back fence of the yard. We were talking about the zucchini, which was recently pulled up, and looked for cantaloupe, which Bug has been obsessed with of late. (Along with nectarines.)

We got to the end of the yard where all of the herbs are...and I spotted two tiny, bright orange bulbs in the greenery. I don't have much skill when it comes to recognizing herbs, but I couldn't think of any at all that grow berries. So I looked closer and they were tomatoes! Bug was enthralled.

We ended up finding five tiny little ripe tomatoes tucked into the herbs. (My step-dad identified them as cherry tomatoes, though I've never seen any that tiny. He said they just popped up there, wild.) Bug very carefully placed three of the little tomatoes on the ground "for the bugs", and ate the other two. He said they were tasty.

We looked for more little tomatoes for quite awhile, but couldn't find anymore that were ripe. I think a few nearly-ripe tomatoes ended up getting picked and donated to the bugs. There were quite a few green ones though, and I talked Bug into leaving those on the plant so that we can have ripe tomatoes again soon.

We checked the big tomato plant, too (this thing is massive), but nothing was ripe there, either.

The big tomatoes are Celebrity, I believe. It's been giving quite a lot of fruit. Tasty.)

Yay for Books!

2010-08-19T18:02:00.000-05:00

Bug and I made it to the library and got our library cards today. I kind of can't believe that it took so long for us to get around to getting them...but there's been a lot going on. And I'm so excited that Bug has his own card! At our old library he was still a smidge too young to have one of his own.

With today being our first visit, we were limited on the number of items that we were allowed to check out. Five apiece. Which was probably a good thing, otherwise we'd have come home with entirely too many books and CDs and movies. As it was, we picked up four books and a video each. (And had to put back a book to get the videos...but Bug was pretty excited about taking something home to watch, too.)

The library was nice. Light and bright and open. The librarians we spoke to were very nice and very helpful. Everything was laid out nicely and things were easy to find. The children's section was large and had a comfortable play and reading area. Bug and I spent some time hanging out over there after we'd picked out what we were going to take home.

I was a little surprised, though, by some of the things they *didn't* have. Not much selection for a few authors that I looked for specifically. Like Jane Austin. I got a craving for some Austin last week and the library had one book. One. But it was one I hadn't read yet, so I picked it up. The other books I more or less chose at random. I've had some pretty good luck doing that in the past.

Today's book list: Persuasion by Jane Austin, The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson, Adventures of the Artificial Woman by Thomas Berger and (the one I'm a little loathe to admit to) Hex Appeal by Linda Wisdom. To keep myself on track with getting through them before the due dates and so that they can perhaps lead me to other books/authors/etc, I'm making a mental promise to write a bit about each of them as I get through them.

Now, off to read...

Have You Ever...

2010-08-19T00:44:00.000-05:00

...had that moment when you glance at the mirror and think "Wow, I have a LOT of gray hair"? How does something like that just sneak up? Gah.

Dress Success!

2010-08-18T13:23:00.000-05:00

Bug woke me up at 4 this morning. (The big downside to his going to bed at 8:30 last night.) Boo and Richard woke up at 5am. Yikes all around.

Perfect day for some sewing.

I'd tentatively started on a sundress for Boo last night and got as far as cutting fabric. I was able to get it all together this morning (with some help from Bug). I want to make some small adjustments to the pattern, but overall I think I'm really happy with it. Lots of compliments from the family so far and Boo's all snuggled up asleep in it right now, so I suppose that means she's comfortable in it. :)

Pardon the crappy picture. Light wasn't good but I was trying to grab a photo between Boo nursing and napping, so I'm running with what I was able to get.

I already want to make another little dress for her. ...After I get in a nap.

Must. Find. Outlet.

2010-08-17T23:34:00.000-05:00

The last few weeks (erm, months?) have been a tad bit hectic/stressful/busy/crazy. Choose your descriptive.

Bug is doing well. Or, well enough. There have been a LOT of changes in his life in the last two months, so some days are better than others. We've been in a little bit of a rough patch the last two or three days or so, but today was better. Given that there has been the same amount of chance in my life, I can't say that I've been responding well to his freakouts - which isn't helping.

Boo is doing very well. Getting big and strong. She's outgrown her teeny little preemie outfits and is starting to wear "real" baby clothes. She puts away a LOT of milk and has started to chub up. Her thighs are getting thick and chunky. :) (Funny to me...Bug's filling out, too, now that I'm making new-baby milk again.)

My sister is AMAZING. She's four days post-op and her doctor says she's healing really, really quickly. She's already got full range of motion back. My sister is Superwoman. Which I've always known but this has proved yet again.

Great news from her surgery, too. The genetic testing showed that she doesn't have the marker. Her lymph nodes were benign so the cancer hadn't spread. They were able to get it all out of her and she might not eve have to do chemo. Yay!

And we bought a condo. (Or, Mom bought a condo and we'll be living in it.) We haven't closed yet and there's a tiny bit of work to be done (a/c doesn't work - yikes!), but it's really exciting to know that we'll have someplace to really call home soon. Not that we haven't been comfortable at Mom's, but it'll be nice to have our own space again, and I'm sure they'll be glad to have less chaos in their lives when we're not on top of each other all the time.

So, all in all, things are ultimately going well.

And I haven't had an outlet for any stress at all. (Because yelling at Bug does NOT count as an outlet!) I neeeeed to do something creative. And soon.

I've fallen behind in my bee blocks. I've got a few starts there, but nothing worth showing yet.

I decided today that I needed to either sew or bake. So I looked up bread recipes and might try a honey wheat yeast bread tomorrow. And I got a bug to make a little dress for Boo, so I started on that this evening. I'm patterning it as I go, so we'll see how that goes.

And I think we're going to (finally!) get library cards tomorrow. I don't have any time at all to read, but I really need to have something on hand that I CAN read. If that makes any sense.

Hopefully there will be pictures of something soon...

It Just Keeps Getting More Interesting Around Here

2010-08-01T22:40:00.000-05:00

Yup.

Not really sure how else to explain (in a nutshell) how things have been going around here of late.

Bug is doing well, considering that his world was turned on it's head less than two months ago and things haven't really straightened out for him yet. He's loving hanging out with his grandparents and his cousins and has more or less accepted Boo. He doesn't really like it so much when she's nursing or if I'm holding her when he's really upset, but otherwise he's affectionate and loving and a really awesome big brother.

We're still looking for a permanent place to live. It's nice being here with my mom and step-dad, but it would be nice to be in our own space, too. (And I'm sure they'd like to have their space back!) We've looked at so many houses and condos that makes the head spin. We've seen some really awesome places...and some really frightening ones, too. Hopefully we'll see THE place soon. :)

In other news...

My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer this past week. Unfortunately, I can't say it came as a terrible surprise. Well, strike that. It WAS a terrible surprise, just not terribly surprising. There's a bit of in the family, including our paternal grandfather. (Which is where everyone in the medical community makes a knowing "Ohhhhh".) She's being terribly brave and I have no doubt whatsoever that she's going to kick cancer in the ***. She has a double mastectomy planned for next week. I'm really glad that we're here, now.

And, the icing, my niece turned up today with what appears to be either shingles or chicken pox. We've been over there for the last two days helping to paint my sister's healing room...so I'm pretty sure we're going to see the chicken pox here really soon. I'm glad that Bug will get it out of the way so early, though I wish Boo were a little before she'd come into contact with it. And I'm sad about the timing. Bug's best friend is coming to visit from Texas next week. They've been looking forward to it for weeks. (As have Richard and I! We miss our friends, too!)

Not much craftiness to talk about, I'm afraid. Too much other stuff going on. ;)

A Surprise and an Exception to a Rule

2010-07-16T19:19:00.001-05:00

Our plans for July 4th were pretty squishy this year. Bug and I were both sick and getting together for a big family thing seemed like a bad idea in light of that. We thought that, maybe, we'd try to find some fireworks to watch if we were feeling up to it. (Because Bug LOVES fireworks.)

At 2 am, Bug woke up in a coughing fit. It was pretty miserable and took about 30 minutes to get him comfortable and back to sleep. I got up at 2:30 for a potty break and was *thisclose* to being asleep again at 3 am...when my water broke. Bug woke up again pretty much immediately, and I woke up Richard while I tried to get the boy back to sleep. I thought we'd have a relaxed time moving towards having a baby, but Richard flew out of the room to wake up my mom and they tried to rush me out of bed and to the hospital. I paused long enough to get Bug back to bed, then Richard and I took off to the hospital.

I will admit to being pretty freaked out. We were at 35w1d and I worried that the baby wasn't ready. Given the way Bug's birth worked out, I was pretty freaked out about having the baby in a hospital (we'd planned on a birth center birth with a midwife in Houston). And, while I'd had a consultation with an OB that I liked once we got to Arizona, we'd only met the once...and she was out of town when I went into labor, so I had no idea what I was walking into.

As it turned out, I couldn't have hoped for a better birth experience. It was AMAZING. Richard was fantastic. My sister stepped in to serve as my doula, and she was awesome. We had a fantastic, naturally-minded nurse and an absolutely wonderful, supportive OB. About eight hours after my water broke, Boo was born. (Drug-free! Woo!)

She looked pretty amazing, especially considering how early she was born. (The stats: 6lbs5oz, 19.7" long.) Then they realized that she wasn't breathing quite properly. Her lungs were immature and had a LOT of liquid in them, still. She had to go to NICU.

The next time I saw her, she was hooked up to all sorts of stuff...and it seemed they'd added more every time I walked into the NICU.

Boo was able to come off of oxygen pretty quickly, but still needed CPAP for several days. Then her left lung started to vent into her chest cavity, pushing her left lung into her heart and right lung, so they had to put a tube into her side. Scary.

Luckily, Boo is strong and a fighter and things started turning around pretty quickly. After six (long!) days in the NICU, Boo was off of the CPAP, the tube had been removed, she was nursing and they took out her IV.

We're adjusting now to life at home, but she's doing very, very well. And Bug is starting to get used to her. :) Richard and I couldn't be happier. :)

More Bee Blocks

2010-06-29T17:17:00.000-05:00

Bug took a long-ish nap yesterday, so I was able to wrap up my July blocks for Sew Bee Wonky.

Kendra was up first and sent us a selection really pretty Kona solids. She picked out a wonky block-in-block design and let us go at it.

I have enough fabric left to *almost* finish a third block, so I might see how far I can get and send a slightly-too-small block that just needs another ring around it. We'll see if I can get a bit of time to do it. :)

Gross

2010-06-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

So, my 2.5 year old has cradle crap. Um, I mean cradle cap.

Bug's always had just a tiny little stubborn spot that's refused to go away completely, but I haven't been too concerned about it. The other night, we were lying in bed and I was messing with his hair and realized that he had gunk - and a lot of it! - aaaaaaaaaalllllll over the front of his head. Ugh.

I'm sure I need to bathe him more often. Or, wash his hair more often, rather. But we're both still kind of recovering from a nasty bathtub spill that's left him terrified of having water over his head.

Does this make me a bad parent?

Bee Blocks

2010-06-28T16:58:00.000-05:00

There's been a TON going on with the move, but I've managed to do a bit of sewing, too. (Thanks to Mom for letting me take over the dining area as a sewing nook! It's fabulous!)

I've gotten some sewing done for the store, but nothing finished to the point that I want to show it off just yet. Soon, soon.

I've also finished Susan's blocks for the Live, Laugh, Bee. She picked the prettiest fabrics - from the Modern Meadow collection by Joel Dewberry. I've ogled these online for awhile, but it was really cool to get to see them in person!

Susan gave us free reign on the blocks, asking only that we feature one of two specific fabrics. I got the pretty dogwood fabric in my bundle and had a lot of fun figuring out how to work the blocks around it.

I love all of the natural light in the area that I've taken over, but I've learned that if I photograph too near the window, the colors kind of wash out. This block is much more vibrant in real life, though the colors as a whole are still pretty soft.

For the second block, I aimed for a slightly bolder look. (Accentuated by different lighting in the photo, oddly.)

Aiming for some good finishes this week. :)

We're Here!

2010-06-23T23:39:00.000-05:00

Bug and I (and my sister, thank goodness!) flew into Phoenix yesterday morning. I'm glad to have had the help! Bug travels very well, but had the most intense meltdown I've ever seen a child have right in the middle of Hobby airport. It was horrifying. (He cried - a LOT. I cried. It was ugly.) Luckily, he returned to his sweet, normal self about 30 seconds before we got on the plane and was a whole lot of fun the rest of the trip. (He was even invited into the cockpit of the plane - fun!)

Richard and Mom and my uncle and most of the cats and all of our stuff got here today. One of the cats manged to crawl under the dishwasher and then under the cabinets and then into a little hole in the wall and got left behind. :( My cousin is still there though and has volunteered to catch and keep her until we can get her here. thank goodness for family.

There's lots to update, but it's going to have to wait just a bit longer. Tired.

Things That Make Me Happy

2010-06-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

Though, perhaps I should have titled this post "Things that make me happy, that I've taken photos of". Though, that's not grammatically correct, is it? Ah well, you get my point.

In the chaos that is our house pre-move, there's not a lot of picture taking going on around here. We can barely get through the living room, much less find a clean spot to take a picture of anything. It's frightening in here. (And it smells funny. I don't quite get that one.)

BUT. But, I did snap a few pictures today of things that are making me smile.

First up, the tangle that is our pseduo-garden.

We have tomatoes again! Even after Bug picked and ate one! Yay!

And, look! A pepper! I'd totally given up on that one. Really. I was just going to be happy that the plant itself had survived this long. But, there it was when we left the house this afternoon, one tiny little I'm-going-to-be-a-pepper-when-I-grow-up. I'm so excited about it. :)

Also, if you can believe it, a completed WIP.

A few days ago, I finally got around to wrapping up the cute little beanbags that I wanted for Bug for the studio. (Even though we no longer have the studio. Ah, well.) Choosing a filling really gave me a lot of trouble for some reason. I finally decided that washable was unlikely to happen so beans of some sort were my best bet. Richard suggested that I try a few things out and see what I liked best.

We tried rice. We tried split peas. We tried lentils.

Rice makes for a nice heavy bag and the filling isn't so large or so hard that a parent or sibling who gets beaned in the head would get terribly hurt. Split peas are considerably lighter and slide against one another nicely in the bag. Lentils... Oh my goodness, the lentils! I've decided that I LOVE lentils for beanbag stuffing. They have *just* enough weight to make the bags nice to throw, but they don't hurt at all if you take a hard hit. The bags fall really nicely and stay where they land (Richard's concern because of how the lentils move against one another). It's luxurious. Now I just need to find a good price on bulk lentils, because I WILL be making more of these bags.

I might even already have the fabric ordered. *cough*

I've got almost half of the fabric cut for the Four Cousins project, but my sewing table is in a sad state and it's not much to look at anyway, so no photo of that yet. I'll post one when it looks a bit more interesting.

And, no photo of this one, but it was the best moment of the day so far...

Richard and I took Bug out to lunch today and he got pretty sleepy while we were out. (It was an early morning.) He ended up falling asleep in my lap a little while ago. I carried him to bed and was *just* putting him down when he woke up a little. My heart stopped, hoping that he'd go back to sleep (I REALLY want to nap with him today!) and not fuss and and and. And he laughed and murmured "I love you, Mommy", then rolled right over and zonked out again. Melted my heart. <3

Four Cousins Project Begins!

2010-06-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

Today was a fantastic mail day!

I got ALL of the fabric for the Four Cousins Project!

Here's what came for my nephew. It's from the Beep Bots line from Hoffman Fabrics. (Ordered from Fat Quarter Shop.)

For Boo (also from Fat Quarter Shop), Love U from Moda.

These are the ones I'm using:

And the cast-offs that will go into an undetermined project:

For my niece, I chose On a Whim 2 from Robert Kaufman. (Ordered from Lucky Kaeru Fabric and Supplies.)

It was my very first fq set!

These are the fabrics I'm using:

And the cast-offs:

And then, Bug's fabrics (ordered, appropriately enough, from Bug Fabrics) - from Robert Kaufman's Playday line.

I. Am. Geeked.

I want to cut into these fabrics NOW...but I have actual work to do, so they're just going to have to wait for a bit. *sigh*

Good Mail, Bee Blocks and a Completed WIP!

2010-06-11T23:49:00.000-05:00

Lookie what came in the mail yesterday!

It's "los novios" from Alexander Henry and I wasn't expecting it at all. I *might* have squealed when I opened the envelope. It came from one of my partners in the Sew, Mama, Sew! fat quarter swap. I am absolutely in love with this fabric. It's so bright and wonderful and just a little bit crazy and something that I've admired from afar but would probably never actually buy for myself.

Now to decide exactly what to do with it...

I also managed, despite having had a really busy day with Richard and Bug, getting my June block finished for the Quilt Block Swap. Or "blocks", rather. My partner requested a log cabin in batiks.

I liked the way the first block turned out (and Richard said it might be his favorite yet - wow), but I wasn't convinced that it looked terribly log cabin-ish. So I put together a second block.

I hope that one of them will suit her needs!

Then, I actually finished the secret, wonky green log cabin project! Yay! I'm terribly excited about it, but don't want to show pictures and give up the surprise just yet.

Perhaps just a sneak peek...

There are also two outings that I want to blog about, but I think they deserve their own posts. And no way is Bug going to let me get into that tonight.

And Christmas Begins...

2010-06-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

You read that right...I said Christmas. Please don't get disgusted and run away just yet! I know how it sounds. Really, I do. I haaaaaaate when Christmas pops up in June. (Seriously, I refuse to go into Hobby Lobby unless I absolutely have to now because, a few years back, I went in on June 6 and they had their *entire* Christmas section already set up. It was heinous.)

But, I'm having a baby soon. And I have a two year old. And if I want to continue with the trend of keeping Christmas gifts about something other than cheap, crappy gifts that were bought in the spirit of consumerism (which isn't what Christmas is about at our house!), then I really kind of need to get started on it now. Or, at least I need to start THINKING about it now.

So, I thought about it. And I formed an idea that was starting to keep me up nights, so I figured I needed to act on it before either the idea disappeared or I turned into a zombie. Either outcome being likely, of course.

In my head, I've termed it the Four Cousins project...because I basically plan to duplicate the idea for both of my kids and both of my sister's kids. Easy-peasy, I think they'll like it, and goodness knows that similar-but-personalized gifts are good for siblings.

I browsed fabric (and spent litarally HOURS over at the Fat Quarter Shop) for two days before making up my mind.

For my newphew, I fell in love with Beep Bots. For my niece, I really liked some of the On A Whim 2 fabrics. For Bug, Robert Kaufman's Playday. And Boo gets the Summer colorway of Moda's Love U line.

Now, what is all of this fabric going to become? I'm afraid I'm not ready to spill the beans on that just yet. But I'll post some sneak peeks after the fabric arrives. ;)

Garden and Other Goodies

2010-06-09T01:38:00.001-05:00

Today, we were very excited about this:

Our second almost-ripe tomato! We've been watching it grow for what seems like forever. Ages ago (it feels like), our little plant popped out one little tomato and Bug grabbed it when it *thisclose* to being ripe. He devoured it - though he did offer me one bite, sweet boy. It was SO tasty! And I was so very excited that we've actually gotten something edible off of the plant before I had managed to kill it. That was a first.

(Last summer, nothing grew on the tomato plant, but I did manage to keep it alive all summer. Also a first.)

Bug was so excited by the sight of an almost-ready-to-eat tomato that he plucked it right off. We've been checking it every.single.day so I'm actually kind of impressed that it made it this far.

Two still-green tomatoes have been plucked in anticipatory excitement. Bug tried really hard to eat the first one and ended up declaring it "too crunchy". It was vaguely amusing though. He *insisted* on eating that first green one. We were on our way someplace, so sat in the car seat with it...taking a bite, exclaiming "yuck", spitting it out, taking another bite...

Bug, sweet thing that he is, offered me the first bite of his newest treasure. It wasn't quite as sweet at the first one (also not quite as ripe), but was still pretty tasty. He certainly seemed to enjoy eating the rest of it. And he was really, really excited when we stopped and counted fifteen (!!) green tomatoes still growing on the plant. And there are more blooms, too!

I am amazed.

In other news, I lopped off my hair this afternoon. Perhaps a decision based on stress and hormones, but I decided beforehand that I would be thrilled with the results pretty much no matter what they were, and I am. We took off about fourteen inches. Yes...fourteen inches. There were three women working where I went to have it cut and I think one of them just about passed out when she saw it all come off.

My hair is, admittedly, quite a bit shorter than I had intended. I'll never really understand why stylists never seem to believe me when I tell them that my hair curls when it's short. It was supposed to end at roughly my shoulder blades...and now curls up just below my chin. I can *barely* get it into some semblance of a ponytail (and, thus, out of my eyes and out of the toddlers easy grasp). But I like it. :) It's definitely a lot cooler!

Time for bed now, but tomorrow I may show off some stuff that I'm getting excited about. We'll see. ;)

Work is Work

2010-06-06T19:37:00.000-05:00

This is what Bug and I did for a little while this morning.

Now, what you *should* have noticed in that photo was the stack of little blanket squares all stitched into rows.

We finished those up this morning while Richard was doing some work outside. And, when Bug decided to go help out there, I started stitching the rows together.

This is as far as we got today.

I might have gotten a bit closer to finishing, had I not accidentally sewed the rows together in the wrong order. You'd think that having them labelled would have kept that from happening...but, no. I'm awesome that way. After I tore it apart and fixed it, Bug grabbed the first three rows and wore it around the house for awhile like a shawl. Had to wait until he was distracted again before I could attach the next two, and after that I started feeling guilty about the other things I wasn't doing, so I set it aside. Maybe I'll get a bit more done after bedtime.

More Big News

2010-06-05T13:58:00.000-05:00

Woooo... It has been one heck of a week around here. There have been some awesomely good things that have happened and some bad stuff that was so upsetting that I'm still trying to figure out how to process it. Ultimately, everything tied itself up in a pretty major decision.

We're moving.

Half-way across the country.

And soon.

I'm sad. I'm excited. It's a big ol' mess of emotion. But ultimately it's all good.:)

More news as I figure it out, I guess. :)

Vanessa's Blocks

2010-06-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

Today, I received my fabric for Vanessa's blocks for the Live, Laugh, Bee.

She requested two 12.5" blocks, if there was enough fabric, in a version of a log cabin and/or star pattern. The star made me a litte nervous and I wasn't sure that I'd have nearly enough fabric for a second block, so I went for two wonky-ish log cabin blocks.

Block #1 came out just over 12.5". It'll trim down nicely.

I wasn't sure how the fabrics were all going to look together when I started (though the pictures already up in the flickr group look great!), but I really kind of like the way it worked out. :)

Block #2 isn't *quite* to size. I was only able to get a 10" block out of the fabric that I had left, so I'm sending it untrimmed with the hope that Vanessa will be able to add another strip to each side and get a block that's workable for her.

I'm not quite as thrilled with the composition of this second block, but I don't think it's unattractive.

And, lest anyone think that I'm letting yesterday's to-do list slide already, Bug and I have already sewn together six of the twelve strips for his new little blanket. :)