Progress (finally)

I'm finally getting somewhere with my two knitting projects that are ongoing. On the baby blanket I'm now on row 185, which means only 16 more rows until I decrease. I hope that will be the kick I need to keep moving on it. Honestly the garter stitch has moved past tedious and into mind numbing territory. But it really is quite pretty for as simple as it is.


I'm also getting somewhere with the Teddy bear. I'm ready to begin decreasing on the body. This is the biggest piece of the bear so the rest will probably move a lot faster. At least I hope so - I'm beginning to get nervous about finishing my Christmas knitting even though I have four months to go.

Homemade Ice Cream

I was looking for something interesting to do with C and I had heard about a recipe for homemade ice cream without an ice cream maker. So we decided to give it a try this afternoon. The recipe is really easy. You need sugar, half and half (we used milk instead), vanilla, ice, salt and a sandwich bag and gallon sized bag.


2 tablespoons of sugar, a cup of half and half and a teaspoon of vanilla are added to the sandwich bag and the bag is sealed tight. Then the gallon is filled halfway with ice and 1/2 cup salt is added. Then the other bag goes inside and everything is shaken for about five minutes.


C and I took turns shaking the mixture until it was ready. The best thing is it doesn't even need to be put in a bowl when you are done - just eat it straight out of the bag!


C went for plain vanilla (personally I don't understand how a child of mine prefers vanilla over chocolate!) and I added in chocolate and caramel syrups into mine. Yummy!

One of those days

Today was one of those days with the kids. You know the kind, where they just won't listen or cooperate. It started out innocently enough. J was actually sleeping in and C was content to play so I got to sleep in. But once they were both up it became a struggle. The two boys just wouldn't leave each other alone. They kept taking things from each other and fighting. Plus C was really hyper today, which just seemed to add to the stress.

Days like this are hard. I love my boys so much but there are times when I'm relieved to put the day behind me!

Knitting progress

I have discovered that when I am doing garter stitch with nothing fancy going, I can do about 950 stitches in an hour. How did I discover this? Well I'm still working on my garter stitch baby blanket and it's sort of tedious. Twice this week I've had a solid hour to knit uninterrupted and both time I came up with close to that number. I have no idea if that is fast or slow but I do know that it means I have about 26 more hours to go on the blanket. Actually the blanket has gotten quite sizable. It doesn't travel as well as it used to either. I'm only 40 rows away from decreasing! And I still love the way it looks and feels, even if I have to do miles and miles of garter stitch.

I've also made some progress on the bear. Since it's more portable, it gets to come to lunch with me. Today I got back to where I was when I ripped it out (epic mistake on my part before). I have one more row of increases for the base of the body and then it's just ordinary knitting for a few inches. I need to get some stitch markers to make sure I keep my place - what kind of knitter doesn't have stitch markers?!

New School Year

Today was the first day of the new school year for C. He is going into his second year of preschool. Last year he went two days a week; now he is up to three days. I was kind of sad today because by this time next year he'll be off to Kindergarten at a new school. It seems like he's growing up so fast!

Isn't he handsome?

Peanut Butter Cookie Bars

This week while I was web surfing I came across a recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip cookie bars from Brown Eyed Baker. I absolutely love peanut butter and chocolate together so I knew I wanted to make these. My parents invited my family and my sisters an their families over for a barbecue tonight so this seemed like the perfect opportunity, rather than E, the kids and me trying to finish a whole pan by ourselves.

The recipe is very similar to regular chocolate chip cookies, but with a few modifications for the peanut butter. First I mixed my brown sugar, sugar, butter and peanut butter together. C wanted to help so you'll see glimpses of him in the photos (and please ignore any messy counters - I was running short on time today)


Next came the vanilla and egg.


After that I added flour, baking soda and salt.


Then the chips were added and the mixture was pressed into a pan. I found this great bag of half semi sweet chips and half peanut butter chips the store today so I used those in the recipe.


I baked it for 18 minutes at 325 in my convection oven and they came out perfectly golden.


My family totally loved them, especially my mom. She couldn't top raving about them. You can get the whole recipe at Brown Eyed Baker's website

Golfing and knitting

Yesterday I got to go to an indoor golfing place. My total experience with golfing to date had been hitting range balls a few times. So this was neat because it simulated a real game without me chasing my ball all over the free world. Basically the ball is hit into a screen while three cameras record your movements. They have different areas that you hit from to simulate teeing off, hitting out of the rough and sand traps, fairways and putting. Pretty neat. Here's me attempting to get out of the rough (sorry the lighting isn't very good for picture taking there.)




I've also got an update on the progress of the baby blanket. I'm now 20% of the way done. I've increased up to row 132 - I need to get to row 201 before decreasing.



E calls my big ball of yarn my kitty. Well the kitty is finally starting to look a little smaller! I do feel like I'm never going to reach the end though!