Since Mikey and I still have some time before we have to decide what kind of “precedent” we’ll set in regards to an “Easter basket” for our children, and since Hazel’s first two Easters have come at a time of great discovery in her short little life, we’ve used it as an excuse to buy and make her things both years (i.e., totally spoil her with stuff, which we normally don’t do). Last year she had really just started playing with toys hardcore so she got a basket full of board books and little toys and her beloved silks. This year she is all of a sudden pretending and doing lots of outdoor things, so we filled her spring basket with outdoor toys and books and things for pretend. (Don’t worry, she’s not deprived of candy – she has lots of grandparents.)

I have had my eye on these eggs by Imagination Kids for awhile. I had a feeling she’d really like them. Whoa mama, did she like them. I didn’t think she’d ever get around to looking at the rest of what was in her basket. Can you tell she’s oozing excitement?

I made this little trio of bunnies from this free pattern on wee wonderfuls. They are made from fat quarters I received as part of a fabric exchange with friends, a remnant of fleece, and they are stuffed with bits of chopped up old tshirts (thus making them my new year’s resolution for the week, which I realize I’m WAY behind on). I’ll tell you, using a rotary cutter to, um, savagely destory several old tshirts was a very good release after WVU’s loss to Duke on Saturday night. My hands did not stop shaking the whole game so her bunnies are overall a little lumpy and imperfect, but the tshirt chopping – THAT I did very, very well. I love the weight the filling gives to them, too.

So, since I was getting caught up on resolutions, the other day it occurred to me to photograph this thing we do as I assembled one after putting away dry things from the kitchen drain basket. We got the idea from friends in Canada: we chop the tops off of soymilk / juice cartons as shown, scrub them out really well and then slide two together. They make perfect giant blocks like these, but not pretty. Hazel totally does not care that they aren’t pretty. I suppose someday she’ll make them pretty. You would not believe how sturdy these things are.

I get excited when I have a good repurposing resolution. I need to keep those going. I think that gets me caught up to the week before last. This whole week I’m playing catch-up with all kinds of stuff, so I’ll try to bring myself current. I do have a goodwill bag going but I haven’t dropped it off yet so it doesn’t count.

Listening: dog-scratching; husband-typing; CCR in my head; THUNDER!!! in my sky
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
(Hazel is) Reading: Pond Circle
(Thinking about) working on: Hazel’s summer clothes – I should do this soon, right? All I’ve made are pajamas. She is living in skirts and capris from last year.

I hesitate to post this for fear of bringing on more snow, but I think… I think… it’s over. Now, I’m not forgetting the year that we got hit with a massive, incapacitating blizzard in March, but that melted off (and flooded everything) quickly because… it was March. These blizzards we’ve had over the past two months are still hanging around to the tune of a little bit less than two feet of snow and a driveway that we still can’t use for anything other than walking, but I am hopeful. Ice is sliding off of the roof in avalanche-like quantities. Our friend Big Damn Snow Bank On The Ramp has died an ugly death. Water is pouring through the gutters. The road is totally clear. There are 54-degree days in the forecast.

That big one is the size of my leg.

Darla and Trevor were home for a few days this week and said they’ve never seen this much snow up here in 20 years, which was a huge comfort and made us feel less INSANE. They asked how we weathered the cabin fever, and all I could think to reply was “well, we’re still married.” I really have felt like that… that if we were still friends by the time winter ended I would be satisfied.

While they were here we spent a few days with Mikey’s mom so they could have the run of their own house, so Mikey could still get some school work done (Kelly and the kids were here too – full, noisy house), and so Jan could spend some time with Hazel, who has barely seen her grandmas and grandpas any more than when we lived in Canada since we’ve been stuck up on this hill so much since we moved here. It felt strange to be in civilization again. Hazel needs new sneakers for running around outside (!)… so I just went out shopping (didn’t find anything). I went to the craft store and forgot something so I just… went back the next day. Amazing.

I feel like I can breathe again. I have motivation again. I finally started five Christmas presents that I had given IOUs for… I just didn’t have the time with the move and holidays immediately after so I let myself off the hook instead of spontaneously combusting from the stress, and then when I did have the time after Christmas I was stuck in the house all the time and there was no sunshine and the thought of making five of the same, very time consuming thing made me panic a little. So… they will be March presents.

I also finally finished those pajama pants before we left for the ‘burg. Some bib-to-be-fabric that never made it, a goodwill-ed pillowcase, and an old brown tshirt of Mikey’s:

Hazel is napping. The sun is out. The house is clean. Mikey is gone. I don’t even know what to do with myself. Edit all those Etsy photos I took last week, I suppose.

Oh yeah, I ripped out this scarf. I got about a third of the way in and realized I can make the cables look way better now that I know how to do it. Plus… it has served its purpose – knitting scarves makes snow go away. Now that I see the yarn made into something I rather think it would make a very nice tiny sweater. Anyone have faith that I could actually learn how to knit a sweater? I’m not so sure.

Listening: drip, drip, drip
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (yep, I’ve now swaptree-ed almost everything she’s written)
(Hazel is) Reading: Welcome Spring (thanks Grandma & Gabe’s!)
Working on: Christmas presents for 2009 AND 2010 – only in my crafting universe does this happen; not giving up on the blue & gold blanket being done this winter; some custom necklaces

Hazel loves her Valentine’s Day gift! She said, “oooohhhhhhh!!” enough times to melt my heart into a puddle on the floor. She has now moved on to tearing up the giftwrap into tiny bits, but the bean bags were super-fun for about ten minutes. I’m really happy with how they turned out, although depending on how much use they get I may find that I wish I’d stitched them differently. I stitched them wrong sides together, turned and topstitched for more sturdiness, and then closed the opening with a really tight zigzag. As I was doing that I was wishing that I’d just done that for the topstitching instead of a straight stitch. Oh well – they will last awhile, anyway, and I can always repair them if needed.

The past few days it has dawned on us that, all of a sudden, we have a toddler on our hands. So far she doesn’t appear to be possessed by demons, but she’s definitely fiercely opinionated and will go into a rage over a small thing if she’s tired. Last night she spied a stack of six rainbow colored cups on a shelf and Wanted Them Right Then Please And Thank You. I gave them to her and she promptly turned the stack upside down and five of the six scattered across the floor, leaving the one she was holding in her hand. She SCREAMED. We suppressed giggles and Mikey helped her nest them back together. She promptly turned the stack the wrong way and they all scattered again. More screaming. I AM PISSED OFF, MAMA. HELP ME NOW. I helped her gather them up from the various corners into which they had rolled, and she sat on the floor, diligently stacking and unstacking them and Figuring It All Out. Once she was satisfied that she could keep them together, she picked up the pile and wandered towards the livingroom to show her Papa her accomplishment. Halfway there… she tipped the stack and they scattered. Her mouth flew open (but nothing came out), huge tears poured from her eyes, her arms stiffened at her sides (one still clutching a pink cup in a tiny white-knuckled-hand) and shook with rage, and she went beet red in a matter of about four seconds. And then out it came – a devilish scream that proclaimed to all of Snake Hill (and probably the Cheat River Valley, too): I CANNOT KEEP MY F%$#@!G CUPS TOGETHER!!!

It’s okay, baby girl. Grownups usually can’t keep our f%$#@!g cups together long enough to make it from point A to point B, either.

After unwrapping her new book she screamed because she couldn’t get the paper back ON the book… but the bomb was quickly diffused (because she was not tired or cranky) by handing her her sack of bean bags.

I suppose this is only the beginning.

Listening: Dave Rawlings Machine (happy V-day, Michael John!)
(I am) Reading: Steady Days (happy V-day, me!)
(Hazel is) Reading: The Family Book
Working on: blue & gold blanket; Etsy mailers

During one of my college summers working for this Americorps program, I had this kid. This. Awful. Kid. By “awful” I really mean that he was charming, energetic, smart, great at reading with his counterparts who could not, witty enough to do some severe laughter-damage to my ribs, and as adorable as all get-out. But as much as I loved him – he was not creative. And I don’t mean that in a way that a lot of my friends say “oh, I’m not creative”, yet they can decorate a room or take beautiful photos or solve problems well – they just mean they can’t draw. I mean we had an entire table full of art supplies and he never knew what to do with it. Huge, deep boxes of found materials just waiting to be pawed through and put to use. Empty boxes waiting to be made into towns. He couldn’t come up with something to draw that was not copied from a picture book or a television character conjured from his brain. If you’d take him outside to play, he’d complain that it was too hot and he wanted to go home to his air conditioning and play video games – he could not creatively amuse himself with some basic sports equipment. He knew every single basketball, baseball, and football rule and could play them all well, but couldn’t play in an open-ended way. He whined several times a day about wanting to go home and play videogames or watch TV. All of his play was centered around videogames and TV. He was five years old and had already forgotten how to play. I became terrified that I would have kids like that and swore they wouldn’t have any screen time, if any, and not play videogames until… I couldn’t even fathom when. Of course it all had to do with his quantity of screen-time I’m sure, but the idea of ANY became scary to me nonetheless. Obviously I’ve loosened up a bit, because my life is full of video-game-playing, TV-watching kids who are awesomely creative :)

Three things could entice my little king of Grand Theft Auto and Spongebob Squarepants: baking projects, water balloons, and bean bags. Each classroom had a set of 26 beanbags stitched with the letters of the alphabet. They always seemed like a simple thing, but I could get my little brood of five and six year olds to do ANYTHING if we were using those beanbags – word games, physical activity, making up stories, sitting through a long storybook while squishing them around, calmed down by the feel of beans trickling through the fabric in their fingers – Any. Thing. Inevitably I would have to take them away because they’d morphed from beanbags into grenades and landmines (yes, landmines), but it was always fun while it lasted.

I was cleaning out some EE stuff at my parents’ house last summer and filed away in my brain the idea of making a set of alphabet beanbags for Hazel when she is older. When I was fondling this red and white polkadotted fabric in JoAnn’s a month or so ago, I was trying to come up with something for her for Valentine’s day involving little fabric hearts. Little soft hearts numbered 1 – 10? Spelling out her name? She’s not really into soft toys and never has been, so I decided to make her some beanbags instead. I still wasn’t sure what to put on them, and then coming across a letter-stamping project in Handmade Home made me decide to simply stamp a few patches (made from an old white tshirt) with some of her loves and stitch them to the hearts. I decided on six and have been working on them, and a drawstring bag to hold them, for most of the afternoon: Mama, Papa, Pears, Dogs, Music & Books. My bobbin ran out 3/4 of the way through topstitching the last heart, which was my cue to take a break and blog the progress. Tonight I’ll fill them with beans and stitch up the holes.

I think they are going to be super-cute and I hope she likes them. I also hope that at age five she doesn’t even know what a landmine is. Just sayin’.

After clinging – for many many months – to the aesthetically pleasing tidiness of having three sets of Hazel’s Eric Carle boardbooks (1 2 3) neatly arranged in their slipcovers, I finally decided to part with them while cleaning the other day. She NEVER takes these books down to read on her own because she can’t get them out. I emptied each one, shelved the books with all the others, stacked the boxes in my arms and was on my way to dump them in the recycling when their sturdiness gave me pause. I set them on the shelf and have been pondering them for a few days. I said if a use didn’t come to me by the weekend I would toss them, but this morning I had an epiphany: I pulled out out some pretty paper left over from other projects and a roll of contact paper and in ten minutes had revamped them into desk organizers. The third of the trio wasn’t a good shape for office-type storage, but since these turned out so well I decided to tuck it away until I happen upon some more big sheets of pretty paper. If that doesn’t happen before we move out of this house, I swear I’ll get rid of it! I also sat on the couch today while Hazel played and used food packaging to make alphabet dividers for our DVDs… finally. Then I continued to chip away a little more at the massive pile of cereal boxes I’ve been diligently cutting and taping into Etsy packaging. Hopefully I will have it all done in time to fulfill week seven. A good day for repurposing things that would otherwise have gone in the trash!

(Our computer seems to have been run over by a bus – I can either bum Mikey’s laptop or wait for the desktop to reboot every .01 seconds if it feels like it – neither of which I’ve really been able to do for longer than I need to check email and Etsy. Bleh. Thankfully we got a extra 3-year warranty so it’ll be fixed or replaced. And for the record, HP’s customer service is TERRIBLE. Oh and when Futureshop tells you that you can get a 3-year warranty even if you are about to move to the US, because you can just pop into any Best Buy if needed? They lie.)

Hazel’s current out-of-season favorite.

Gift tags made from old Christmas cards.

Hazel watching Kermit sing the alphabet with the Ladysmith Black Mambazo before bed.

Post office day.

Tis the season.

She has been keeping me very busy:

…and a couple of days ago while I was laying down with her nursing her to sleep for a nap, my exhaustion caught up with me and I accidentally fell asleep too. I can’t remember the last time I took a nap. We slept for two and half delicious hours, and I had the most realistic dream ever about broccoli cheddar soup. Now, I don’t know that I’ve ever actually had a broccoli cheddar soup that I enjoy – no, I never ate it at Panera because it wasn’t vegetarian when I worked there – but while Hazel ate a snack I set about finding a recipe. None of my trusty cookbooks had anything to offer, so I resorted to hunting online. There are few things that annoy me more than looking for a recipe online, but I was committed to this dream soup, so I hunted. For about 45 minutes I read and reread tons of recipes, submitted comments from people who had tried them, forum discussions about soup… a little less dense than vaccination research, but it was giving me a headache. Finally I had, on a totally marked up piece of paper, what seemed like it would end up tasting good. Unfortunately the only source I can remember is epicurious.com, which gave me the idea of using tarragon, although the actual recipe was a far cry from a creamy broccoli cheddar soup. It came from twelve or fifteen different recipes and comments and discussions, and some stuff I just made up, so I feel like I can legitimately say this is My Recipe. Anyway… it was divine. I didn’t even remember to take a picture because I was so excited to eat it. Mikey and Hazel loved it too. So here is the recipe for my SIL (the Angie one) and Mama, and whoever else wants some totally yum broccoli cheddar soup. Take that, Panera Bread, and all of your frozen soups too.

I’d say this serves about four. Or more specifically: two huge husband bowls, one normal wife bowl, one tiny baby bowl, and two lunch bowls the next day.

6 T butter
2 lbs fresh broccoli – peeled and chopped stems separated from chopped florets
1 lg. onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried tarragon or 2 tsp fresh, chopped
4 c. vegetable stock (next time I will probably just use water, actually)
1 c. whipping cream
3 c. (packed) sharp cheddar cheese, grated

- Melt butter in heavy-bottomed pan and saute stems and onion until the onion is transluscent. Add garlic and tarragon and saute a minute or two more.
- Add stock/water and bring to a boil; simmer until broccoli is tender (15 minutes or so)
- Add cream and broccoli florets, stirring pretty frequently until the florets are tender.
- Puree in batches and return to pan. Add cheese gradually and stir until melted.
- Serve with a yum bread.

The next day when we were eating leftovers for lunch Mikey asked me if it was complicated to make, and I told him no. Then he asked if it was “long and involved”. I told him not really, but then thinking that maybe he was wondering if he’d be able to make it for himself, I corrected myself and said “well, kind of… there are a few steps and you have to throw it all in the food processor and puree it before you add the cheese…” He just stared at me for a second and said, “Well I was just wondering if it was hard becuase I want you to make it… often.” Oh, okay then. I’d worry about his fingers if he tried to use a food processor anyway.

Other odds & ends…

I’m excited about this new shop opening on Bloor Street (my back yard). The owner invited me to participate, via my Etsy shop, but unfortunately (and fortunately) we will be gone. I will definitely stop in when we are back in the city visiting, though.

And… finds like this make all of my time spent scouring dollar stores for things to repurpose worth the hunt. Two packs of kitschy plastic party favor rings, on their way to new lives as pendants.

I’ve got my Etsy inventory about halfway rephotographed. It’s so tedious, and I can only work on it when Hazel is napping, and only then if the light is right, or on weekends when Mikey is home at the right time of day and can keep her occupied. I swear on all that is good and holy (and crafty), when I am done I will not get behind in my photographing. I will not.

I haven’t made any squares for a few days because I’ve been busy making stuff for a craft show, and yesterday I made a Christmas gift for my SIL (the Janet one), which I am suuuuuper excited about and can’t wait to share in, um, three and a half months.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: The Saggy Baggy Elephant; Growing Vegetable Soup (the former, in board book version, was found at the Dollarama downstairs – sometimes they have kids books that have no business being sold in a dollar store. I don’t know how they get there but I am happy when they do.)
Working on: ephemera packs; pendants; photo revamp; etc. etc. etc.
Packing progress: wrapped and taped up a huge pile of framed photos, prints, and posters – a tedious and much hated task, done! Also packed three boxes. Why doesn’t this feel real yet?

So… I didn’t do any of that stuff yesterday, because within seconds of posting that entry, Hazel woke up after a whopping half-hour nap. I swear, every new tooth is worse than the last. When she’s awake she’s fine for the most part and plays happily with us or “alone”, so I had half an hour later in the afternoon to revamp these tshirts while she “read” books on the floor beside me.

Grossly deformed halloween tee – dollar bin at Zeller’s last year before she was born
White tee – a quarter at Gabe’s

…and then today while she napped for her usual almost-three-hours, I decided I wanted to make some orange pants to go with it. She doesn’t need pants (just like she doesn’t need skirts), but I remembered a pile of fleece that I’d bought for a project that is now not happening, so I decided to make her some warm pajama pants for winter. Because… we’re going to be living in a cabin in the woods this winter, and she will need them there, unlike this hot-as-hades apartment that we currently call home.

Unfortunately they turned out a bit smaller than planned* and won’t fit over a bulky cloth dipe, which is fine because she sleeps in disposables, but now she can’t wear the orange ones with the halloween tee. Not that I’d put her in those to go anywhere anyway, because I accidentally (with one eye she-who-was-by-then-awake and one eye on my work) sewed that pair with the bum seam out. A testament to what an impatient, fast, pinless seamestress I am. I’m trying to remedy this.

*From now on my PLANNING will involve something more than roughly tracing a pair of her pants on kraft paper and eyeballing the seam allowances.

She’s super cute in them anyway, of course, and they will keep her cozy. Plus they make a great dog-hair-catcher when she scoots all over the floor in them. I didn’t have to sweep today. I just let her scoot all over the floor and then threw her pants in the laundry – it’s like magic.

She had such a big time playing with the scraps all over the floor that I used some to make a few little fall leaves for her texture-lovin’ hands to scritch and stretch and pick. She loves them way more than the pants for sure.

I don’t even remember how much the fleece cost exactly. I’ve had it for a couple of years, but I remember that it was on clearance for less than three bucks a yard, which makes for some stinkin’ cheap fleece pants. Take that, Old Navy.

(But thank you for the two super cute sale hoodies – I do not know how to make a hoodie for her.)

Now I am going to swear off of sewing until we move home. I was going to make pants for Luca, but after Hazel’s turned out not-quite-right I know I need to concentrate a little harder (maybe find an actual pattern somewhere?), so I will just make him some for Christmas. The other gift-sewing projects that I have in mind can be done in just a few days each, and I will have a month once we are home and the initial settling in days and thanksgiving have passed. It’s also way easier to sew “real” stuff (not fleece pants) when you have a washer and dryer IN your living space and somewhere that you can leave an iron set up while you work. I need to stitch up some baby legwarmers for a craft show, but that is IT. To prove my seriousness I am going to take all of my fabric home to store when I go in three weeks, and my Fabricland membership has expired, so there. I have way more things I should be doing than sewing.

Like watch Millenium and crochet.

Listening: Elliott Smith
Square count: 35
Progress towards moving: packed one box of books today… which I really only did to free up some space for a teetering pile of Mikey’s books that are sitting on the floor, ready to crush my child, and I needed something heavy and stable to block the Bagel from getting at a powerstrip that we have no possible way to hide/move… but still. I packed a box, people. And started the list of the truck contents for crossing the border. Box #1) books – crime and social problems ((my books, clearly))

Does puffy paint make something a legitimate “craft project”? Hazel is trying to learn to walk and has a hard time on our bare floors when she’s just in her stocking feet, so after she went to bed the other night I spread all of her socks and tights on the floor and went at them with some clear glitter puffy paint.

This morning I stitched up some gifts for the newest tiny baby in my family – a set of burpcloths made from prefold diapers (wash them first! they quilt up considerably) and a recycled tshirt (with the graphic cut into thirds to fit the soaker panels of the dipes), and a set of teeny baby legwarmers. Regular adult socks make perfect tiny baby legwarmers – I’ll post a tutorial later – and kneesocks hacked off and hemmed/serged (or not) make bigger baby legwarmers that work just as well as Baby Legs at a fraction of the cost. I found a Claire’s-esque store selling pairs of socks ten for ten dollars, regularly five for ten dollars, and stocked up for all the winter babies on the way. This is also a great way to recycle your old socks that just have worn heels and toes, because they aren’t a part of the final product.

Finally, I’ve been wearing the skin off of my fingertips crocheting blanket squares every night. I’m so bad about diving into huge projects as soon as I learn a new skill. I’ve only been crocheting for a couple of weeks and I (perhaps a bit too ambitiously) decided that my first ever project is going to be a blanket that is big enough to wrap around myself, my husband, AND my daughter (however big that is)… by the time the first snowflakes hit the ground. And it’s September. And I live in Canada. I’m getting through a few squares a day, so it might actually happen. Square count: 21!

Meanwhile, I still have to make time to:
-parent an (almost) eleven month old human and an (almost) three year old dog
-play wifey
-maintain a household
-and an etsy shop
-starting this week, try to work from home about three hours a day to help out my (soon to be former) employer
- make christmas gifts early because at the end of November I have to
- pack up my life and
- move home to WV
- make baby gifts for the 472893472398 babies being born every week (lots of legwarmers – hopefully these mamas will get as much use out of them as I do)
- sleep
- good thing we already have lots of blankets for when the snow comes…

Listening: The Velvet Underground
Reading: The Vaccine Book by Dr. Sears
Working on: The Every Color But Purple Blanket