May Flowers

I'm going to have to hijack my parents' camera soon.

But for now my trusty camera phone will do.

I'm making a present for someone.  I don't know why I didn't start doing this sooner, but I'm thinking that since I love for people to make me pretty homemade things, maybe my loved ones feel the same way.  We'll see...  So I'm making these pretty crocheted flowers, pattern courtesy of Rose Hip.  I really like making granny squares, so I was pretty excited to see this neat spin.  

(On a side note, I've also been inspired by these,which she sells on Etsy, and which also remind me of these found on Posie Gets Cozy.  Whenever I get the chance to get at my pillowcases, that'll be it.  I don't think I'll ever be able to have a plain pillowcase in my life ever again.  Bless you lovely dears and all my other favorite craft bloggers for giving me constant inspiration.)

I actually had nine flowers completed, but Lily, who loves the be around the process of things homemade, and all things pretty and cozy for that matter... well, the lovely child snaked one of them.  And now apparently it's her flower.  I try not to argue with Lily if I can help it.  She's tough, cute, and, of course, I'm flattered that she carries it around with her along with her beloved bear.

I also tried to use the yarn I had on hand and embrace frugality and practicality all at once, but alas, it's all so wintery and deep and dark for this spring/summer flower project.  So I gave myself some leeway to go (yay!) yarn shopping.  I found these opposite-of-dull bright colors by Caron called Sheep(ish).  This may end up being my go-to for my home, non-kitchen projects.  It's so soft and fun.  

I'm also super excited because my beautiful friend, Bubbles, gave me a Mother's Day present!  Aren't Amazon gift cards wonderful?  I thought I'd add some fiction to my collection (Frank Peretti has a new book!), but I had so many crafting books and cookbooks on my wish list on Amazon, I couldn't resist, and it took me all of about three minutes to spend my present.  So now I've got two books coming:

This one's for me, of course.  Tanya Whelan is an amazing fabric designer and the author of the blog, Grand Revival Designs.  Man, oh, man, if I wasn't committed to using up our fabric stash before getting any more, I'd go bananas stocking up on her beautiful designs.  

This is for as soon as Rose is ready.  My mom is a master seamstress among other things, so she'll do the initial teaching in her own way (the best way I happen to know from experience).  After she gets the basics, though, this is for Rose and whoever else gets the bug.

God bless my crafty family and the friends who enable us.  

Unfortunately, these books will be on the slow boat, since I'm too cheap to pay for shipping.  But that will make the anticipation all the sweeter.

I'll let you know how the "flowers" grow.

Have a beautiful day.

Happy Monday

Ahh... wholesome afternoon activities for the kiddos.  Hopefully there are some good lessons in Toy Story 3, like how it doesn't pay to be a mean bear.

I'm reaching.

Lovely day outside, though.  I'm going to have to squeeze in some outside time after work today and before dinner.

Happy Monday!

My Swedish Kid

I haven't posted in a couple days, because I've been working on, well.... work.  When it rains, it pours. 

I've also been working on silly things like this, because it's Rose's birthday tomorrow, and I would like her to have some stylish, crafty things in it.  So I was up late last night mostly working on this:

You can't really see it, but we're having a mermaid-themed party, because Miss Rose likes mermaids for the moment.  I thought this would be pretty and fun, and I really am liking the idea of having festive decorations you don't have to throw away.  She can hang it in her room after.

I got the pattern from Little Lizard King.  Very cute if I do say so myself.  The fabric is from Nauvoo Quilt Co.  These two shops are lovely and speedy with tons of cute stuff, which basically will eventually translate lots and lots of -- well, let's call them necessary -- purchases.

But let's go back a bit.

First, I love this place:

And of course a good part of the reasoning for this is it's a cool store with furniture I can afford.  I actually had a brief moment of insanity where I almost bought TWO cute craft bins at Joann Fabrics -- two at $17.95 apiece!  People need organization, right?  Right???  But can you imagine?  Then I came to my senses and remembered to just jot it down on my running list for a future Ikea visit when I had enough on there to rationalize the amount of gas to get to the store.

Phew.

Another part of the reason is the cafeteria is actually pretty darn yummy.  And, once again, economical.  Sometimes, I can feed my kids there for free.  I don't usually plan it that way, but sometimes you just get that extra happy grace.

What I usually get there (except for breakfast, because it's woefully unavailable) is this:

But as I haven't been there in a while, I decided to make my own and experiment on my family, because what are family for except the leeway to experiment on people who have to love you no matter what?  I had made Swedish meatballs before, but this time I used this guy's version:

Because when I make his recipes, they usually turn out awesome.  (For recipe, see:  Alton Brown's Swedish Meatballs.)  Also he doesn't use sour cream in his gravy, which is good because me mum does not care for the stuff.  And while she's family and, as aforementioned, therefore well-placed for experimentation, it would not do to experiment with things you know they don't like.

Unless your kids have a fatal aversion to vegetables, and then it's just tough noogies.

In my opinion, the recipe was much better because of it.

This is my sous chef.  Or at least my sous chef for the evening.

She apparently, judging by her shirt, had some sort of Italian dish at school that day.  Nevertheless, she's good to have in the kitchen.  Whereas Lily is good for serious culinary training, Ivy is good for morale.  For me, anyone three feet tall who can fall off a two-step step stool and laugh about it is okay in my book.

So here is my sous chef on the floor.  It's so easy to find good help these days.

Side note:  My kids are a motley cultural blend of Welsh, German, Mexican, Norwegian, Lithuanian, and a little bit of Swiss and Irish just for fun.

Ivy is now all of this and half Swedish.  She ate enough of the resulting Swedish meatballs to be practically fluent in the Swedish language.  She's been listening to ABBA ever since.  She's planning a viking raid that I'm not supposed to know anything about.

Actually, I think she was doing that anyway.

I'd have taken a picture of the actual meal, but min familj inhaled them too quickly.

I shall have to explore more Swedish cuisine in my off time from now on.

Have a lovely day!

Six Servings My Eye

I have seen the future... er... my future, and it almost certainly includes weekly Costco trips.  If you didn't know already, my four beautiful, sweet munchkins are ages two (Ivy & Lily), three (Leif), and five as of next weekend (Rose).  I made these wee toddler/preschooler people what Quaker Old-Fashioned Oats calls "six servings" of oatmeal with a generous cup of raisins and divided it amongst the four of them.  (Please see above.)

This is the aftermath, or as I like to call it -- post-carnage.

That second bowl is Lily's.  You'll have to excuse her wastefulness.  She ate her body weight in penne at the Macaroni Grill the night before.

What in blue blazes am I going to do when they're teenagers?

I need to stop dreaming of a house and start looking for a farm.

Lily's Incredible Dancing Hair



I love this girl's hair.  Good thing because I have the same hair.  It looks a teensy bit cuter on her... okay a whole lot cuter.  Lily's hair is gorgeous.  It's really good hair for...

  ... DANCING!  Go, Lily, go!

(Wait, what happened to Ivy?)

Musings Over Leftover Himalayan Karahi

I'm doing it again... not reading.  I was going great guns with my favorite by-myself past-time.  And now I'm fighting off attack of the fried brain. 

Here is a bit of what is doing the frying, i.e. what is on my mind today -- the bigger stuff:

Better/more convenient childcare:  Great googly moogly.  This is the complete bane of my days.  Do you know how hard it is to find good childcare as a single mom in a city where people pay over a thousand per month per kid???  Do you?  Boy, I hope not.  I don't even make a thousand per month per kid.  Thank the Lord for the child care subsidy.  However, not everyone takes the voucher, let alone while having space for three kids.  Hello, waiting list.

Where to live in six months:  Big family for a city.  Little income.  Want safe neighborhood and awesome metro access.  Pretty please?

Where to live in six years:  No kidding.  I'm a planner.  Big family moves to suburbs.  Little income.  Want safe, pretty neighborhood and awesome schools.  Pretty, pretty please???

I'm all about finding the balance, though.  So I put these on my mind, too.

Rose's mad Spanish skills:  I took four years of high school Spanish.  I actually remember a great deal. 

I have no idea what Rose is saying to me with six months of preschool Spanish, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

Plus it's funny now that she has the ability to be bossy now in both English and Spanish.

Leif's mad English skills:  He's becoming quite loquacious.  It's awesome to find out what he's actually thinking.  What Leif says often sounds like poetic genius.  He speaks in haiku.   

Okay, well not really haiku.  But he has these awesome thoughts.  Do birds eat the sun?  Poetic genius or something else.  But I prefer poetic genius. 

Lily's awesome scolding skills:  I have absolutely no idea what she's saying.  But it's hilarious.  She points at you, furrows her wee eyebrows, and gives you what for.  She uses whatever syllables come to mind. 

I try not to think that she's actually just soaked up 17 months of mommy constantly doing something similar. 

And that it probably sounds about the same.

Ivy's whistling:  My littlest precious one began whistling when she was eight months old.  I kid you not.  So if I whistle, most of the time she will, too.  It's pretty cool.

And she watches television like Mike TV from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. 

Only sometimes. 

(Insert big smile here.)

And I do love living here.  (See:  picture snapped with BlackBerry above.)

The Wine Guy and The Chef Girl

This is Wine Guy and Chef Girl, also known as my brother and and my sister-in-law.

And this is an introduction to two of the most awesome people ever.

(I hope they don't mind I stole their picture.  It's a great picture.)

 

Wine Guy is my little brother.  He's very focused and very creative.  He'll tell you he had a rebel phase.  Well, I'm calling it the rebel phase.  

It was in the second grade.

I'm serious.  That's when he went through his devil-may-care, I'm-only-doing-what-I-want phase when he was, say, seven years old.  Then he got his act together in the third grade.  He got down to business.

Wine Guy has wanted to be two things his whole growing up life.  (Okay... maybe with the exception of saying he wanted to be a garbage man in kindergarten... but I don't think that counts.)  What he decided in the third grade, or thereabouts, was that he was going to be a doctor, a laparoscopic surgeon.  He went on to study hard, take Latin (the better to learn complicated medical terminology), and watch every cable surgery show he could find.

I know.  I was there.  I had to watch them, too.  I've seen things.  Things I never needed to see.  I've seen the insides of things I never needed to see.

Then he began working in a restaurant in high school, and they found out he was awesome.  So they trained him on everything.  That's when he decided to become a chef.

Now, this is amazing to me.  I have wanted to be about 67 things in my life.  I changed majors in colleges  about six or seven times in four or five different colleges.  I'm not kidding.


I did actually settle and graduate.  But I'm not quite as focused, you might say.

When Wine Guy decided to become a chef, he went out for the best culinary school in the U.S with ten letters of recommendation and an extremely competitive scholarship.  There he met the girl of his dreams, Chef Girl.  Two peas in a pod, you might say.

You might say a lot.  I like putting words in your mouth.

Chef Girl is one of the absolute sweetest people I have ever met.  In fact, I wondered what she saw in Wine Guy.  Because of course, Wine Guy is my little brother.  I remember him -- as amazing as he is -- as being an annoying booger growing up.  But if she thinks he's a booger now, he's her booger.  And they're perfect together.

Chef Girl also comes from a family of very interesting, fun, friendly, creative people.  I want to be them when I grow up.

Like that's ever going to happen... growing up.

She also has wonderful taste in things.  Plus she's a wonderful gift giver.  Plus she has great ideas and is fun and sporty.  I love, love, love her.  And she is the BEST chef.  I want her to be my personal chef, but I could only pay her in love and gratitude.

Apparently, you can't pay your bills with love and gratitude.  Sigh...

Together, they have an up-and-coming, successful, cool restaurant in the South.  It's one of those places where the idea seemed iffy at first -- snazzy, but iffy -- and you wonder if it's going to work.

It totally worked.  And the restaurant/bar is the hot new place to go.

Plus they teach, plus they write, plus they have wine tastings/classes, plus they got invited to audition for a cooking series, plus they travel, plus they have the fifth most adorable kid in the universe. 

Yes, the fifth. 

If you don't know who the first four are, you haven't been reading this blog.  Shame on you.  (See: Rose, Leif, Lily, and Ivy)

Plus Wine Guy has this awesome master certification in wine and spirits I can't remember the name of.  Shame on me.

Plus they always send me the most awesome bourbon for Christmas.  Cuz they know I'm a bourbon girl. 

(More about awesome bourbon later.)

Wine Guy, Chef Girl, and Little Gourmet, you are amazing.

Come make me food.

Rose

This is Rose.

Someday...

... she's going to help run the world.

Be ready.

My Basil Money Plant

Long, long ago, (okay, well maybe like 2 years or so) when I still harbored illusions of being this awesome, crafty, lovely stay-at-home mom, I bought a basil plant.  It was not my first basil plant.  As a matter of fact, I had been pretty effective -- given my thumb is definitely nowhere near a shade of green -- at growing rosemary.  Of course, rosemary is hearty and hard to kill and smells wonderful.  But it makes you feel good when it gets big and beautiful under your care.  So I felt pretty good planting my fragrant sweet basil plant. 

While digging the hole for my tiny fragile plant, who should come calling but a monster of a one-year-old bent on destruction.  Rose, in all her charming toddler curiosity, had grabbed the aformentioned basil plant and pulled it completely apart and out of its temporary, flimsy, plastic pot -- disecting, if you will. 

Aww... the budding little botanist.

I should have reminded her that botanists don't kill -- or they shouldn't.  However, I (because I am naturally such a calm and collected being) shrieked and snatched it back and lectured her for who knows how long on the propriety of touching other people's things.  I'm sure she retained every word. 

I gathered up the massacred plant as my daughter sat playing with rocks.  (She doesn't truamatize easily.  Good thing.)  Since there were a few roots holding desperately to a stem and one-and-a-half leaves, I planted the poor thing anyway and said a little prayer.  And then, of course, I lectured her again while she stared up at me incomprehensively -- or wise beyond her years.  Who knows?

It survived.  I don't know if it's still there today, but it lived!  I watered and tended it and took care of the wee patient until it resembled a healthy member of the garden.  I felt pretty good about it.

What does this have to do with anything?

Well, I was reminded of this story and how I now am that monster one-year-old with the basil plant.  Only the basil plant is my bank balance.  Grrr...  How do I do this to me? 

As a single mom (Oh yeah, I say that a lot.  Get used to it.  I'm still adjusting. I say with love.) with sporadic child support, the four kids and I, along with wonderful helpful parents who depend on my financial contribution as well, live pretty paycheck to paycheck.  Okay, there's no pretty about it.  I am Ms. Squeaking By. 

By God's great and wonderful grace, He provides us with what we need. (Can I get an Amen?)  We are sooooooooo blessed.  Just want to emphasize that.  WAY BLESSED.  Did you get that?  However, it's obviously through no financial wizardry on my part. 

Not even a little.

So I should have been more than a little suspicious when I felt like I could breathe. 

Caution To Self:  If you feel like you can breathe, double check.  Something is wrong. 

But I didn't.  I rejoiced and bought a couple things (not like Caribbean vacation or new handbag, okay?  Like stuff kids needed, blah, blah, blah) and threw caution to the wind.  Yay!  So when I reconciled my checking and found it wanting, I hyperventilated.  Then I called my mommy.

She's awesome.  She listened calmly.  She said stuff like, "I know you don't want us to bail you out."  She's right.  I hate being bailed out.  I just wanted somebody to freak out to in a major, major way.  (See: tears, yelling, whining, et cetera.)  It turns out I put in a small deposit twice.  Seriously? 

Yes, seriously.

So I am at once the monster one-year-old devastating the already fragile plant.  But I am also the amateur plant doctor watching, waiting, tending to make sure the old bank balance plant survives, and maybe one day, thrives.

Thanks, Mom.  I love you guys.