Sunday, February 26, 2012

Connor is here

The nameless one finally has a name!

Connor Michael Lyons was born February 22, 2012 at 9:36 via a super efficient c-section (dr choi was fantastic!)

He was 7 pounds, 11 ounces and 19 3/4 inches long.

We came home early and are adjusting to having a newborn again lol

Friday, February 17, 2012

Pizza rolls

Pseudo stromboli

I used canned pizza crust, mozerella cheese and pepperoni, rolled it all of with some garlic. Topped with oregano and Parmesan cheese and baked at 425 for about 12 minutes.

Om nom nom

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Hawaiian BBQ

Tonight I made Hawaiian BBQ chicken sandwiches. It was pretty much an experiment.

So for any interested parties here is what I did.

3 large chicken breasts, frozen (about 1lb)
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon garlic
About 1/8 cup yellow mustard
Juice from one can diced pineapple and about half the fruit
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup water
Salt/pepper/cayenne in moderation
great value brand honey BBQ sauce
Hawaiian king large rolls

Dumped all that (except the bbq sauce and rolls) in the crock pot and cooked on low for 7.5-8 hours.
Drain out the fluid and put the giblets back into the crockpot. I shred the meat up with two forks, then added almost the whole bottle of BBQ sauce. Let that sit on low while I prepped the rolls.

Cut rolls in half to use as buns, slap on meat, served with yellow rice that I dumped the rest of the can of pineapple into.

Kae ate two whole sandwiches. Kid tested and approved, will make again

Monday, February 13, 2012

Baby Steps

I finished my first large crochet project over the weekend!

It's a baby blanket using Lion Brand Pound of Love in antique white and some ancient acrylic from Gail in Aqua.

It's not perfect, but it's cute, and I finished before baby got here (next week zomg!!!!)

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Upcycled Tshirts and Cloth Diapers

Yesterday I got motivated to actually get some stuff off my To Do list!

Not much though /sigh

I cut the fabric for the baby's quilt. I didn't make the batting sandwich, or even bust out my sewing machine...

I then took the box of Ross' and my old t-shirts and deconstructed them, I set aside the sleeves and backs, and put the fronts aside to make "the quilt". Ross insists I'll never actually make him a tshirt quilt, claiming multiple women in his life have said they would, even claiming shirts, only to have nothing happen. I will have this quilt finished by our 10-year anniversary...I will damnit!

The sleeves I've set aside to cut circles, I'm going to sandwich the cotton between flannel and make nursing pads I can wash.

The backs I've started cutting up with pinking shears to use as cloth baby wipes. Mom and Ross think I'm a little crazy, but honestly, why put a disposable wipe in the trash, and the cloth diaper in the wash, when I can just wash it all in one load?! Though I have looked into flushable wipes. They are a consideration.

A lot of my friends and family keep looking at me like I'm crazy for all this "green crap". Part of it is, yes, better for the environment. We're setting a good example for Kae, one of her chores is to take out the recycling. And she's talking to grandma Debbie about starting a compost bin to use in the veggie garden.

Part of the cloth movement on my part is cost. Actually most of it is cost if I'm being honest. It's something like $5-6k a year saved using cloth diapers.

Last reason, cloth diapered kids potty train faster. I don't want another situation like kae, she didn't potty train until the summer before she started VPK. Part was my fault, but she's also stubborn as a mule.

13 days to baby, I'm getting closer to being ready!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

To Do List

last post today..i promise!


When I updated the OS on my iPhone i got this handy little app called "reminder"
it's a TO DO LIST! omg love.

i started putting everything in there that needed to get done before baby came (3 weeks omg /panic)

so far i've gotten a lot done off my list, but i still have more, a lot more. some of which i try and tackle every day on top of the regular household upkeep i have to do (you know, that never ending pile of laundry and dishes that sprouts up as soon as you get the space clean? yeah, that)

almost all of it requires my sewing machine /sigh


problem is i don't have any pinking scissors...blah

i find that i have started adding stuff to my List that i've already finished, so i can feel good about checking it off. and that's not the best way to do it. actually it's the cheaters way. so today i'm going to make a template and start cutting t-shirts for the quilt i promised Ross, and use the leftover cotton to make re-useable baby wipes to go with my cloth diapers.

once i stop playing on the computer..lol

Christmas Presents

since we got an ipad for christmas i haven't really been turning on my computer...oops

time to catch up on all the pictures i SHOULD have posted, from christmas, but forgot /sigh

i need to update my facebook too lol


 Scarf i knit for charity, but mom snagged to send to Stacie
Yeah..amazingly that's it. the rest of the stuff i made for christmas, the coasters and the picture frames, i already posted. I can't find the pictures of the hats i knit for Kae, Maiya and Gabe...drrr

  
Wreath Steering Wheel cover for Mom

My Year of Crochet

On Christmas Eve i sat down with some ugly lime green red heart yarn and a size J crochet hook (it's purple!!) and started teaching myself to crochet...again.

See Grandma Wonick taught me to crochet one of those oval shaped rugs when i was about 8, she gave me a couple balls of red acrylic yarn and away i went. it kept me busy almost the whole two weeks we were in Iowa, and on the greyhound bus ride home. Then i ran out of yarn, and couldn't get more. so i gave up and it fell into obscurity.

Armed with my ugly green leftovers, my purple hook and my trusty iPhone, i got a chain done (i could do that in my sleep anyway) and then started Single Crochet. Not too hard right? WRONG! my swatch started to look like a Christmas tree, getting smaller and smaller each row. I did of course figure out that I'm supposed to chain one at the end of each row...yes. I'm smart like that.

as soon as i finished that i scoured Ravelry for a Single Crochet Baby Blanket pattern, which i found, ignored and chained the foundation row for my own. I'm using a mixture of yarns, Lion Brand Pound of Love in Antique White, and Pop N Yarn in Aqua. This yarn is ancient. I got it from Gail's big bag o' yarn. and i used every single yard of the blue doing 4 round of edging. I'm back on the antique white to edge THAT and make the thing bigger. because i haz no concept of what size a baby blanket should be.

in the middle of hooking this blanket, i decided to learn Double Crochet and Half Double Crochet. I made washcloths using a single ball of Lily Sugar and Cream Cotton. Everyone is getting cotton cloths and home made soap for Christmas. cleans out my stash /dance

So last night while working on the blanket that doesn't end, i decided this year would be a whole year of crochet. I'll learn new stitches by making wash cloths to stash for Christmas, and larger projects with stitches i like. Also the shawl i promised my mom last year (oops). also kae wants a poncho, and a blanket of her own (which I've been promising for two years).



This is not to say i won't knit. I'm still doing Knit Ishinomaki, making and donating scarves to Japan Relief for the people who are in temporary housing. And the Ravelympics is coming up again!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

January Reading List

January
1-1 Stupid History - Leland Gregory (1/2) -free/nook
2-2 Organize For A Fresh Start - Susan Fay West (1/7) -free/nook
3-3 The Iron King - Julie Kagawa (1/11) -free/Gail loan
4-4 Winter’s Passage - Julie Kagawa (1/12) -2.50/nook
5-5 Kawaii Bento Boxes - no author on cover (1/16) -free/library
6-6 Dark Moon Trilogy - C.L. Bevill (1/19) -free/iBooks
7-7 I Used To Know That - Caroline Taggart (1/26) -free/nook

I read a little more this month than previous months, I attribute it to having an iPad now. I put the nook app on here and he last month worth of free Fridays wasn't terrible.

Also Gail got me hooked on a new Fae ya series. That and with three doctors appointments a week I have a lot of waiting room time (nst's take an hour of sitting in one place afterward too).

Most of my reads this month were non-fiction, Ross is proud, he's convinced I could take over the world if I stopped reading romance novels and read only non-fic. Screw dat!

I'm also keeping track of how much I spend on books this year. It will be interesting to see at the end of each month.

4 non fiction
3 fiction
------------
6 free
$2.50 spent