The big 3-0

I turned 30 this week.

Yikes!!!!!

Okay now that I have that out of my system...it was a pretty nice day. I went and painted pottery like I usually do. I also got a couple of hours of knitting in, which is good since I was under a time constraint (more on that later). My parents also took me out to lunch - I thought it was really sweet of them to do that. The most amazing part of my day though was my birthday cake! My sister made me cupcakes. But these were no ordinary cupcakes; they were shaped like skeins of yarn with fondant used to make the wrapper. She also dipped wheat sticks in chocolate and put smarties on the end to look like the needles. Absolutely amazing! She is ridiculously talented.



On the knitting side of things I ran into a few issues. I found out the baby shower for my friend was this weekend so I didn't have nearly the amount of time I thought I would to finish the blanket. I tried really hard to get it done but by Wednesday I knew I was sunk and wasn't going to finish. At my knitting group that night someone suggested doing a hat instead. I wish I had thought to switch sooner and I probably would have had time to do some booties too. As it was I was bagging up the hat just 45 minutes be fore the shower. But at least it's cute. It's the same pattern as the green hat I posted before but with a flower embellishment on it. I used some bright pink yarn I got for my birthday (see mention of awesome sister above - she also got me real yarn to match the cake!)



Now I don't know what to do about the blanket. I'm on square 14 of 15 but the question is do I still give it to her when the baby is born or do I keep it in reserve for another friend? On the plus side I can hibernate it for a little while either way since I'm so sick of looking at the thing right now. I've got to get cracking to finish E's Father's Day gift anyways. Luckily I have some major free time coming up in the next couple of weeks!

Mother's Day

This weekend was Mother's day. So I did some baking for it. I never know what to get my mom or MIL so I ended up doing gift cards for their favorite restaurants. But I wanted to do something with more thought in it too so I baked brownies. I had never done brownies from scratch before but I had no box mixes in the house. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected it to be. I also made chocolate chip muffins - we were going to E's family for brunch and I didnt want to show up empty handed.

Sunday was Mother's day and I had a very nice day. Since E's family wanted to do brunch, I ended up going to a different church that had an earlier service. They had a guest speaker who was very interesting and I was able to focus the whole time (it helped that the boys were very chill). It was a good start to the day.

Afterward we went to my inlaws' house and I brought the chocolate chip muffins along. The kiddos seemed to enjoy them but who wouldn't enjoy chocolate for breakfast! My BIL made mimosas so all of the grownups had a good time too...After we ate I gave my MIL her brownies. She gave me something too, which was unexpected and very sweet.

Next stop was my mother's house. The boys got to play in the water when we got there so they were thrilled - I know it's hard for them to be on there best behavior all day. My mom gave my sister and I pictures of our kids on tiles with the date noted- very cute and I will have to put this idea away for future use. I gave my mom the brownies and decided to do a few for my sis too since it was her first mother's day.

It ended up being a very good and relaxing day!

I also went to my C's preschool for Mothers Day Tea yesterday. It was so cute! The kids sang us three songs and then every child told us what made their mom so special and gave her a picture (see the pic below of C with his teacher). C said that I was special because "she loves me and I love her back." What a sweetheart! Since school let out early I was also able to take C to the park-  just me and him.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. C

Sometimes I swear my son is a new version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  Or maybe he has an identical twin that looks just like him but has a completely different personality. Or (and this is the most likely scenario) maybe he is four. It seems to be the only way I can explain why he behaves the way he does.

Yesterday this split personality behavior was on full display. C had been sassy and sacastic and nothing was getting through to him. Then all of the sudden it was "I love you mom" with kisses. A short time later the sassy child came back, as he was mean to his brother and very disrespectful to me. It went like this, back and forth, all the way to bedtime.

Yesterday I was frustrated. It's hard to deal with when you don't know what to expect. Today I am seeing it a little more clearly - right now he is emerging from the terrible twos/trying threes into someone who can articulate what he needs. It's hard, but we'll get through it.

Progress

I've been trying to knock out a few knitting projects so i can start working on new things. To be honest these longer term projects are getting a little tedious.

Checkerboard: I'm finally nearing the home stretch of the giant checkerboard. I now have enough squares to seam together the 5th row. I also have all of the blue squares done for row 6 but still need to do the green ones. I'm debating on anther to finish those first and then seam both rows at the same time or seam now and then do the rest of the knitting afterwards. I'm leaning towards seaming now just to change things up a little.

Baby blanket: I'm on square 10 of 15. This the last of the pink and then I move on to yellow for the final five. This block is making me a little crazy. There seems to be a mistake either with me or the pattern because on one row I'm one stitch short. All of the other rows are okay so I'm going to keep going and see what happens. Bear in mind that this is all after ripping it out once before because I cast on 35 instead of 36.

Android: E's android was such a hit that C requested one. So I'm doing his in red (his favorite color). I am primarily working on this one during knit night so I only have to top of the body and the arms done. I'll probably finish soon though cause it's a quick knit. I think it will be good for me to finish something so I can have some sort of sense of accomplishment.

I'm leaning towards some dish cloths when I finish one or all of these projects, again because I need to feel like I'm finishing something. I'd also like to do a shawl or stole but I want to finish the big projects first

New Year New Resolutions (Part 6)

Since I completely biffed on coming up with any new ideas for dinner in March, I thought I would try to come up with something for April before the end of the month. I stepped way outside the box for this one and went with pork loin.

I know that pork is not something that unusual and my family eats things like ham and bacon but we don't have things like pork loin worked into our rotation. Well I went to Fry's last week and they it for less than half price so I thought "why not"? Since it's not something we usually have, I prepared it in a way similar to what I had done before and crockpotted (yes I just turned that into a verb) it. I left it on low in the pot for about 7.5 hrs until it fell apart. Then I drained off the excess liquid, added bbq sauce to it and let it simmer for another hour (cranked up to high for the last 10 minutes or so).

The verdict: pretty good. Of course C didn't eat it - he rarely tries anything new (according to the pediatrician this will supposedly get better in the next year or so; I'll believe it when I see it). J examined it but didn't eat it. E liked it although would have liked more bbq sauce. I liked it too but I think I prefer the bbq beef. I'd also like to find different marinades for cooking - this time I didn't season it until the end with the bbq sauce. My guess is this will make it into the rotation once or twice a year when there is a killer deal on pork.

New Year New Resolutions (Part 5)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I taught myself to knit in the round so I could complete a secret project. Well now I can discuss it - it was a project for E's birthday. I'm 99% positive he doesn't read this blog but I didn't want to risk it. E is a huge tech geek, who loves to listen to podcasts, read tech blogs and analyze why certain products are better than others. A while back on one of this blogs someone posted a picture of a crocheted Android. Hubby sent it to me and asked me to make him one - unfortunately I don't crochet. So I covertly went on Ravelry and did a pattern search for a knitted version. There was a very cute little droid but he was knit in the round. So I taught myself how to do it. Here's the finished project - E loved it!

It seemed really intimidating at first but once I got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad. It also has opened up a whole new set of patterns that I previously glossed over soley because they were constructed in the round.

Mmmmm cheesecake

What's in the box? Why that would be cheesecake bites (which I'm sure is quite obvious based on the title of the post. My mom's birthday was this week and I didn't know what to get her besides a gift card. She and dad like to go to Cheesecake Factory on date night so that seemed like a good choice. But I wanted it to be more than just a gift card so I decided to bake something to go with it. Cheesecake seemed like a natural choice.

I had to go on a recipe search - I have a recipe for marble cheesecake but it's kind of complicated and I was short on time. I considered cheesecake balls since they are more portable and easier to package but as I mentioned I was in a hurry. I ended up finding a recipe on Bakerella's website - a recipe for cheesecake bites.

These involve using vanilla wafers as the crust and a very simple recipe. Her recipe calls for 1 tbsp of lemon juice- I cut that in half. Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly. My wafers were too small for the baking cups but it still worked okay. I also got only 32 out my recipe instead of the 48 she got. I ended up leaving the cherries off to make them more portable.

Not too bad. Some day when I have more time I want to try some variations on this like chocolate ganache or a rasberry topping. Maybe mable cheescake with oreo cookies for the base! The possibilities are endless!