Sunday, November 19, 2006

Bye Bye Blogger

Hello, Wordpress. This will be my last blog on blogger. My new site is: http://craftjunkie.wordpress.com/ so add it to your bloglines and delete this one. This week I'm going to try to post at least once a day with a A Week of Thanks. Each day will be about something I'm thankful for. Hopefully I'll be able to throw some craft posts in there too. I still need to write a review of the Sew U pants pattern (waiting for my husband to take a picture of me wearing them!) See you at my new site!

PS. Capello, I know you asked about how the site was going. It was super easy and was actually done the same day I started; I'm just kind of bad at blogging. :) No html involved at all! So far... I know if you super customize stuff, you need to know some, but I was happy with what was already available. But if you really want to build a site from scratch, I recommend Microsoft Frontpage. It was really easy to learn. Email me if you have any questions.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

A few things

*I love mint flavored chocolate as much as I love pumpkin flavored anything. Oh the holidays are good for something! (Weight gain???)

*I will be moving. My blog anyways. Even with the changes that Blogger Beta has (which by the way I barely notice!!!), blogger still stinks. I need more, Blogger. So I'm moving to wordpress. This will cause a fight between my husband and me, but its okay. He spent countless hours about a year ago setting up a wordpress blog for us. He put it on his server though and its just not stable enough for me to want to use it. Anyways, I'm using the version that's hosted by wordpress. So far it looks great. Lots of neat options like categories and pretty layouts. I'll make another post when its all complete and ready.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Cale, robots and rambling

What would you think if you went to someone's house and they had a very large painting of thier child in their living room? And by large, I mean huge, bigger than the child is tall? In other words do you think it would be tacky to hang this in my living room?
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Its about 40" square. And Kevin thinks that its weird for me to want to hang it in the living room. He thinks it looks like we love our child too much. How is it any different from family photographs though?

Anyways, this week has been rough so far. Cale has been mouthy. And its getting to me. And my neck hurts. I don't know if I slept on it wrong, or if its stress or what, but it hurts.
On the plus side though, I got to be a pattern tester for Wee Wonderfuls new Robot pattern.
The pattern is wonderful and easy and cute and I highly recommend that you watch for when it goes on sale so you can buy it. The spaceboy might be even cuter than the robot!
Also I learned how to make pastelillos which is kind of like an empanada, so I see lots of spin offs from that recipe coming soon, including dessert empanadas!
Also, I made the absolute best dessert this weekend. It was very impressive and no cooking was involved! I made chocolate truffles and they were sooooo good! Even my dessert-hating husband loved them. I would suggest to use less oreos than it says though so more of the cream cheese flavor comes out.

My Thanksgiving menu is all planned and although it appears that we are cooking for many, I think its just us this year. I can't believe its next week! Being gone for a month in a hot state like Florida really took Fall away! Its already almost gone. There are no trees to admire here so we'll just have to pretend its not green and lush outside still. At least its chilly...sometimes.

The other day while thumbing through Pottery Barns Kids catalog, I ran across this advent calendar and fell in love. Advent calendars were not part of our Christmas tradition while growing up. When I saw the idea to put activities in it, instead of treats, I knew it needed to be implemented in our house. So now, I'm working on one for myself. The squares are cut and I have each one planned out, some the same, some different. My husband was like you going to plan 25 activities? No. That's where I cheat a little. Using my MOMS Club calendar, community activities, and our trip to Germany, it really doesn't leave many days to plan! So we'll make cookies, watch silly Christmas movies, make ornaments, decorate the tree and stuff like that. Plus crafts. Cale loves scissors and a glue stick! I'm pretty excited about those aspects of Christmas.
Pssst. I'll show you what's on my list: a new sewing machine. I want it now!!!! It does lots of pretty stitches and automatic buttonhole. And its reasonably priced, plus comes with free quilting feet! I really think mine is on its last legs. Or at least needs servicing, but no one in Italy works on Kenmores. With shipping, it probably is cheaper to just buy a new one. Sorry Kenny, I loved you but I've met someone new. I fell in love with his blanketstitch capabilities.
What's on your list this year?

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Thursday, November 09, 2006

My craft room

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I've been working here and there on stuff around the house that I always put off. Painting my bulletin board was one of those projects. The pegboard was painted almost a year ago. (Obviously there's still a ton of work in here!) The book in the righthand corner is Sew U. I'll be reviewing it shortly. I just finished a pair of pants from the patterns. My goal is to make one of each so I can fully review the book.

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I finally finished this project yesterday as well. When I hurt my foot I knew I had to do something with the crutches. It seemed so wasteful to throw them away, but I can't stand keeping stuff like that either. So now they are shelves. One is glued and one warped so I had to nail it together. It makes the perfect home for my pez collection. Unfortunately they're a little too small. And yes, I know one is crooked. I hung it, what do yo expect???

I have also been painting lately. Its almost done and is coming along beatifully. Cale loves it so much that he actually pulls up a chair so he can sit and gaze at it. It will be revealed once it's done.
I bought Simplicity pattern 4072 (similar to this) and have been mulling over what fabrics to use. I love the clashing patterns. But there are so many great fabrics available lately. Hancock's of Paducah sent me a catalog recently and its so great to have so many of them to look at. They have a pretty decent selection of discounted fabrics too. I never know if I should spend the big bucks for fabric that I really love or be cheap, because the pattern may not even turn out that well.
I have also decided that I will not be making gifts this year. But in the DIY spirit, they will be purchased from small businesses.

PS. Have you checked out Pandora Internet Radio? I'm loving it. You enter a band you like and it finds stuff thats similar. If you hate what they choose, you say so and it deletes it. I did a Death Cab for Cutie search though and it keeps finding 90's grunge, which I keep deleting, so its basically playing Death Cab non stop. Which is weird, but the other stations are super cool so far.
Have a great weekend and have fun celebrating Veteren's Day! :D

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

4am Saturday morning + trip highlights

So I was driving my husband to the airport (he was home for less than 2 days before he had to go somewhere) at 4am and looked up and saw lava on Mt Etna, Sicily's lovely volcano. Nighttime is about the only time its noticable. Its erupting at the top and on the side. Its probably the only time we spoke to each other the entire drive. Not much to talk about that early in the morning. I dropped him off and Cale said "Where's Daddy going?" This is his favorite new question. SO I said Daddy's going to work. Cale is never fooled easily. He said, "Different work?"
This was the exact moment that I knew I didn't want him to re-enlist. How do I explain to a 2 year old that his Daddy has to go to school for a week in another country? That's really hard. But explaining 6 months? It will be even sadder when he stops asking. I write this and I say this, but I know what his decision will be.

We got home a week ago. Our trip was completely exhausting, in every sense of the word. We experienced no jet lag on the way there, but it has taken a week and a half to recuperate. We spent a few days in Spain trying to get back so we've been on this time for that long.
I wish I could say we had a blast but there were more bad times than good times. So here's a few of the highlights.
*Seeing my new baby nephew, Trinton
*Seeing dolphins dance
*A lovely day spent on a deserted Pensacola beach. Cale and I went for long walks and collected seashells.
*Shopping. I miss you Target. And Joann's Superstore.
*Bought Sew U and have tons of inspiration for these 3 simple patterns.
*Spending time with my best friend who keeps me giggling for hours
*Being told constantly how good Cale is.
*Eating lots of good food.
*Going to really nice grocery stores.
*Fun beverages: Izzy juice, cheerwine soda, and pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks
*Making funny statements to Cale like "you've never been in a place like this" and I was talking about a convenient store or a target or an eckerds.
*Thrift Store City. My fave store in Norfolk still rocks. I can't even tell you how many awesome finds I found.
*Flea markets and thrift stores in general. So much awesome dishware, so little space to bring it back. I did buy too little pieces of Pyrex for a steal though!

So it wasn't all bad. I'm glad its over and so glad to be home. Cale's having a hard time adjusting to these 'naps' that I'm making him take again. He keeps trying to trick me. "Its not dark outside." "I wanna take a bath first." Today it got even better, "I'm going to tell everybody that you keep making me take naps when its not even dark outside." Kind of a long sentence for him and I'm sure he left words out, but that was the jist of it. But at least he's taking baths again.