ponderings and projects from one crafty mama
My little puppy is growing, fast! Here he is today, at just 3 months old. He’s already changed so much, and is on his way to becoming a really big dog. We still can’t convince him to play fetch with us, though. Hey dog, you’re a retriever! Start bringing that ball back to us!
This time with better pictures, thanks to our new camera lens.
E. hits the springboard for her vault.
A. finishes her shoot-through on the bars.
E. is fearful of beam, but she managed a little hop and made her coaches proud.
E. poses at a pause in her floor routine as her teammates and coach look on. She did awesome, and even finished the routine with her roundoff-back-handspring.
A. is caught mid-jump while performing her floor routine. Look at the height she got!
Both of the girls showed improvement in their scores, and were pleased with their performance at the meet. Our level four team finished in third place, and brought home a new trophy to display at the gym.
My girls competed in their first gymnastics meet this weekend. They both did very well remembering their routines and performing in front of so many people. I was so proud of them! Here are a few pictures that hubby snapped during the events.
E. on the balance beam:
Both girls watching some of the other gymnasts compete:
A. during her floor routine:
A. on the bars:
I’ll admit, I finished sewing these pants weeks ago. I took pictures of them meaning to make a blog post about them, but didn’t get around to it right away. So, even though these are old news, they’re too cute not to share.
These are the “pluto pants” from the winter 2008 issue of Ottobre magazine. I used olive ripstop fabric from Jo-Ann’s and did contrasting topstitching in light blue thread.
This pattern went together so well, I’ll definitely make it again. All the little details – knee pleats, panel seams, cargo pockets – make these pants special. E-boy much prefers pull-on pants, and I love the sporty look these have. They are plenty baggy to wear over long johns if the weather is chilly, too.
Winter makes me feel like knitting. Hats, scarves and mittens make sense in December. Practically, I should start knitting for the coming winter when it’s August, but in August I feel like sewing shorts and swimsuits. Luckily, I can knit these small projects rather quickly, so they can be in use soon after they’re begun.
I’m not a great knitter. I enjoy it, and have learned a lot since I first picked up yarn and needles about a year ago. I’ve found that when I don’t understand some direction in my pattern I can find what it means by a quick internet search. Looking for a bit of a challenge, I decided to give fair isle knitting a try. I started with this pattern, found on Ravelry. I changed the fair isle pattern a tiny bit on the earflaps. I wish I hadn’t positioned the earflaps according to the pattern directions, though. As I was doing it, my gut instinct was to move them, but I resisted. They don’t quite cover the ears as well as they should how the pattern is written. Well, there’s always a next time.
And here’s the current work-in-progress, a cable-knit hat. It is fun to see the pattern emerge as I add rows, one or two at a time as I pick it up.
We had a quiet Christmas at home with the kids this year. Here are the excited kids in front of the tree on Christmas Eve.
During the afternoon on Christmas Eve, the kids and I made gingerbread man cookies.
Here, the girls are writing notes to leave for Santa along with the gingerbread man cookie. One of the notes told Santa that there was a glass of milk for him in the fridge. I guess Santa got the message, because come morning, along with stockings full of presents, the cookie was gone, and an empty milk glass stood on the counter.
Here are the lumpy, bumpy stockings after Santa filled them. Even Moose had a stocking (although I didn’t get his initial sewn on it in time) and got some tennis balls and a new leash on Christmas morning.
And, there were many presents under the tree to be opened!
One of E-boy’s gifts was a new leapster game:
E. got a new game:
And A. got a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (confession time: I probably put 950 pieces of this puzzle together…I could not walk past this on the counter without stopping to fit some together):
There were more presents opened, but after a while, I stopped taking pictures. Because, really, if you’ve seen one grinning kid tearing the paper off a gift, you’ve seen them all. I hope your Christmas was filled with grinning kids of your own!
We’re pleased to announce the arrival of the newest member of the family, a chocolate lab puppy named Moose. We brought him home on Thursday, and apart from being a little homesick for his mommy and littermates he’s been doing a great job becoming accustomed to our home. The kids are absolutely thrilled to have a puppy to play with and love on.
This weekend was the first opportunity we had this year to venture up to the ski slopes as a family. It was E-boy’s very first time on skis and he had so much fun on the bunny slope. He wasn’t the least bit scared, and kept asking when he could go up the lifts. Daddy and the girls did a few runs from the top of the mountain while E-boy practiced. Since the skiing part of the skill seemed to come naturally to him, I was working with him on stopping. I think he just was having so much fun skiing fast, he didn’t want to stop. He had a great time, and can’t wait to go up to the mountain again.
Here’s the trio of pajamas that I just finished sewing up for E-boy. When asked which was his favorite pair, he chose the doggies. Hopefully, when I put these into his closet, I can also remove the much-loved and now-too-small Christmas Tree pajamas from last year without any complaints.
I also made some nightgowns for my girlies. This is the pattern from the latest Ottobre. The girls have decided that they like long nightgowns, they’d never had any before these ones. I still need to put some labels in to tell whose is whose, but all in good time…
Yesterday’s adventure in the kitchen was canning applesauce.
On Monday I picked up a big box of apples from one of our local orchards. They were having a sale, so the box of red delicious apples (over 25 pounds!) was only $5. Being a bargain shopper, I fell for it, thinking I’d can it into applesauce. Never mind the fact that I’ve never canned anything before. With the wonder of the internet, you can go from novice to expert in just a few clicks. After reading up for a bit, and begging the loan of a canner from my friend Melissa, I got out some pots and pans and set to work.
First, I peeled and chopped the apples and put them in my biggest pot. After a dozen apples, I could hardly see a dent in the box, and the pot was getting pretty full. I added a few more apples for good measure, then put in about a cup and a half of water and turned on the heat. Meanwhile, I filled the canner with hot water from the tap and put it on the stove, and stuck my jars into the dishwasher to sanitize and stay hot while I was cooking. The lids went into a little pan of water on the third of my four burners where they heated up at a low simmer. As the applesauce cooked, I added a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of brown sugar and cinnamon. When the apples were soft, I used my immersion blender to blend the applesauce to a smooth consistency. At this point, I found I needed to add a bit more water to make it look just right. Time for a check: Hot water in the canner? Hot jars in the dishwasher? Hot lids on the stove? Hot applesauce in the pot? Yep! Ready to go. Now I filled the hot jars with hot applesauce, placed a hot lid on each and secured it with a (not hot) ring. Then I placed the jars into the hot water canner, crossed my fingers and waited. After sitting for 20 minutes in boiling water, the jars were ready to be removed to a towel on the counter to cool. About two minutes after I took the jars out of the canner, I started hearing the ping of the lids sealing, and felt the pride of accomplishment.
Oh, you want to know how it tastes? Nu-uh! I canned those babies to last through the winter, so there’s no way I’m cracking the seal today. But I do have about 15 pounds of apples left, so it’s pretty likely I’ll make another batch today.
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