A Few Days Late and a Frame Short

When it comes to holidays, I usually have grandiose plans concerning what I am going to do and how I will decorate. My mind's eye creates stunning displays throughout the house and pictures how the whole house will come together in a Martha-esque manifestation of all things festive.

In reality? Not so much.

Oh, I usually get something done but since having kids it is usually more along the lines of: Oh dear! (____fill in the blank holiday___) is 3 days away, I should really dig something out and throw it on the mantel.

I feel terrible about this because G is really into holidays and is always bugging me to decorate for them. Oh, well. One more thing for her therapist to mull over in twenty years.

This Easter was no different. I had plans aplenty but a total lack of execution. Even the wreath I shared with you remains unhung because I cannot find an appropriate home for it. Aside from this minuscule little display on the aforementioned mantel, our house was adornment free.


Which isn't to say I didn't try. I did make the wreath after all.

I also did a little stitching:


This little Peeps inspired pattern is available for free on the DMC website. I did change up the embroidery thread colors somewhat from the recommended ones using the following instead (all DMC numbers):

• blues - 799, 3325
• yellows - 725, 727
• pinks - 603, 605
• purples - 208, 209
• black - 310

I only got to this point in the project before the actual arrival of Easter


but I went ahead and completed it a couple days ago, a miracle in its own right since normally the unfinished project would have lingered until next year. Go me!


It still needs to be finished and I think I'm going to put it in an embroidery hoop using this tutorial but I'm still debating round versus oval hoops. I'll share it with you when it is all done.

You know, maybe before next Easter.

Bounced Out

I think I'm still recovering from last weekend. It wasn't too crazy but still feeling like we crammed a lot of things into a little bit of time. I mean, how hard is it to go out to dinner, hunt for eggs, attend a birthday party, go out to dinner, dye eggs, open Easter baskets, go to church, go out to brunch, and then cook a big Easter dinner?

I must be getting soft.

We were lucky enough to have Papa (Todd's father) come visit for the weekend and celebrate Easter with us so that added to the overall excitement level.


Continuing tradition, we went to the Bunny Bounce at the zoo which, due to the gorgeous weather, was crazier than it has ever been since we started going four years ago. I think this was the first year it didn't rain or threaten to rain and the weather certainly seemed to be trying to make up for past ickiness.


The kiddos had a blast and G managed to fill her basket to overflowing


while M was a bit more methodical in his egg gathering.


There was some additional silliness


And even a sneak peek at the soon to be opened dinosaur exhibit.


Given the boy's obsession fascination with dinosaurs, I suspect we might be back at the zoo in the very near future.

Spring in the Kitchen

This week, G had her snack day at preschool. Translation: I had to come up with a snack food that was: small, portable, not too messy, appealing to G the food snob, had not previously been taken into school for snack by G (see previous food snob comment), and wouldn't cause issues for any major food allergies in the class. Oh, and G wanted it to be "fancy like a treat" because it was almost Easter.

Clearly graham crackers were not going to cut it.

Luckily, I hit upon the idea of making decorated pretzels and G was amenable. Thank goodness because I had nothing in the idea tank if the pretzels were nixed.

The great thing about these candy/chocolate dipped pretzels is that they are very simple to make (though not fast) and the kidlets can help out (to say nothing of my lifelong love of white chocolate covered pretzels though I am sure that played no role in my decision to make these).

After much consideration, G picked a color scheme of white with Spring colored (pastel) sprinkles. The materials were purchased:

pretzel logs, candy melts or chocolate, and sprinkles

And the helpers assembled:

The assembly is pretty straight-forward. Melt the candy coating according to the package directions. Then dip- I use a 2 cup measuring cup so I can easily tilt the coating to get better coverage (I think a bowl is too shallow).

if I make this photo somewhat smaller than the others will it hide the fact that is is blurry?didn't really think so but thought it was worth a try.

And sprinkle (I have a set of breading pans that are great for this kind of thing- I think only a third of the sprinkles ended up on my floor instead to the usual half):

We lay our pretzel outs on wax paper or parchment lined baking sheets to dry. If it is warmish you can tuck them into the freezer or frig to help things along.


Voila! The pretzels were a big hit and G was a very happy camper.

Which means I'm a happy camper.

And now I have 5 weeks to figure out what our next snack will be...

Penguins & Playtime

I hope everyone had a fantastic time over the long weekend. We managed to get out and enjoy the sunny weather.

We headed over to Woodland Park Zoo to check out their new Humbolt penguin exhibit. It is really fantastic. The new exhibit represents a coastal fishing village in Chile or Peru and includes tide pools and nesting areas for the birds.

It's no longer just penguins swimming around either, there are all sorts of interactive parts to it:

Here's Gwennie the penguin warming the eggs in her nest.

And the whole thing was built to be green, using geothermal heating & cooling and filtering its own water for reuse.

Did you know there is a little playground at WPZ? I didn't. I must have walked past it a hundred times! Todd and the little ones introduced it to me on Monday. Very cute, all the activities are based on animal homes or habits.

Gwen enjoyed pretending to be a spider.

Both kids channeled their inner turtle for Aunt B.

And much time was devoted to running in, out, through, and over this burrow.

Typically Todd takes Gwen to the zoo while Matt naps on the weekends so it was nice to all get out together.

New Year, New FO

I thought I'd start the year with some knitting content.

I'll pause while you all stand back up from the floor...

OK, here it is:

This was a Christmas gift for Todd and I am inordinately pleased with it. The pattern is VERY loosely based on an Irish Hiking Hat (Ravelry link). Loosely as in, "I cast on the 96 stitches the pattern called for and did a cable and rib patterned hat." Everything else I changed: order of the ribs and cables, width of the cables, height of the cables, the decreases... you get the idea.

The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted in Pearl Ten and I knit the hat on a size 8 Addi Turbo 16" circular and dpns.

I like the hat a lot but mostly I am pleased as punch with the way I worked out the decreases:

They make a fun, swirly pattern!

Should anyone be interested in the alterations I made, let me know- I actually took copious notes (shocking) so I know what I did.

Retrograde

I cannot believe that there are only two and half weeks until Christmas- where has the time gone? I think the late Thanksgiving and the resulting shorter pre-Christmas run up really has my brain flummoxed (love that word- I think we should bring back into regular use, it so precised describes that sort of baffled "what the heck?" feeling I experience so frequently these days).

I think I'm making progress. Gifts have been purchased. Gifts have been made, not all are done but I'm getting there. I am slowly getting the house decorated...

And... my children are slowly un-decorating it for me. My main accomplishment thus far was decorating the tree. Gwen's big accomplishment?

Removing the ornaments.

"But Mama, I liiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiike holding them."

well. Who can argue with that kind of logic?

sigh

It's fourth down, she'll have to punt...

Um, so that was me with regards to my handmade Christmas gifts. It just didn't work out this year, but I was in serious denial until the 20th or so of December, madly knitting while a tiny voice in the back of my head whispered that there wasn't enough time. Oh, sorry. That was actually my husband in his loud voice telling me to give up and get some sleep already!

And so, I did. I gave up. It was hard. I'm not ashamed to say that there were tears. You know how it is, with visions of perfect knitted gifts in just the right color, yarn, pattern all amazingly wrapped in your handmade, hand painted/stamped whatever paper with exquisite handmade card attached. While I never wrote about it here (because that would, you know, require me to actually write) I had in my head taken a "semi-handmade" Christmas pledge... not to be confused with anything related to Sandra Lee- how does she have a show on Food Network? I'm sorry but those tablescapes? Sometimes less is more. And have you ever noticed how the decor in her kitchen changes almost every show to match the theme? I once caught about five minutes of a lemon themed show, I swear the whole kitchen looked like a lemon meringue had exploded. She scares me and the food? yikes. I don't ever intend to watch her show but sometimes I'll be flipping through the channels and I get sucked in - I think it is the train wreck factor - what is she going to do next?

Um. Where was I? (but I do feel better, getting that off my chest)

I wanted to make as many presents as possible this year. I really had a bee up my butt about it. It is really tough for me to not be perfect when it comes to things like this. But, in the end, my sanity, what little I have left, was more important (thank you amazon! while you may be the total opposite of the handmade Christmas pledge you do come through for those of us with a last minute present crisis... ).

At least now I am, for the moment, ahead of the game for next year's Christmas gift knitting. I'd say I was ahead for birthday knitting but my family (with the exception of my daughter and my father) has inconveniently decided to be born in the warmer months when a wool whatever just wouldn't go over too well.

And in some totally unrelated, technology-makes-no-sense news, my card reader has decided to function again, just out of the blue. I didn't change anything, it just worked when my husband gave it a go. Unfortunately I don't have any current knitting pics in the photos I'm uploading to flickr but I'll try to get some in the next couple days and give you a year-end wrap up of my works in progress (too many). In the meantime, here is a little cuteness from "backstage" at my brother-in-law's wedding back in October (man, I have a lot of catching up to do), Gwen was the flower girl: