December

Aaaaand now its December.  Christmas prep is in full swing around here.  I have been more than busy making my Christmas gifts and haven't been able to set any time aside to blog.  In fact I don't know how much time I will have to update the ol' blog moving forward.  For now, I am keeping an open mind but I foresee a blog free life in my not-so-distant future.  Although I do like having a blog and a record of past projects, my time is becoming increasingly limited.  I am definitely going to give it some time to ponder and really consider my future in the blog world, but I think my ultimate decision is inevitable, however the time line is still undetermined.  I hope all is well in your world and I do hope to post again soon.  Until then, I hope that you all have a safe and happy holiday season!

October

Wow.  I missed an entire month! I keep meaning to post and either lack the time it takes to post or lack content to post.  My apologies!  Autumn is here, and that means more knitting projects and great yummy food! I still am a bit crunched for time... but here is a quick run down of what I have been up to and a glimpse of things that I will post more about soon!

I finished knitting my first pair of socks!!! I am super happy with how they turned out and so glad they fit! I have since collected sock yarn to make more!

I knitted a vest from the Unofficial Harry Potter Knits Magazine.

I knitted another shawl front scarf:

I became really obsessed with knitting these headbands in the Spring.  I just now got around to blocking them...

...which was all kind of pointless because I cut all of my hair off :-) I will still wear them though.

We have been making sure that the boys are enjoying the summer completely before the weather turns.

The hubbs built a fire pit in our back yard and we have been having fire pit parties every weekend!

I have been trying a lot of new recipes, like this one.  Which I will definitely be sharing the recipes for since they are soooo good!!!

...and dessert recipes too! 

Our compost pile has surprised us with a few volunteers, just in time for Halloween! 

OH and the best of all....  My chickens have started laying eggs!!!

I have more to share, but until next time...  Happy Autumn! 

Proving Myself Wrong

During the summer, I only wear flip flops.  Seriously.  So it doesn't really make sense that I have chosen now to take the plunge and knit my first pair of socks.  I am always up for a challenge but I have always stayed away from knitting socks.  Why, you ask?  Well, for many reasons:  1. It's cheaper and easier to buy socks.  2. I am extremely hard on my feet so it would make me really mad to spend so much effort on something that I will just wear a hole in.  3. I just know that I would get done with one sock and not want to knit up the second sock, therefor I wouldn't ever wear the one sock.  4. Have you seen sock yarn and sock needles?  5.  I just don't wanna.

Slowly, I started to come around.  I consider myself an advanced knitter and I have always had this nagging in the back of my head that said, "You're not advanced until you can knit socks."  Then I had a group of women recently tell me that I haven't lived until I wear a pair of hand knitted socks (I know, I hang around some real delinquents).  I have the needles and the yarn (I don't really know why) and I really started to develop a desire to tackle a sock pattern with the excuse that I am going to make them just to prove how much I will hate making them.

I checked out a bunch of sock books from the Library, scoured the Internet for free patterns and asked my sock knitting friends for suggestions.  I now have several patterns to choose from, but I decided on this free Knitty pattern:

Solidago by Mary Jane Mucklestone

I picked out my yarn and dug in.

Today marks day 3 since the cast on of sock 1 and so far I am half way through the heel flap.  It has gone pretty smoothly thus far, well see how the rest goes...  I will also begrudgingly admit that I am actually enjoying knitting this sock.  We'll see how I feel when I have to start on sock number 2 :-)

Until next time, Happy Sock Knitting! 

hello

Is it August already?!?  I keep seeing commercials for pre-season football, wasn't the Super Bowl just a few weeks ago?  Wow.

Well, let me catch you up.

July 5th, we went junkin'.  Here are some of my scores:

For those of you that don't live in the Midwest or even the USA, junkin' is where you shop at "junk" stores (flea markets, thrift stores, yard sales, antique malls) to find treasures.  This is the hubbs and my favorite past time! 

We used our left over sparklers.

I am knitting a few gifts.

I finally finished knitting my cowl.  I bought 5 balls of this Louisa Harding yarn at Tuesday Morning for $6.30 total!  It is 90% cotton 10% cashmere and it feels so soft! I still have one ball left  :-)

We saw a Yoda cloud.

I went to visit this girl...

In this city...

 and had a lot of fun, ate a lot of good food:

I bought some yarn in Chicago and decided to make some handwarmers. They are almost done.

Took the kids to visit the in-laws. Saw a fox the minute we got there in the middle of their yard.  This pic is taken with my iPhone through binoculars.  I think it turned out pretty decent, considering.

Took the kids to the zoo and was greeted be this feller:

Saw an elephant getting a bath.

And fed a giraffe.

We went to this fun place

And did some more junkin'.

 We got home and built an in-ground fire pit:

And it is fantastic!

Pinterest gave me this idea to make "Firestarters" Click here to find out how.  

And they worked like a charm:

Oh and I was given this stash of knitting goodies from a friend of mine that didn't want it any more.

I have started on Christmas projects already.  Which is probably a good idea since the last 7 months have flown by.

This pic doesn't look like much but I have started getting ready to possibly put an art exhibit together.  This will be the first one that I have done in 10 years! So fingers crossed that I can have the focus to get this done and accomplished.

I am also hoping to post more often so until next time, Happy End of the Summer!

Independence Day

The 4th of July is kind of a thing for us.  We, along with our neighbors, host a 4th of July celebration where we invite family, friends and neighbors.  Each year we perfect the party just a little and this year it turned out to be awesome!  This is the 1st year that we had a pot luck and I used this as an opportunity to decorate very inexpensively.  Here is the final result:

Super easy, super cheap, do it yourself party decor.  For starters, the materials that I didn't have I bought at the dollar store.  The table cloth was $1, blue was the only festive color I could find aside from white so I went with it.  Since the table was going to be blue, I bought red and white streamers, both $1.  To create the streamer look above, hold one piece of red and one piece of white together.  Tape them at the top with tape, I used washi tape that I had... blue painter's tape works too.  Twist the paper slightly and then tape at the bottom.  

The stars are equally as easy and fun.  I have a stock pile of scrapbooking paper that I have accumulated over the years, so I dug in the pile and looked for red white and blue.  I came close with dark pink and powder blue... I used white card stock that I also had on hand but you could also use computer paper or even the back side of your junk mail.  On the opposite side of the paper I drew a star in pencil and then had the kiddos cut the stars out.  These are also taped on with washi tape.

The yarn tassels were a bit more time consuming.  I realize that most people don't have a yarn store in their basement like I do, but for this project, you don't need super nice yarn.  I would buy the cheapest roughest yarn they make.  If you planned far enough in advance, you could even pick these up at a yard sale or thrift store.  I wrapped the yarn around a book enough times that it looked like the tassel was going to be full, slid off the yarn and I used the tail to wrap around the top and tied off.  Clip the loops on the opposite end to form the tassel ends.  Once the tassels were made, I strung them on a piece of twine, making sure each were secure by stringing the twine back through each tassel like this:

 Next is the center piece for the table.

For this project I bought a foam loop also $1 from the dollar store.  It is that typical green foam that they use in floral arranging, so I wrapped it with the red streamer.  I bought 4 bags of suckers, not at the dollar store.... I looked, they didn't have any :-)  I bought 2 bags of Tootsie Pops and 2 bags of DumDums and had the kids separate out all of the red white and blue suckers.  Then I had then stick them in to the top of the foam circle.  I made the sign, taped it to a paintbrush and stuck it into the foam too.  The most expensive part of this was the suckers (I think total they were about $8) and if this is your contribution to the pot luck, I say that's pretty cheap!

I think that totals $4 for the decorations, plus $8 for the suckers.  Not only was the food better this year and more coordinated, but with the decorations... it was much more festive.   I think everyone had a great time, I know I did.

I hope everyone had a good and safe Independence Day!  Until next time, Happy Using-up-all-the-left-over-sparklers!