This blog has been so neglected. But I just haven’t had anything to write about. I’ve been trying to keep my health stuff on the “other blog” and since it has been taking up so much of my time, and I haven’t had a lot going on, I just haven’t had the motivation I need to write posts here. That needs to change. I need to find more balance in my life and obviously if my focus has been completely on the “other blog” then I’m not balancing very well.
I’ve decided to take on a couple of projects for this blog to chronicle. Hopefully to get me back into the right frame of mind for writing.
Spring Cleaning/Decluttering
It’s still Spring. The first day of Summer isn’t until June 21. So, I figure if I get started on Spring Cleaning before that date, it is still technically Spring Cleaning. I’m going to be using a combination of the Spring Cleaning Party plan on Simple Mom and the “party” variations and tips on Organizing Your Way.
Starting tomorrow, I’ll try to post some before and after photos as I work through each area. We’ll see how it goes.
“Soon-To-Be Niece/Nephew” Baby Blanket
I’m working my way through a blanket for my sister’s baby. She is due at the end of October or beginning of November. She is 40 and this will be her first child. She’s been wanting this for so long and it’s incredibly exciting for her (and really for our whole family). So, I started a blanket for her. It’s a pretty simple pattern but with a rather pretty yarn, and it doesn’t require that I do a whole lot of thinking while I knit. I’m going to try to get some early stage pictures here in the next few days. I’m only about 2/9 the way through it (heh. 9 squares, obviously). We’ll see how the finishing goes, since I’m going to have to sew up all those seems. Should be an interesting learning process.
Horray for finished mittens! And just in time really. Today was the first day when my hands were actually icy while walking the dogs. So, damn it’s a good thing that I forgot about The Boy’s student council meeting and showed up to pick him up a half an hour before he was ready to leave. It gave me time to sit in the truck, listen to NPR, and finish knitting up these puppies:
The faire isle makes it a particularly warm pair of mittens, so pretty darn perfect for the weather that seems is rollin’ in to this part of the world. And being my very first completed faire isle project, I must say they turned out fairly well. So well I believe I’m going to make another pair in different colors. Since I haven’t bought a winter jacket yet this year, I may have to wait to choose my yarn colors though.
I’m getting a pretty nasty knitter’s callus. And because the weather is so cold and the air is a bit dry, it’s started to crack open. It’s painful. I really need to figure out how to prevent this. Other than wearing a bandaid all the time, which if I’m knitting with more delicate yarn leaves icky gummy crap on my projects.
yeah. Most. boring. post. ever.
Since it is November 1, and the lovely PoppyMom has requested that W and I complete:
And so, here I am at 6:30 on November 1, typing away on the blog.
Halloween went fantastically. I really started panicking on Wednesday night when I realized just how little I had completed on The Boy’s costume. Truthfully, I am usually on my final fitting and have done at least one full dress rehearsal by a week prior to the big event, and here it was two days before and I had yet to finish cutting out pattern pieces. I spent most of the day Thursday sweating and near tears thinking about it, but not being able to do much as I had picked up a few freelance projects and had a deadline to meet. Friday morning I woke up and immediately began working. I didn’t move from the kitchen table all day. What came out of it was not nearly as technically marvelous as some of my previous creations, and I ended up giving up on the arms and legs portions, but I realized about 3/4 the way through it that *any* homemade costume now-days makes me an incredibly awesome mom. And the fact that while we were trick-or-treating, I saw a number of children with no costume at all? Yep. I feel ok about my half-assed costume design this year. Besides, I’m a makeup supergenius, so as long as I had a clean pallet to be able to coat The Boy’s face with gorgeousness, all was well. Of course, I realized now this morning as I’m uploading photos that I didn’t seem to get a single decent shot of the entire body of the costume and that the lighting outside was not particularly flattering, but you’ll get the general idea.
He really isn’t as miserable as he looks. The makeup makes him look particularly pouty.
We spent about an hour wandering in our neighborhood, which has changed significantly in the last six years! We lived here with The Boy was five and moved away until this last summer. Back then, one of the first Halloween nights he can remember, there were virtually no children in the area. It’s an artsy, trendy area that has been gentrified to hell and back, but then it was all young hipsters. Based on last night though? Hipsters are growing up and having babies! There were quite a few ghosts and ghouls, and a number of pirates and butterflies, wandering the neighborhood with bags of treats. The Boy was obviously among the older kiddos, but it was nice to see families in this area.
The Professor stopped by on his way home from work to check out the costume and walk a block or two with us, and then we headed down to W’s best friend’s new house. They were pretty excited about getting trick-or-treaters for the first time and we loved the fact that they had candy for kiddos and cocktails for the grown-ups! Pumpkin coffee syrup and tequila make a delicious little beverage. While W sat and chatted with friends, The Boy and I finished off two more blocks (both sides, as he insisted). The amount of candy that kid accumulated is truly amazing. And not a single sticker, pencil, or toothbrush in the lot! He did get a bag of Doritos, but we all thought that was kind of cool, considering the amount of sugar you injest on Halloween. Who doesn’t need a salty little snack at the end of it all?
Ok, even though I’m titling this post with Ministry lyrics, it is such a mommy blog post that I may need to shoot myself when I finish.
This week has been the total panic of “Oh, Gods! Friday is Halloween and I have done little to nothing to prepare my child!” Generally I am a Halloween fanatic. I have costumes planned months in advance and by the week before I only have a final fitting and makeup trial to complete before everything is perfect. My house is decorated. I have plotted and planned the best candy acquiring route for The Boy. This year, for some reason, things just fell to the wayside. And here it is Wednesday, with the big day falling on Friday of this week, and I am just now getting things figured out.
I’m not going to wreck the surprise of the costume until the day of, but let’s just say that this is our most challenging costume to date.
The first few years of The Boy’s Halloween adventures were pretty standard toddler costumes, but starting at age 6, he began dressing as the Universal Studios monsters.
Age 6: Wolfman
Age 7: Invisible Man
Age 8: Mummy
Age 9: Dracula
Age 10: Frankenstein’s Monster
Age 11: Can you guess it? It’s hard. It’s fancy. It involves extensive make up. And the following supplies:
Camo footie pajamas, two yards each of two different green faux-leathers, and a yard and a half of green lycra. (Ignore the nosy dog. He’s not part of the costume!)
A white swim cap that was hand painted forest green (the picture makes it look much brighter than it is). This was originally supposed to be a bald cap that I would either paint or use sponged makeup to change to a lovely shade of green, but three stores later, I gave up and purchased a white swim cap instead.
A the final photo of my hand with various makeup mixing techniques being tested out on the back of it. The top one obviously won.
And no, The Boy’s costume has absolutely nothing to do with the military or really being camouflaged at all. It was just a great base for the costume and was an easy way to keep him warm.
Stay tuned for Friday when I’ll post photos of the actual costume and all our secrets will be revealed.
Tags: Ha
I finished it. I boiled the hell out of that damn thing for over three hours. And got it to felt up about 50% of the amount it would have felted in a standard washing machine. Blah. Here is some photo documentation of the process.
I have been sick for four days now. Four absolutely miserable, head pounding, fever breaking, snot filled days. I had to call in sick to work on Friday, because I was running a fever and didn’t want to risk getting any of the kids sick. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to find a sub or I would have been absolutely screwed. When i got back to work on Monday, I figured out just why it is that I am ill. My favorite little cuddlebug walked into the classroom yesterday with a gigantic blob of green snot running down her upper lip and proceeded to cough all over the snack table. I love my job.
So the decision was made immediately in my mind that I was going to break my “hand sanitizer is the devil” boycott of all products which claim to kill 99.9% of germs on contact. I’m going to start bathing in the shit. I’m going to eat, sleep, and breathe Pur*ell. It may be the Devil and you can call me a Satan Worshipper now.
I had seen our occupational therapist wearing this really handy little lanyard with a rubber capsule on the bottom made to hold a bottle of the liquid gold that will save my poor red nose from going through this throughout the year. Perfect! But after searching both Target, Walmart, and Office Depot, I was still completely empty handed. And then it hit me!
I have a gigantic storage tub full of 50% wool 50% mohair yarn courtesy of Matilda444 that is just perfect and ripe for a project. I created a pattern pretty easily by modifying an I-Pod Nano cozy to be slightly more narrow and shorter, knitted it up in less than an hour, and prepared to toss it in the…
Foiled. I no longer live in a house with easy access to a washer dryer and control over the water temperature of said washer. I tossed the cozy in the washer with a load of jeans last night and when I pulled it out there was no change at all. I have a feeling the water is set incredibly cool, even for the hot setting. I figured a couple more runs through might do the trick, but after two further cycles this morning, still nothing.
Grrr.
I had read somewhere about felting wool by boiling and cooling and aggitating. Similar to, ya know, the “traditional” methods used to make those stupid felt, tri-point hats from the revolutionary war. I donned my dirndle skirt and a muffin cap, and popped a pot on the stove.
For the last hour, I have been boiling and shocking and aggitating and wringing and turning my fingers into prunes. And really? Doesn’t look like it’s doing a whole lot. I mean, it looks slightly felted. Ever so slightly. But it looks nothing like the lovely, thick and lush felt bags that I made last year. I’m going to keep attempting to boil the hell out of it, hoping that maybe it just needs a bit longer. But I may start saving my felting projects for the nights that we go to the laundromat.
Every fall I go a little crazy and knit up about 20 hats and a shitload of scarves. Mostly because I have learned with The Boy™ is completely incapable of having one hat/scarf set last him more than a few weeks. If Boy Scouts taught me anything it was Be Prepared! The preparations start today with that lovely little ball of yarn up there.
I’ve been brewing plans to make a quilt for our bed for this winter. Partly because I’m tired of fighting W for one of the two undersized blankies that we have on the bed. I want to make it big enough to cover both of us so I can snuggle up closer and not have to worry about it falling off the bed. I know, cheesy. But also because I want to add something of “me” to the apartment.
When I moved out of the house, I left everything for J, my son’s father. He’s not the kind of man who will go out and buy new blankets or household items. He’d just live his life without them. He would have slept on a bed with no sheets or blankets. Not because he’s gross or dirty or lazy. Just because he has a bit of the absent-minded professor thing going on and wouldn’t think to do so. I worry about him sometimes without me living there. The man, literally, may forget to eat. (In fact, I do believe this post has inspired the name of my son’s father for use in this blog. Hence for he will be the Absent-Minded Professor, or just The Professor.)
But I figure a quilt would be a good first thing to add to the apartment. It will be infused with ME!
Not much excitement on the home front today. The weather threatened to storm on and off through most of the morning, so The Boy™ and I spent another afternoon in doors watching movies. Today’s selection? The third installment of Back to The Future. Oh yes, the wild wild west edition! You know you’re jealous! We also watched Ghost Busters and both ended up craving roasted marshmallows at the end.
I’m dying for a trip to a decent craft store. Michael’s just isn’t cutting it. I have finished up both projects that I was working on and now I have absolutely nothing to keep my hands busy. The most recent finished project had sat around W’s apartment for awhile and I just couldn’t resist stitching it……
