Life Lately

Life has been a bit stressful in our neck of the woods. If you follow my other blog Adventures with our '76 Layton Trailer you'll quickly see why the stress level here is at sky high levels. We have a looming deadline of June 12 to complete it all by for our trip to the Olympic National Forest! Yikeez! Here's a pic of hubby fiddeling I think with paper.

I spy with my little eye...a 2 yr. old!

At the beginning of May I participated in an online vampire themed Ravelry swap.

Here's my awesome little swap package! I was definitely very spoiled by my swappee. And she included the most delicious homemade Oreo truffles!!

My swap package went to my swap partner in France. I sewed a 16" hex frame knitting bag I found the knitting bag tutorial for it at U-Handblog. It was pretty easy and fun to sew.

Other than this swap package, the trailer has been consuming our time. It is quite a large undertaking. Larger than we originally anticipated. It has put a hault on any puppet making or listing of a new load of vintage goodies in both my Etsy shops. It's been a scary month! Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

Update?

I don't think this will be an update, I'm here to confess that I have had no motivation these past couple months for adding new projects or pictures to this blog. Or to even just type about what I've been up to. Maybe it's a rut, I'm not sure. I've been crafty and creative but the camera issue a few months back really made me lose the desire to take new pics and share. I'm slowly learning the new camera and I'm getting better at using it, but it's not enough to motivate me.

Quickly though, Christmas was stressful for me; New Years the family was in bed by 10ish, I was by 11:30; January went by in a breeze but we spent the last week of it in HAWAII!! That was a blast!! February has been nothing but illness among all four of us and this past weekend an acquaintance through a group I volunteer with lost her husband to a heart attack at the age of 44. They have four kids and she is due with her 5th this May. My heart goes out to her and all my energy for the next week or more will be to however I can help this family out. I have never experienced a friend losing a spouse. I have experienced friends losing parents, pets, extended family, but that's it. This is new and difficult at the same time.

That is basically all I have right now. No pics, no crafts, nothing in the creative department. I hope you and your family are happy, healthy and safe!

Funny things in life

Neither my husband nor I ever had ducks growing up. He's a big time city kid and I grew up in a small farming town, so I had more exposure, but not much. We had chicks once, but they grow so fast they were soon sent to my aunts house in the country. Ever since we got our ducks towards the end of August, we've had daily chuckles and smiles put upon our face by these two feathered friends. EVERY single time we walk out the back door, we hear quacking and the quick patter-patter-patter of duck feet over to see us...

SLAM! Patter-patter-patter-patter...
QUAAACK, Quack, quack-quack-quack?? (Translation: OH! You gonna feed us??)
Cuz a snack would be nice, there's fewer bugs out now...
No really, cold weather = fewer bugs...
Seriously,we'd like to have a snack NOW!
So disappointing! Let's go...
EVERY time we walk out back, this is what we get.

Where have I been??

Well...let me tell you...for the month of October I SUPER over-committed myself. As a mother of two...it's pretty stressful. It all started with Halloween costumes. I wanted to make both boys and my college roommate asked me to make hers. THEN it was the countdown to our churches fall bazaar where I signed myself up to donate craft items, desserts in a jar gifts and baked goods. On top of all that was my monthly Year Of Enchantment ornament swap, which was sent out a week late, mostly because of poor time management for the entire month on my part. Well, ALL of these things had to be completely roughly in the same THREE DAY WINDOW!! That's where it got stressful...time was running out. The boys got sick on top of all that.

Other than that brief explanation, here's what I have to show for the month of October:

My swap package for the Year of Enchantment. October's ornament theme was owls. I used Moonstitches tutowlrial. They were so fun to make and SO CUTE!! Below is a pic of the package I received.
In fact, they were so cute and so fun that I decided to make a whole nest of them for the church bazaar. Once again, my camera wanted to fail. Picture taking has been so discouraging ever since it's "accident" I talked about here.
Well, other than all the owls, I made two batches of pumpkin spice cupcakes, two pans of cookie type bars and a dozen jarred "desserts in a jar." They are quart jars layered with dried ingredients then a recipe tag attached on how to make them. I chose the M&M bar and the Dreamsicle bar which was a HUGE HIT!! It's made with Tang...that's what makes it so dreamy I guess. Oh, and our Halloween costumes...
Toddler wanted to be a knight because it had a sword. Look at all his armor!! Thank you dollar store!! Together we decided that baby could be a dragon, and toddler (the knight) could save the princess (that would be me, in a stinky, vintage velvet dress from my moms costume closet) from the dragon. Like the ferocious dragon in the pic?? He was pretty ferocious until we started walking in the stroller. But if I didn't make my dress and ferocious dragon was toddlers costume last year, why was I so stressed about sewing the knight costume?? Oh yeah...because I also had to sew college roommates costume, which was this...to a T. :/ Fur IS NOT fun to work with.

Camera, Canning & Caves

Last night I had a four hour adventure in canning some grape jam. This is the only pic I have of it and I didn't know this pic had even taken until I uploaded it to the computer. Why is that?? you ask.
Oh, because my husband decided to take the camera to this hole in the earth...
...and take pictures of him and his firefighter buddies spelunking. Then proceeded to drop the camera on some rock and crack the screen. I wasn't sure if it still took pics so I tried this morning.
And that's why this is my only pic of my big canning adventure:
And BOY was it an adventure. I used a recipe out of Better Homes and Garden cookbook. "Prep time 65 min. Cook time 5 min." ACTUAL prep time: 3.5 HOURS. ACTUAL cook time: still 5 min but did two batches AND you start timing the 5 minutes when it's at a full rolling boil which takes up to ten minutes. REALLY?? Better Homes and Garden couldn't have suggested a prep time of 65 min. to 3 hours?? Here's why...you de-skin half the grapes, you soften the grapes in pot on burner, sieve the grapes to remove cooked skin and seeds, measure pulp and juice, pour back into pan, heat up, add water and sugar and bring to full rolling boil. Upon full rolling boil, you time it for 12 minutes OR until the mixture has reached a gelling point. One hour and fifteen minutes of rolling boil time later....STILL NOT GELLING!! At 10:10pm we called it quits. I say "we" because my neighbor came to assist and stayed the whole four hours. She was a trooper! Can you imagine how long it would have taken me had I been doing it alone?? So, we jarred it, lidded them, put them BACK into a bath of hot water, brought them to ANOTHER boil and timed 5 minutes. Whew! By the time we finished the second batch and covered them with a cloth to cool the night on the counter, it was 11pm. INSANE! AND, no pictures to show what I did...but here's one of our un-amused kitty:
Yes...poor camera....broken lense cover, broken screen...it's had a rough life.

Next up...salsa!! Just need a few more tomatoes to ripen up. Like how the yellow squash had to squeeze into the pic??

A bigger gift

Our two boys celebrate their birthdays just two weeks apart. This year we had two parties, one for family members and one for toddler friends. Since our house is so small and we're already overflowing with too much stuff, we decided to ask for a donation of Back-to-School items for a program at our church instead of toys.
I completely forgot to get the backpacks in the pic, but we also had four school size backpacks to go with it all.
Here's the rundown:
1-package peechees
1-index cards
1-Toy Story 11 pc. set
2-eraser packages
2-12 ct. color pencils
2-packages of scissors
2-packages of glue
2-of those four colored clicker pens
2-rulers
2-pencil boxes
2-packages of socks
3-calculators
2-pen/pencil holders
2-packages of paper
2-10 ct. markers
4-packages of pens
4-backpacks
6-binders
6-24 ct. crayons
8-elmers glue
9-10 ct. pencils
14-spiral notebooks

In the end, I'm SO GLAD we did the birthday's this way. Almost everyone who came brought stuff to donate. Many school kids received school supplies and WE didn't have to make room for new toys in our 800 sq.ft. house. A win/win for me!

Eagle City Park

Driving home from our bike ride along the Route of the Hiawatha gave us the idea to have our next adventure near Wallace, Idaho. Being an old mining town, there's a lot of history to check out and learn about. After some internet research, I learned about a few other mining ghost towns in that area, including Eagle City. With no obvious remains or location, we ended up tent camping on private property at a place called Eagle City Park.

We started our stay with a tour of the place by our camp host, Peewee. Now, before we met Peewee, we had concerns about what kind of place we were staying at. Well, Peewee turned out to be the nicest and most informative camp host I've ever met! He had TONS of suggestions on where to eat, what to investigate in the surrounding ghost towns and where to dig for gold on the property. :) He said "You find it, you keep it." Good enough for me!

The next day we hiked into Settler's Cedar Grove. A one mile trail where the deeper you go in, the larger the trees get...some as big as six feet in diameter!
See what I mean??
After our morning hike we had lunch in Murray at the Spragpole and toured the free museum. We soon learned that the six foot diameter trees were upwards of 1,000 years old, if not more. Insane!! The afternoon and dinner was spent at our campsite, lounging. Peewee and a few other regular camp inhabitants invited us for a spaghetti dinner. We then sat around the campfire listening to everyone's gold stories and dealings with the wildlife. The wildlife conversation was sparked by the previous nights coyote howlings. Being in between large hillsides, the howls just echoed and echoed.
Our third day we spent along Eagle Creek digging and panning for gold. We saw A LOT of wild life from the really small...
...to the pretty large! We walked around a large clump of bushes and BAM! there this guy/gal was just fifty feet in front of us. It looked pretty young and we feared the momma being nearby, so we turned and walked back the way we came.
We also had to take an afternoon drive to put one-year old to sleep for a nap. We drove to the peak of this road...
...admired the view, then drove back down. Once low enough to where the road was two lanes again, we pulled over, rolled down the window and all four of us napped in the car in the mountains. We had about 15 minutes of natures silence and a cool breeze to relax in. At least...we tried to until a squirrel seeked us out and proceeded to chatter at us until we left.
We almost stayed a third night but changed our minds late in the day. Our drive back home took us past the Snake Pit where we had dinner. Looks a bit interesting from the outside, but is a pretty neat establishment.

All in all...I would DEFINITELY go back. Our next chance may be this October, but then it would be weather pending. Otherwise, next summer for sure! It is such a beautiful area and we FOUND GOLD!! We never did make it to Wallace, and that was the original plan. :)

Busy Busy!

Whew! Am I glad the past two weeks are over! They've been jam packed with birthday's, traveling and crafting. Here's a sneak peek.Stories to come...stay tuned!

Route of the Hiawatha Bike Trail

Fun, Fun, FUN!! If you ever get a chance to ride the Route of the Hiawatha Bike Trail, do so. It's ALL downhill, all 14 miles of it. Here's the first tunnel, 1.7 miles long. You need lights...good lights. We packed every possible light up toy, glow stick, flashlight we could find for the boys in the bike trailer. They were a-glowin!
The first trestle...
The tallest trestle at 220 feet. There was a moose down in that creek, but she quickly went into the trees once people started gathering and got a little noisy. Viewing the trees from this perspective really tricked my eyes. It was weird.
One of the shorter tunnels, didn't need our lights on for this one.
There's also lots and LOTS of wild flowers in bloom right now. There was red, yellow, white, some blue and purple flowers, all along the trail. Very pretty!
It was a very fun and beautiful day in nature. The whole bike ride smelled forest fresh, the chipmunks were extra friendly and we didn't have to ride back uphill! They have a shuttle waiting for you at the bottom, except it drops you off on the south side of the long tunnel, so we began and ended our bike ride with a 1.7 mile dark tunnel ride.

Rejection

Now that I have become a parent, many new fears and worries have appeared. I've talked to a good friend (who's also a mother and a camper) about my new found fear of the great outdoors, which I LOVE and grew up camping in, only now it scares me because I have two little ones.

Today I experienced another worry that I've thought about more frequently over this past year (since I no longer work and we're able to have more playdates)...my son being rejected by his friends. The hard part was that it wasn't during a playdate, where I would have upped and left once it occurred. It happened while watching my friends kids so she could run an errand. It was heartbreaking to watch. What do you do???

I ended up sending everyone to their room and kept my son in the living room and told them all that we needed to have some quiet time since we weren't playing nice. Afterwards I talked to my son about it and told him that when they are not playing nice, they need to have some quiet time and that it was time to play alone for a bit. His chin quivered when he said that he didn't want to play alone. My poor baby...he was treated unfairly and recognized it because he was trying to force them to play nicely right before I broke them all up. I have always worried about him being rejected by certain friends because there are a few that he is so loyal to when we visit.

What would you do??

Just a pic of my sons pretty blue eye and the Fresh From the Cauldron yarn in Bella Swan colorway that I custom ordered to knit a hat out of for him. Think they match??

Long time no see...

Life has been a whirlwind in my neck of the woods. Even before my absence from blogland. Weekend after weekend of busy-ness, and not just two day weekends. Oh no...some as long as five days. But that's how summers are right?? I think we're making up for last summer of absolutely no traveling because I was pregnant. Well....here's what I've been up to...the 4th of July the boys were baptized. After a meeting with our pastor on how the ceremony will proceed and how to dress them, we decided on robing them after being baptized. A few days later I described over the phone what I designed after a little research and the pastor approved. SO...I set to work on my first ever muslin pattern....Here's toddler modeling his muslin while not being distracted from his movie. Believe it or not, this stripe fabric was cheaper than muslin. I had hit a 50% off red tag sale at JoAnn's. I was pretty stoked to work on my first muslin pattern to create a final product. After three days of stressing over both my toddlers and 10-mo-old muslin patterns, I finally got it figured out and got to work with the white linen. Here's the un-ironed finished product....
It's designed after the Alb. Why you ask?? I really don't know since that's the robe style of a pastor. (I do tend to create things on the costumey side...I'm not sure if this was truly okay or not though). They both turned out AWESOME and my craftsmanship on them are SUPERB!! (not to brag any) I used single fold bias tape on every seam and velcro to close on the top at the left shoulder. The finished pattern ended up being SO SIMPLE! Looking back I don't know why it took me three days to figure that out. Oh wait...because it was my first time and I've never pattern drafted before! haha!

Well, that's not all I've been up to...more to come this week...

Never trust a quiet baby...

Why?? Because when you have a 10 month old who can crawl, climb, open cabinets and drawers... they become quiet when they've discovered something new and fun to play with, such as a whole jar of petroleum jelly. You say WHAT?!?!? I'm saying, YEAH...petroleum jelly!! Apparently I left a little jar of it in the boys bedroom in a small drawer that I keep cloth diapering things in. You know, a drawer of stuff that you assume they will never get into because it doesn't have toys in it. It was a jar left over from when they were....you know when baby boys are "cut" (get my drift??) and you have to keep that area covered in the stuff to keep it clear of infection?? Yah, I left it in that drawer because it was never bothered with, until last night when 10 month old decided he could open that drawer (for the first time ever), pull everything out, discover a jar of non-edible-jelly, and open it (how the heck did he figure that out??). He must have been looking for crackers to go with the non-edible-jelly because it was smeared all over his hands, arms, face and the open drawer. There went the rest of our evening. I didn't get to finish drafting a new pattern I'm working on for this weekend for the boys baptisms. :) Maybe I'll have time to post about that soon, assuming the rest of the week goes smoothly and we don't have any more 10 month old caused mishaps.

Vacations over... :(

Last night I returned home after being away for six days. It was lovely. With my husband out of town, I went to my hometown and visited with family and stayed with my parents. I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. I took my Frock by Friday dress, only got the pleats sewn back together, I completed my toddlers pirate coat (the pic above, it's a Simplicity kids costume pattern, he picked out the fabric for the pirate pants, yeah, not my first choice but you can't tell a toddler no to dino fabric), I took my husbands knitted beanie cap, the Mr. Tom's Beanie by Woolly Wormhead, it's still on the needles after what??...5 months??...(did not even pull it out), I took my fairies I designed back in February, I started four more (did not even touch), I took three books to read (I maybe read one chapter in A Reliable Wife and two chapters in a pattern drafting book from the library) and I took a couple of pilates DVDs (and I didn't even complete one 30 minute workout). Where did the time go? I don't know...but it flew by...The time has been flying by too much these days...We need to slow down...ALL of us...even you dear reader...we need to just find that road with the wheat fields on both sides with the clear blue sky and slight breeze in the air, spread out our red and white check table cloth and have a nice relaxing pic-nic in the middle of no-where.Okay....back to reality....Here's what I did accomplish other than the pirate coat...geocaching with my dad (that excursion resulted in the above pic, fun eh?....there's something relaxing about driving through the middle of nowhere, especially when that nowhere results in a view of wheat fields growing right up next to the narrow country road.), a Mary Kay party at my grandma's house, grilling burgers and visiting with family at my aunts house, brunch with my other grandma, wine tasting in Prosser (we chose Gamache Vintners), found a new quilt store and bought even MORE fabric (it's Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear pictures, see below), digging/sifting in my moms stash of garnet gravel for Idaho Star Garnets and I finally saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, that was interesting.The nicest thing about coming home last night was the part where I first walked into the house and the air smelled cool, crisp and with a hint of my peach scented candles from Pier 1. SO NICE!!! No stinky cat litter smell, no drooling, wet dog smell, no dirty dishes in the sink smell, no dirty diaper smell, no toddler food left on the table smell, not even stale closed up house smell....just cool, crisp, peachy air. Aaahhhh.....to come home to that every day would just be peachy!

Today's Life Lesson

Don't put off your morning shower because you need to change the litter box and want to shower after all that litter dust billows up at you and clings to you, but before you get to that you decide to super vaccuum the house for a few hours then before you know it, it's lunch time, so you pause to eat and realize you're running late for a playdate, but squeeze in a trip to the library and ALL THE WHILE you're doing laundry (which are several loads of bedding), so you're washing on hot-hot-hot and extra rinse (I don't like crunchy sheets from left over detergent) before you know it, it's dinnertime so you eat, but it was a warm day so you water the garden and a few other plants, THEN you realize that you still need to change the litter box and do so THEN you finally take your morning shower only you've been doing laundry on hot-hot all day so it's not so warm shower. >:/

Ridding of the Sicklies

I've been absent for two weeks, I think, (If I'm doing my math right!). We've all been sick in our neck of the woods, first me a week ago with a little cold I couldn't shake. Now I've graciously shared it my two little boys who are experiencing the symptoms a heck of a lot more than I did. I don't buy boxes of tissue, so we're going through toilet paper twice as fast with three runny noses in this house! Their poor little immune systems...they just aren't as strong as mine yet, I guess. I'm going to have to sterilize the whole house once it's all gone because of all the snot and hacking and weezing that's infected our house air. Bleagh!!!

We're all now on the mend and I hope to be adding some new photos of what we've been up to soon. Several destashing projects, several in-progress projects and a new ornament. Yay! In the mean time, here's a pic from my parents back deck I took back in February. You can see Mt. Adams peaking over that hillside in the distance. One of my favorite things about my parents house is the view they have of the valley facing west. On a clear day you can see both Mt. Ranier and Mt. Adams AND the Yakima valley all the way to Yakima (maybe, never really checked the accuracy). Check back soon!

Ten Tiny Toes...

You'd think that I would have been able to post sooner, time just flies when you have two kids. My new little guy was 8 days late and now he's 8 weeks old! I think I've adjusted pretty well from working mom to home mom, I've managed to maintain a semi-clean household. However, in doing so, I have had very, VERY little me time. What I mean by me time is craft time. I have spent about 5 hours in the past 8 weeks on crafts and only then was it because I'm forcing myself to get a baby gift completed. My crafting is my stress outlet, is my form of relaxing from a long day, and I have no time for it!!! I will manage. In the mean time, baby is doing great, 3 year old brother is adoring little baby brother, gotta watch him with his love squishes, and the house is cleaner than when I was working and pregnant. :)