time flies…

I thought July went by quickly, but August?  Wow, August just slipped right through my fingers.  This last week was no exception.  

Perhaps it was the time I spent stopping Little Bear from riding his tricycle down the front step (a full size step).  Or the lower back injury that had me spending most of Wed & Thurs resting on the sofa.  There was also a play date on Thursday morning, and playgroup on Friday morning.  Maybe the 1.5 hours it took me to get home from playgroup on Friday, causing me to miss picking up Belle at the bus, had something to do with it.  Actually, I’d say that one took YEARS off my life! 

[I was able to call the school and let them know I wouldn’t make it.  They won’t drop off little kids without an adult present.  She just stayed on the bus through the whole route then the driver brought her back to school.  I’ve never felt so horrible!!]

Nevertheless, I haven’t spent as much time sitting here at the ‘puter as usual.  A little time here, a little time there, but man this chair is hard on my back!  

We’ve had a nice, quiet weekend so far and tomorrow looks equally as nice.  Lots of laundry-washing, sorting, and putting away, cooking with my husband (it’s so much more fun WITH someone), and other homey sorts of things.  I hope you are having a wonderful weekend as well!

 

PS: I have posted a few new recipes over at my cooking blog.  Check them out!

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Sewing Week 2

One of my goals for this year is to spend one day a week sewing.  I find it so difficult to get motivated some days.  Almost like a depression, but not that severe.  I’m taking a proactive approach and diving into life head on this fall.  So I’ve planned my sewing day to be on Wednesdays, bathroom cleaning days.  This forces me to get off my butt and get the cleaning done early in the morning so I can spend the afternoon playing.  

My first week I made these pants for Little Lamb.  Up next was a project for me!  I’ve studied this pattern so many times, purchased the fabric months ago, and finally worked up the nerve to try it.  It’s actually quite simple and I’m happy with the results.  Though I did realize much later that the fabric closely resembles that of my school uniform…Guess all those years in plaid (13 to be exact!) placed something deep in my subconscious.

The pattern comes from the Bend The Rules Sewing book by Amy Karol.  It is such a fun book!  It certainly gets the creative juices flowing.  

Here’s the “in progress” shot:

The kids always feel the need to get crafty while I’m sewing.  This week Belle decided to make a chef’s hat.  This child amazes me with her ability to take random paper bits and create something quite cool.  One day she made hand puppets from copy paper and even fashioned moving arms!  Oh how I wish I’d taken pictures.  Anyway, she had to incorporate some sewing scraps into today’s project.

And now for the finished purse.

 

Next time (and I can say with confidence that there will be a next time!) I will make it larger, you know to hold more stuff!  The handle is one solid tube shaped piece that feeds through casings made in the lining so it pulls the sides in a bit.  Amy calls it the charming hand bag, and I must say, it is quite charming!

Nature day!

Getting an education in nature is quite easy out here where we live.  In just one day, we had visits from a snake (it’s really much longer than it appears in this picture)

I had to sneak out the front door quickly to get that shot as he was hanging out in the bed just outside our front window.  The kids were squealing with a mix of excitement and fear.

Later that day, as Belle and Little Bear were playing outside, we spotted this mommy and baby deer resting in the shade of one of our trees.  Notice how their mouths are open, munching on tasty leaves.

Honestly, it was quite a miracle that I even get Belle to go back outside after that snake sighting!  I instructed them to not cross over to the side of yard where the deer were, so that they would not feel threatened.  They seem to have grown accustomed to our sounds as they make frequent visits to our yard, but better safe than sorry!  

Finally, that evening we had a visit from a lovely butterfly.  It sat on J’s shoe for quite some time, somehow not scared away by the sounds and crazy movements of the children.  Amazingly, this picture was taken at true distance-no use of the zoom!  I couldn’t believe I was able to get so close.

And that concludes our lesson for today!

My second home

I’ve debated for quite some time over how I should organize my cooking posts.  Categories are an obvious help, and I do plan to implement them.  However, I really wanted a place just for food.  I always want to post more about food but worry that it might take away from the original intent of my blog.  Which, you know, is to share the goofy details of my life!

And so, I introduce Depeche Mom Cooks.  I’ve posted some old recipes from this site and I’ve started a challenge for this month: serving better breakfasts.  I’ll let you know as I post new things over there.

where does the time go?

We’re in the mad rush to make sure Belle has everything she needs for school.  Her first day is one week from yesterday.  We meet her teacher, Ms. G, tonight.  J was able to  change his schedule so he would be off early enough to make it-he’s in the out patient center this week and they rotate who leaves first, second, third, etc.  He lucked out that today was a slow day at the center so he didn’t even have to go in!  This sort of thing rarely, if ever, happens and he has to work all weekend, so I’m especially happy.

I can’t believe my little girl is about to begin first grade.  It seems like just yesterday we were fretting over Kindergarten, and in a blink it was over.  Heather Bailey was saying the other day how, with kids, the days are long but the years are short.  I have to completely agree.  There are many days when I wonder how in the world I’m going to make it to bedtime, and yet I can’t believe how close we are to Little Lamb’s 2nd and Belle’s 7th birthdays.  

We seriously considered homeschooling Belle this year.  We knew we would be moving, and the neighborhood we hoped to move to didn’t have the best schools.  I read books, did research online, dreamed of field trips.  My heart was really set on homeschooling.  But then we moved to a house in the same school as our old place.  J and I continued talking it over, trying to be sure we were making the best decision for Belle.  The school year ended on such a high note for Belle.  She was excited to be a part of something bigger than her.  She excelled academically further than I’d ever anticipated, mostly due to the large number of aids her school employs.  

 

The reality is Little Lamb is still at a very demanding age.   I’m hoping to do some evening tutoring rather than watching a child every day, but it might not work out.  It simply wouldn’t be right to push Belle’s education aside to care for someone else.  This is where we are right now, and much as I’d like to, I can’t deny that.  I expect that I will question myself many, many times this year.  But I’d do that either way, really.

So, for this year, she’s going back to public school.  I can’t speak for next year, or the year after that.  I’m seriously dreading the increased emphasis on testing that I know is inevitable.  They don’t begin formal state testing until 3rd grade, but I know the preps are coming.  As a former public school teacher, I know just how much testing influences your planning.  There are many things I would have taught, but couldn’t because I had to administer yet another practice test.

On another note, we’ve just given LL her first peanut butter sandwich.  Her response was “Yummy!”  So far, so good.

Here is a note from the little girl herself.  She just had to get her opinion on here:

 bbn  bbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

Have a nice Thursday!!

Brrrr

We were just outside playing with sparklers and I am happy to report that it was positively chili outside!  About 70 degrees, according to the computer.  You Texans don’t hate me too much with your (still) 100 degree temps!

 

Ok back to the Olympics and my crappy antenna reception.

Three quick ones for the road

So we’re sitting at our favorite Mexican food place (as documented here) and I’d ordered the Taco Salad.  It has steak, romaine, red onions, and pumpkin seeds-I omit the beans and jalepenos-in a delicious shell.  It took some doing, but I finally got Little Bear to try a seed.  He immediately declared them delicious and foraged through my salad for as many as he could find.

On the way out of the restaurant he said, “Mommy, I really loved those monkey seeds!”

No wonder he was reluctant to try them!

 

*****

Belle: Hey, Little Bear.  Wanna come in my room?  I’m writing a song about tennis shoes.

Can you tell we went shoe shopping recently?

 

*****

 

We were playing in the (baby) pool in the back yard the other night.  Little Lamb prefers to stand by the side and reach in with her toys because the water is always ice cold.  She determined I was hungry and began preparing me food.  At first it was “mac a cheese” like we’d had for dinner.`I tried to get her to say the word delicious, because, really, there is nothing cuter than little mouths spouting big words.  She paused, but said nothing.  Then she turned back to the pool, got a cup full of water, and said “Want some wishus, Mommy?”  She repeated this over and over and over switching between mac a cheese, wishus, and sometimes even wishus a cheese.

The results

Well, I didn’t accomplish quite as much today as I’d hoped.  But I think I came reasonably close to my goal.  Mostly I just didn’t get to the vacuuming.  I did, however, finish Little Lamb’s pants and they turned out so cute!  They are just what I was hoping for.  They took a bit more tweaking as I went along to make the ruffle work.  Pattern sizing is so screwy.  I knew I needed to cut the length shorter if I was going to add length to the ruffle (here’s the something close to the original pattern for reference), so I cut them at the 9 month size.  I tried them on her to test the waist band and they were nearly long enough without the ruffle at all!  So, I cut a couple more inches off the pant legs and about an inch and a half off my ruffle (which started at 7 inches in length).  Then, I realized the legs weren’t tapered enough for the ruffle to fit.  So, I restitched the inside and outside leg seams at a diagonal.  Oh I realized I forgot to link to Sandi of  Portabellopixie yesterday so you’d know what I was aiming for…sorry!  One of these days I’ll get my hands on a yard of her fabric.  Until then, my 40% off deals at JoAnn’s will have to do!

 

In the end, I am quite happy with the results!  She won’t wear her clothes across her belly (remind you of anyone, MB?), so it looks like she has a big gut.  🙂  

 

I’m super behind in posting pictures due to our internet connection issues.  Here are some taken last weekend at our favorite Mexican food place.  The first photo shows Belle as you can typically find her these days-behind the cover of a book.  My kid!  A bookworm!!  I’m just a little excited about this, can you tell?  Next you’ll see Little Bear and I together.  I feel terrible that I haven’t mentioned this here, but when I was in TX my mom treated me to a fantastic hair cut and highlights.  I’m really liking this look!  

Finally, I organized the toys in the basement yesterday.  There were toys in there the kids hadn’t seen for months.  It was like Christmas!  (Lest you be worried, the children have had full access to plenty of toys in their rooms.)  

 

I can’t seem to get the pictures to do anything but go into a gallery, so a gallery it is!  

 

 

Ok, I see how to post the pictures individually now.  I don’t feel like going back and changing everything this time.

this is how my mornings go…

I was going to post a simple “to do today” list for myself here, but as with most things these days, it wasn’t quite so simple.  You may remember me telling you we had dial-up internet.  It was killing us with the slowness.  There was a time when having dial-up wasn’t such a big deal, but the internet is a totally different animal now.  Every site is geared toward high speed connections.  Plus, we have several other gadgets which use internet that were completely unusable.  So, J set about to find the next best alternative.   This took much research what with some companies putting caps on how much info you can download per month and other companies having completely unreliable service.  We’ve finally settled on NTELOS.  It’s a little USB modem thing that plugs into the back of the computer.  J even managed to connect it to the router so we can use the laptop and J’s other toys.  You can take it with you, hooked to your laptop, and get internet connection most anywhere.  Like even driving down the road!  It’s more expensive than DSL, nowhere near as fast, and much less reliable.  Don’t you just love it when you’re paying more and getting less???  However, it’s much better than dial-up.

 

Usually.

 

Except this morning.  Let me replay the events for you:

 

Wake-up the computer

Wait for window to pop-up asking if I will allow something or other

Wait some more

Try connecting and see if it will pop-up

Computer freezes

Restart the computer-Yes, I want to close Safari and all my lovely tabs

Get Little Lamb more cereal

Computer closes everything, bus freezes before restarting

Turn off computer by pressing and holding the power button

Wait a bit

Get Little Bear more cereal

Turn computer back on

Wait for Allow window

Yes!  Click Allow

Connect to the internet

Check email-nothing interesting

Check Vienna (my blog reader)-read a couple of sites

Open Safari to write a blog entry

[Feel free to take a potty break here, we’re just getting started…]

Connection strength falls to zero, can’t load page

Disconnect internet

Wait while “Disconnecting” streams across top of screen

Go downstairs to basement to put a load of laundry in the washer, feed cat, and retrieve sewing machine and thread

Still “Disconnecting”

Computer frozen again

Restart computer

Get Little Lamb more milk

Wait for Allow window

Click Allow

Signal strength: 0

Wait for improvement before connecting

Reboot router

Signal strength: 3!!

Connect to internet

Open Safari, begin post

 

Ok, so now I’m going to stitch up a pair of pants for Little Lamb.  I cut them out and pinned them last night.  This is the first time I’ve really modified a pattern, so I’m curious to see if they will turn out.  It’s a simple pair of pants with a flair/ruffle at the bottom.  However, I wanted the flair to be much bigger (a la Portobello Pixie) so I cut the pants shorter and the flair bigger.  Ideally I’ll make her a little dress from the same pattern that she can layer over the pants this fall.

 

Then, I need to clean up the kitchen.  Switch out the laundry from washer to dryer.  Fold, sort, and put away several loads of laundry.  Get kids to clean up their bedrooms.  Vacuum bedrooms and office.

 

Sounds like fun!  Wanna come over and help??? 🙂

Finally!

I check my stats and search terms for the site fairly regularly since they are both listed on the opening dashboard page.  Generally my search terms are boring and well, predictable.  You know, things like depechemom or crisanne.  Today I finally got something worth writing about!  “celebration of small boobies”

 

I have no idea what that has to do with anything I’ve written, but it gave me a good laugh.

 

I have two delicious, cheap, and easy dinners for you.  I’ll write them up tonight or tomorrow.