Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Rather, my house is in the extreme stages of our part of the remodel job. There are partial floors in many places, stacks of furniture in many rooms, and general chaos almost everywhere. Most importantly as regards my blog, the computer I upload pictures to with the little card thing is in one of the piles, so no pictures for now. Also, my sewing machine is entombed in one of these piles, so for now crafting is at a minimum. I did sew a new fabric cover for Alice’s doll stroller, which I can hopefully post soon. And I have curtains for one of the new rooms to do. So hopefully things will begin to quiet down soon.
I’ll show you some fun things we’ve been doing though:
This tile I snagged on craigslist for a super deal is for our bathroom floor and tub surround.
It’s actually far more gorgeous in person and feels delicious underfoot. I can’t wait to install it!
The bundler I want for baby Miller’s first clothing:
I’ll hopefully have some pictures soon — of the floors we’re ripping up and those we’re putting in, of the gorgeous wall mural my sister did in our half bathroom, and all that fun stuff. Until then, we’re off to sister up some joists.
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
I took part of the afternoon to make some passport sleeves and luggage identifier tags for two young ladies who are graduating and heading to Europe for vacation.
Here’s the outside:
And the inside, being modeled by my well-traveled daughter’s passport:
And the luggage tags, front:
And back:
Our house addition project is coming along very nicely. If you’d like to see and read a little about it you should check out our builder’s blog. He put up a great photo and said he’ll be posting more soon.
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
We had our ultrasound today and watched the wonders of modern technology display the fabulous feet, adorable full lips drinking in the fluid, little hands playing with fingers and clasping and unclasping, and all four chambers of the heart pumping away. Overall he was as busy and healthy as can be.
It was, as always, delightful. We are all excited to meet son-number-three in some twenty-odd weeks or so. And now I know that I can sew dresses all summer for Alice without also making a pile of gowns in miniature for a sister.
I have a sort of tradition of buying one ’special’ cotton knit blanket for each of the kids. This one’s first blanket is Zutano’s elephant parade (you really should click the link and see the detail view, it’s pretty amazingly cute):
I actually bought it on sale a few weeks ago thinking it could be pretty unisex. But I do think it’s better for a boy, so it’s perfect.
And now we have the very difficult task of coming up with a third boy name that we really like.
And, as a friend pointed out, we now have a team for Hoopfest.
**I had to edit this to add the kids’ name suggestions. Alice wants ‘Albert.’ Clive suggests ‘Shark,’ ‘Snooky,’ or ‘Rocket.’ Miles says, “Um, Biz.”**
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
Strawberries are in season somewhere and consequently they are temptingly cheap at our local grocery stores. Even though I’m never really in a jamming mood this time of year, the alarmingly diminished jam stash in our pantry pushed me over the edge and I did a batch yesterday. And then bought 8 more pounds of berries after we tasted the first jar.
I use Pomona’s Pectin, because for every 4 cups of fruit you only need 3/4 sugar (and it’s a natural citrus pectin, so there’s nothing weird or icky). The flavor ends up just about as fresh as you can get, and we love it. It’s also an incredibly easy way to make jam.
First, you wash, cut, and slightly mash the berries and add a little of the calcium water (it comes with the pectin).
Then, you cook it up to a boil.
In the meantime, you mix the powdered pectin with the sugar.
And get your jars ready.
Then once you’ve added the sugar and returned the jam to a boil you can pour it into the jars.
Screw on the lids, boil the jars for 5-8 minutes, and you’re done.
You may notice from this last photo that the jam has settled so the berries are all on the top. This problem is solved by giving the jars a good shake about an hour or two after they have been removed from the boiling water. This gives the pectin enough time to start gelling and after you shake it up the berries are evenly distributed in the ‘juice’ and they stay put.
The result is fabulously delicious and completely worth the effort. As well as being infinitely better tasting than store jam it’s much, much cheaper. I figured that even with the pectin it comes out to little more than $1 a jar.
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
I’m back from my fantabulous vacation and also I’m actually starting to get some energy back (hooray!). In that vein I’ve not only dug through mounds of the kids’ clothes to figure out the give/yardsale/keep piles, but also starting on some summer things for Alice.
First up, a new shirt:
The back, with gathering:
You can’t really tell from the pictures, but it has double layer sleeves which were annoying to sew (because I didn’t add the seam allowance to the Japanese pattern) but turned out cute.
I have pattern pieces laid out on some nice Amy Butler fabric ready to be cut and become a nice spring and summer coat (hey, it snowed here today so we need coats for a long time).
Things are pretty exciting around here right now since we’re getting a two-story addition put on the back of our house. They just dragged in my new jacuzzi tub the other day, and that’s enough to put me over the moon. For the kids, it’s the cement mixer in their backyard.
And speaking of the vacation, here is some of it:
Monday, March 30th, 2009
First, a big thank-you to Sara Moore, head of Artfire’s content department. She chose and blogged about my blog on Artfire’s website. Artfire is a competitor with Etsy, and seem to have much more reasonable options for sellers. I’ll definitely be considering them as a marketplace if I ever get around to selling anything! I’ve been poking around a bit on Artfire lately and my favorite item so far is this baby hat:
The seller actually had so many cute ones I didn’t know which one to put up, so definitely head to her shop and check them out. If I find out my bun is a girl I want one!
Also, another fun giveaway I had to post about–Simple in cooperation with Bumbleride is giving away a free stroller (yeah, I know, that’s huge!). Just leave a comment on their post today with your favorite bumbleride stroller and get a chance to win.
And this is one of my favorite projects to do. I like to occasionally check the skirt clearance racks at ‘discount’ stores like Ross or T. J. Maxx. Often the large or very small sizes will go super cheap. And a size 18 has plenty of fabric to make it alterable for a child’s dress. The other bonus is that the skirts often have fun details, gorgeous fabrics, and invisible zippers — almost all the work is already done for you.
Last summer I picked up this skirt for $2.49.
About half an hour’s work gave us this:
I simply cut parallel to the seams on one side to remove a piece to make it smaller to fit my daughter’s torso. I learned last time that a bit of elastic in the back would help it fit better (and longer). So I pulled up a bit of the bias tape and sewed some elastic down underneath. The surplus fabric was easily made into shoulder straps, and we’re done. A perfect summer sundress complete with cool bodice stitching for $2.49 (plus maybe a penny or two for the thrifted elastic and thread).
The important thing to remember with this project is that finished dress looks much nicer if you actually remove the portion of the waistband and hem where you are ‘taking it in’ and then replace and resew it, rather than just cutting and sewing.
And here’s someone really ready to enjoy some fun in the sun.
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
I’ve been feeling crummy, thus the lack of posting. But things are starting to look up and I actually cut out an Easter dress for Alice last week. Maybe I’ll get it sewn here in the next week and have something crafty to post (let’s cross our fingers, shall we?).
In the meantime, here’s some things I like.
Vintage press-out books:
I’ve snagged a couple of these to put away for next year. I like this as a craft project because it seems to be fairly time consuming and the result is fun to play with. Mainly it looks like something I would have loved as a kid.
We have a great farm one
and this one, which I’m especially excited about.
Also these cool bumpers, each for an individual bar. No climbing leverage, no smushing of bumpers or crowding of breathing room, and no head bonking. Brilliant!
And there’s a giveaway for them here.
And the thing I like best right now? That in two weeks I’ll be here with the hottest guy I know:
We’re heading to Fort Lauderdale and then a five night cruise of some lovely Caribbean Islands — a little babymoon before we settle into life with four!
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Alice turned 5 and we celebrated with a little bring-your-doll tea party, complete with flower cupcakes and pink hot chocolate (unbelievably -and perhaps contrary to all proper feelings- it does exist).
For the party craft they painted teacups with ‘paint markers.’
And dolls need a tea party too.
She happily informed me that when you’re four or five or six or seven you still look like yourself. However when you get older you look like someone else.
The only crafting I’ve done lately is to whip up an odd holder for hot rice to soothe a tiny sore knee. It was deemed ‘too hot’ and not effective. I did buy some incredibly pretty pale lilac velveteen for a coat for my little girl. Maybe now that I’ve blogged it I’ll get motivated to cut it out!
In other news, my fourth descendant is developing his (or her) external ears and possibly optic nerves and eyelids. So I guess I am pretty busy.
And since we’re expanding the family we’ve decided to (almost for sure) expand our house. We’ll be adding two bathrooms, two bedrooms, and (finally) a back door.
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
We had a major mullet problem at our house. I fought letting go. I knew what would happen. But it got so scraggly and awful it couldn’t be ignored.
So we lost the mullet, and our baby, in one fell swoop. Just like Bad Harry’s haircut, the result was that our mischievous boy doesn’t even look angelic anymore.
And another Olive doll, about to make her way to celebrate a certain young lady’s big day.
Friday, January 16th, 2009
Or, never underestimate the power of a simple red sauce.
Act one:
One onion and lots of garlic simmered in olive oil. Whole, peeled canned tomatoes. Simmered for a long, long time. It’s like candy. A dash of red pepper. Water added occasionally. A little white wine at the end to compliment . . .
Act two:
Mixed seafood, sauteed quickly in dry white wine and butter.
And the denoument:
Spaghetti allo scoglio. Serve with fresh grated Parmesan and melt away in bliss. Come over and I’ll feed some to you.
—-
Also a new Olive, made for our now one-year-old friend Piper. She smothered her with kisses.
We were recently doing some minor demolition in part of our house and found this:
And this:
(he won by four million)
And so I think we might never move.