Super Creative Friday

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We have “Creative Time” in the afternoon after naps. On Friday, we do music appreciation during Creative Time, which is just playing with Play-Doh while we listen to a specific piece of music (we’re listening to Peter and the Wolf this month). Naptime was a little short on this particular Friday, so we got started on Creative Time early and found ourselves with tons of afternoon left when we were done with the Play-Doh.

So we made some cupcakes.


The girls ran off as I was cleaning up the kitchen and started doing the things that young children do to make each other scream and cry, so I asked them what they wanted to do instead of irritating each other, and Bluebird exclaimed, “Have another Creative Time!” What do you want to do? “Make puppets!” Alright then, get out your art caddies…

Frog (they insisted that he needed ears)

Yellow Rabbit

Peacock (that one was pretty fun…)

(Now Bluebird wants to build a puppet theater. I told her to ask Daddy about that because I am not about to begin juggling three kids in the garage while I operate the table saw! Perhaps we’ll draw up some schematics in the near future and ask him to cut them out.)

Overall, a great afternoon. I don’t know why I don’t generally take more time to do stuff with them in the afternoon…it keeps them in one spot, no matter how messy the project, so there’s hardly any clean-up to be done before dinner. It was nice. And we got cupcakes out of it as well…literal icing on top of a good thing.

During dinner, while we were talking about our day, I asked Bluebird what her favorite part of her day was and she responded, “Having two Creative Times.” Awww.

Patching Up the Blankie

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If you have a child who carries a blankie, you’ll totally understand the necessity of tending to whatever injuries the coveted item encounters. Rabbit’s blankie has had this ouchie for a while, but then it caught on something the other morning and tore some more and she seemed rather distraught about it–so I decided to do something about it.

I located some random pink gingham flannel (which isn’t too terribly random when you consider that this a house with three young girls living in it!), cut out a heart, hefted the sewing machine upstairs and started some intense blankie surgery, while Rabbit anxiously looked on.

End result:

Cold Evening Musings

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The evenings of early winter are one of my favorite experiences. Darkness approaches at an earlier hour, and somehow, it becomes easier to turn my energy inward and keep it contained within my family.

The girls got their second round of flu shots this evening and I allowed them to have Burger King drive-thru for dinner as a reward. As we drove home, I found myself basking in the comfort of the early darkness–how it seemed to separate us from everything else and made it feel like we were our own little world, encapsulated in our warm vehicle, with only our thoughts and feelings to worry about. I like feeling that feeling–that we’re all that matters in a particular moment.

The earlier approach of night empties the streets of bikers and walkers; when I’m at home on a winter evening, there are fewer distractions outside my window to remove my focus from my precious brood. I love to stand at a window and not see anything outside–only the reflection of my home behind me in the glass in front of me. It seems to sum up what really matters in such a simple way.

Add in the glow of twinkling lights and warm traditions of the winter holidays, and it’s no wonder why this time of year enlarges our hearts and magnifies our desire to spend time with our loved ones. Perhaps we love harder in order to feel warmer and counteract the chill in the air?

Thank goodness for winter. If life was one summer day after another, there would be no time to slow down and ponder when the shortened days of winter keep us close to home. This is a special time, a time to sit still and really see and feel what matters most–our families, our homes, warmth, love, peace and contentment.

Peach Butter

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4-4.5 lbs peaches
4 cups sugar
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
  1. Wash and blanch peaches. Put peaches in cold water. Peel, pit and slice peaches. Combine peaches and 1/2 cup water in saucepot. Simmer until peaches are soft. Puree in food processor.
  2. Combine peach puree, sugar and spices in a large saucepot. Cook until thick enough to round up on a spoon. As mixture thickens, stir frequently to prevent sticking. Ladle hot butter into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 10 minutes (20 for Spanish Fork) in a boiling-water canner.

For a couple of years when I was a young girl, someone in my family made apple butter and gave us a couple jars. I absolutely fell in love with fruit butters then. This was my first time attempting to re-create some of the magic on my own and I’m very pleased with the results. This peach butter has great flavor and the spices make it absolutely wonderful.

Cable-y Goodness

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Indeedidly doo, el Aran Scarf es finito. I love this scarf. Hopefully my pal does as well. It won’t be going out in the mail for a while yet, as this weekend is Birthday Weekend for me and I’m thinking that I’ll have to wait for our next paycheck to pay for the regional goodies and shipping. Or not. And then I’ll be completely done.

I’m going to take a break from knitting for a while.

And I have a hungry baby crying for her dinner. (Or eightsies after dinner.)

Slow and Steady…

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Can I just say that I totally love this scarf?

Seriously, this has been a great knit. I love cables…it’s so fun to watch them appear as you knit.

For those of you who are interested, you can find the pattern online for free! (Thus proving that this scarf is even cooler…free patterns are so nice to come by.)

We’re at forty percent completion. It would be fifty percent if I had been able to find time to knit on it in the past two days. (That’s why I aimed to finish this a month early; I knew there would be days where I could not knit.)

I might knit another one of these. That’s saying a lot because I’ve never knitted the same thing twice. Ever.

Aran Scarf, you rock!

(Even if I’m kicking myself for signing up for ISE6. Really? A scarf exchange? With a newborn and two other little ones? While making three baby quilts? And after my husband has been newly diagnosed with kidney disease? I’m a flippin’ moron!)

(But then I look at this beautiful concoction of yarn and think that it’s worth it to have had the opportunity to discover this pattern and work with it.)

Yee Haw, Movin’ Along…

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Well, the Cowboy Quilt is officially pieced. All that stands between it and completion is a couple of trips to the quilting shop; one to pick out the fabric for the backing and binding, another to drop it off with its backing and batting to be quilted and one last trip to pick it up to take home and sew on the binding. (I’m going to have it professionally quilted because I don’t like to machine quilt and, truthfully, their quilting just plain looks better than mine.)

Rabbit thinks the quilt top makes a swell picnic blanket. (Too bad she dumped that cup of water on it about five seconds after the picture was taken.)

Yes, the blanket seems small; but, in my experience, it’s the smaller baby blankets (24 x 36 inches or so) that become children’s favorites. I’ve made some 36 x 48″ blankets, but that size seems to be too cumbersome for little people to tote. Both Bluebird and Rabbit have adopted “blankies” that are about 2 x 3 feet, so I started making my gift blankets that size as well.

Coming Out of Hibernation

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It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? She’s earmarked for a special little person and I’ve already finished with the tying, which seemed to suit her better than machine quilting…I don’t know why, but I went with it.

Just some binding and she’s good to go.

Aran Scarf

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This is the scarf I’m making for my International Scarf Exchange 6 (ISE6) pal. I’m rather surprised that I ended up going with something as involved as this is going to be, given the time frame and my obvious time shortages for anything extracurricular. My pal mentioned that they liked cables and hadn’t yet tried the technique themselves…so I figured that since I like knitting cables so much, why not spread the love a little bit? Anything worth doing is worth doing well, right?

This is a shot of half a repeat. I plan to do about ten repeats and am aiming for half a repeat a day. I never have time for knitting on the weekends, so I’m looking at 2.5 full repeats a week, which should take me about a month to get this done. It absolutely must be finished by May 26th, so my proposed stitching schedule will definitely keep me ahead of the game, which is good.

The Little Lamb Scarf

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I’m going to estimate this as being about 40% done. There’s nothing special about the patterns, just a 2×2 ribbing; but I love the yarn and just wanted to show it off in something simple. The scarf is going on hiatus for a while as I channel all available spare nano-seconds into the Aran Scarf for my ISE6 pal, so I thought I’d post a little picture…because it’s pretty.