Wishing all of the moms out there a Happy Mother’s Day!
May 092010
May 042010
It was a sneaky sneaker weekend here at Chez Mousie! Munchkin needed a new pair of shoes because his old ones were making his feet hurt, so we took a trip to the local shoe store with the mother-in-law to see what we could get the very opinionated (hmm.. wonder where he gets that from??) Mr. Munchkin to wear.
Turns out he takes after his mama and is a new member of the Converse (Chuck Taylor) All-Star fan club!! He bought his first pair of gray Converse – I’m so proud! *wipes imaginary tear* Those are his feet on the left… isn’t he stylish?
I know what you’re thinking – but Mousie, what’s with those photos of the weird olive drab looking Converse in the other photos?? Um.. yeah. Those shoes are the product of the sales guy telling my Converse hating MIL that there ARE “uglier” Converse in the store than the gray pair my son picked out. He said something to the effect of “yeah.. we have this olive green pair over here on clearance because they’re so ugly. Look at them! ” at which point my eyes glazed over, my mouth dropped open and I said “Are those CORDUROY?? — OMG I must have them!!!!” … and now I do. Oddly enough, these are my first pair of low top Chuck Taylors because I always preferred the look of the high tops.. but I love them!
Jul 112009
Yesterday was Munchkin’s 8th birthday! We went to Chuck E. Cheese, ate pizza, went toy shopping, and had ice cream cake. This year he was given the choice of getting presents or getting money from the relatives and doing his own shopping.. he went for the money & shopping. While he did end up buying things yesterday, I’m proud to say that he saved over half of his birthday money “for another day” without anyone suggesting it. I’m glad he had a great time but I’m also happy that we’ve been able to hang around the house today and chill.. I’m exhausted!
May 062009
I haven’t baked or knitted in over a week now because we’ve been hit with one type of sickness after another around here. Earlier last week our new kitty Jack was attacked by something (we think a fox or a small coyote – and yes, its news to me that we have coyote here in Georgia) in our yard and had the side of his face torn up and his back leg injured. He was doctored up and is healing quite nicely.
I put a new piece of jewelry in my stretched earlobes and had a horrible reaction to the metal (surgical steel.. but maybe a high nickel content?) leading to a really big infected nightmare. Thankfully I caught it before it was unmanageable and I ordered in a nice new set of jewelry from BodyArtForms.com. My ears are now much happier…
On Friday at noon I got a call from the school to come get Munchkin because he has “pink eye”. A highly contagious illness you say? OF COURSE. We waited 24 hours (b/c the person in the clinic is not medically trained at all and even said it <em>might</em> not be conjunctivitis) and his eye was nasty – so we had to take him into one of those ‘emergency’ clinics and wait for 4 hours to be seen and get antibiotic eye drops. (Did I mention we don’t have insurance and the state run children’s medical insurance has been dicking me around for on the upwards of 6 months??? yeah… you don’t want to know what that visit cost.) HUGE amounts of sleep lost while I cleaned Munchkin’s eyes every few hours so that they didn’t get stuck shut. He is MUCH better today and has a note which allowed him back at school today.
Yesterday when I was woken up by the cats chasing each other around the bed (they were jumping on our heads.. what a great way to get woken up) I realized that I couldn’t see out of my left eye. When I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror I realized that I had caught Munchkin’s pink eye!! The good news is that the clinic doctor anticipated this issue, had given us enough eye drops, and had told ME how to take them (Love ya doc.. seriously.) should this happen. I’m doing much better but my last pair of contact lenses had to be thrown in the trash because they were contaminated.
I wear 2 week disposables but my prescription is LONG expired and I’ve been wearing this particular pair for an obscene amount of time. The only glasses I have are now about 12 years old (though apparently my prescription hasn’t gotten that much worse because I can see pretty well, just don’t ask me to read you anything on the tv or identify anyone at a distance).. and I’m blind as a bat (and I don’t have that handy sonar feature) without some sort of prescription eyewear. Fortunately my parents (who are AWESOME) are going to help me out for the extra money I need to get myself an eye exam and a box of new contact lenses.. they even said “happy mother’s day” – which means its a gift instead of a loan.. so I don’t feel as crappy about accepting money.
My husband is on a business trip to the West coast for the next 6 days (hence the utter chaos a contagious infection in the house has caused…) and he left early this morning for the airport.. so I’ve been up since about 4am. I’m going to go take a very VERY long shower (all your hot water is belonging to me!!!!) and veg in front of the tv. *sigh* Is it Friday yet??
Seriously.. I sat here for about the last 10 minutes making myself giggle with possible titles for this post, but instead have decided to let you make your own. Go ahead.. have at it.
So, tomorrow is Easter – and while we don’t celebrate the religious part of it here at Chez Mousie, we do rock the “Look, a giant mutant bunny brought you a basket filled with sugar!!! wheeeeeee!” part of it for Munchkin. The bunny is a little short on cash this year so the basket contains dollar containers of bubble solution, vanilla sugar wafers, dollar chocolate & white chocolate bunnies, and a whole container of Transformers fruit snacks. I always sort of had a feeling that the one year that ‘the bunny’ brought my son a GI. Joe action figure (one of the big ones too.. ) would come back to bite us in the ass (thanks hubby.. I told you so.) eventually.
Along with the visit from Bunzilla we also spend the day with hubby’s family at his grandparent’s house, where we hide eggs for the kids (munchkin is the only kid there this year since ‘the cousins’ have moved to Florida) and I attempt to eat my weight in spiral honey baked ham. As with every family gathering, I’m required to bring a “dish” (which usually ends up being about THREE dishes.. but I’m not upset or anything *fumes*) of assigned food to the meal. Usually its something that my husband hates and that I’m sick of making.. like deviled eggs or rice pilaf. This year (with the fact that I’ve been totally sucked into the Cult of Bread) I decided that I would make homemade yeast dinner rolls because right now I’m having a lot of fun baking bread, and the normal family dinner cooking is usually a miserable chore.
Bread making? It totally rocks. I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour and added Italian dressing seasonings to it to make some kick ass herb rolls… and I even got them finished early enough in the day so that I could take some food-blog worthy macro shots! Two trays worth of dinner rolls (minus the one that Munchkin had to sample.. it was VERY good) that were stupid-simple to make and fun too (not to mention seriously food-model worthy)– what more could someone want? I can’ t wait to eat these tomorrow… I hope no one else wanted any bread. 
Mar 242009
Wow, I can’t believe its been so long since I’ve last posted! Sadly, the most exciting thing that happened worth noting around Chez Mousie in the last two weeks was that I accidentally slammed an Exacto knife into my thumb a few nights ago while trying to remove the plastic wrapping off of a bottle of vitamins. Seriously folks, when bodily injury is the best subject you have for a blog post, you might be in trouble.
So, instead of offering up some more bodily injury.. I bring you a post about homemade pizza! (everyone all at once) mmmmmm…. pizza.
(click to embiggen)
I love to cook (nothing fancy- mostly slapped together curries, family favorites, and the occasional tv recipe) and I do like to make easy desserts and those boxed cakes & muffins.. but I would never ever call myself a baker. Truth be told, I’m pretty well terrified of any recipe that involves little yeasty beasties because I have heard all about the things you can do to absolutely ruin a loaf of bread. The only bread I’ve ever “baked” involved a weekend fling with a borrowed bread machine and packaged mixes… and believe me, it ended BADLY.
So, how did I end up with homemade pizza when I’m clearly a bit yeastophobic? I’m blaming my MIL & P*zza H*t – seriously. We don’t have a lot of money so in our house ‘delivery’ pizza (we pick it up to save on cost and always use coupons) is a once a month treat. At our last stop for pizza & movies night (yay Netflix..) my husband ran into ‘Pizza the Hut’ (does anyone else get this reference? ) and came out to tell me that our local PH is in the process of being bought out- and that the new owners will NOT be accepting ANY PH brand coupons even though the name will remain the same!! It was already a stretch for us to get pizza at the coupon price, so this new plan just torched us. We bought a garlic bread frozen pizza from the grocery store next door and went home to cook it.. vowing only to return to ‘the Hut’ for boneless wings, should the late night craving arise.
When I relayed this story to my mother-in-law, her (rather snide) response was “well.. what are you going to do, make your own pizza??” Yes, yes I am.. and mostly because you just insinuated that I couldn’t. Yesterday, while hubby was out doing odd jobs (boy, this economy SUCKS) I searched the internet for “easy pizza recipes” and hit on one from Hillybilly Housewife which looked like maybe even I could pull it off. The only ingredients I needed from the store were yeast, fresh mushrooms and some shredded mozzarella cheese… the canned tomatoes & tomato paste needed for my stupid-easy homemade sauce and the rest of the crust goodies were already in the pantry. The dough (which I had to set outside in the sun to rise b/c I feared it was too cold in the house for it) ended up getting just right and the family declared homemade Mousie Hut pizza to be a success. It was so much of a success that I ended up baking up the second batch of dough so that we could stuff ourselves stupid.. even Munchkin enjoyed helping. I’m definitely going to be baking our own homemade pizzas from now on.. and I’ve conquered a bit of my yeast bread fear in the process. Next up? Homemade soft pretzels!
Dec 192008
I’m tired and stressed and its time for wee skully bullet points!
I’m calling that holiday happening on the 25th “Clustermas” because it seems that EVERYTHING I’ve tried to do as gifts has backfired.
Due to stores under stocking popular toys & books, Hubby and I have been calling all over the greater Atlanta area looking for the things on Munchkin’s Santa List. I tried to order the books from Amazon.com a few days ago but it turns out that they are out of stock… *sigh*
Thankfully it seems that Barnes & Noble online was prepared for this and had ‘expedited free shipping’ for orders over $25.00. I now have BOTH books Munchkin wanted winging their way to Georgia as we speak.. and I’m very happy. I also had to order the PS2 game (Lego Batman) that Munchkin asked for because the only place we were going to be able to purchase it was Circuit City – and it turns out that they are closing all of the locations near us. We went the other day and everything including the trash can outside was for sale… they had no games. Fortunately (as we were using our ancient CC charge card for the purchase) I was able to buy the game online (from CC) and have it shipped with 3 day free shipping directly to my door.
I”m now going to sit here and PRAY that “Guaranteed Delivery by Dec. 24th” isn’t a joke! I’m starting to wonder why I didn’t just do this from the beginning because I feel so much better knowing that we’re not going to be running all over creation today – its Munchkin’s last day of school until January 5th and I’m sure every parent in the area is out frantically doing their last ‘child free shopping’ until Christmas.
Its 67 degrees here in Georgia… no shit. People all over blog-land are snowed in and we’re wearing t-shirts and drinking iced coffee… weird. Not to say that I’m not happy that I’m not freezing my tail end off – I’m definitely sick to death of not having heat and being too cold to want to shower or wash dishes. Its just that it doesn’t feel like Christmas when its too hot to drink hot chocolate!
Aug 102008
Its that time again! I’m totally blown away by the fact that we’ve got to get up and get Munchkin off for his first day of school tomorrow morning. We had orientation earlier last week where we found out that our new house was NOT on the bus route as I was told that it would be when I called the school a month earlier. Much paper shuffling and phone calling later.. they’ll be picking my son up directly in front of our house tomorrow — Hooray for door-side bus service!! After 2 years of walking 5+ blocks to the bus stop – I’m definitely excited about this, and I KNOW that Munchkin is thrilled to be getting picked up and dropped off right in the driveway. Apparently there IS some advantage to living on the side of a major road – it makes up for the fact that getting my mail or putting out the recycle bin seems a bit deadly with cars whooshing past at 45 mph.
Munchkin is definitely excited to go back to school this year after meeting some of the kids in his class at orientation. He picked out this snazzy orange bookbag last week during one of our school shopping trips and we’ve packed it with his lunch money, snack, new blue water bottle, and Camp Rock notebooks (yes.. my son has been sucked into the Disney dimension and is obsessed with the Jonas Brothers *sigh*). He’s already got his clothes for tomorrow picked out and hanging on his door… I think I’m more nervous than he is!
Jul 282008
If anyone finds some blogging mojo hanging out in the corner of their house or abandoned in a parking lot – please do pick it up and check the label to see if it belongs to me. Seems as though I’m not alone in my blog ennui though – it appears to be happening & talked about on other blogs recently. I’ve been pretty quiet just because there isn’t much going on around Chez Mousie worth blogging about.. with the exception of a recent early morning trip to pick blueberries. Munchkin and I were invited with the in-laws on a blueberry picking excursion to a family friend’s property where we spent a few hours picking numerous gallons of blueberries from bushes that were so large that Munchkin called them “blueberry trees”. We forgot a cooler though, so I wasn’t able to bring home any berries.. they’ll be frozen at MIL’s house until I can get to retrieving some at a later date and turning them into blueberry muffins when the weather cools down enough to use the oven.
As for knitting.. there’s some of that around here. Seems everything I’m knitting involves fingering weight yarn.. including this Dream Swatch headband made from the leftover yarn of my Avada Kedavra socks. I’m enjoying this pattern and its coming out really nice on size 5 needles.. its a good project to pick up & knit on when you have a few minutes between doing other things. My plan is basically to knit on it until I either get bored or I run out of yarn.. whichever comes first.
I’ve got the same 2 socks on the needles (Nanners & More Fun Than Cables) because its just too damned hot here to knit and I haven’t spun in so long that I’m not entirely sure that I remember HOW to do it or where the fiber that is on the wheel actually is. We are still trying to avoid running the AC for as long as possible but its only getting us to about 6pm before its 92F in the house – which is my limit for an indoor temperature. Between the heat and the lack of an actual workspace for my shop stuff.. I feel like I haven’t done anything creative this entire summer. I’m sort of hoping to have my Etsy shop back up and running come mid-August but right now I’m really not feeling that into anything I’ve previously sold. At this point I am trying to come up with some totally new things because I still feel like everyone and their brother are selling stitch markers on Etsy and the market is so flooded with them that no one is buying.
Also.. I just realized that Munchkin has only 2 weeks left of summer vacation. I’m going to go freak out now.
Jul 102008
Today is Munchkin’s 7th birthday and our plans are to head for the all you can eat pizza buffet (the kidlet is all about some pizza) and the game store so he can get the new Lego Indiana Jones PS2 game that he’s been waiting for. I highly recommed the Lego games – we’ve LOVED the 2 Star Wars games and are looking forward to the release of Lego Batman in Sept.
I’ve already made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast & he’s been watching whatever movies he wants (within reason of course..) all day. Tomorrow we’re having the ‘family’ party with grilled hot dogs, corn on the cob & a Batman cake at the in-laws house… which Munchkin can’t wait for because he picked out his gifts (Bakagan ‘battle brawler’ creatures & cards) at Box o’ Toys with grandma but couldn’t have them until his party.
I’m still floored by the idea that I have a seven year old son.. in 9 years he’ll be driving a real car and not this coin operated one in the photo! EEP!
Dec 182007
Somehow I’ve managed to lose an entire week and I can’t stop thinking that Christmas is still about 2 weeks away.. I’m going to blame my wrist injury for that one. I am doing much better (look- capital letters & punctuation!!) which is proof that it was probably just a bad sprain rather than a fracture and I’m definitely taking that lucky break. I haven’t yet tried to knit and I’m limiting my computer/typing time so as to not injure it further – I have a habit of re-damaging things because I’m in a big fat hurry to get back to life. I wanted to thank everyone for their nice comments and even an offer to knit for me- y’all continue to wow me with your generosity. I’ve decided though that I will knit Munchkin’s hat as soon as I’m able and that he’ll end up with more than enough to open Christmas Eve (with the in-laws) and Christmas morning (Santa’s unwrapped toys & my parents gifts which usually come via UPS and that I’m hoping were mailed in ample time this year….)
If you’ve been here at my blog around Christmas time in the past.. then you’ve certainly heard me grumble about our pathetic Charlie Brown-esque fake tree and my hatred for said shrub. No more! As you can see.. this year I was gifted (thank the in-laws and their hording issues..) with a 7.5 foot, very realistic looking fake tree that I had to stand on chair to put the tree topper on and take off some of the back branches to fit into the space by the fireplace without blocking entrance to the guest bathroom & Munchkin’s room. I am so happy that I finally have a tree that resembles the beautiful live trees that my family had when I was a child (minus that lovely smell which I’m replicating with some gifted Yankee Candles..) that I can’t stop staring at it and sighing.
I’m actually READY for Christmas this year which is a far cry from my usual last minute knitting, gift shopping, freaking out nightmare that comes with it being 4 days to holiday family festivities.. and it feels nice to have basically nothing to do but make cookies & chocolate covered pretzels this coming weekend and decide on what this years “hot dish” contribution to the family dinner will be. I’m supposed to be cleaning the house b/c we’re supposed to have company but I’m really hoping to get out of that one. Munchkin starts his “Holiday Break” on Thursday at 3pm and I can’t wait to not have to get up at 6:30AM for an entire 2 weeks!!
Aug 162007
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| I, Mouse, being of sound mind, hereby bequeath my entire estate to my pet rock. I do this because it understands my needs.
My only regret in this life was that I didn’t punch more people in the face. |
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Hee hee hee!! I can’t actually remember who I stole this from but I nearly snorted my coffee (iced..) when I read my results. I’ve got some finished 2 ply merino handspun to show off as soon as it cools down a little to take photographs outside.. its over 100 degrees here in Georgia and I’m absolutely miserable. Apparently when it gets this hot and you live in a house with no trees and no shade.. the best your air conditioner can do is 85 degrees inside. This is still too hot. I’d like to move somewhere that has no more than a month of summer- preferably in Canada… can that be arranged?
Other than alternating between complaining and roasting from the heat.. there’s nothing going on around here at Chez Mousie. Munchkin started school on Monday and is slowly adjusting to life as a first grader.. which he says is significantly less fun than being in kindergarten. Both of us are doing more than our fair share of complaining in the morning because getting up at 6:30am is just cruel and unusual punishment – not to mention that we have to be at the bus stop over an hour before last year and we have the bus driver from hell. If it wasn’t so hot.. I’d be driving Munchkin to school instead of putting him through that horrible woman’s attitude every morning and evening. Unfortunately both the car AND the people inside it would overheat before we got through the car rider line – I have one working window in the car and no AC. I’m still hoping to be able to get a new (to me) car in the next 6 months.. but I can’t do more than cross my fingers for that.
I haven’t been knitting anything for over a week now.. but I do still have a bunch of projects on the needles and my Ravelry queue is getting more and more out of control. At the moment I’m considering my choices for a sweater to wear to SAFF ala Jen of Jenla – though without the bet and the handspun. I don’t have a very big stash.. and I only have enough for one sweater (6 skeins of Cascade 220) so I’m rather limited in my choices. Right now I think I may knit Samus, or Mariah, or the “A Cardigan for Arwen” from Winter 2006 Interweave Knits. I don’t have a very big stash.. and I only have enough for one sweater (6 skeins of Cascade 220) so I’m rather limited in my choices unless I can get the same dye lot of the cascade 220 that I already have. Everything about Samus looks pretty easy and I have the yarn to make it (and the zipper if I decide to use it) but I don’t like that Samus doesn’t have a hood. I’d like to add a hood but I’m clueless as of how to do so.. I’ve never made anything hooded.
Now if you’ll excuse me….. I’m going to go back to standing in front of the open freezer.
I haven’t been blogging much lately due to trying to get Munchkin ready for going back to school on Monday. I’ve also been rather miserable as I’ve got one of my wisdom teeth cutting through and its absolute hell. In between running around getting laundry washed and Munchkin’s room in order, I took a trip to the Mall of Georgia with my MIL so that Munchkin could play at the play area and fountain. You have to click on the photos to make them bigger because I took them with my cellphone. As you can see.. people were paying attention to the sign and refrained from ‘atherin in that there area.
Lest you think that the Mall of Georgia is without its own designated areas of fun.. here’s where you can pick someone up if you’re in the market. I think it would be faster, as you could weed out the folks who were taken or otherwise uninterested in being picked up. I was surprised that there weren’t many people in the “pick up” area but I guess it was too hot out there for trolling for a date. Most of the teens and tweens in the mall were too busy being in my way inside the mall and knocking into me with their giant Abercrombie shopping bags. Are those giant paper bags actually necessary? I could easily put half of my closet inside one of those… talk about wasteful! I hate the mall and I hate back to school shopping time.. especially on a Friday evening. 
Here is the fruits of our labor.. all that for a Pirates lunchbox at the Disney store. The horrible migraine I received from spending an entire day at the stupid mall was not included in the picture – you can just imagine it along with the overwhelming urge for an alcoholic beverage and the thought of moving to somewhere where the words “Excuse Me” actually make people get out of your way without having to physically move them while glaring at them.
According to the rule book for the new elementary school Munchkin will be attending on Monday.. there is nothing against dress code about wearing or having things with skulls. HOOORAY!! I had already bought him some new running shoes before I found out about the dress code or he would have gotten the cool Airwalk shoes with the skulls that I found at Payless.
We got to meet Munchkin’s Grade 1 teacher and visit his new school on Thursday of last week.. she seems very nice and both the school and the classroom were so clean because of being a brand new school. I’m more than slightly peeved at the new bus schedule though.. the school is less than 2 miles away and we have to be at the bus stop over an HOUR earlier than last year. I am NOT happy about having to be at the bus at 7:20AM — and even less excited about the fact that they moved the bus stop TWO blocks farther away from my house. We’re the only people in this side of the subdivision that are putting their child on the bus.. so I’m assuming its why I will have to walk Munchkin 5 blocks one way to the bus on Monday morning. Regardless.. I’m going to be calling the transportation dept. bright and early to arrange for another stop. Just because the people in this community see it as something of a status symbol to drive their children to school in the morning (really.. I’m not just making broad assumptions here.. I was told that “car riders” are far superiour to “bus riders” and that only “trash” bus their kids) wasting time and gasoline.. is no reason for me to have to drag my poor 6 year old that far in the sweltering Georgia heat.
Jul 142007
I’ve got nothin’ kids. I’ve spent the week being dragged around to different things for Munchkin’s birthday and watching what little money we had for said events fly away at rapid speeds. Plus side is that Munchkin was very happy with his birthday week and no horrible family scuffles occurred..
- I don’t anticipate much blog posting, IMing, or commenting going on around here as I’ve recently been slapped with a case of tendonitis in my right hand and it is killing me to type. I’ve pulled out an ergonomic keyboard from the garage and changed back to a regular click mouse from the trackball that I used before but it doesn’t seem to be making enough of a difference. I am reading blogs but I’m trying to keep the typing at a minimum to avoid making this any worse. Sock knitting is also out at the moment.. so I’ve been spending a lot of time walking around the house with nothing to do.
- I am able to knit for short periods on things with larger needles.. so I’ve been doing a bit of knitting on the Kureyon Entrelac scarf (danica from knitty) because its on size 8 bamboo needles and is easy to pick up and put down without losing my place.
- I finally managed to find Munchkin somewhere to get his hair cut without coming out either traumatized or scalped. We ended up in the same beauty salon that hubby’s grandmother gets her hair done… think Steel Magnolias and you’re pretty much there. The white haired ladies in the dryers looked at me like I had 15 heads as I walked by to use the restroom… though they were completely taken with my son. His hair (though much shorter than when we walked in) looks very cute and was exactly like he wanted.. just like “Zack and Cody” from the Disney channel. We’ll be going back before Munchkin starts school next month to have it touched up so that he doesn’t look like a shaggy dog.
- If I haven’t mentioned it lately.. I love Ravelry. They included a pattern search which allows you to browse all patterns in the system – I spent 2 hours looking at scarf patterns and adding them to my queue. My hand had better get well quickly because I have a LOT of knitting to do.
- Last night while watching tv I came across “A Model Life” on TLC which is shaping up like a less mean-spirited and less “Survivor meets Fear Factor” slower version of “Americas Next Top Model”. I watched the entire show mostly because it was set during the winter months in NYC and the girls were wearing beautiful knit scarves and hats. I was very taken with the American (they’re all international – making things a bit more interesting) girl’s knit hat which was a large ‘sloppy’ looking dark gray wool number with ribbing. I wonder if it actually was wool though due to the fact that she states she is a vegan and I know there are a lot of vegans who won’t wear wool or silk. I went browsing around online for a still of her wearing the hat but couldn’t find anything. I am hoping they replay the show so I can get a better look at it so I can duplicate it.
Hopefully I’ll be back to blogging soon.. but it might take me a while to respond to emails. Its already taken me close to 3 hours (I’m writing in bits) to make this post and my hand is burning. Catch y’all soon!
Jul 102007
This is one of my favorite photos (taken about a year ago or more) and favorite times watching Munchkin in the world.. he’s watching the fish at the Atlanta Aquarium in a giant viewing window and loving every minute of it. For a child who never stops moving it is a rare vision to see him sitting calmly and just admiring the view. His birth six years ago in Colorado was so fast that I barely got to the hospital before it was time to give birth.. and he was (by the hospitals calculations) 4 weeks early. He’s always been a busy guy.. ever since he was born!
Today’s birthday celebration included Transformers toys & teeshirts, more Pirates, Ghost Rider, Legos, and a trip to Chuck E. Cheese where all of the children (my husband, father-in-law, and son) played games, and a trip to Krispy Kreme for donuts. We’re all lazing around the house now while hubby and Munchkin put together new toys.. and I’m finally getting my daily iced coffee. We’re planning for his birthday celebration to last the rest of the week as there are two promised movie trips (Ratatouille & Transformers) and a trip to the Mall of GA with his great grandmother for ‘dinner’ at the food court and a visit to Build-A-Bear. I’m ready for a nap.
Jun 282007
My first order from The Loopy Ewe came in the other day (talk about lightning fast shipping..) and I started on Munchkin’s snake socks last night while watching some crappy tv. The yarn is Opal Rainforest and I’m already finished with the first sock! Getting the right amount of stitches at the cast on for my son’s kid size 13 feet was very tricky and I was really getting frustrated until I hit on the right amount – 8th time is the charm and all that. I actually had him try on my second STR sock that was in progress and estimate the amount from that.. somehow it worked. The maths.. it is not my friend.
Its disgustingly hot here in GA and I’m pretty sure that my brain is going to melt before cool weather hits. So, in honor of my slightly mushy brain and lack of complete thoughts.. I give you random bullet points of nonsense!
- I’m motoring through the second STR sock and I’m actually ready to start the Broadripple cuff.. I love sport-weight yarn.
- I’m spending entirely too much time at Ravelry. I’m “Mouse” there and if you “friend” me, I’ll add you as well. Apparently I’m very whoreish with the friending – which is apparently obvious by my bloglines reading list of close to 200 feeds. “oh.. so-and-so commented and has a blog.. I’ll add it and read it too…” um yeah.. and I wonder why I feel like I spend all day online.
- There’s been a run the sheep bags at my Etsy shop and I’m painting, printing and packing up a storm. The only crap thing about the handmade stencils I’m using is that I can only get one to two prints before I have to draw and cut a new one. Slow going.. but worth it.
- I’m glad y’all liked the photos from the grocery store.. I’ll definitely have to take more pictures of silly things I find like that!
- I’m super proud of myself. Last week I cleaned my closet ( a walk in closet that I take up all on my own. Hubby’s clothes live downstairs) and I can WALK in it! Everything is hung up (not thrown on the floor) and I even managed to get rid of close to 4 trash bags of clothing to charity. I still need to pair down more but I’ve definitely reduced the clothes by 1/3rd.
Jun 152007
With a good portion of my internet friends out of town I’ve had a lot of knitting time on my hands and have actually managed to finish one of my STR socks. I had a lot of problems with finding a pattern that would work with the pooling and finally settled on Broadripple from Knitty. The pooling worked up awesome and I really loved how easy the stitch pattern is to memorize and follow. I’ve yet to cast on for the second sock but I’m already worried that it won’t match its mate. The only good thing with the second sock is thanks to my handy kitchen scale I know that I have more than enough yarn to make another sock of this size.
Tomorrow night is Munchkin’s first sleep over with his grandmother (MIL) and he’s thrilled. I however.. am a basketcase. I have to finish up some laundry and pack his bag and blankets in the morning but I still want to be sick over the thought of him not being here at night. I’m sure he’ll do fine.. and I’ll be up all night pacing the floors.
May 112007
There are only 8 days left in the school year for Munchkin! Honestly I’m shocked at how quickly the year passed us by… it seems like yesterday I was putting him on the bus for the first time. Yesterday was Munchkin’s “School Birthday”- I spent the whole day calling it his “unbirthday” from Alice in Wonderland.. and cracking up a lot. While it was thoughtful of the teacher to lump all of the summer birthdays into their appropriate dates in May.. It would have been nice if I would have had some notice that I had to come up with baked goods. Judging from the response of the class mother when I called to ask how many children were in the class.. it was perfectly clear that most of the moms did store-bought goodies. I called and said “Hi.. this is Ms. Mousie.. Munchkin’s mom. I’m baking cupcakes and I wanted to know how many children were in the class.” and she said “your.. whatting.. what? baking.. like with an oven?” While I realize that most moms work and don’t have the ‘luxury’ of staying home – I was sort of surprised that homemade cupcakes were such a novelty. 
Things are clearly getting weird around here.. I’m knitting lace. A few weeks ago another blogger set forth a challenge to knit lace this summer.. and here’s my second go round after the serious failure of the kiri shawl. This is (or at least I’m hoping it will be eventually..) Seraphim from Mimknits… Sandy and I are having sort of an informal knit-along for the pattern. In other words.. we’re both knitting it and she promised to help me learn to read charts when it gets all confusing later. At the moment its still a mouse (the animal..) sized shawl.. but its very pretty. The yarn is some from Handpaintedyarn.com and is my first real experience with knitting lace-weight yarn… I’m very nervous about screwing it up.
Feb 012007
I’m totally over this whole “home sick” business with my son. Poor little guy still has the stuffy nose/hacking cough combination but its not as bad today.. I elected to keep him home again so that he’d only have one day to get through before having two more days to rest. I did get up twice very early in the morning because we were supposed to have a “wintery mix” (*insert giggling from a transplanted Yankee who spent some years in the mtns. of Colorado*) and I wanted to see if they called off school (and thus giving my son a ‘free’ day to get over this cold that won’t get marked against his attendance) but we weren’t on the list of over 110 schools. Boo-hiss.
Tomorrow is the blogger silent poetry reading.. (or so I’ve heard) and also my 9 year wedding anniversary. I’ll be back tomorrow with my poem. Hopefully I’ll be sending Munchkin to school – and fingers crossed that he’ll make it through the day.
Nov 102006
After reading about it on another blog and remembering having it before.. I got the wild idea to make Monkey bread with munchkin. He loves to cook and bake.. and its something I’d definitely not like to overlook.
I used the recipe found here (thanks Sandy…) because I remembered that it was made easily with store bought biscuit dough (the other recipe was from Martha Stewart and required you to make your own dough and other silly things like that.. ). The one thing that I forgot was that it required a bundt pan but we could pick one up at the grocery store in the baking aisle. Unfortunately we couldn’t spend $11.00 on a bundt pan at the local Publix- so I got all MacGyver in the kitchen with the tin foil.. and created my own bundt pan. Unfortunately I forgot that the real pans are hollow in the center to allow heat to get in and cook whatever is in there.. so our monkey bread had to cook quite a bit longer and required being slopped onto a cookie sheet mid baking.
Regardless.. you can see that it was well enjoyed by the whole family and is going to rate a bundt cake pan coming into our kitchen upon the next available paycheck.
mmm… sugary goodness.