Creation: "Converse" high-top booties

Last week I went to a baby shower for a new friend who's having her first baby in a few weeks - a boy. Her husband was nicknamed "Playa" (as in player, not the Spanish word for beach) by Ted because, well, he looks like a playa. But he's in medical school, so I guess he's a smart playa. Anyway, I thought these would be perfect for their offspring.





I am certainly not clever enough to come up with the pattern myself. I got it here, and they took me a LONG time since it was only the 6th thing I've crocheted since teaching myself from this fabulous book. Thanks again for it, Ted!

What's in this?

Ted and I agreed that neither of us like Blueberry Jelly Bellies (do you write it "Bellies" because it's the plural of "Belly" or do you write it "Bellys" because "Jelly Belly" is trademarked? I couldn't find the answer to that in Eats, Shoots & Leaves). They kinda taste like soap and not like delicate, pop-in-your-mouth, slightly sweet but slightly tangy blueberries. Most flavors they just nail, and I loved seeing the process when I visited there some time ago, but Blueberry....sorry guys.

Then there's the color - and that's where today's story begins. They're a deep blue, not navy, but a little darker than royal. Kinda like a Duke blue. More reason to want to love them, but we just can't. So we decided to give the few that we had to our resident garbage disposal. She doesn't care about the nuances and notes of flavors so much, for she has yet to gain sophisticated palates like her parents (said tongue-in-cheek, but right now I wish I was saying it donut-in-mouth). She gobbled them up, and though she slapped Daddy's thigh for more, we were strong. She wasn't getting our root beer ones.

But these tiny beans! They must be made up completely of dye and sugar (not that I'm against those things)! I can understand these effects directly afterward:





But I was not prepared for the next day. Her diaper manifested that she had eaten very concentrated color pills. Though the output stank to high heaven (which is coincidental, since I was changing said diaper during church), I still got a few giggles out of it because I was reminded of when one of my mission companions and I bought blue dye for fish tanks and put them in some brownies and Kool-Aid for the elders. We nabbed the whole zone, and had a dozen or so of them calling the mission office with some "serious medical issues" because they were suddenly peeing green. You can understand why I number it among my greatest mission success stories.

On the cooling rack: Valentine's Day cookies

I'm not sure why it took me so long to post these. My friend Ashley invited me over to decorate cookies with royal icing as a birthday present last month, so while her husband and our home teacher played with Tessa for two hours, we whipped up icing, colored it, piped it, flooded it into the cookies, and voila:


I'd never worked with royal icing before, and I must say, though the final product is smooth and pretty, it was a royal pain to work with. It's a finicky frosting and it takes a lot of time, and quite honestly, I like the taste of a good buttercream MUCH better. True, you can't decorate all fancy with it, but taste is the #1 criterion for me with any food, especially dessert. I like my sugar cookies soft and sweet and buttery, like my boobies when I'm nursing, and like Jana's incredible recipe that she has perfected over several years. The royal icing dries quite hard, and I wasn't fond of biting into such a crispy thing. I'll save that for my chips and toffee, thank you.

I think the lips were a favorite among the three women doing the project. I provided the cookie cutter with the arrow going through the heart, and after seeing the cookies it made, it looks like I'll have to go and bend it back into a decent shape. The upper left hand corner cookie had me singing the 80's band Human League song "Poison Arrow", except I forgot it was "poison", so my lyrics went something like "shoot that broken arrow through my heeaaaart", and only when I tried to picture an image of shooting something already broken, expecting it to pierce your target and how ridiculous it was did I realize I must have it wrong. Oh well - it fit my cookies.

My Mount Everest (well, one of 'em)

Like many of you, I grew up as the daughter of a very talented mother. She could sing, dance, cook, bake, play multiple instruments, sew clothes for her family, earn money from home, chauffeur, direct a choir, teach little kids, and my siblings and I were particularly proud that she could eat breakfast AND nurse a baby while driving the kids to early morning seminary... in a stickshift.

As the 6th of 10 kids, I didn't get to benefit from any of my mom's signature hand-made clothing (showers and laundry were more of a priority), so I really didn't have any idea about how good she is with a sewing machine. I spent many a Saturday over at my friend Shannon's house, whose mother is an interior designer and decorator and therefore had a workroom with a half dozen different sewing machines that rivaled the local downtown LA sweatshop. Shannon, being the fearless talent that she is, learned to sew on them from a young age and intimidated me with her mad scrunchy-making skillz. I remember being crazy jealous at the time, but didn't act positively to my jealousy until I was about 14. I told my mom I wanted to make a pair of pajama pants - a project I decided on because I figured if they didn't turn out well, I was only wearing them to bed anyway. So we bought a pattern and thread and she helped me begin. In my naivete, however, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to begin sewing on a knit, and to begin with a pair of pants, even if they did have an elastic waist. The result before I even got to the waistband was a pair of "pants" that MAYBE a human-sized penguin could wear, but would probably be very embarrassed. I didn't know what happened! But in my frustration and embarrassment, I threw the whole thing away and didn't look at another sewing machine until I was much older.

Fast forward to a post-mission love affair and suddenly I wanted to make a sassy patchwork quilt for a boy. Love makes you do crazy things. Like revisit a black spot from your past. Well, by golly, the quilt turned out just like I wanted it, so I started to teach myself how to make pillows to match it - with my own piping! I had no idea at the time that I was making progress because I sure did break a lot of needles.

Rather than jumping off from that point, the boy and I broke up before I had a chance to give him the goods, so I kept them for myself and to this day, they adorn our guest bed in what Ted likes to call my "boudoir". With the boy gone, and me back at college and without access to Mom's machine (and never thinking to ever ask or save for one), sewing went by the wayside, and after several years, I began to be in awe of others' talents and claim I didn't have any sewing know-how to speak of. Yes, I am the epitome of burying one's talents.

Then our move to NC with a 6 month-old meant I became a stay-at-home mom, and I spent her naptimes (and much of what should have been my own sleep time) FINALLY reading one of the several thousand crafty blogs out in cyberworld. This particular one belonged to a girl I knew in my old ward but was afraid to get to know better because I was so intimidated by her many talents and personality traits. At the time, I remember wanting to be just like her (a common feeling for me regarding many people who excel in areas I don't...yet) but didn't know where to start. It took me a few weeks, but I read that blog from beginning to end, and with such a concentration of creativity and goodness, I was inspired to get over my sewing fears, stop telling myself I didn't know how, and deal with any discouragement or disappointment along the way.

It all began when we were having a meeting with all the leaders of our church's girls' group. We were planning a Halloween activity that required some "gunny sacks" to be sewn out of thick fabric, and none of the four leaders piped up. I sheepishly volunteered, but said I didn't have a machine (thinking that would get me off the hook). No dice. Another leader had a machine, but didn't know how to use it. Turns out the other three had less experience with a sewing machine than I did, and that ain't sayin' much.

I made six gunny sacks, showed up with them all cute and what-not to the activity, then during the first race, two of them popped open at the bottom, allowing huge feet to sprout forth. I was SO disappointed. I wouldn't allow them to go into storage at the end of the activity until I fixed them, so I took them home and reinforced the bottoms of ALL the sacks. We'll see if they work next year.

After that debacle and the fixing of it (I hope), I decided to revisit this sewing business for good. Basically, I told myself "there's absolutely NO reason why I can't do this. It's a learnable skill, I am a learned person, and I even taught others how to learn, so I can teach myself this." I borrowed books from the library on the subject, visited a fabric store or two, found a pattern I loved for Tessa and made sure it had the word "Easy!" plastered somewhere on it, and proceeded. I laugh at myself when I think I brought the pattern and pieces of the dress to various church activities over the next few weeks to try and corner anyone I knew who could interpret the hieroglyphics that is a sewing pattern. Pockets, bias tape, zippers - what the F? But I did it. I didn't give up - I conquered my mountain. And here is the fruit of my labors.

Tessa opened it up on Christmas morning in front of my family, and the people who were most proud were my mom and my used-to-make-a-living-as-a-seamstress sister-in-law. I'm going to pretend it's Tessa's favorite thing to wear.

First Birthday, pt 2

I finally got my gloms on Ted's camera and therefore present to you the aftermath of the cake frenzy. I think the video is my favorite. Had she taken a more substantial nap before the festivities began, I'm sure we would have seen it in her hair and such, but even so, she ate that whole piece. She's my chubby love-bug.

A quick picture and a quick whisk into the tub. Note to self: chocolate cake looks like poo.

We gave her a present after she got all cleaned up. This was my first attempt at applique.

She woke up later that night with a serious sugar high, but I don't think she cared. Happy Birthday!

One year old today

I pulled out dessert stops for the birthday girl. We invited a few friends over to our place for chocolate chunk raspberry cake and ice cream. As planned, we stripped Tessa down to her skivvies so she could go as crazy as she wanted on her first whole piece of cake (which, mind you, was bigger than her mama's). I admit, I thought she would show a little more excitement at the sight of a fat load of chocolate than she did, but she was running on empty from lack of a nap. Still, she managed to gag it all down.

The light is bad in this next one, but it shows the goo of the cake. LOVE the goo.

Oops! Doesn't look like cake anymore...

Meh. Still edible. I used to think we were raising a bit of a foodie until I caught her one day, picking up milk curds she had regurgitated and shoving them back in her mouth. Maybe I shouldn't take her pleasure in my cake too much to heart...




I have to swipe Ted's camera so I can show the aftermath, but you get the general idea. Perhaps not piranhas on a whale carcass, but still frenzical enough for her parents' entertainment. Happy birthday, sweet puddin' pumpkin pie!

If I was still a teacher...

If I was still teaching, this week would have been one of my favorites. See, last Friday, the local radio DJs were basically warning their audiences of the impending doom that was sure to come from the sky later that night - a snowstorm.

North Carolina doesn't handle snow well, come to find out. We were admonished to "get to the stores and buy bread, milk, eggs, and canned goods before the storm hits" by multiple sources, including a couple of radio stations and TV news reports. Ted got emails from school, canceling a T.A. session and to be on the alert for any class cancellations the following Monday. An announcer on the radio even made the quip, "One day, you'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you survived the Great Winter of 2010" - a hilarious statement, yet he was completely serious. But my favorite was from an email I got. I signed up for a newsletter and specials from a local bead/craft shop, and their email again advised bulking up fridge contents, but also mentioned we might want to make sure we have enough craft supplies to keep us occupied for the few days we might be "snowed in." So come in and get your decoupage paper and flexible beading wire! Um, I have enough to keep me occupied, thanks. It's called LAUNDRY.

Sure enough, the snow started falling, lightly at first, and then in large, pretty flakes. We went out to eat to celebrate Ted's grades and Tessa saying "mama" for the first time (took you long enough!) and by the time we were done with our filet mignon, there was a legitimate snow covering on bushes, cars, buildings, and roads. And it was stinking cold. We drove home, got Tessa's full belly tucked into bed, and continued to watch the snowfall. Total damage? Six. itty. bitty. inches.

The next morning, everything was white and crunchy. It looked like a scene from some Norman Rockwell painting. Our neighbors in our complex invited us over to watch the Duke game and to bring our Cocomotion, so we spent a good part of the day being embarrassed by our team vs. Georgetown and drinking delicious, perfectly whipped, frothed, and heated cocoa. At one point, we started watching all the "closings" at the bottom of the screen, and commented that there sure are a lot of baptist churches in the area! Our bishopric cancelled church the next day, and then we noticed all the school closures.... ALL the schools, public and private, closed for Monday. Two days away! Monday came, and the sun was shining, some snow was melting, and Tessa and I went to run some errands. Lo and behold, they cancelled school for the next day, too. And the next! And today (Thursday), school is starting two hours later! THE SNOW IS CLEARED AND MELTED, PEOPLE!

However, if I was still a teacher, I would have been praising God for this week.