Sew-a-thon

As my total weight gain for this pregnancy nears 300 pounds

(just kidding... but that is how it feels)

I have been seeking activities that involve 

less movement than my normal routine.

All my life I have watched my mother sewing,

knitting, cross-stitching, etc and have always had a slight interest

in learning how to make things out of fabric or yarn,

but have never had quite enough motivation until now.

Now I am having a girl.

 

Don't get me wrong, boys are awesome

but baby boy clothes are just not as cute as baby girl clothes. 

And with the arrival of our daughter approaching

 I did not want to limit myself to just the adorable clothes

that you can buy from a store...

No, I wanted limitless options.

So I took over the spare room and, on occassion,

the dining room and began going a bit sew-crazy.

Under my mother's watchful eye 

I have been churning out enough baby clothes for an army.

It has actually become somewhat of an obsession.

  I started with dresses.

Here is my first pattern:

and, of course, just one color was not enough:

 (As of yesterday I made another one of these)

Then came patten number two,

a wrap dress:

(I finished two more of these yesterday as well)

Then I stepped up to pattern number three 

which is significantly harder to make then it looks.

I call it the nightmare dress:

 (I am halfway done with my second one of these)

Each one of my creations has some kind of significant flaw.
I may have not lined up two pieces of fabric properly,
 sewn across something I was not supposed to,
caused the botton-hole maker to spontaneously break down
leaving a glob of thread where a button-hole should have been, etc.
but I tell myself it is just how I make each piece unique.

When I need a break from sewing dresses I work on other things,

like patches for overalls:

A rainbow colored blanket that I am knitting

(pictures to come),

and this:

A crib bumper kit.

Only 24 ties and 12 pieces of bumper fabric

(and likely 10 hours later)

and I will have completed my crib bumper

complete with sparkles

(which you can't really see in the picture).

Think I am a nerd?

So does Casey.

But, really, didn't we all know that before?

And aren't you glad you get to read a post that doesn't contain

pictures of boogers or dishwasher brains?

I thought so.

The Wrong Message

This afternoon I noticed some suspicious looking

globs on the spare toilet paper.

On closer inspection, I realized what they were.

It turns out that if you instruct a child to

"go wipe your boogies on some toilet paper"

you need to be clear that it should be on a section 

of the roll that you can then tear off and discard.

I have now learned my lesson.

 Really, though, it is kind of hard to be mad at the perpetrator

when they are this darn cute.

The Brain of the Operation

The other day during our lunch break

I was listening to one of my co-workers

talk about how she had fixed her dishwasher

by cleaning out the leftover bits of food that were 

clogging the filter. 

Our dishwasher's performance hasn't quite been 

up to par lately, so as I listened to her, 

I thought to myself

"Hey, I should really give that a try."

Little did I know that this would turn out to be one

of the biggest home improvement blunders of all time.

See, at the beginning, it didn't seem too bad.

After removing the dish rack,

it was clear that there were two filters, each attached by 

a couple bolts.

The first one looked like this:

No big deal right?

Wrong.

For this was only the top.

Underneath I found what I would later refer to as

the dishwasher's brain.

 The photo below shows parts of the brain.

 I think you might need a close-up to really

experience the total nastiness of the brain.

 

After scooping this stuff out

(and nearly throwing up all over the kitchen)

 it was on to filter number 2.

Yup. Almost as gross as filter number 1,

but I don't think anything could beat the brain.

Just in case you needed a close up of this one as well:

 After I finished cleaning out both filters

which was likely the most disgusting thing I have ever done,

we turned the dishwasher on to find that apparently

if you remove the brain,

the dishwasher will not work anymore.

Maybe it was act of rebellion on the part of the brain...

maybe not,

either way this was the last glimpse I had of our old machine.

 About a week later, a replacement arrived.

Casey popped it in, we started it up

and got clean dishes at last.

 

So if you are planning to eat dinner at our house anytime soon,

rest assured the brain and all of its accompanying bits

are safely elsewhere,

perhaps plotting the takeover of another unsuspecting home.

Yours perhaps?

No, just kidding, don't go there... really.

Happy Spring!

Happy first day of Spring!

Oh, wait... never mind.

That was yesterday. 

Today looks like this:

Will this torment never cease????!!!!

North Carolina: 2013

We came...

We saw...

We conquered...

End of story.

Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that.

We met Orin's newest cousin, Baby Anna:

Who is, quite possibly, one of the cutest babies in the universe.

Meeting Anna made Orin even more excited about 

the nearing arrival of his sister.

So much so, in fact, that we mulled over the idea of stealing 

this wonderful, precious ball of pink,

but eventually decided to let her parents keep her.

They did seem quite fond of her, after all.

After Baby Anna left, we got down to the business of the more

standard North Carolina fare: Golfing,

 

(A lot)

 Playing in the sand with our more mobile cousin,

 Hiking around the salt marsh,

 Sleeping,

 Playing on the beach some more,

 Hiking some more,

Golfing some more,

  And sleeping some more...

All while eating delicious seafood 

which I never bothered to photograph.

It was, as always, a wonderful vacation.

 The only thing that was missing was the basketball tournament.

Somebody had the very bad idea of delaying the tournament this year

so that it didn't overlap with our time in NC.

Which means I guess we are going to have to extend vacation a bit

because our Blue Devils are tipping off in 30 minutes.

Gotta run and go prep some game snacks.

Winter Wonderland

 Last summer was a remarkably "easy" winter

as far as northeast winters go.

This year, not so much.

It seemed like only days between this:

and this:

The first storm of the year is always nice,

powdery white snow, icy breath, bight sun reflecting off the 

whiteness....

It is hard to resist being drawn outside.

After all, there is a lot of fun to be had in the snow:

 Sledding,

Skating,

Skiing,

Playing,

and, sometimes, just laying around.

 

But after several months of freezing temperatures

 and the 3rd blizzard in a two-week span, 

the snow starts to lose its appeal.

What used to be powdery fun

turns into "Shoot! We have to shovel the driveway again?!"

(yes, that is my car)

 and sometimes it seems like it makes more sense,

just to hunker down inside

and wait for when it will look like this again: