Easter Eggs

Masterpeices, every one.

Can't blog, must can

If you've been wondering why I haven't been writing much on the blog, it's because I've been busy indulging my canning habit. Jams, jellies, pickles, applesauce, pears and peaches are filling my pantry shelves to the point where we're starting to worry about the weight. Too much delicousness can get heavy.

 

 

 

 

Art

Sometimes paper is just too limiting for the true artist.  Some masterpieces are too ephemeral to frame, but of course that is a large part of their appeal.

Stick Dragon

I got inspired to sew again recently. I loosely followed these instructions, which Tombi pointed out to me. Loosely being the operative word - I pretty quickly decided that instead of a horse, I was making a dragon.

 It turned out pretty good. Here it is in action:

It breathes fire, naturally.

The bridle has already been removed.  Everyone agrees the dragon looks more comfortable now.

I'm already thinking of half a dozen other stick creatures I want to make. 

Conan's Pink Star

When we decorated our tree, we found we didn't have a good topper. So I suggested to Conan that we ought to make a star. I grabbed the construction paper, and pulled out a couple sheets of yellow and orange paper. Conan eyed them skeptically. "No, Mama" he said. "It would look better made out of pink." Now it was my turn to be skeptical, but I went ahead and complied. We traced out a star-topped cone on the pink paper, and Conan helped me cut it out. Then we got out the sticker box to choose some stickers to decorate it with. I thought the dinosaurs would be nice, but Conan went straight to the pink fuzzy alphabet stickers. I was still pretty skeptical, but his design really came together in the end, and looks great on the tree.

 I will treasure it for ever.

Playdough: It's Easy!

So it turns out that playdough is actually as easy to make as everyone says.  Who knew?

Well, OK, nearly everyone.  Despite frequently being told that it was super easy to make, I always thought it would be hard to get it to turn out just right.  This is probably because I have a vivid memory of my Mom making a disastrous attempt at playdough when I was a kid.  I'm not sure what we did wrong back then, but whatever it was, I was able to avoid it this time.  Our playdough turned out absolutely perfect, without a doubt every bit as good as the store-bought stuff.  And Conan loved helping to make it.

 

Cooking this stuff was pretty strange.  At first it really didn't seem like the goo in the pot could possibly work out, but after a few minutes stirring it on the stove it quite suddenly changed texture and voila! we clearly had acheived playdough.

 

The recipe said to add the color to the water, which did make it super easy to blend it in, but it also meant that all the playdough was the same color.  I used yellow, and then took about half the finished dough and worked in some blue coloring to make green.  (I would also have made some orange, but then I discovered we have no red food coloring - I think it all got used to make fake blood a couple Halloweens ago.)  It was pretty easy to work the color through, and kneading the dough while it was still warm helped to work it smooth.  Next time I don't think I'll worry about coloring the whole batch, and instead split it up after it is cooked and make several colors.

 

Conan's favorite thing to do with the playdough is to make cookies.  If I set him up with some cookie cutters, his toy rolling pin, a plate and a spatula, he'll really crank them out!

 

He's quite serious about the cookie-cutting process.  Here's a quick instructional video, in case you needed some pointers on how to make cookies from a real expert.

With cold, rainy weather settling in and lots of indoor playtime in our future, I'm really glad to have finally taken the plunge and made my own playdough.  Seriously, give it a try!  Take it from me: it's as easy as everyone always told you.

Here's the recipe we used:

Cream of Tarter Playdough Recipe

Ingredients:
2 cups of plain flour

2 cups of coloured water
1 Tbsp. of cooking oil
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1 cup of salt

Directions:
Place all of the ingredients in a medium size or large pan. Cook slowly on medium-high and stir it until the playdough thickens - just a few minutes. Keeps best in the fridge in plastic containers.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

We scored a nice kid's easel at the consignment store for $10, and Conan's really enjoying playing artist. He's quite enthusiastic, and occasionally has trouble confining himself to his canvas. This particular work took barely as much time as it takes Mama to put the groceries in the fridge and feed the cats.


I will add that Melissa & Doug's Non-Toxic Dry Erase Markers come off of skin, clothes and hair really, really easily. Which is a bit of a relief.

Cloth Diaper Confessions

I was super excited about using cloth diapers on Conan. I had a great time reading cloth diapering forums on the internet, doing research on different styles and materials and laundry strategies. I bought some to try out the professional offerings in a few different styles. I busted out and sewed up dozens of adorable pocket diapers, using all my newfound knowledge and all the best features. I made diapers from space-age fabric (soft! waterproof!) using only polyester thread (won't wick!) with gussets (won't leak!) and FOE (won't chafe!) and special diaper velcro (won't scratch!) I ordered online. I even made teensy weensy newborn sized ones with a curved dip in the front so they wouldn't rub on the umbilical while it healed.

I was into it. We were going to save money, save the evironement, and have the comfiest, happiest baby around. We had a waterproof bag for wet diapers in the diaper bag, and lots of cloth baby wipes. We had a diaper pail with a lid and a removable bucket, and extra gentle baby laundry soap, and Biokleen Bac-Out for odor removal soaking.

And at first, it worked. Conan wore his teensy weensy newborn scoop diapers for a couple of weeks, and then grew out of them and into the next size up. So far so good. Both of us were home for the first couple of months, and my Mom came and stayed for a few weeks, so keeping up with the laundry was a snap.

Then at about 6 weeks we started going out more, and that's when the seduction of the disposable diapers really started. It was just SO much easier to have Conan in a disposable diaper when we were out and about. Hauling home a stinky bag of wet and/or poopy diapers sucked, no matter how nice a waterproof bag you have. But more than that, it's the frequency of the diaper changes that really did us in. Whith cloth diapers, even super-duper high-tech modern cloth diapers, you just can't go more than an hour or two without a change. Disposables, with their absorbant polymer gel, just really win on that count.

It may not sound like much, but the difference between taking your tiny baby grocery shopping and having to change him in the bathroom or the backseat vs. not having to change him again until you get home is HUGE. Pretty soon it was just the norm to put on a disposable before going out, period.

But we were still using the cloth diapers all the rest of the time, so that wasn't so bad, right?

Well, then we reached that baby intestinal milestone where they no longer poop EVERY SINGLE TIME they eat. WooO! And with that, it suddenly made a lot more sense to put him in a disposable diaper for bedtime. He'd still wake up every 3-4 hours, but that was just to eat. The last thing we wanted was any extra waking up due to feeling wet! With disposables, on average, we only needed one diaper change per night, which meant the other two or three wake-ups were just simple feedings, and we could do that in a sleepy stupor. No light, no fuss, just feed and back to bed. Ahhh.

Then came the 1-2 punch of going back to work. Not only did that mean a LOT less time for keeping up with the laundry, it was really just too much to ask our babysitting friends and relatives to use the cloth diapers.

We still use about 1 cloth diaper per day, in the evening, for that hour and a half or so between dinner and bathtime. I massage my eco-guilt about using disposables by buying the Seventh Generation Chlorine Free diapers. We use cloth wipes all the time, so that's another small reduction on our environmental impact. It's kind of the "change one lightbulb for the planet" approach. If everyone used one less disposable per day, that'd be a lot less diapers in the landfill!

I should mention that the cloth diapers themselves performed perfectly. We never had any trouble with odor or rashes or inordinate leakage (a certain number of leaks are inevitable, even with disposable diapers). No, cloth diapering didn't work out as well as I had hoped due to the realities of our lifestyle and the limitations of time and energy.

But you know what? It's OK. We did our best, we gave it a good shot. If we'd been able to get a diaper service, or been able to stay at home to parent, I think we would have stuck with it. I would encourage anyone considering it to give cloth diapering a try. I've passed on my diapers now down through a number of different friends to use on their babies, so that counts for something too. Right?

1 month old!

Time sure has flown by... even though every individual day (and night) seems nearly endless, somehow we've made it through a whole month! Conan is changing and growing fast, he spends more time awake and alert every day, having "wiggle time". He is even starting to smile real, whole-face smiles at us. They sure do melt my heart, even at 4 am after a long restless night. :)

Conan took his first bottle (of breastmilk) the other night, and he loved it. It broke my heart a little to know that he won't be completely reliant on me for every meal anymore, but it also feels very liberating. Of course, I still have to pump...

We've been getting out for longer and longer trips into town, and we're getting the hang of getting him into and out of the car, and how long we can go for before we run out of time on the "baby clock". Later this week we're planning to go all the way to Sedro-Woolley to show him off at my office, so that's something I'm looking forward to.

He's a little over 9 lbs now, and growing out of clothes right and left. It's hard to find things that fit him properly because he's so long - things which are the right size around are often too short. On the plus side, he's big enough now to wear the "small" size cloth diapers I sewed for him (the 2 dozen newborn sized ones he grew out of in the first week, so we've been using disposables).

Unfortunately I only got 6 of those done before he arrived. Things are starting to settle down enough though that I think I will soon be able to snatch some bits of time to sew up a few more. The ones I made with gussets and FOE sure do work well, I'm very pleased with them. The inserts and baby wipes I made are also working great. We also have been using some flat-fold diapers with store-bought covers. I don't like them as well, but at least they get us away from using so many disposables. I find they leak more often and also they don't have any wicking layer, the wetness just sits on his skin, poor baby!

Speaking of which, he's awake again and not happy about something... gotta run!

Diaper & Nursery Update

New diaper tech: Gussets and Fold Over Elastic (FOE). I'm pretty pleased with how professional these look! I used the Wee Weka pattern and made 6 diapers. They are size small/medium so they won't fit right away but they should work for several months, supposedly up to about 25 lbs. This was my first time using FOE (which you have to order online from diaper-making supply places, they don't have it at Joann's or other "regular" fabric stores) and it takes a little getting used to. But it sure does make a nice neat finished diaper. These diapers definitly take more time to put together than the simpler ones I started with, but I think as baby Conan gets bigger and more active the gussets will really make a difference. I used up nearly all of the 10 yards of FOE I ordered though, so I'll have to go back to regular elastic & turned seams for a bit until I reorder. I still want to make another 10-12 newborn/small sized diapers anyhow, so I might go ahead and incorporate gussets into those. They aren't really that hard once you get the hang of them, I was pleasantly surprised.

In the nursery, we finally finished repainting the old white dresser, brought it back into the house, and set it up. Finally there is enough room to really organize all the baby clothes we've been given into dresser drawers! We also put up two of Will's paper star lantens, which make a lovely soft light in the room when it's dark. It's really relaxing, it'll be a nice space to sit in the rocker and nurse.
Now we just need to hang a few pictures on the walls and the nursery will be officially done! That feels like an accomplishment, even though we didn't really have to do any major work. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to pull down the plaster, re-wire, insulate, sheetrock and paint like Brian & Abby are doing. It was exhausting enough for me just to move out the old TV room stuff and move in the baby stuff. :)

Done Working!

Yesterday was my last day of work, now I'm officially on maternity leave! Woooooo!

It feels really good to be done, although it's a little wierd - I've been working my entire adult life, and now I've had this job for nearly 11 years. (whoa!) It's really strange to think I will not be working for 3 whole months, I've never had that much time off before. Even durring the time I was "unemployed" between graduating from college and landing my current job (which took about 8 months) I was actually working quite a bit, as a temp. While I didn't work full-time while I was in school (either college or high school) since I was about 14 I've always had at least a part-time job working evenings & weekends, holidays & breaks. This whole "on leave" thing is going to be a strange experience for me in many ways. I bet I can handle it tho! :)

I'm really looking forward to having some time to finish some baby related projects, not to mention nesting. I'm getting some crazy urges to clean things that I'd never considered cleaning before. I cleaned the inside of the dishwasher already, and the washing machine door has some serious hard water deposits that need to be scrubbed off. And cobwebs, OMG. And I'd never really noticed before, but there's dust and cat hair on the top edge of the baseboard trim, all over the house! Also the pantry and all the closets need to be organized. Something clearly must be done about all this, and soon... because obviously I can't have a baby in a house with dusty baseboards and a disorganized pantry! It's wierd - I know it's totally irrational, but I am powerless to fight the urge to clean these things. [shrug]

Here's one baby project that I did finish recently which turned out really nicely, I made a mobile out of the blessing dolls which people made for baby Conan at the baby shower: It's hanging over the changing table in the nursery. It's really neat to look at. Each of the dolls is so unique, and they all carry a little paper scroll with a blessing written on it. Here are a couple of the individual dolls:

They are made from clothespins, yarn, fabric scraps, feathers, and love.

Receiving Blankets

I took a break from sewing diapers (15 completed) and did up a few simple receiving blankets out of some really cute flannel. I think the elephants are my favorite:
I've also made a gazillion cloth wipes and all the absorbant inserts we're likely to need for the diapers. Things are coming together in the baby room but there still seem to be a lot of things left to get ready, and not very much time... Eeek!

They said yes!

The water association meeting with our neighbors last night went very well, we've been approved to add a second connection to the main water line so that we can irrigate our orchard. We had a nice discussion over pie and coffee, and agreed (wholeheartedly) to sign something to the effect that this connection can't be used in the future to supply a whole additional house. Current county zoning laws forbid a second house on our parcel, but zoning laws change, and even though we'd never try to push through a lot division or anything, if we ever sold the property who knows what could happen. So now we can start buying & planting fruit trees! We won't actually put in the connection until spring, but knowing that we have the permission we could go ahead and start planting now - no irrigation will be needed over the winter months, that's for sure!

In fact, some of you might be wondering why I'm so concerned about irrigation at all, given that we live in soggy whatcom county. True, it's wet most of the year, but sometimes we have long, dry summers (like last year) and especially in the first few years trees need to be watered regularly so they can get established. Grapes and berries, with their shallower root systems, will need water in dry years even after they are established. We won't need a lot of water, but when we do need some it will be crucial to have it available.

It was nice to see all our neighbors and visit a little about what everyone's been up to. We always wave when we pass on the driveway, but it's not really the same as a visit. Of course, everyone is excited about Conan's upcoming arrival. Our neighbor Florence really stole the show by giving us this beautiful baby sweater she knit for him. It's simply gorgeous:
I can hardly wait to see him wearing it!

Hank's 'hawk hat

Hank is one year old! His super fun punk-rock themed birthday party was on Sunday, and featured a piñata - for those of you keeping track, yes, it was a two-piñata weekend for me! Here's the "mohawk" hat I made for him, modeled by a spaghetti squash:
And here it is again, from the front, modeled with LOTS more attitude by Sanford:

It was even cuter on the little Hankster himself, but I forgot to take my camera to the party. Oh well...

Pocket Blankie

I made this little blankie with a pocket and a stuffed kitty for Christian & Fish's baby, who is due Sept 27th. The baby shower was yesterday, it sure was a fun gathering.
It's made from scraps of different yarns from my collection, I think it turned out really nice. The dark navy blue is a super soft, silky & fuzzy yarn, fun to work with.
I hope baby Lopez will like it. :)

First Diaper

I made my first cloth baby diaper yesterday! It turned out really well. I spent a lot of time looking at patterns and reading about materials and styles and stuff so by the time I sat down to sew I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. Even so, I'm impressed at how quickly and easily it came together. Also, it's really tiny and cute, I cant wait to have a little baby butt to put in it. :)

Here it is with one of the wing/tabs open, you can see the little scoop in the front - that is to keep the tummy pannel from coming up over the umbilical stub while it's healing. The pattern I used is called "Shar's Newborn with Umbilical Scoop Pocket" and it was a free downloadable pattern.

Here it is completely open, the elastic at the top is the opening for the pocket. For those of you who haven't been obsessibly researching cloth diapers for the last month (and why not? you have something better to do?), a pocket diaper has two layers - an outer water resistant or waterproof one, and an inner wicking one, with an opening so you can stuff an absorbant insert in between the two - aka the pocket. In this case, both the inner layer and the outer layer are polar fleece, but strangely enough some fleece lets water through and other fleece doesnt. I had quite a time going through my fabric bin pouring water on various fleeces to figure out which kind was which, it is not obvious from the thickness or fuzziness of the fleece at all. So, how does it work? In the interest of science, I tested the finished diaper (even though I had already tested the fleece before sewing) by stuffing the pocket with scrap material and placing the whole thing on top of a t-shirt before pouring about a half-cup of H2O onto it.
The result? It worked perfectly. The insert soaked up all the water, the inner wicking layer of fleece felt only slightly damp to the touch, and the outside of the diaper and the T-shirt beneath it were perfectly dry. I'm sure in real life some accidents may happen, but this diaper design really seems to work well!
After my initial diaper-making success, I decided I should try my hand at making the absorbant inserts. It took a bit of trial and error, but once I got a system worked out they went really fast and I made up a baker's dozen of them. The winning combination was two layers of flannel or jersey (from an old t-shirt) and an inner layer made from a retirement-aged bath towel. I top-stitched the edges and the center to (hopefully) keep all the layers in place without any fraying through wash after wash.
I also cut out a bunch more fabric for more diapers, including some PUL (polyurethane laminate - basically plastic-backed fabric) to use for the outer layer on some truly waterproof ones. The PUL is kind of expensive, so I wanted to make sure I did up some fleece ones to practice before I got into it. I figure I'll make about twenty of these newborn-sized ones with the scoop front, and then switch into a slightly larger newborn/small, maybe from a different pattern. This is fun, and it's really going to work! I'm so glad I decided to give sewing my own diapers a try.

Baby Barbarian Hat

I finished the baby barbarian hat for little Conan. Here it is, modeled by Sprout:
I had to roll up the brim so that it would fit Sprout, but even so this hat is so tiny! I hope it fits little Conan for at least a little while after he's born... I might have to make another one, in a larger size so he can actually wear it when he's bigger.

Baby Hat

I finished crocheting this little hat for my little future neice while we were at the cabin on Guemes. It turned out really cute.
The main body yarn is a super soft merino-silk blend, and the little flowers are lambswool. Nice yarn to work with, not to mention good for keeping little baby heads warm this winter!

Benjamin's Blankie

I recently went a little crazy buying yarn and baby crochet pattern books at the fabric store. Here's the first project I completed, for my boss's little boy Benjamin due in October. It's a "snuggle blankie" - basically a small blanket with feet & hands and a teddy-bear head. I added a little blue heart too. It turned out nicely, although this super fuzzy yarn is a lot harder to work with than I expected. It's hard to count your stitches when you can't see them!

I have a lot more cute patterns picked out that I want to make, some for Baby Conan of course but also for my brother's little girl (due in november) and for all the other babies I know too, both born & unborn. :)

Berries, Jam & Jelly

Saturday morning I picked berries. I got quite a haul! Tayberries, Gooseberries, WILD cascade blackberries, the first of the raspberries and the last of the strawberries. For those of you who have never had the chance to taste our wild, native cascade blackberries, they are marvellous - tiny, intensly flavorful, and sweet. I clambered through the bushes all around the yard, and got pretty scratched up in the process, but it was worth it. There's a king's ransom worth of these little gems in that colander.
This is our entire gooseberry crop for the year. I mentioned a while back that we had put a remay tent over the bushes to keep the sawflys off. Well, it worked perfectly to keep the flies and their voracious larvae off, but it also raised the temperature (remay is commonly used to protect plants from frost) and I believe that caused a lot of the berries to drop off prematurely. We noticed the problem a few weeks back and switched the remay out for a traveler's mosquito net that I had from back in my south america study-abroad days. It's working just as well to keep the bugs off, and the remaining berries ripened nicely. Next year we'll get it right from the start!

The Tayberries continue to impress. We have three of these plants along the fence, and they are absolutely covered in huge red berries. This is only their first year producing (they were planted last spring) so I can hardly imagine how many berries we'll be getting in future years. The new canes they are sending up - next year's fruiting vines - are super vigorous. Tayberries are a blackberry-raspberry cross from Scotland, they have the vigor, berry size (as well as seediness), and habit of the blackberries and the color and flavor of the raspberry. Amazing.

What to do with all these berries? Make Jam & Jelly of course! Charlotte came over in the afternoon and together we put up three batches of tasty summer preserves. The blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries went into a mixed-berry jam. The Tayberries are pretty seedy, so we cooked them down into juice and made one batch of straight tayberry jelly, then we cooked down the gooseberries into juice and made a final batch of jelly with a tayberry-gooseberry blend. They all set perfectly and taste amazing!