Autumn Leaves

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When the leaves are this colorful, who would notice that the sky is gray?

Almost-Finished Crafts

We've been working on clearing out the guest room to get it ready to become a nursery.  It has been quite a task, as the guest room also housed storage, a lot of miscellaneous books, and all of my craft stuff.  In going through my craft stuff I found a box full of almost-done projects.  

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All of them are so close to being done, that I wondered why I didn't finish them before.  And then I realized that each of them had an item or two that I still needed to get from the store.

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I made this hat about a year ago, just after my birthday in 2010.  All it needs is to have ribbon sewn on.  I had the ribbon; so what's the problem?  I had no matching thread.

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I made these sweaters over the summer just after we found out that Baby P was on the way.  Both sweaters  are missing buttons.  Also the one on the right needs an eye, a beak, and feet embroidered on to the ducks on the front.

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This project is a little more embarrassing because it has been almost-finished for a few years now!  When David and I were on our honeymoon in Ireland I bought yarn, and later made these Christmas stockings for our first married Christmas.  Because of the two-color patterns there are "floats" of yarn along the inside, and when you stick your hand inside your fingers catch on them.  To fix this, I've been meaning to line the stockings.  Each year at the beginning of the holiday season I have the best intentions of getting this done, but here we are at Christmas number four!

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These hats are made using scraps of leftover yarn from other projects.  I made them both sometime in the last year.  They also need to be lined.

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Last weekend I trekked out to Fabric Depot to got all of the odds and ends that I need to finish these projects.  My goal is to complete them all up before the new year.  I'll keep you posted as I finish them up!

Expectant

I think most of the people who read this blog know already, but in case you don't: I'm pregnant!! 

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 The baby is due at the beginning of April, and it's a boy! 

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We are very excited to be growing our family, and we cant wait to meet "Baby P" when he gets here!

Thanksgiving 2011

We had a small gathering for Thanksgiving this year, but we still cooked up a storm.

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Even Sprocket helped.

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We tried a new dessert: Dutch apple dumplings. They were tasty!

Halloween Bread

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Yep, a bread pumpkin, bread tombstone and bread ghosts.

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Happy Halloween!

Inspired by Baby Bok Choy

I have been trying to rededicate myself to posting on this blog.  My goal was to post once a week in September . . . but that hasn't been working out.  I really am planning on posting more, though, so don't give up hope!

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On Sunday evening, David had a group meeting for one of his MBA classes, and they ordered a pizza.  So I was on my own for dinner.  I've been reading the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, which is all about cooking and eating alone, so I decided to get inspired and make myself something fabulous.  Luckily earlier in the day our neighbor Marty brought us over some vegetables from his garden, and among them was baby bok choy.

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I started by sauteing the bok choy in a little bit of oil and vinegar.

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Then I sliced a tomato from our farm share,

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and poached an egg.

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Then I tossed it all on top of a piece of toasted bread that I'd drizzled with olive oil.

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It was delicious . . . so I made another!

Legitimate

Ever since we got Sprocket, we've been meaning to get him a tag with his name on it.  He already had a few tags: one with his animal licence number, and one with his microchip information, but we figured it would be a good idea to have one with his name and our phone number on it, too.  So we got this.

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Doesn't he look excited?  Actually he was really confused about why I wanted him to look at my hand, and not my face.  He eventually complied, though!  Hooray, after having Sprocket for 2 years, now he's legitimate!

For our fourth anniversary Brianne and I went to Ashland, OR for the Oregon Shakespeare festival. We saw four plays! On the way home we decided to take a four hour detour - stopping at Crater Lake!

Sleepy Puppy . . . Again!

It's been a while since Sprocket appeared on the blog, so I thought I'd post this picture of him.

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It appears that pictures of a sleepy Sprocket are somewhat of a tradition on the blog!

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Sleep Puppy 1

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Sleepy Puppy 2

Strawberries!

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We've had strawberry plants for the past 3 summers, but this summer we are getting far more berries than ever before!  For the past three weeks I've been going out twice a week and picking this many strawberries. Yum!

Green Shawl

A while back David bought me this gorgeous varegated green yarn.  I knew that I wanted to make it into a shawl or scarf, but I also knew that my usual lacy patterns would get lost in all the color.  So I found a nice simple pattern, aptly named "Simple Thing"

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It's mostly plain stockinette stitch, but near the edge there's a few rows of eyelets.

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It's a bit bigger than my usual scarfs, so I've decided that it's a shawl.  I've been draping it over my shoulders in the evenings when I get a little chilly, while knitting or watching a movie!

Charging Station 2

Yesterday I told you all about deciding to re-purpose my old jewelry box into a cell phone charging station.  (You can read all about that here.)  Well now I'm back to share pictures of the finished product.

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After removing all the gunk out of the top of the jewelry box I sanded the whole thing down, and painted it.  I spray painted it using a color called "Antique White" which is actually off-white.  It took a couple of coats to get the color even, but now it looks fabulous!

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The cords hide in the drawer, where they are plugged in to a little extension cord.  With the extension cord we are able to plug in three things, so only the single cord sticks out the hole that I drilled in the back.

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David helped me drill three slots so that the chargers can get from the drawer up to where our phones sit.  We put in three because there is definitely enough room for three devices, although currently we are just using it for our two phones.  Perhaps in the future one of us will want to charge our i-pod here.

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So that's my new charging station.  I hope that you like it!

Charging Station 1

I've been wanting a charging station for our phones for a while now.  The charging cords have been cluttering up the top of our dresser for way too long.  I have tried looking for one at Target, but they never seemed to have one that I liked.  So I decided to make my own.

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I know what you're thinking:  That's not a charging station, it's a jewelry box. 

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Well, you'd be right.  A few months ago, after purging my jewelry collection, and keeping only the things that I actually wear, or really like, I was left with a jewelry box that was way too big.  I was about to just get rid of it, when I realized that it was the perfect size for a charging station.

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I figured that once I removed the dividers that were inside and took off the lid, the top portion could hold our phones, and the drawer below could hide the cords.

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This worked perfectly for the drawer.  The dividers popped out easily leaving the bottom fairly clean.  Since the velvety lining was in pretty good shape, and no one was going to see it since it was in the drawer, I decided to just leave it in.

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The top was much more difficult.  The velvet wrapped up the sides of the dividers, and everything was stuck in there pretty good.  After trying and failing to just pry out the dividers like I had done with the drawer, I eventually resorted to using this tiny little saw to cut them out.

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While the dividers did come out, they left behind a whole lot of gunk.  Everything was glued down, and when I got the dividers and the lining out it left behind a the paper backing.

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I nearly gave up, but eventually I managed to scrape all of the paper backing and velvety residue out.  It must have left me exhausted, because I don't seem to have a picture showing the interior clean and free from gunk.

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Well, that was a lot of photos, so I'll save the "after" photos of the completed charging station for tomorrow!

Converting a Keg

 

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David is planning to brew his own beer sometime this summer.  Last weekend he was converting a keg into a kettle to use during the brewing process.

Jungle Dog

Photo Studio

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Our living room recently doubled as a photo studio!

Sleepy Puppy

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Lately Sprocket has been doing this thing where he crosses his front legs when he lays down.  I think that it's so cute!

In Bloom

Date Night

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We saw a 3-D movie, don't we look cool!

Settling in

I'm settling in nicely at my new job.  Today I brought in one of my hydrangeas from Easter to make my desk feel a little more homey.

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I have a fun little window that gets morning sunlight.

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I think I'll let my hydrangea live here for a while, but eventually I'm going to plant it on the grounds at Fiske Cottage.  (aka - in the flowerbed at my house.  It sure sounds fancier the first way, though!)

Almost too cute to eat . . .

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Almost.  But not quite.

Flowers from Jenny

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In November for my birthday, my friend Jenny gave me a big bag of bulbs.  She didn't tell me exactly what they were, but only said that they were an assortment of different flowers.  They've started to come up, and everyday I go out to check and see if there are any new clues to what they are.  So far there are yellow daffodils blooming, but a lot of other greenery that hasn't revealed the flower within.

Backpacking Dog

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We're planning a bunch of hikes for the summer, and possibly a backpacking trip.  So we got Sprocket his own back pack so that he can carry his own food and water!

The Tiger

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March's book club book was The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant.  It is the true story of a man eating tiger in Eastern Russia in the 1990's.  I actually listened to it on CD, because I was able to get a copy from the library sooner that way.  I think that listening to it was definitely the way to go, for me at least.  With my long commute, I was able to make it through the book fairly quickly, and painlessly.  It was an interesting story, but there were a lot of tangents, so I think if I'd been reading an actual book I would have found it a lot harder to power through it.  The tangents covered everything from Russian history, to big cat psychology.

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It's probably not a book that I would have picked for myself, but in telling David about it he thought that it sounded interesting, and he's probably going to read it, too.

Bike Rack Cozies

In St. John's the other day this bike rack caught my eye.

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What are those?

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They appear to be knit bike rack cozies.

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I think that someone has way to much time on their hands!