greetingarts

change of plans

Last Wednesday night, as I was methodically knitting away on Rebecca's second stocking, I suddenly realized that Jessica's preschool Halloween party was two days away (they don't have school this week), and I had yet to start her Hello Kitty hat!  Whoops.  Talk about feeling guilty, how could I have forgotten?  So I got some white acrylic from my stash (I looked for bulky, I sure would have liked to have used that if I'd found any!) and did a little bit of Frankenstein knitting (cutting and splicing different bits of patterns from various places on the net and in my own brain) and came up with a rectangle that just naturally forms ears without any shaping.  I totally got it done on time.

Hopefully, I'll have a non-blurry picture to post of the baby as Hello Kitty after Halloween, because she couldn't stand still enough for a photo after cupcakes and popcorn and marshmallow treats the day of the party.  I didn't have to worry about making a tail because the girls informed me that HK only has a little stubby one and Jessie didn't want to worry about it.  Whew.

So then I went back to knitting the socks, but guess what?  When Rebecca put on the shoes that go with the fairy outfit, we realized there was no way they would fit with these thick worsted weight stockings on!  Hours and hours of knitting and one and a half socks later, I'm scrapping the whole thing, going to Target tomorrow to look for a pair of white knee highs that I'll paint stripes on with fabric paint.  If I can't find anything, I might just go ahead and paint her legs.

Needless to say, I guess I'm still not over SSS.  But I kind of think I'm over Halloween already.  Halloween costumes, anyway.

getting over SSS

Sounds like a bad cold or something, doesn't it?  But actually, for you non-knitters out there (and maybe for you knitters who haven't been bitten by the sock bug yet), SSS stands for Second Sock Syndrome.  The affliction that sets in after you've bound off your last stitch for a sock, and then you realize that the moment of elation you have from finishing a project is short-lived and undeserved.  Because *one* sock really isn't that much of an accomplishment, is it?  You've got to have a pair.

That's where I am now.  Forcing myself to work a few rows on the mate to this sock every once in a while, when I really just want to be reading Harry Potter Book #4 and nursing this stupid hacking cough I've had for a week.  I finished this stocking for Rebecca's Halloween costume two weekends ago but didn't cast on for the other one until late last night.  Need to have it done by Saturday.  I'll get there.  Maybe I'll ask Rebecca to hide the book and then I'll be okay.

bat hands, boo feet

Jessie came home with the cutest decorations from preschool last week.

Bat wing hands on Wednesday...

... and Boo feet on Friday.  So so funny!  I'm thinking of having the girls do this on fabric with fabric paint, and making a quilted wallhanging out of it.  Wouldn't that be fun, with embellishments and fun Halloween buttons and maybe some pieced pinwheels or prairie points for the border?  Ah, so many ideas, so little time.  Still working on the knee high socks for Rebecca's fairy costume, and still need to buy some yarn for Jessie's Hello Kitty hat and tail!  Maybe next year.

no random number generator for me

Lately, I'm figuring out I'm a pretty low-tech kinda gal.  Excel is nearly giving me a migraine (I think I'm going to scrap it in favor of pen, paper and a calculator), and it took me nearly an hour to format a simple little table in Microsoft Word.  So when it came to picking a winner, I just wrote the names down with a Sharpie on little strips of paper, folded them in half, and threw them all in a spider basket for the girls to choose.

Don't worry, this is just the mixing part.  Right after this picture was taken I made Rebecca close her eyes.  And the winner is... Katie!  Whoo hoo!  We've been blog friends for years (?!) now, and I'm hoping she'll post a picture of her little cuties eating those grit cakes she plans on making with the egg molds.

Thanks to everyone who played along, it was fun hearing from a lot of you for the first time.  Hope it helped to break the ice, I look forward to hearing from you more often!

yummy bear & bunny eggs, want one?

It took me only about six years to realize that the Korean supermarket almost right next door sells those really cute Japanese bento box accessories and things that make kids' lunches a real treat.  Colorful plastic picks for fruit or cheeses, reusable bamboo utensils and kid-sized chopsticks, and molds for rice and eggs.

I really hoped these would turn out decent, that they wouldn't be too fiddly and difficult to work with.  And guess what?  They were a breeze!  I've shaped rice with them, too, and everything comes out great.  So happy! 

I did some searching on the internet and found a few tips for using these molds.  You want to shape your eggs while they're still hot, and the molds should be wet when you start so nothing wants to stick.  After you put the egg in (a smaller size works well, I used the Large ones from Fresh & Easy, they're a bit smaller than Super AA or Extra Jumbo or whatever they have at the huge supermarket chains and Costco), I dropped the whole mold into a bowl of iced water for a few minutes.  The eggs popped out with no problem whatsoever.  The only slightly less-than-easy part is that you kind of need to have the egg yolk more or less in the center of the egg, and that can be achieved by turning and rolling it in the water while it's boiling.  I did the dishes as I was cooking the eggs, so I reached over and spun them with a spoon every few seconds or so.  No big deal.

I was so pleased with the way these worked out that I went back and bought an extra set of the bunny and bear molds to give away.  I figured, I've had so much luck and happy mail lately, it's time to return the favor.  I'm resisting the urge to turn this into a Box Tops giveaway, but I *am* still the Box Tops lady and if you have any you don't need for your own kids, please, please consider sending them to me, don't throw them away!

Anyway, leave me a comment if you'd like to have the egg mold, I'll probably pick a winner over the weekend.  No hoops to jump through, no questions to answer, I'd just like to know how many of you are out there... and maybe how you found me, how long ago?

Oh, and isn't that cursive handwriting fabric cool?  I think I'll make a journal cover out of it.  Or maybe a lunch bag.  Oh, who am I kidding?  It's going on the shelf and will be lucky if it gets cut and put to use before Jessie starts 3rd grade.

virtual registry

I think of my sister and her husband as an urban, environmentally-conscious couple who have amazing careers and are very well-educated.  It's hard to describe their style, but I think I'd know what they like if I saw it.

   

This stroller is so cool.  And these cribs, and look at the high chairs!  All this other modern furniture, too.  I like the sleek, clean lines, so different than what I usually gravitate towards. 

 

This diaper bag?  Totally my sister's style, I think.  She loves lime green.  And she *loves* her bags.  Virtual shopping is fun.  All the joy, without the bills.  As long as I keep my finger off the clicker...

let the countdown begin

Yay!  It's October 1st!  Now I can unabashedly go all-out with my Halloween decorating.   No holding back.  We'd already brought out the glow-in-the-dark pillowcases, the felt banners and the placemats, but now we can start eating the countdown candy, wearing the holiday T-shirts and skirts, and pull out the orange and black striped tights.  Well, actually, it's still in the 90s so maybe not the tights yet...

These Countdown to Halloween boxes are from Target (last year, not sure if they carry them this year), each drawer has a treat inside.  When you're finished eating the gummy brain, rat, bones or whatever, you turn the box around and it's supposed to make another picture when the month is over.  You can see the first square turned around on the box in back, it's green and white.  The Countdown is actually a preventative measure, you know.  You don't want the kiddos getting sugar overload on October 31st, right?  So, starting today, you give them small doses leading up to the Big Day.  It's smart, really.  But if you were against the whole sugar sweet candy thing, you could certainly put mini erasers, stickers, Halloween confetti or little notes inside the boxes instead.  I plan on using these for at least a few years, or as long as the paperboard holds up.  But I may have to recover them... my girls aren't too keen on the skeletons!