eat! craft! live!

I blame the baby.

My lack of motivation lately has been epic. EPIC. And for that I apologize. There has been little crafting. Even less cooking. Hardly any eating, for that matter. Next to no blogging. Barely any photo-taking.

But today is beautiful and sunny and warm and I am taking a vacation day to sit at home and catch up on cleaning, crafting, gardening, sleeping and just generally enjoying being alone!

So there's a wee post over here, with some lovely photos (if I do say so myself) and I hope you'll pop over and take a peek!

 

:: photo friday :: the school down the street

:: photo friday :: completely random

Happy holidays!

I hope everybody has been having a lovely holiday season...we sure have over here! Fairly low-key, with a few big surprises thrown in...

I haven't taken a single photo. (!) Shame on me! Aside from a twin toddler photo shoot I did a couple weeks ago, my camera has been collecting dust on a shelf. Anyone know where I left my photo mojo? I didn't even document my darling toddler's Christmas shenanigans! Help!

I've been doing some knitting (hats galore! toddler mittens! socks!) and some sewing and some quilting. Maybe if I find my photo mojo, I'll actually remember to snap a few photos of the finished objects and share them with you!

There's a few recipes in the queue to share - cashew tamari dressing, for starters. (Oh, the yummy...) But largely we've been eating a lot of truffles and cookies and popcorn and other festive goodies. Hopefully that will change now that the holidays are approaching an end.

This is a vacation week over here and I'd like to say that I might catch up on some blogging but in reality I will probably be doing a lot of napping, a lot of knitting, some reading and a bit of baking. Now if that pesky photo mojo would just show up, I could document it all...

Hope you all had a decent 2011 - I have very high hopes for 2012!

30 days of thanks: day 17

What am I thankful for today?

Hidden gems.

Maybe "gem" isn't exactly the right word...

We live in a cute little neighborhood. At the end of a nearby street, I'd always thought there should be a path...turns out there is! It's a delightful little path through the woods that leads to...an awesome playground! The closest elementary school is just a block over and the last time M, E and I walked over (probably in the spring...) there was no playground.

No playground!

How does an elementary school not have a playground?

I was elated to see that they do, in fact, now have a playground! I can't wait to take E on a walk through the woods to play on the playground. We are lucky and have another playground at a small local park a block in the opposite direction, but choice is good!

30 days of thanks: day 16

What am I thankful for today?

Oy. That's a tough one. I'm thankful for small moments of happiness in an otherwise annoyingly bad day.

I went to the market this morning, as I always do on Wednesdays. Upon arriving, I had to drive around a lot longer than usual to find a place to park. Huh. So I parked, fed the meter my very last quarters (only 30 minutes' worth - usually that's plenty of time!) and walked on up to the market in the beautiful, freakishly warm November morning. When I arrived, I went to the info booth to use my EBT card to get little wooden tokens that you can use like cash at the market. Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to bring them had forgotten, so they told me it would be another 30-45 minutes before they were there. OK. I know I don't have much time on the meter, but what else am I going to do? I've got to get food! I buy some kale from the one farmer that has his own EBT card-reading-machine, then I pop over to the post office a few block away to pick up some boxes. Which they don't have out. And it takes them forever to find. I head back to the market and sit on a nice sunny bench and pull out my knitting. (Thank heavens for portable knitting!) I knit a few rounds on my sock before a lovely woman asks what I'm knitting and we get into a nice conversation about knitting, crocheting, felting and general woolly wonderfulness. Finally, I see that the info booth has their card reader and tokens so I head over. Unfortunately, IT'S NOT WORKING. After many frustrating minutes, the other customers and I finally get our tokens.

At which point my usual egg guy is out of eggs, because I've had to wait so long.

*sigh*

I manage to find eggs elsewhere and fill my bags with delicious, seasonal, local produce. Wonderful!

As I approach my car, I see that I've been ticketed. Usually, 30 minutes is more than enough time for me to go to the market. This morning?

An hour and a half.

So, yes, technically I overstayed my welcome at my 30-minute-meter. But only because I was too broke to actually have any cash on hand, which meant that I had to wait ages for the little wooden tokens. So basically, I got fined for being broke.

To top it all off, I nearly killed myself and others when I was approaching a light on the way home and the sun was shining at just the right angle so that I couldn't tell if it was red or not...

It was.

I stopped.

Barely.

This is a pretty long rant, considering I'm suppoed to be thankful!

But.

BUT!

I got to sit and knit on a sunny bench outside in the middle of November! Something I would ordinarily have been too hurried to do. Which led to a conversation with a stranger. Another something I wouldn't normally do. (She happened to be waiting for the EBT machine too...)

Small moments in an otherwise crappy day.

30 days of thanks: day 15

What am I thankful for today?

This may sound like a bit of an odd one, given my love for food. (Or maybe not?)

Anyway, I'm thankful today for Weight Watchers!

If you don't know me personally, you probably wouldn't know that I'm not a delicate flower. It's true! Shocking, I know! So when a coworker mentioned that a new Weight Watchers meeting was starting up for free at our worksite, I decided at the last minute to join up.

And today I found that I've lost 3.6 lbs since last week!

30 days of thanks: day 8

What am I thankful for today?

My job! Despite the fact that I only work half time, I have an awesome job. It's something I love doing, it's something I trained for, it's something I feel like can make a difference in the world. (Usually.)

This post is extra short because a certain toddler in our house was up for many hours last night, crying, "Hurts! Hurts!" and wailing. We think it was teething...and hope tonight will be better!

30 days of thanks: day 6

What am I thankful for today?

Certainly not the time change... All you people who love the extra hour of sleep clearly don't have small children at home.

Anyway!

I am thankful for my awesome vacuum cleaner today! For the first time in a...while...we hauled E's car seat out of the car and I vacuumed every nook and cranny meticulously with our super fantastic vacuum cleaner. Oh, modern conveniences... I have never historically had much use for the "crevice tool" attachment to the vacuum but OH MY GOODNESS. Today it was my new best friend.

For those of you who don't have small children, the car seat, no matter how tidy the child, seems to become a receptacle for all things crumby and crumbly. We are a relatively clean family, generally speaking, but E didn't seem to get that notice.

For the longest time (and still now, to a certain degree) E didn't like riding in the car unless she had a snack. And by "didn't like" I mean "screamed bloody murder." So for months and months now we have had a box of Baby Mum Mums in the front seat, ready to be pitched back at moment's notice to a grabby toddler. They're really remarkably un-crumbly, for a cracker, but still.

Bits of mum mum, shards of cracker, small toys, shredded paper, minute smears of applesauce, the teensiest remains of that time she got car sick... UGH. But with the help of my new best friend, the crevice tool, and a few sprays of my homemade all-purpose cleaner, it's good as new!

Plus, it entertained her all evening after dinner - she didn't know what to make of having the car seat in the dining room!

30 days of thanks: day 5

What am I thankful for today?

Today's thankfulness is taking me a little while to come up with. It wasn't a stellar day - unexpected car tire repair...too many hours away from E and M...frustrating back pain...miscellaneous minor irritations...

So what am I thankful for?

I'd have to say that today I'm thankful for my credit card. That sounds ridiculous I know. Especially if you've read this post. But in all honesty, today I really needed it. That tire just wouldn't have repaired itself. And those groceries weren't just going to come home with me out of their own free will. Most people's hard-money times come at the end of the month. Ours, due to various factors, comes at the beginning. We'll be fine, we always are, but it'll be tough going for another week or so.

I realize that doesn't sounds very thankful at all...I'll try to do better. That is the point, after all!