I wish I had known

prior to getting pregnant that, a few months after having a baby, your hair falls out. 

And not just like a few strands.

Gobs and gobs of hair.

Apparently we don't lose hair while pregnant like we do while not with child, in my opinion so that, while the hormones are regulating after birth, our personal summer of hot flashes can be made oh so worse with hair plastered to our face. And then it all starts coming out. I didn't believe it could happen to me. And then it did.

Left-brain was suitably grossed-out. Apparently, explaining that it's hormones doesn't work as well for hair as it did when I was sitting in the camper 10 days post-partum, crying because the book I was reading was really sad (an experience I NEVER hope to duplicate, I was wailing, y'all). Or else they should have covered it in the discharge speech--he understands baby blues, not red hair all over everywhere.

And now, all that hair is growing out, and looking horrible. I haven't had a haircut in 17 months--I didn't feel like explaining to the hairdresser that I couldn't get my hair dyed because the doctor said not to, and why have a pretty cut if it's half grey? But I have bangs at the side of my hairline--not in the middle, that's growing and flowing, my legit bangs are past my chin. I look awful. I have plans though--this is not staying this way, no, m'ams and messieurs.

I am going to pull out my sewing machine tomorrow. I ran up to Joann's to get sewing thread for it. Someone Small came with me--it was her first experience sitting in the shopping chart without being in her carseat. I put aside my germ fears, strapped her in, and we proceeded around the store. I often wonder how things look from her perspective and how she thinks about things--she looked at everything so hard, even the cashier.  She just stared at her, occasionally sucking on her pacifier like a little Maggie Simpson-girl. LOL.  I told the girl, "She's usually not like this." So my plan is to take it out, run the needle through an old onesie of hers that is too disreputable to wear anymore to get the oil off and try some finishing. This may be a slow process--bear with me.

Photo fun . . . and a recipe.

Told you I finished something!  I have had this rolling around my UFO pile for the last two years. I am so happy it's finished. I've always really liked this design, and decided the Crazy January challenge 2011 was the perfect time to commit to it.  After the designer for Primitive Needle passed away so tragically that same year, I dedicated it to her--I still feel so awful about the way she was taken. But then life took over, and this, along with the rest of the Crazy January starts, fell along the wayside.   But now it's done, and really, when it comes down to it, this is a pretty good message for the way my life has been going lately--we just gotta keep going and hope for the best.

This is my problem child. This was kitted up by my LNS, and I don't have enough floss to finish it. I can pull the DMC from my stash, but the hand-dyed floss is another question. Even if I were to go back to the LNS and complain, the kit is from 2008, and matching the floss would be a problem. I'm just adapting the design as I can. And I am annoyed. This was not a cheap little kit. It's very cute though, so I am hoping I can finish it and not make it look too bad.  Wish me luck.

I don't know if I've posted this before, but I wanted to share a recipe that is part of my family's Easter celebrating . . . glorified rice. My gramma learned this recipe from her grandmother, and I've been trying to research where it came from, because so many of my gramma's recipes were, "til it taste me good", and it's hard to quantify how to make them. It's the one recipe that does not seem to be on the Internet, though, because I can find recipes that are close, but none that are exactly the same. It's not ambrosia, it's not rice pudding, it's glorified rice . . . and it's heavenly. So I wanted to share.

The ingredients: (yes, I use store brand for the most part. I do use name-brand vanilla, Penzey's to be precise. To me, it's the Ferrari of vanillas, but if you don't have it, use your favorite)

4 cups of instant rice, prepared per package instructions.

1 medium can of crushed pineapple, drained

1/2 C of sugar

1/2 t vanilla

medium container of heavy whipping cream

Combine the rice, sugar, and pineapple while the rice is still warm. It melds together a lot better that way.

I have seen recipes that use pineapple juice, not pineapple, and lemon jello, but I can't imagine how that would taste, plus it always makes me amazed that, in the early 1900s, in the hollers of Western Pennsylvania, my great-great-grandmother had access to and money for crushed pineapple. This was truly a special dish if she had that for her family.

When mixed, pour the cream over it and add the vanilla. You can use a little more or a little less depending on your preference. I have adapted it to be less sweet than my gramma's way because Left-brain won't eat it when it's too sweet, and you get enough calories from the cream. It's going to look soupy, but it goes in the fridge to "draw through" and thickens up.

This was a photo I took of the finished product. I love to eat that first bowl while it's still warm and yummy. It just doesn't photograph well. But it tastes, well, divine.



Katie "helped" me make it; she sat on the floor, banging pan lids while the water boiled for the rice. It's not fancy food, not to a modern palate, but it's good, and it's home food to me.

So that's all i have for tonight. I hope your weekend is going well. They are calling for snow on Monday here. Not sure if they're going to be right--the forecasters are started to laugh at their own ineptitude at this point. But Easter means spring is here and it has to warm up sometime.

In case you haven't seen it

Cross Eyed Cricket re-released the freebie, Slicker Bunny, on their site:

Go here, then to "gift design" to get your copy of it, while it's still out there.


I'm getting through, here in Crazyville. The time change has really been kicking my patootie. That and a new effort to try to get Someone Small to go to bed at a normal hour--she's been staying up til 10 or 11 on a weeknight and does not want to sleep in her own crib. I am so jealous of people who say their baby goes to bed at 7:30 and sleeps all night--what is THAT like, do you know what I could get done with all that time? 5:30 comes early enough as it is, without spending the evening trying to convince her she really is sleepy, so we're starting a new effort to get her in bed by 9, in her own bed. So far, it's going OK, but still, it's going to take some time to get her used to it.

I have been working on a couple things since finishing No Scaredy Cats. I started Told In a Garden's Simple Gifts the next day, and work on that when I get a chance, which is not often, but also picked up the photo-to-chart image of the baby's hand holding my finger. I'd wanted to get it done by her first birthday, but I don't think that is going to happen, since I am not even finished the first page, but if not, I'll get it done by her second birthday. Debbie did a fantastic job charting it, I can already tell you what it is and there isn't that much done. And I started an older freebie my LNS kitted up for my March ornament for the Christmas ornament SAL. I think it's called Winter Moon. I've had to alter the design, since my LNS did not include enough green floss to finish both of the little trees in the design--it just makes it more personal. It's a big ornament, but that's OK, you have to have something for the bottom of the tree, right? 

I have two days off next week. On Friday, we're taking the baby for her 9 month pictures--can you believe she is 9 months old already?--but Thursday, I am planning on spending what time I can finishing ornaments. I think I may get the sewing machine out tomorrow to get it ready and figure out how to use it to maximize my time.

Other than that, not much going on. I am spending a lot of time on Pinterest, finding things I want to do. I like looking at the DIY projects, even though the holiday ones can make me feel woefully inadquate, but I am pinning them more as inspiration. I already have this great vision of white lanterns with red candles in them lining our walk next holiday season . . . and the wreath ideas! Left-brain has masses of old Christmas balls that his first wife bought to decorate their tree, ostensibly til they had enough of the personal ones to fill the tree (and I'll admit, I have done that too for my little tree, I just choose not to use them anymore), and we don't use them, so we just have a box of random Christmas balls that need to be refreshed and reused and I now have some ideas.

If you would like to follow me, welcome to my Pinterest world! And I would love to follow you! 

A little more stitching time

Somehow, somewhere, I got some stitching time this weekend.

I WAS SHOCKED.

Right after Christmas, our storage hassles came to a head. Left-brain couldn't get to the desk in the office because of the stacked boxes in there, and I couldn't get to anything of mine. It was starting to really annoy both of us, so we reconfigured his mancave. A lot of my boxes are now downstairs, but I can get to them easily and they are no longer a towering death trap, where the heavy things seem to be on top and everything I need is in the bottom box. Our goal, as stated before, is to build a shed, even though I don't know how that's going to work because they just re-did our flood maps and my side yard is even more in a flood zone than it was before, and I don't want our shed in a flood zone. But, when we do that, we're moving all the man toys out there, all the exercise equipment that is downstairs out to the garage, and the area where that is now will be my stitching area/the baby's play area. Maybe then, I can get some real shelves and a suitable table set up. Barring us moving to another house/having another baby/who knows what else happening in the meantime.

But I pulled Waxing Moon's No Scaredy Cats out of my Crazy 15 starts from 2011:

Remember this? (It's the last one in the post. Not the last one to be completed, just the last one in the post)

My progress has been abysmal:

 No Scaredy Cats


But between Downton Abbey Season 2 on Monday, the "Gold Rush" finale on Friday night (that show is like watching a flipping trainwreck, but it's strangely addictive), and then a marathon of DA Season 3 on Saturday, during which Babygirl slept, I got a lot of progress. It's probably 2/3 finished, but I still have her sign to do and her head. And I love it. I did change the cat on her shoulder to a tabby/calico looking cat, just to be different, and it's cute.  I don't know if I'll do the pumpkin necklace for her though. I don't want to buy the charm, and I found out small things that dangle attract fingers that pull (and I'm not talking children's fingers). Not sure how I will finish this. Maybe as a cube, but then again, I may be able to rustle up a small black frame from somewhere. My mom is starting to be on the lookout for frames at rummage sales and the like, and, since those will be starting up again soon, I may be able to find what I need.

I will post a picture when I get a little more progress on it. I wanted to do it last night, but Babygirl was either teething or so tired she couldn't sleep, because she stayed up, fussing, til midnight. Makes for a very tired Mummy, that does. And she was not any better this morning. No fever, nothing obviously wrong, just disgruntled. But she was fine when she got to school, so hopefully, it will pass.

My weekend

I was so productive this weekend. More than I think I've been since I had the baby.


I attacked the mountain of laundry that has been growing in our hallway for a while.  We're just too busy to keep up with it. Now it's all done. It feels so good to have that out of the way.

I also did a deep cleaning of Babygirl's room: put away all the baby clothes she's outgrown, corralled a bunch of cards that had escaped my efforts to put them in her treasure box, along with her christening bib and booties, arranged all the stufties by her bookcase and made sure her library was neat. I have decided she gets a new book for each holiday and there've been enough of those that she is amassing a nice collection.  Valentine's Day brought her "Love, Splat", which she seemed to enjoy.

I also made this recipe! I must confess, I found it through www.pinterestfail.com, which is usually not a good recommendation for a recipe, but I figured it couldn't be that hard . . . and I used store brand Oreos in case it didn't turn out right. But it did. They are yummy. They are rich and indulgent and not that hard to make, and they taste like chocolate cheesecake. My only tip is keep them small, because thof the richness, and use a spoon to dip the almond bark, it's just a lot easier to deal with.

Today I spent the day watching Season 2 of Downton Abbey.  I got through 7 episodes before it was time to do something else.  Babygirl was at daycare--I thought long and hard about whether or not to keep her home, but it's good to have some consistency to her schedule, and I needed time to get other things done, so she went; I know some people may think me a bad mom for doing that, but I have a clean house and a rested spirit for my day, and that makes me a better mom, at least I think.

I finally managed to finish something today. Two things actually. I finished the above pattern, which I started on 1 January 2012. It gives me immense pleasure to have finished it, although it was supposed to have been done by the end of December.

And I started and finished this little guy:

I'm participating in an ornament SAL, and this month's theme was reindeer. I wasn't sure what pattern to pick, but I found this little guy on Pinterest, and he kind of stole my heart. He looks a lot like Beazer, doesn't he? It's from a French site, but I am not sure which one. I need to finish him up, but he was a fun, cute little stitch that took me maybe 3 hours at most.  What do you think? I may redo him on a t-shirt for Babygirl for Christmas next year, but not sure.

I pulled another UFO out, from my Crazy January starts of 2011, and worked on that a little. It felt so good to get time to work on my stitching. I've missed it, I didn't realize how much. I know there isn't a really good alternative right now; the financial issues I spoke of a few months ago are starting to let up, but we won't be out of the woods til at least the end of the year, and what time isn't taken up with trying to earn money is spent trying to make up for the hours I spend trying to earn a living. But I have a plan and I am going to be a stitcher again, soon. And I will appreciate the gift of time more.

One more picture to share. 

She's in love with her "puppy" now, pesters him incessantly. He puts up with her like a champ. I snapped this last week, the first good picture of them together.  My kids!

Cake pop adventures

For Christmas, I got the idea that I wanted a cake pop maker. I got introduced to them at one of the bridal shows we attended (which are a waste of time, BTW, except for the cake), and have been wanting them ever since. But I didn't know you could feasibly make them at home--I figured you had to have professional equipment, like a melon baller, to do it, and I have a tiny little kitchen . . . and no melon baller.

So when I found out they make a cake pop maker, I was stoked. I looked on Amazon to see if they were expensive (they aren't), if they work (if you're lucky, they do) and then put one on my Christmas list. 

Now is the time I admit that, had I done a bit more research, I would have figured out that you do not need a cake pop maker to make cake pops. The internet is full of sites that involve crumbling up cake, mixing it with icing and making balls. Somehow I missed these.

And I got the cake pop maker. We were going to fool with it the weekend Kaydence was baptized, but it requires vegetable oil, and I didn't have any, and the seven mile trek to Safeway was TOOO far. So it's been sitting, waiting, since then.

Yesterday, I got it out. I had time because the battery in my car died, so all my weekend plans were on hold til Left-brain got me a battery.  I have a Bella cake pop maker, and it came with cake mix to make the balls, otherwise, I'd have been breaking out the brownie mix I keep in the cupboard, for all the spare time I have to make brownies. I followed the directions. The maker smokes the first time you plug it in and turn it on, and they say to toss the first batch you make, which felt a little wierd, but I did it anyway.

It was not hard to use, once I figured out how much batter to put in the little holes, but, to be honest, what came out were more like doughnut holes than cake pops. They weren't very big. I didn't even bother to dip them in the topping, but we ate them just so. Chocolate in the morning, yummy!  I can see taking the maker camping or to the cottage and using it to make doughnut holes for breakfast. It would be a lot more fun, right?

And I just want to say, I am not ungrateful for the gift, and it was pretty easy to use, once I figured out what was going on, and got over the fact that a kitchen device was smoking. If it had been useless, I'd put it in the cupboard or never use it again. Left-brain was making fun of the cake pops while they were cooling, but he ate most of them while the game was on last night. I'm going to try to make the cake balls the right way, with the crumbled cake and icing, but I tried.

2012 finishes

I forgot to do this before the New Year turned. I managed to get 30 finishes last year. Most before the baby came. Babygirl will only be small so long and I would rather, when she remembers her small childhood, that she says, "My mother read me stories, even though I didn't understand what was going on, she acted them out for me," and "I remember her dancing with me in the living room in the evenings, and smiling at me,"  not, "I sat and watched my mom cross stitch." I can focus on that when she gets a little older. Maybe we can craft together, since I am still planning on finishing things and have a bunch of pretty craft ideas pinned to my Pinterest.

Anyway, here's the list:

5 November--cat freebie

1 September-Thomas-Kitty and Me


8 August-Spooky-Kitty and Me

2 August-August Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt--Val's Stuff

21 July--Bunnies-- Prairie Schooler

19 July--July Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt-- Val's Stuff

1 July--freebie--Jean Farish

15 June--Sharing the S--Sanman

4 June--June Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt--Val's Stuff

3 June--SNN kit-June 2008--UFO since 2008

28 May-Ice Dragon's Kingdom--Dragon Dreams--UFO since 2010

20 May--October floss tag--Heart's Content

17 May-The Rabbit Alphabet-JBW Designs

11 May--May Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt--Val's Stuff

9 May--Just a Little Flaky--Val's Stuff--JCS 2011

8 April--Merry Christmas--CCN--JCS 2011

7 April--April Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt--Val's Stuff

4 April--Hearts of America--Little House Needleworks-UFO since 2008

13 March--Star of Wonder--Fine-ally Finished-2011 JCS

10 March-Carrot Patch-Cosmic Handmade

4 March-March Square--Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt-Val's Stuff

18 February--Half Hour ornament--Lizzie*Kate--JCS 2011

15 February-Winter Forest-Little House Needleworks

11 February--Trim The Tree-Debbee's Designs-JCS 2011

3 February-February Square--Itty Bitty Kitty Quilt-Val's Stuff

29 January-Love and Joy-JBW Designs--JCS 2011

28 January--Fresh Fallen Snow--Little House Needleworks--JCS 2011

19 January--Spring Has Sprung--Brightneedle--UFO since ?

17 January-Yuletide--Plum Street Sampler-JCS 2011

14 January--Lucky Dog-JAB Co-UFO since 2008?

7 January-SNN kit--January 2006--UFO since 2006.

2 January--January square-Itty Bitty Kitty quilt-Val's Stuff.


I won't be mad if my 2013 list isn't as long. My photo albums are getting full.