Where in the world...

Have I been? I dunno, I can't really explain it. I tried to write a post so many times but it didn't feel right and I never got very far. I've just been doing the same thing I always seem to be doing; playing with the two A's, doing yard work with the bearded one, and hooking on my down time. Does one really get down time being a stay at home mom? Sometimes! Until one of the babes wakes up, or one of the dogs throws up, and either seem to happen on the nights that you get everything done early and you get optimistic about ALL the free time you'll enjoy. Want to see some of the things we've been doing?












































(this is one of my favorite pictures because of Alyssa's photo bombing with her white noise machine, playing with the light and Amelia being all model-like)























(she was washing her face, she wasn't getting her mouth washed out!)


There's some more stuff that I've been up to lately, but I feel like this is getting too heavy with pictures and no captions, but I'll save those for another day. I just wanted to stop by for a quick hello and to tell you we're all well and very happy, and I will be back very soon to actually tell you about the things we've been doing.

Happy trails, friends!

P.s. if there's a picture you'd like better explained, let me know! :-)

Fiber Adventures

Hello! Are you enjoying this lovely Sunday in your neck of the woods? I am very much! My dad, Amelia, and I went to fund raiser and we got our fingernails painted. Yep, my dad let Amelia pick out two colors for him and he got his thumbnails painted. Before he came over, Elliott and I cleaned up our bedroom. Not that it was so dirty or is that big, we just did a deep clean. And before that I got to sleep in until 8! How awesome! Now everyone is quieted down and the two A's are taking naps. And I'm here talking to you! I have a few things to show you. Sorry it's been so long, but I was having severe blanket crochet withdrawals. You think I'm kidding but I'm not! I actually went a few days without picking up my hooks at all. But in that time I did make something super neat.




It's called a mai tei. I got the tutorial HERE:
My sister gave me my birthday present a little early, a gift card to hobby lobby, and I bought duck canvas and minky in pink and the hot pink calico plus some other little odds and ends and made myself this carrier. The pocket was my own add on. Just a simple envelope pocket.




Alyssa loves it. She loves to be worn.




I love it because with this carrier I can wear her on my back. So with Amelia running around when we go out, and especially if I'm by myself, this feature is so helpful. Just the other day, I took the girls to the park on and put Alyssa on my back...




She fell asleep. Haha! I asked a stranger if she looked ok, he said she looked as comfortable as could be. When we left some high schoolers laughed at me for the way I had to take her off my back. I wasn't worried about it, I know I'm super cool, don't need no high schoolers to tell me! But I keep the Mai tei in my car and I get butterflies when I get into the car because the fabric makes it smell like Hobby Lobby. I love that store.




But with the rest of my gift card I bought new yarn for a new blanket! It's I Love This Yarn's neon colors and grey. The grey is called greybeard! How fun!




And here's my inspiration for the blanket, A sock! Elliott got these socks for me last Christmas and Amelia has been wearing them on her hands like mittens. I ran into ILTY neon when I had to pick up a skein of brown to finish a project and Amelia picked up the fuchsia and we both fell in love with it.




It's another ripple with no specific purpose except to make me happy while I make it. I might make it for one of the girls or just toss it over one of the couches. But it's bringing the joy of crochet back to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm still working on the granny square blanket, Amelia's hexagon blanket, an everything else I'm working on, but as I've said before I really missed the gentle flow of a larger blanket.




I made Alyssa a hat out of the fuchsia, so I need to make Amelia one now instead of the periwinkle.




If you remember this one. I got the pattern from HERE.
And for Amelia's hat I chained 42 and doing what Barb has written for the pattern for 60 rows. Amelia's head is 19 1/2 inches. For Alyssa's (her head is 17 inches) hat I chained 38 and did Barb's pattern for a total of 52 rows. I wish I would have made Alyssa's a few rows longer but this pattern has fantastic stretch. I hope you try it!




Besides all that, we've just been doing our thing.




Alyssa is sitting up all on her own in the middle of the floor. And she's growing so much! She's in the 92% for her height and 80th for her weight.




And Amelia is just an amazing big sister. She helps me so much, and for awhile I tried not to ask her to help because of Alfred Adler's birth order theory (I was a psychology major in college and he says that the first born is basically a little mother/father. I didn't want to out that one her trying not to set her up for that role, but she was born into it. No pun intended!) But she just wanted to help and be a part of it all. She's my right hand sometimes. And Elliott's back is much better now, thanks for asking! Also, because of my lack of drive for crochet, I'm behind on my crochet along. Oops! I'll catch up soon, I promise myself.




And I got my hair cut! My hair is naturally curly but my hair dresser/one of my closest friends, always flat irons it when she cuts it. I LOVE it! That's about it for now, I hope you're outside enjoying the beautiful weather! Happy Fall beginnings!

Sunday Morning

This morning I woke up to the usual. Amelia handing me Denny, the ankylasaurus, so she can get into bed with Daidai under her arm while I throw the covers over her. To the sudden realization that this child is yet again up before I'd like to be, but 7:30 is better than 6:30, and Alyssa wasn't up yet. Then I listened closely, there were no shrill cries of locust but the soft tweeter of finches in the yard. It's been raining, misting, and gray since yesterday. You know what else I saw yesterday? For the first time in weeks, I saw a robin with a worm in his mouth.


After Amelia watched her Loony Toons videos (about 2) on my phone, she hopped down and knocked down the baby gate to get to the kitchen and get into things. She has a Minnie Mouse lawn chair she drags around to climb on the counters.


How convienent for her that it's so light. We've taken it downstairs countless times. But she had only just gotten into the cabinet when I finally pulled myself out of bed.


Sometimes, if I get the camera just right, in pictures it looks like we don't have neighbors. After I picked up the bits Amelia did get into I looked out the back door. We have two hummingbird (honeybird if you ask Amelia) feeders and just had to put the oriole feeder back up. We got some in the beginning of summer but then they left, but because there's no food (I.e. Bugs) they've come back looking for food. Elliott had a theory they were back because one of the honeybird feeders was super low after early morning, not like it should have been. The same day he told me his theory, before he told me, I thought I heard the croak of an oriole. He was right about them getting into the feeders and when they flew off they would slosh "nectar" from the feeders.


This is the best picture I could get of him. Little fingers had smudged my camera on my phone and when I had cleared it, he was gone. The honeybirds have been going crazy lately too, Amelia and I sit out back and watch them after Alyssa goes to sleep at night.


After fixing Amelia up with her morning fruit and milk, I had a nice snuggle with Alyssa. I always lay my hand on her back if I'm not rubbing it. I love snuggle time. After I had bragged to you about the 11 hour night she had a major sleep regression and was waking ever 2-4 hours at night. But last night was the best night we've had for at least for a month. She even woke up at 530 and out herself back to sleep! Knocking on wood that it wasn't a one time thing though, she'll be 6 months on the 8th, and still only pre-crawling.


Elliott threw out his back last night and is laid up on the floor, but the girls don't mind. And if you don't mind the mess, it's a cute picture. So I don't think we'll be getting out of our jammies anytime soon. I hope you have a great Sunday and I'll be back hopefully tomorrow with some stuff to show you.


Happy days!

Banju to You!

Hello! How are you today? Are you enjoying the weather where you are? We are! Everyday we take the girlies outside so they can play for a bit. Well, Amelia plays, Alyssa falls asleep in her swing.


Amelia is finally getting to play in her water table we got her for her birthday (February 11). We actually didn't tell her about it until we put it together. I generally don't tell Amelia about things until right before they happen that way if things change she won't be disappointed. Which stops any meltdowns that would follow had she known.


I also just bought them a little dollar store pool. Amelia loves it but Alyssa would rather just sit on my lap and chew on my fingers. Yeah, she's teething already. Well anyway, I have the neatest thing to show you...


It's called a banju pillow, I think. I was browsing google images for cushion ideas and ran into this particular pillow through indulgy.com. I followed it to see if it came with a pattern but it was written in German. And being that I don't speak German, or read it for that matter, I couldn't find where the pattern came from.


I did search for quite some time and just decided to dive in using the picture(s) I found as my guide. After I had one side done, I finally found the pattern but decided against buying it because it was going so well without it.


I sewed some fleece in the middle on the wrong side because there are gaps between the second and third/fourth rounds and I didn't want fiberfill to spill out. I got some great new needles by sewology from Hobby Lobby that are super sharp (ask my thumb... Ok! I purposely poked my thumb on the needle to see how sharp it was) and they made it so much easier to poke the yarn through the fleece.


These are so much fun to make, so much so that I made two! The rainbow one for my sister and the larger one for my bed. It's now Elliott's pillow, just so you know.


I used my I hook on the larger pillow and did double crochet for the edges. I liked the way it looked but it made the pillow harder to stuff because it would just stretch instead of getting firmer. I used my H hook on my sister's and did half double crochet between the two halves. The smaller gauge and hdc made it easy to stuff and it wasn't as squeeshy as mine.


And if you're wondering, I didn't get all fancy with the green blanket as my background. It's just the thing that Alyssa was rolling around on in the living room.


And of course, the best part of making anyone a gift, is giving it to them. My sister had no idea what it was going to be though I sent her a couple picture updates. She liked it so much she asked me to make her another one in all blue for her new house she's moving into in August. Why, make something with yarn? Don't mind if I do. :-)