It's only been a week

School's out, school's out, Mom's gonna scream and shout!

You like it? It's the mantra I'm hoping not to channel this summer. So far, it's been okay. I don't have my boys signed up for camp after camp this summer mainly because they didn't want to do anything. They are turning into total slugs! No. Not really. They both took semi-private golf lessons, and have joined the summer golf league. My little guy plays on the little par 3 course, and the older guy plays 9 holes on the main course. Older guy loves it, younger guy could take it or leave it.

My younger guy could probably use some more swim lessons. Or, we could just go to the pool every day this summer and I can continue to work with him in the deep end, where he likes to hang out. He does, because most of his friends can swim and that's where they hang out. He has made a lot of progress in just three trips to the pool.  I do sometimes envision him as a teenager, not going to pool parties because he knows it would look really silly if his mom came too, hanging out near the deep end.

Kumon is still a daily ritual for us. My boys go to Kumon for math enrichment, although they offer both math and reading.  I would love for them to do both, but that's more than our car payment! The boys are doing well with their math. They are both a year ahead of grade level. I'll post about Kumon some other time. The curriculum has worked for us. I've suggested Kumon to many friends because it has made a positive impact on my kids' grades across the board.

One thing I'm doing this summer that I haven't been able to do in the past is take fitness classes without hiring a sitter. I've enlisted the help of Older Son to look after Younger Son without tormenting him. So far, so good. However, I noticed a call on my phone as I was finishing up yoga class. The call was from Older Son. I tried to call back immediately but it went to his voice mail. I needed to run to the nearby doctor's office to pick up a prescription, and then as I was driving home, calling not only his cell but the house phone and getting nowhere, I notice the local fire trucks and rescue vehicles zooming toward the general direction of my house. I'm thinking, Please don't let these guys be answering a call to my house! It became clear, soon enough, as I approached the big intersection by my house that the rescue crews were dealing with a bad car accident. One of the vehicles was totally flipped over on its back. My first thought is I hope to God it's no one we know.

So, I have two classes per week. Yoga on Tuesday and Muscle mania on Wednesday. Then I'm pretty much disabled Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Seriously, it is extremely painful to walk down stairs after the muscle class. I take my time going down stairs and look ridiculous while doing it. Kind of like during the class....

My classes are in the morning, and that seems to be a good time for Older Son to babysit. The only problem is, waking him up. That is slow going. I have to start early. And he's like a grizzly when I try to wake him. So not fun...

I'm working hard to finish a crocheted baby blanket for my friend who just had her fourth child. I was hoping to have it completed sooner, but school let out and I have no energy left for lots of crafting. However, I did sort thru some crafting things in the basement (while avoiding baby blanket) and found a beautiful punch needle pattern of sheep that I bought at our local needlework shop probably a year ago or longer. That store is INCREDIBLE. So many beautiful patterns and completed works. It's in an old Victorian house and I just love to go in there and browse. I went in the other day to ask about a special over-dyed floss needed for a cross-stitch sampler pattern I bought way long ago when we lived in Ohio. That would be about ten or eleven years ago.  It's a lovely design and perhaps the reason I never started it was because I knew it wouldn't look right if I didn't use the correct floss. To my amazement, this local shop had the floss, called Weeks Dye Works. It's more expensive than DMC but it gives you such pretty variations in the floss, to make your sampler look so vintage.

I accept that I have this "issue" of starting new projects before other ones are finished. It doesn't mean I NEVER finish projects. I finish nearly every single project I start. I just get antsy working on one thing when I know there are fifty other things I want to try. I even bought a package of quilling strips the other day. I don't even have a quilling tool, and the craft seems so out of fashion that I can't find one next to the quilling strips in the store. I'm not worried, though. My Older Son is really good at making things and I'm sure he'll make me one.

Lastly, I have the privilege of teaching a soon-to-be-sixth grader how to knit. She has no experience but she loves to makes things. She's similar to me in the sense that she starts something, gets on to something else, etc. etc. I gave her the first lesson last week and was stunned how quickly she caught on to casting on stitches. Really impressive! I didn't think we'd get beyond casting on in our first lesson, but I was able to teach her the knit stitch as well. She popped in this afternoon for a quick fix up. Every new knitter makes mistakes. Lots and lots of mistakes. Experienced knitters do too. But mistakes are such an important part of learning to knit that I would be worried if a student never made any! It's important to help a new knitter work through mistakes because that is how you really come to understand the structure of a stitch and a row and all that goes along with knitting. I'm really excited to see where this girl will take her knitting. She had such a fantastic question this afternoon. She wanted to know, if a person had really, really long knitting needles, if they could knit a scarf the long way instead of the regular way. I smiled, told her about circular needles and was thinking, "I really like the way she thinks."

More Waistline Growth

You know how there are certain stores where you'd be CRAZY to pay full price for anything? Stores like Kohl's, for example, where they are always having a sale. And I love it when the TV ad says "The Biggest Sale of the SEASON!" And I swear they've done that twice in the spring, for example. Or if you pay with your Kohl's charge, you get an extra 15% off EVERYTHING, on top of the already great sale prices! Act now! Or my least favorite promotion, the ol' scratch off. You may possibly get up to 40% EVERYTHING!! All I really get from this is gold scratch off tidbits and no desire to go to Kohl's to get 15% off. If you tell me I could possibly get 40% then dammit I want 40%. I'm not going to go into the store with my wimpy 15% scratch off and look like a total loser. No way. Not me.

My husband likes to get his business clothes from Jos. A. Bank. (As I typed it, I said it in my head in the TV voice with the swagger: "JO-seph Aaaa Bank!"). This is a store where you would be out of your gourd to pay full price for a Traveler's Pinpoint dress shirt. They are $87.50 each. Geez, people. We all know they are not worth it. Otherwise, you would not offer them "buy one get two free," a deal we recently took advantage of.

So where am I going with all this? Well, Kohl's often does this Kohl's Cash promotion where you earn $10 in Kohl's Cash for spending a certain amount of money. I recently bought a large bag full of clothes for my two boys. I also picked up some flip-flops for me, as well as some other small things I needed. I earned $40 in Kohl's Cash! Wowee zowee.

So after Mosaic and Fried Chicken Day, my friend and I went to Kohl's to spend this "cash." Not on something useful, oh no. Not on something practical, no way, man. We knew just what we needed.

A mini donut maker. 

(Ok, "needed" is not the correct word.)

So I picked up the Babycakes mini donut maker and one box of cinnamon sugar donut mix. It came to $38 and some odd cents. Perfect!

This is not my first foray into the world of Babycakes. First you must understand I'm not a huge consumer of cake in any form, even the adorable and oft celebrated cupcake form. I swear you cannot go into any store nowadays without seeing cupcake merchandise. Books about cupcakes, wire holders for cupcakes, fancy cupcake papers, cupcake gel clings, cupcake clothing, cupcake dishes, etc. But I purchased the Babycakes waffle stick maker, thinking I would make delicious and handy waffle sticks for my boys every other morning. Well, my first few attempts at waffle sticks were not all that successful. I had waffles sticking in there, or waffles that tasted like the actual waffle maker. Yuck. Then I bought Krusteaz Belgian Waffle Mix and all my waffle stick dreams came true. And have I mentioned how I only buy REAL MAPLE SYRUP?? Oh, waffle sticks and real maple syrup. I love thee.

So I owned the Babycakes mini donut maker for a week, and promised my boys I would make donuts on Saturday. And so that is what I did. And we all died and went to heaven, end of story, Amen.

No, really, we're still alive. We just THOUGHT we had died and gone to heaven because not only were the donuts Beautiful, they were magnificent, like no other baked donut, dipped in melted butter, rolled in cinnamon sugar has ever been or will ever be.

So the moral of this story is, when you have Kohl's Cash, you should buy a Babycakes product, because it's sort of free, and it will make you and your kids happy and all your dreams will come true. I swear.

Personal development and (waistline) growth

We are having a string of warm sunny days, and they began on Mother's Day. It's been beautiful! Today it's around 80 degrees and sunny. All the neighborhood kids are outside playing. My kids are inside. One is doing Kumon, the other has two friends over and the three of them are happily playing Legos. It's all good. The older one, the one begrudgingly working on Kumon math worksheets, wants to know if the younger one can only have friends over once per week. Part of me would like to say, "that would be awesome!" But I really don't mind that he has friends over and they spend their time off of electronic devices. They even play in the sandbox! I can't complain. The older one is just twelve going on sixteen and he's grumpy as hell. And he just wants to play Skyrim all the time. 

The day before this string of warm, sunny days was chilly and drizzly. Ick. But I had a plan. Thanks to Living Social, I bought a deal that allowed my friend and I to go to a glass studio in Willowbrook, IL and make a mosaic piece of art. We didn't really know what to expect, but once we got there, we knew we were going to enjoy the process.

We went to Nathalie Studio. The owners are a husband and wife team from Ukraine. They are both extremely talented artists. Nathalie is an artistic genius of mosaic and Urii enjoys stained glass. They are a warm, inviting couple and good teachers, too.

There were only five students in this class and we got to work just as soon as we chose a simple design from Urii's collection. One student brought a coloring page her young grandson did, and she made her mosaic from that. We were each given a small piece of plywood on which to apply tiles. But first, we transferred the design onto the plywood with carbon paper. Then Urii showed us how to cut tiles to fit the spaces we had and how to glue them on using a small amount of white school glue. Simple enough.
The class was advertised as a three-hour class, but it really took us four. I certainly never kept track of time. I was having too much fun!

There were many different colors of glass tiles to choose from. Sometimes, they were already cut into small square shapes, but we often used tiles that were mostly a bit larger squares, but sometimes irregular shapes as well.

Here is my friend with her "Angry Kitty" mosaic, before any grout was applied. The glass artists said they have a cat that looks exactly like that and she's not a very nice kitty. So "Angry Kitty" turned out to be a great name for this piece. The red background really conveys her feelings. "Stay the hell back!" That's what I see, anyway.

And here is my mosaic. Of course, I was drawn to the imagery of a wine bottle. What can I say? I like my wine. Again, this is before grout. I was concerned that my tiles had too much of a gap between them, and while Urii may have agreed a little, he didn't seem overly concerned, so neither did I. With his instruction, I selected tiles for the background that so the lightest ones were at the top, and got darker as the background met the "countertop." Similarly, the label was made so the tiles to the right were a bit darker, to convey the roundness of the bottle, as that edge would be farther away from your eye.

Here is the grout being applied by Nathalie. It was a somewhat messy job, so in a way, I'm glad she did this part for us, but I would not have minded doing it myself. To speed up the drying process, Urii helped the grouted pieces along with a heat gun. Then we were able to take our pieces and go home.

Here are both our mosaics with fresh grout. We were ready to leave. Urii instructed us to wait 24 hours before cleaning up the glass tiles, because they were looking a bit dull with grout residue on them. He also said we should use an X-acto knife to clean the dried grout out of the little nooks and crannies that are often part of the glass. This turned out to be very helpful. Here is my finished piece.

After class, we were more than ready to eat. And this is where Bec had a plan: to eat at Dell Rhea's Chicken Basket. This is a restaurant that's been around for years and has even been endorsed by Guy Fieri of the Food Network show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Bec and I both LOVE fried chicken, but in our adventures together, we have only experienced Cracker Barrel chicken-fried-chicken. I know. Pathetic. Lame. But on this day, we were truly in for a treat. REAL. FRIED. CHICKEN.

Now, don't get me wrong. We don't usually eat like this. But we know what we like. And we wanted quality. Well, we got it. What a great place this is! Dell Rhea's Chicken Basket in Willowbrook. Check it out sometime. It's not in any glamorous part of town or anything, but once you're inside, you know you are going to enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal and dessert, if you have room. We did not have any room for dessert. No space. But we were happily stuffed with fried chicken. And the cheesiest mac and cheese ever, and biscuits with honey. Oh yum. 

Ah, Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to any of my four readers out there who happen to be moms! ;-)

I had a wonderful Mother's Day. First of all, we all had a peaceful night's sleep, and woke up to a beautiful sunny day. Secondly, I was handed what I thought was a cup of coffee by my 7 yo boy, who brought it all the way up the CARPETED stairs (it was an empty mug). Third, we went to lunch at On the Border, where I indulged in a delicious watermelon margarita. Oh my. It was REALLY good. Lastly, we went home, got the dog and his leash, and went over to one of the local district parks for a three mile walk.

I also received a brand new Mac Book Pro for Mother's Day, which is not something I asked for, dreamed about or even thought about. So I was downright shocked! I have a lot to get used to on this wonderful piece of technology.

I have something really neat to post about tomorrow. I just have to figure out how to deal with my photos and stuff.

The Prettiest Little Baby Sweater I've Ever Knitted

This was not difficult. Sure I made a few mistakes, and fixed them, but it was quite a pleasure to knit this little darling up. The biggest mistake I made was when I knitted the sleeves two at a time on circular needles. Using this method, your sleeves (or socks--if you're doing socks) should be even. You have a separate ball of yarn for each sleeve. You simply cast on the stitches for one sleeve, then drop that yarn, pick up new ball, and cast on the same needle for the other sleeve. Then you simply knit back and forth in rows. In this case, you are knitting on the right side, and purling on the back side. Pretty straightforward. However, at some point, I went back and forth on one sleeve, forgetting about the other. When I bound off all stitches and blocked the sleeves on a towel, it was very clear that one was longer than the other. I stared at this in horror! How the heck did I do this?? But I know. It's called distraction. And their names are Connor and Jack. ;-)

Setting in sleeves was also a new method for me. Basically, the body is knit, the sleeves are knit, and you simply have to sew the sleeves into the arm holes. This went a lot smoother than I imagined it would. I love the decreases used in this pattern, It really makes this sweater look special, in my opinion. Of course, the cables and lace design is what really makes it.

This sweater is for my newest great niece, Isabelle. She was born just a few weeks ago. I haven't met her yet, but I'm looking forward to mailing this to her tomorrow.

I love the book this pattern comes from, Baby Knits by Lois Daykin, so I just ordered my own copy from half.com. There are many patterns in this book I'm going to make. I really can't wait to start the next one.

Quick update!

Oh my, so much has been going on with me lately! It's all good, mostly, short of needing a root canal, my first ever. I can safely say it wasn't that bad. Gum surgery was far worse and getting a bridge "installed" was no fun either. My root canal had to be performed through aforementioned bridge, specifically, the crowned bicuspid in front. I was nervous because I paid a lot for that bridge which I just had done in Jan or Feb of this year. But it was all good. Root canal=no problem. This handy graphic tells it all. I didn't really know what a root canal was or why you'd need one. Now I know and I share my knowledge with anyone who will listen. (Ok, not really.)

A more enjoyable aspect of springtime for me has been working in the yard and garden beds. Our front yard has been annoying me for some time. Last year, the burning bushes looked like they were dying, the spirea looked like crud, and I tried to introduce some color by way of salvia, and that did help, but I lost one. I have not liked the juniper-type things in the front and they had grown into one big lump. But the worst part was that three large shrubs were dying on the east side of my house, and I didn't know why. I figured they had some sort of disease, because you could grasp a branch and it would just pull away right at ground level. I found out that the shrubs (viburnum) had become infested with a borer-type pest. That particlar type of virburnum is susceptible to this.

I had a landscape designer come out and we discussed her drawing up a plan for our back yard, which is essentially bare. She told me to get rid of the virbunum and replace with something other than that, like lilac.

So, I've been cutting in a crisp, new edge around all the front beds, I've gotten rid of the viburnum and with the help of my husband, planted three new Miss Kim lilacs. They are lovely. I also planted three stonecrop, three large hosta, one cotoneaster and three new salvia.

 I also brought home twenty-some bags of really, really good mulch and applied it. It looks great. I step out onto my front porch and I feel such a sense of accomplishment, even though there's still more I can do to beautify the front. I've physically worked very hard on it and I will say I've enjoyed it. (I DO, however, have part of a thorn from the Hawthorn tree in my arm. Not sure what I should do about that yet...)

Today, I met with the landscape designer and she presented me with a fabulous plan for our backyard and side of the house, where we have a path leading to our patio. The patio and path are new as of last spring. We have no privacy in our backyard, and no matter what we're doing back there, I really feel like every neighbor is watching. We have great neighbors, but I would like a little privacy! I would like that beautiful new patio to feel a tad enclosed with some plantings. Like an outdoor living space. Wouldn't that be awesome?

 The only problem is, it's a big, ambitious plan that would cost over $10,000

Yes, you read that correctly. Over TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS

if the nursery did it all.

Of course, I'm already picking apart the plan and trying to determine how much I could do myself. I already know I can't plant the big trees. Heck, I probably won't even be able to plant the junipers. But there is a lot I can do, and I'm willing to rent a sod thrower (not even sure what this is, but I hear you can rent this machine to remove sod) and learn to use it. I'm not afraid. I am woman. I can wield a mighty spade and haul several wheelbarrows full of mulch.

Honestly, I am more sore this week from sitting cross-legged on the carpet and sorting through thousands of Legos to build some Lego Power Miner sets for my son. My older son received these kits a few years ago, and I believe he attempted to build them himself. However, we were probably busy and didn't help him and then all the pieces got tossed in with thousands of other pieces and it's not efficient to build elaborate Lego toys this way. It makes you crazy and bitchy and sore. But I spent about 8 hours on this project this week. And I gotta say, my back hurts like hell. I did not feel sore after all the front yardwork. I was in pain just trying to get out of bed this morning!

As for the Legos, I realized after one entire evening of attempting to find the right pieces and put them together (while Jack kept attempting to walk over me and all my found pieces) that I had to sort the pieces out by color. It's fairly simple to do, just extremely time-consuming. It helped, but I was still missing a few vital and rare pieces. So I went up to my older son's room and started searching through K'Nex containers (I found some weird stuff in those!) and Erector sets, too.

I found some pieces.

 I was elated! I was geeky!

I am still amazed I allowed myself to spend so much time on this. But I will admit, I like a challenge.

Here are the finished toys:

Later on, I'll post pics of the prettiest little baby sweater I've ever knitted.

Sidetracked! (insert screeching tire sound here!)

Uh-oh. How did this happen. Notice how I didn't put that last bit in question form. I already know the answer.

The Answer Is:

I get easily distracted by intriguing projects. And I was distracted when I started browsing some of my favorite blogs (see side bar). And I love to look at the beautiful crochet projects of Attic 24 and The 8th Gem. Then I thought I'd see what blogs THEY have as their inspiration, and just like that, I found

(drumroll)

The Wool Eater Pattern.

It matters not that I do not have wool that needs to be "eaten." It matters not that I have a lovely pink baby cardigan needing my attention. I am an instant gratification-type person and darn if I didn't need to get the yarn, get a hook and start hooking.

(That last part didn't quite sound right, huh?)

So I started with some cotton yarn. I don't even like to call this stuff "yarn" because I find if hard to work with. Virtually no elasticity and that is hard on my hands. Plus, I didn't have much of various colors of kitchen cotton, so my initial idea of making a "wooleater" dishcloth was canned. I canned it whilst sitting at my desk in the basement. Next to the can is a large Thirty-One bag containing a crapload of JoAnn Sensations yarn called Sublime. I have used it for Fair Isle practice...

 and for the tiny Fair Isle pouch project on teeny needles.

I really like this yarn and the only setback is that I don't think they make it in orange or yellow which would be fantastic. I used my electric yarn ball winder to make this Sublime into several workable balls. So glad I did that, now that I've found a use for it.

Anyhow, I grabbed a size E crochet hook and this is what I have so far.

Then I stumbled upon a link on Ravelry to a booklet called Bavarian Crochet. Turns out this is what Bavarian Crochet is. I guess my German roots have something to do with loving this pattern and loving the stitch and the process. More pics below:

Maybe I'll have enough to make a lap blanket. Maybe just a cushion cover. We shall see!