• April 26, 2010

    Things I have learned from Wife Swap



    So today, while doing some knitting (I finished the main body of the sweater!) I watched a recent episode of Wife Swap. While watching, I realized that I should probably take a few lessons from these ladies such as

    • take more 5-6 hour naps 
    • run the washing machine so Ryan thinks I am cleaning (so I can take more naps)
    • spend more time internet shopping
    • make the kids do pushups when they forget to say “Yes ma’am”
    Anyways, it has been a busy few days around here. Friday was a long shopping trip with my mom and sister. B got some new sandals, so now when we tell him to get his shoes on he goes “NO! Sandals!” And I found him some good summer clothes. I picked up some soft purple yarn to make these slipper/boots out of when I finish the sweater I am working on. I need to figure out how to use two circular needles at once. And I also found an excuse to go to Michaels that day. We needed to get Mother’s Day and general crafting supplies. We have a lot of fun things to do this week with paints and markers (and sidewalk chalk!). And B picked out some super fun sparkle paint that we are going to use to make a birthday card tomorrow. I am excited to make things. I love the drawings and makings of children.

    Saturday was library day, and B had fun as usual. O was just amused at everything going on. B really likes going to the library, he picked out a few new books to read, and loves trying out all of the couches. We walked around in the sky walks for a bit after and he really liked that. Mostly the being on top of roads part. Then it was grocery shopping. I am proud that the fresh half of my list was way longer than the not-so-fresh stuff. I’ve been making more effort to plan things out, and that is going really well. After shopping we all went for a drive to Lockport for dinner, which was really pretty and relaxing.
    Today we just had to exchange something and go to the Bulk Barn. I picked up various dried fruits in hopes of getting B to eat them. We’ll see how that goes. And then we barbecued. B loves BBQ-ing because he runs outside while Ryan is manning the grill and plays with his sand table. Or dirt rally table as it seems to be.

    I think that I am going to try the Kids Clothes Week challenge next month. I have enough time to prepare, and I love sewing little clothes. Finding patterns that don’t look completely dated for little boys is hard though, so I might have to come up with my own. I need to hit up Fabricland (and use what I still have around) to prepare! If nothing else, I can make a week’s worth of shorts, but hopefully I will find or come up with something better. I still have a couple of weeks to figure it all out.

  • April 22, 2010

    Making houses and stuff.


    So after finally finishing O’s little sweater, you’d think I’d take a break, but no, I immediately cast on for the next sweater. What a difference size 8 needles make. I am almost halfway down the body already. It’s going to be a quick knit. I really like the pattern, it’s knit from the top down with stitches held and then later picked up for the sleeves. Which means minimal finishing work. I think I might add pockets, mostly because I like pockets a lot, and partially because I think the front needs to be broken up a bit. I flipped through a knitting pattern book while we were driving around on errands today. It’s called Favorite Mittens, and I really recommend it to anyone interested in either knitting mittens, craft as folklore, or both. The author collects traditional knitting patterns from all over the eastern coast and has stories of their origins with each pattern. I picked it up from the library because I am really into the mittens, but I think I might have to own a copy. The introduction is really informative too, going into all of the things that make a good mitten. I really need to get some more smaller double pointed needles. I have been eyeing this set from knitpicks. The wood is so pretty! There are so many mittens I want to make. I am still working on the Squirrelly Swedish Mittens right now, mostly because I was working on the sweater.


    The boys have been keeping me very busy. I’m slowly starting to toilet train B, but I’m not in a hurry. He spent most of the day pushing the vacuum around the house. If he was not just getting over a huge fear of it, I would have turned it on so he could have done some cleaning too! He is finally pretty much unsick, but his molars are still coming in, making him a drooly monster. I finally took the two boys to the park by myself the other day. It is a lot of work.


    Tomorrow I am going to do some shopping. I am meeting up with my mom and sister at the mall with the boys. B wants/needs some new sandals. He found his ones from last year and tried to put them on. He looked at me and said “Too small. Buy new ones. MAAAALLLLL!” And since I love excuses to shop, that is what we are doing. O does not need anything, as I probably bought too much of everything for his older brother. But it’s so hard to resist the cute little stuff. 


    The other day B brought me a toy catalog he found, and was pointing at a house. He then brought me his little Makka Pakka, and said “House, sleep!” And I deduced that he wanted me to build him a house for the little guy. Instead of breaking out the Mega Blocks, I dug out an old shoe box and some gift bags I found next to it. I used a holographic glittery bag to line the box, and quickly crafted a bed out of a gift box I found in one of the boxes. I added a blanket, put some art on the walls and cut out a door. I also made a magazine holder and re-purposed the gift tags from the bags as magazines. The best part about this box is that it slides out matchbox-style, leaving a perfect spot for a garage. Luckily, B’s taste is not discerning, and he does not care that all I have is masking tape to put things together with, and he loved it. Especially since there is a garage. He loves garages.


  • April 10, 2010

    Friday.

    For some reason I am in a funk today. I don’t know why. I am attempting to cheer myself up with Easter chocolate (little solid eggs), a documentary (The September Issue), and the cutest little baby smiles which just fell back asleep. Even when he is sad, little O tries to smile.


    Today he had his 2 month checkup. All is good. I think he’s something like fourteen-and-a-half pounds and just over twenty-four inches now. Growing well. B went to Ryan’s sister’s for the day, so I cleaned the storage room. Fun. I did find lots of old photographs, drawings, and art supplies which just further propels my sudden inspiration. I tried to relax by knitting O some booties out of this really pretty yarn I bought in the States about five years ago (the colour is Country Sunset, but really, it feels more Underwater Menagerie to me), but as I got to the cuff of the last one, I ran out of yarn. Pout!! I had forgotten that I had used some of the ball to make a very large and very fluffy pom-pom. And I was so excited to have finally found a way to use this yarn to. I just love the colours. I will just have to pick up more next time we go. But I learned some more about bootie construction, and have some good ideas.

    Yesterday the four of us all went out to dinner, at Moxies, almost an hour past our regular “supper hour” with great success. Is there a Parent Scout badge for that? I should embroider myself one. Then we walked around the mall and I wanted to buy everything. Mostly these nail files (not like I need anymore). And the diaper bag I have been dreaming of. And then today I saw this post on taking good family photos which really just made me spend too much time looking at nice children’s clothes on the internet. I think he needs a good summer cardigan. Like this one. I need to get dressing him like this out of me before he cares enough to not wear the things I pick out! (Ooh, and this shirt!)

    We spent some time this evening finally building B a gas pump for his Cozy Coupe. It has a gas cap and spot for a nozzle, and it always makes him disappointed that he can’t fill it up. he even tries to use the teeny-tiny nozzle on his Little People garage sometimes. So I cut and taped something together on the fly out of a diaper box. Ryan did a great job with the nozzle. I plan to make it prettier at some point, I just wanted to get it finished tonight before he went to bed since he was watching us make it. He was sooo excited when he realized what it was and made lots of glug noises while he filled up his car.

    This weekend is busier than it feels. Tomorrow AM I think we are going to the library to run around and look at books. Then Ryan has to do some work in the afternoon, mostly while the boys nap. And I need to go grocery shopping at some point. Sunday my sister gets home from Montreal so we are going to see her in the evening. I started thinking about gardening, but I am wary with all of the deer around here. I had bad luck on our second floor apartment balcony (even my jalapeños got eaten!) so I don’t know if I want to risk it. Maybe I’ll just try a couple of small plants and look into deer repelling techniques. It makes me a little sad that we are so far away from the Farmer’s Market this year. Instead of a 5 minute drive, it’s probably a 45 minute drive. Maybe there is something around here. We also talked about maybe checking out the one in Portage la Prairie this year. I love car rides. 

  • April 2, 2010

    Easter eggs and projects.


    Today I came up with a genius idea. I was getting B to help me make cookies (ok, and by help make cookies, I mean place ready to go Pillsbury pucks on a cookie sheet) and I was trying to figure out how to include him more in a pretty basic purpose. I then remembered that I had food colouring markers in the fridge still so I marked X’s on the parchment paper so B would know where to put the cookie dough. And it worked! B was soo proud of himself. And then I went and negated my flash of brilliance by using a tea towel to take the cookies out of the oven and burning my index finger pretty bad. It’s not a good finger to burn pretty bad.


    Holy yoke Batman, I did not realize how many rows of yoking there is to do on the baby sweater I am knitting. It almost makes me want to reconsider the hood, but in the end I know I will do it. I have to take a temporary break from working on it due to my finger injury though, the small stitches and needles are too much for it. So I am working on two larger chunky projects, a Mustard Scarf on 13 needles (I started it on 15 needles, but it was just a little too hole-y so I started again) which is knitting up quite quickly, and a Simple Slouchy Hat for Ryan, who shaved his hair off last night.


    B and I decorated some plastic Easter eggs the other day. I figure I’ll hold off on the hardboiled eggs until next year, because I had visions of him squeezing them to hard and being really sad about that. And he is a long way off from making Pysanky. I sometimes can’t believe we were making them in elementary school when I was in grade one. And that I can’t recall any open flame or hot wax disasters. So anyways, we made Cars eggs, which B was really excited about, and then proceeded to pretend they were cars and had them drive all over the place. Cute.


    The other day, while I was making dinner, B dragged his toy kitchen in, and made dinner himself. He stole a mushroom and some broccoli and various utensils, and it was so adorable. He even put his dishes in his toy sink when he was done with them. And put the broccoli in a metal measuring cup and pretended it was a pot. It made making dinner take twice as long because I couldn’t stop admiring his cuteness.



    We had a fair bit of running around to do after Ryan finished work yesterday. We went to the mall to get some dinner, but B was too excited about playing in the play area to eat. While Ryan watched him play, O and I did some shopping. I went to The Children’s Place to see if I could find Easter outfits for them, but they were out of everything good in B’s size. So frustrating! It’s hard enough to find cute little boy clothes as it is. And even sadder was that they were all out of B sized matching sweater vests (well, they had the purple and green ones, but I wanted the blue and yellow ones). They had lots in O’s size though. Disappointing. I had great plans of matching Easter outfits. Well, there’s always Christmas. I might still yet go check the Polo Store for this shirt, because it was pretty nice, the picture does it no justice.


    After that, we had to go to Sally Beauty to pick up some clippers to do Ryan’s hair with. I figured with 3 guys in the house, it made sense to get some better quality ones. And it was an excuse to take advantage of their buy 2 get 1 free on all nail polish sale. I just picked up some Sally Girl mini bottles (there are some seriously cute colours), and some nail polish remover. The dark green is seriously pretty. Right now my nails are Purple Panic. It’s insanely bright. I think I’ll go pastel for easter, doing something fun with For Audrey and Do You Lilac It.




    Why does it have to be so gloomy out today! Ryan has the day off, but I think we are just going to take it easy. I think I am going to sew up the car holder I posted the other day out of whatever fabrics I have around the house (which is not much so it might clash a little). And I might make O something with ribbon tags, because he loved the little blankets I made him. I need to make a grocery list for tomorrow morning. I wish grocery stores were open today. And make sure to get everything to make Chocolate Babka.



    I’ve decided my goal is to crochet a dorky Granny Square Afghan. And of course finish up the baby clothes quilt I started with B’s old clothes. I first need to figure out how to crochet, and then how to crochet a granny square, but that should not be too bad. I’ve been looking at lots of pictures of them on Ravelry. There is so much consideration to make in the colours. Do I just use scrap yarns I have around, or do I just buy a few colours of yarn to make a more focused afghan. Once I go through the yarn I bought the other day I will start working on it, because I am not allowing myself to buy anymore yarn until then. If you have Ravelry, I love this one, and am tempted to do something really similar, with the four colours and white edging. I also really like this one a lot, and how the chaos of all of the colours is pacified by the strong white borders.

  • March 16, 2010

    Jeepers Creepers

    While I was unsuccessfully trying to organize the pantry (we’ve been here since November and I STILL have no where to put the spices I don’t really use these days anyways, which is another story all together), there was a knock at the door. Which excited B, and solicited no response from O, who was asleep in his cuuuuute owl swing (I seriously made Ryan drive me to Grand Forks to buy it and an owl-print Pack and Play). I was not really expecting anything except my new glasses, but I thought it was too soon for them to come yet. But behold! It was the DHL guy with my new glasses straight from China only a week after I ordered them. Which is the same time frame as the place in the mall, because I have bad eyes so it takes longer.

    It’s the 3rd time I have ordered from Zenni Optical, and I will order again. I have been pleased with my glasses every time. And the price! Oh my. Two pairs of glasses for 29.00 shipped! That is less than the anti-reflective coating I never get because it seems to wear off. I am a happy camper. As mentioned, I got two pairs. One is a black stylized half-rim pair ordered to replace a pair that B broke a while ago, and the other a clear bright purple frame. I figured my face needed a break from all the thick black glasses. And I love them both.

    Now about those spices. I really need to find some of those windowed magnetic tins for them. I have a perfect space on my fridge for them. And then they will not be in a cardboard box labled “DO NOT TIP” even though I always do by accident AND I can finally find the right ones to use. Chili Powder is no Cayenne Pepper. One of these days.


    Today in the mail I got the new issue of Everyday Food magazine. I heart Superstore. OMG Joe Fresh kids clothes! They are just too cute. And a good cosmetics and home section. It is trying-to-save-money kryptonite. So as much as I love Ben and my trips to Superstore, I think that once I get it all figured out, I want to get out to places like Organza and Delucas more like we used to. Because if we are eating for less, we might as well be eating better quality. And it might help eliminate some of the junk we buy. Which B loves all too much. It took me all day to get him to put the tiniest piece of a new food in his mouth. All he wants is fruit snacks, Bear Paws, and “Ger-goni” crackers. So my plan over the next few days is to come up with a good meal plan for next week. I just need some new ideas.