February Post

Maybe if I set myself a nice attainable goal I can achieve it? One post a month? Well, it's busy, busy, busy around here.

 Amelia is 4 months old now, wow! She's getting more and more fun every day, rolling over, laughing, playing with toys ~ good stuff. We have a very active social calendar, which really helps me get through the days. I'm meeting lots of mommies near me and that's been really great too.

We've finally started adding doors to the upper cabinets in the kitchen. They even have knobs now (I took this picture at Christmas time). Only 4 more to go and we can think about adding a pantry. Whoopee!!

I've baked a few things recently....the Star Wars cookies were yummy.

 

 

 

 I've finished one of my pre-baby sewing projects. She's probably just about ready to wear this little dress.

 

 

 

 I'm still buying bits of fabric here and there, I can't help myself. I don't know yet what these will become, but I think Amelia will have something to do with it.

 

 

 

 And of course, spending my days playing with this little peanut is what I do most of the time. Our pediatrician told us to start suicide-proofing the house today, yikes, I'm not ready for that!

I hope you're getting more done than I am.

Finished Enough in the Kitchen

Oh my gosh! I forgot to show you what's going on in my kitchen...it's almost done. Certainly done enough for me for a while. yay!

Here's where we started last year around this time.

The left wall was the worst part. The door next to the fridge and the lack of usable cabinets was such a pain. Not to mention the inside of all the cabinets was the original particle board from the 60's. I'll just say "gross" and leave it at that.

At my last update, it looked like this (scroll down a bit).

Here's how it looks now (minus a few things on the counters). The room feels about 10 times larger and there is so much cabinet space that I can't even fill it! *sigh of relief* We've got a small island in the center now that really helps when you take something out of the fridge etc. And later we'll add another section of floor to ceiling cabinetry (just behind where I stood to take this photo) that will serve as larger storage and a pantry. I can totally live without that for now. I'm just so happy to have a new, clean kitchen.

Here's my favorite part! The baby bathtub, haha. No really, I love my new sink and faucet with no mysterious grime. Even better, the cabinet below it doesn't smell like an old folks home.

And we got it all done with time to spare before baby #1 arrives.

Summer Treats

In an effort to not do another wip post, I thought I'd show you some food instead. I guess it's still something I made, but I was in the kitchen this time and it wasn't for the baby! haha

We finally got around to having a little backyard barbecue a few weeks ago. The weather was beautiful, plenty of people came and it was a wonderful day. I, of course, made way too much food and because of this spent most my time in the kitchen forming hamburger patties because I was behind schedule (sorry about that to those who were here).

I only have pictures of the treats to share with you, I hope you don't mind.

I dug into Martha's Cupcakes again and made the strawberry cupcakes. I went with regular buttercream instead of strawberry. Not being a strawberry fan (and probably the only one on earth), I felt the strawberry on strawberry would be too much! As usual, they didn't disappoint. Nick thinks these might be his second favorite cupcake ever (right behind Martha's maple cupcakes ~ yummmm).

 I also made a batch of marshmallows. It's just ridiculous how easy they are to make! I added a little English Toffee candy flavoring to them & it was just enough to give them some pizazz. These were a hit too, there were only 4 left at the end of the day. No one wants to be the person who takes the last one, right? Here's the recipe I used for the marshies. It's worth buying a candy thermometer if you only ever use it to make your own marshmallows. They'll shock & amaze your friends too.

That's all the food photos I can share, I didn't manage to take any other pictures that day (so typical). The macaroni salad from Cook's Country Magazine (my FAVORITE magazine ever!) was so good too...next time.

Here's my next cooking project:

 Did you know there was a whole book dedicated to Whoopie Pies? {drool}

Now that I've actually located a bag of graham flour, I'm going to attempt the graham cracker whoopie pies.

 Wouldn't it be fun, and a lot of work, to use your own marshmallows for these? Now that's domestic!

I won't be rushing into any baking right away, we've started phase 4 of the kitchen remodel. I want this done before the baby gets here or it'll never happen!

Actually, this should be complete by early next week. All we need now is the new pantry, some tile and a nice new floor. Movin' right along!

Oh, and I finished that little crocheted sweater. Told you I could crochet a sweater way quicker than I could knit one. :) hehe

Pretty good, eh? Only one crafty photo in the bunch! Hope you're having a nice summer too.

Finished Projects

**Note: My house is a cave on the brightest day, I apologize for the terrible photos.

I told you that we'd been trying to get some work done around the house before Nick's parents came, right? Here are a few of the projects we got (mostly) finished...

The Guest Room

I made some very bright and colorful curtains for the guest room. I bought some of that pre-patchworked (like this) fabric at JoAnn. I thought it would look good with the quilt that's in the room. It's the most colorful room in our house.

The Dining Room

 This is a photo of the room before we moved in. The door to the kitchen is long gone too, you can see how unnecessary it was with the kitchen just off to the right.

We took the Japanese doors and window screen out pretty quickly, but I only just finished patching up all the holes from all the framing it took to hang them.

We've replaced the light fixture, painted and I made some curtains too. Eventually I will be hemming the curtains and adding some decorative buttons to the tabs at the top. For now, it's just nice to have them hanging, haha.

The Hallway

We've still got a few walls that need some love, but I finally finished the quilt I was working on for the wall opposite the entryway.

Yep, it's the same line of fabric I used for both the living room and dining room curtains. I hope it's not too much of one thing.

Since this quilt was actually for us, I took my time and freehand quilted the whole thing. It took forever but I like the way it turned out. It really warmed up the hall too.

There were some more projects, but these are the biggies. This weekend, or some time soon, I hope we'll tackle the next phase of the kitchen remodel.

We'll be taking out the lower cabinets under the cooktop and replacing them with three new ones. It'll be nice to have the cooktop in the middle and lots of nice storage below and to the sides. Those old cabinets are so gross inside (you won't be seeing any pictures of that, ick). The cabinets are here, so I'm hopeful it'll be sooner than later...I won't hold my breath though. Oh, and yes, we will be putting doors on the uppers, they're just really expensive. I think it's more important to have more new cabinets than to hide my stuff...for now.

Absence

Wow, I knew it had been a while since I blogged, but I didn't know it was that long.

Things have slowed down a bit on Etsy lately so I've been extra busy trying to get things done around the house.

 We've got a full set of upper cabinets now. I have so much storage space in there, I can't even find enough things to put away. Wait till we move on to the next round!

Yesterday I finished making and hanging the living room curtains. They really finished off the room! I'll make some tie backs for them next. Too bad you can't tell how sunny it is today, it's always night time at my house. We hope to put a couple sky lights in there at some point.

I've been sticking with my new plan to only work on "work" during the day, so I've been doing lots of knitting in the evenings. 

 

I finished two socks, now I just need to make the partner for each one, hehe.

I really love these yarns, both from Lilou Colours.

Saturday I went to my first yarn show with Trisha and Lou. I got a great pattern for a sweater (my first attempt at a sweater) and this pretty bamboo yarn.

 

I'd like to make a baby hat with it. There's always someone around having a baby, right?

I've been baking a bit too...

I made some lemon cupcakes, just for fun...

 

and red velvet for Valentine's Day. Nick's office mates liked these. 

Thanks for stopping by to see me again, it's nice to be back.

Progress Report

It was a great weekend!

I have 3 upper cabinets now, and 5 more on the way.  Hooray for storage and progress!

I've pretty much finished my clown socks, I just need to weave in the ends of the yarn and stitch up the toe on the 2nd sock. What I learned: make 2 socks at once! Cool.

The excitement of finishing the socks made me rush on over to Etsy and pick up some knitting patterns from Danger Crafts. Have you seen that shop? OMG!

I bought a 5-Pack of patterns, here's my first project...

He's called Maddox, and Jody likes him too.

I must say, after knitting socks, it's pretty great to be able to finish something in a few hours instead of a few weeks! I've got loads of yarn left, so I may just move on to one of the other patterns right away. Should I go with this one, or this one? *sigh* I think I may be addicted to yet another craft.

Thankful

Today I'm thankful my new oven arrived in time for Thanksgiving.

I'm thankful that Julie sent me this book for my birthday so I could give my oven a test drive.

Naturally, I went with the Maple Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream.

The first thing I ever cooked in my oven!

I think Nick's coworkers were thankful he went to work yesterday.

Mmmmmm, cupcakes. So many things to be thankful for, have a safe and happy turkey day!

Over the Weekend

This weekend I headed south to the Quilt, Craft & Sewing Festival in Puyallup (Nick even went with me!!). It's not the biggest show on earth, but it was a nice diversion and I did pick up a few bits of fabric. Are you surprised? haha That Japanese one on the bottom has already been turned into my new knitting bag.

Do you like it? I was way overcharged for the fabric so I thought I'd better make something for myself for a change. I made the handles extra long so I can wear it with a coat when I walk to my knitting class.

I also got this cool Washington Oregon tea towel. I think I'll stitch some borders on and quilt it. This will look nice in our family room area downstairs.

I also picked up some of what I call "filler fabric". These will be great for coupon organizers. The top one has already been cut to be an organizer.

And here's the update on my socks:

I've gotten to the heel flap now. There's a "design element at the bottom of the flap, but who's gonna know?

Now I'm off to paint the kitchen!! Yes, it's moving along nice and quick. The oven will be delivered tomorrow. All but one cabinet is built. There is a Thanksgiving!

This is how it looks right now. No soffits, no doorway...excellent!

I hope you aren't shocked by the colors we chose. Let's just say, "cheerful".
Here's a clue.

There's a Tent in My Kitchen

We're finally getting started on the long and slow process of remodeling "the vanilla kitchen", YAY! Unfortunately, mold is the reason we're moving forward with phase 1. Yep, too bad the home inspector missed that one. Anyway, I'm glad to get it all started.

 I get to have this tent for a couple days while things dry out. Then we'll be removing soffits and patching up the walls.

 

The first thing we'll tackle (once the mold is dealt with) is this wall. Major changes are coming my way, and a new double oven!!

To help maintain my sanity through the kitchen drama (and Christmas with two Etsy shops), I'm knitting a scarf from this pattern. Maybe I'll even finish it, haha.

It's a super easy pattern and I love the look of the stitches. I'm using pretty inexpensive yarn that I picked up at JoAnn for this scarf. I'm not ready for the good stuff yet, but next week I start a sock knitting class. That's going to be so fun and I can walk to the wool shop where I'm taking the class. I'll keep you posted on my sock progress.

To celebrate my knitting, I took a quiz to see which ewe I am. Here's my result!

A Perendale!! I knew it. If you want to know which ewe you are, here's the quiz. It's only a few questions.