1/2 a mitten is done

I decided to make a pair of mittens for Madi. I got the idea from Kent (she is part of the knitting CJ that I am in right now). The pattern is from the Lion Brand site. it is the Family of Mittens pattern. I made some adjustments because I don't like using Homespun and I have way too much Cotton-Ease left from the Tuesday Morning escapades a while back. I sorta went between the toddler and child pattern depending upon which part I was knitting. I think I would have finished it last night but I needed to see Madi's hand to see where it needed to come to. She has small hands and I didn't want them to be too big for her to wear. I figure she'll be able to wear them this year and next. I was going to make them all pink (her fav. color), but I was afraid I'd run out, so I did some striping. I used the bubblegum pink, orange and blue.

Got out to be crafty

Well in exchange for Nick getting out all last weekend for the Nascar races with his brother and dad, I got out for scrapbooking last night. There are pros/cons to scrapbooking at the crops at the store you work at. Pro would be the discount that I get onn anything that I need to add to my pages. Cons are that I'm not left alone, because most of the other scrapbookers recognize me from the store. I have no anonymity to just get my work done. I'm actually thinking about paying to go to another store next time just so I can really get some work done. I had a great time though, happy to be able to get out of the house for a few hours and get some pages done. Here are two of them:

Turkey Day festivities

A small recap of our Thanksgiving day festivities. It all began Wed morning when I started baking the chocolate cake to bring to my MIL's house. I got the cake batter done (awesome recipe from Martha Stewart), got the oven preheated, but alas the oven was not hot. I had to run the cake over to my neighbor's house so she could bake it for me. That put everything behind for the whole day. I ended up having to bake the cheesecake over at my parents house at 8pm that night. it wouldn't have been bad, but the cheesecake takes 2 hours to cook. Long night.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun, definitely a lot to be thankful for. Family, friends, good health, you name it. We went to see Sue (MIL) in the morning, left to get Nathan down for his nap. Then we went to my parents house for the eating. My cousins were there, minus Corey, who I guess missed his flight from New York and wasn't able to make it. First time in over a year that everyone in my family has been together, very nice feeling. We ate and then ran. Sue's birthday is Friday so we went back to her house for cake festivities.

Kids were exhausted, but it was a good day.

new tooth today

Sorry,, but there will be no pictures of the inside of Nathan's mouth. he barely lets me look. I had to hang him upside down and make him laugh hysterically in order to view molar #2. That puts his total tooth count at 10 teeth at 16 months old. Here are some pictures from this weekend.

This is Nathan's super funny face:


Jared relaxing:


We went to a birthday party for the little girl who lives next door. Chloe turned one this weekend. Her party was a ton of fun, but we ended up having to leave before the cake smashing because Nathan was getting really tired and wanted his nap. Here is a picture of Chloe enjoying her day.

AZ Museum for Youth (and some knitting)

I'll start with the knitting stuff. It is safe to show this gift because the recipient doesn't read my blog. My friend Renee is having a girl in December and I told her I would make a baby hat. Only request was that I get a photo of her baby wearing it.

I also finished the back of Nathan's sweater. I decided to do the sleeves on circulars instead of seaming so I needed to pick up a few needles. Here is the sweater:

Since I knew I was going to go to Fiber Factory I took the kids to the Arizona Museum for youth (conveniently located just across the side street from the yarn store. The kids got to build robots, and they also ran in the space room (aka room with lots of blacklights and glow in the dark stars).
Artville is also part of the museum and it let them burn off steam without me needing to watch their every move. Here they are being quite nice to each other in the play kitchen.

Very much looking for to SnB tonight, need to get some knitting done.

Race car bed

Nick is such a handyman. After looking at different big boy beds for Jared, we decided to build him a race car bed. I found the plans online and ordered them a while back. Nick got almost all done with it yesterday. I left him alone in the garage for 8 hours and this is what I come out to. It fits a twin size mattress and it built like a tank. We will probably have to make a second one in a few years for Nathan.
Here is the bed:

and the wonderful builder of the bed:

Dyson rocks

In love with Dyson. I never truly thought I would say that I loved a non-living object, but there is a first time for everything. We got a refund check from the title company after we refinanced the house a few months ago. What a better way to spend it then on something for the house. We have been looking at the Dyson for over a year but the price was always holding us back. I bought last years model (since we don’t have pets or anything special), I didn’t have to get one of the really high priced models. It arrived today and Nick had it out of the box in 10 seconds flat. He loves it, I love it. Do you think it will make me clean more, I doubt it, but it is a nice thought.

Closing of Memory Lane

The end of an awesome store, Memory Lane. I’m pretty sure it was one of the first scrapbooking stores in the Valley, it has been around for 10 years. They have always had awesome teachers for their classes. I have taken a few classes there, one from Heidi Swapp and another from Debbie Crouse. Heidi Swapp now owns her own scrapbooking line of products and Debbie is in all of the Designing with books. They just decided to close the store as of the end of November and it is so sad. They were the destination store if you wanted to alter anything or put together a very special scrapbook. I heard on the first day of their sale, the lines were out the door and in the parking lot. I didn’t get there until a few days later and it was pretty picked over. I did get some bookboard journals that I can’t wait to decorate. I will always remember shopping there.

it's Halloween (picture heavy post)

We started the day getting ready to dig out the pumpkin. Jared was ready to dive right into the seeds, Nathan was a bit skeptical.



Then onto the real festivities. Tony picked up Madi so she could go trick or treating over at her house. She really wanted to stay over here though. Here is Jared as his favorite character (at the moment)

and Nathan as the winnie the pooh honey bee

here is how our pumpkin turned out, the kids just lovved him

favorite costume of the night was the next door neighor, Tanya and her daughter Chloe

the kids had a blast, Jared ate one piece of candy, Baby Ruth, which he said he loved. Both boys passed out promptly at 7:15. We went back outside and hung out with the neighbors, everone had a blast.

Hope you all did the same.....