Adelaide Lemonade

I'm in Chelmsford

Katie — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:27:36 -0400

Where, you ask? Yeah, I'd never heard of it either until the class I was supposed to take in my hometown didn't get enough participants and the closest alternative was Chelmsford, MA. There's not exactly much to do here, but I'm actually enjoying my "alone" time. After traveling for work quite a bit in the past 3 years, I've discovered that I don't mind being alone one bit. That may change when I'm not constantly with 5 other people, a cat, and a dog, but for now, I don't mind. Of course, my first choice would be to be with my family, but I'm having a glorious few days doing what I want when I want.

I don't even mind eating out alone - especially when it's on my company's dime. I usually treat myself to a glass of wine, read my e-mails, check my facebook, annoy the crap out of my husband by texting him photos of everything I'm eating and drinking, then read Kindle on my phone while I eat. Tonight I chatted with some fellow business-travelling ladies from Dallas sitting next to me (but I'm usually traditionally Yankee stand-off-ish and don't talk to anyone).

The first night here, I ate a yummy cherry pepper flatbread from Moonstones

I liked it so much that I skipped dinner last night and ate my leftovers.

Tonight, I ate at a place called Fishbones. Nice decor, don't you think?

Yummy blackened swordfish with pineapple salsa.

I also drank a bellitinitini.

Never had one before, but I was sold on the advertised peach puree. I managed to drink it, but I'm not sure it was really my thing. I didn't really need it, but I had a glass of Prosecco for dessert - my first white wine of the season.

I usually drink red when it's cold and white when it's warm. It was gorgeous and approaching 70 today. I think it was the first day in 6 months where I haven't been freezing my butt off.

The two drinks is probably what's making me brave enough to post a photo by myself. Here I am eating all by my lonesome.

I stumbled home on the lovely Bruce Freeman Rail Trail where I've been running/walking every day.

Other than that, I've been spending oodles of time surfing recipes and cooking blogs on the web. Do you have any favorites I should follow? I've been following Pioneer Woman, Smitten Kitchen, and Pinch My Salt for ages, but I just added as many as possible to my Feedly feed last night. I'm not positive that will still work after the Google Reader end of life. I still need to research that some more. What are you all going to do? I mostly used the Google Next button which I loved because it took me to the actual blog.

I'm still totally on a cooking kick. Here's what I made for meals last week.

Sunday: Barbeque Shrimp, Chips, Guacamole, corn, Poblano Jack Cheddar Beer Bread (if I make this again, I need to cook it longer) S'mores Cookies, Strawberry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (I used Pioneer Woman's Blackberry Ice Cream recipe, but blackberries aren't exactly in season now, so I subbed strawberries.)

It was so good! We used chopped up Hershey bars leftover from the cookies. Does anyone know where you can get those flat square chips that you find in mint chocolate chip ice cream?

The S'more's Cookies were the third in our project to make I Heart Naptime's 50 favorite cookie repices. We all liked these. I might skip the cinnamon next time and maybe double or 1 1/2 the Hershey bars.

Next up are Cookies and Cream Cookies. Here's Addie picking the next recipe out of our basket of recipes.

and Frank carefully pressing the Hershey bars into the partially baked cookies.

Monday: Pretzel Chicken (again!). This time we used the Snyder's Honey Mustard and Onion Pieces for extra flavor. I'm not sure it really made that much difference. Crash Hot Potatoes (never any leftovers with these babies). Carrot Sticks.

Tuesday: Pork Satay with Peanut Sauce (this was so good - it converted my husband from his vegetarian ways - I feel a bit guilty), Quinoa Salad (I liked it well enough but not a big hit.)

Wednesday: Leftovers and my husband cooked up some pasta because the peanut sauce was just so damn good.

Friday night, I went a little crazy preparing for an overnight in Rangeley and made my new favorite Jacques Torres Infamous Chocolate chip cookies found on via I Heart Naptime. I'm really liking the Crepes of Wrath blog - home to these cookies - and have already marked a bunch of recipes to try.

I also made bagels and my favorite Pain a l'Ancienne from Peter Rheinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice.

I have a reprieve from cooking this week, since I'm out of town. Since I've had so much extra time on my hands, I think I just about have the next 3 weeks of meals planned. For me, that's almost the hardest part.

I originally had really good intentions of making a blouse for Spring Top Sewalong, and I was a good portion of the way there on Thursday night. I might have been able to finish by the deadline of Friday night, but then I remembered that I'm trying hard to be patient with myself. Rushing to finish a shirt didn't really fit in with that.

I also intended to cut out a bunch of things for Kids Clothing Week and to bring my sewing machine to Chelmsford with me. It was such a great idea, since, other than class, I have no commitments and could sew uninterrupted, but I had a chance to go to Rangeley for the night and hike with my girls on Sunday.

So I didn't have much time to prepare, and I decided that didn't fit in well with being patient with myself either. I am feeling a bit bummed about missing out on KCW especially seeing everyone else's posts about it, but I think I'll manage. I'll sew when the motivation and opportunity strikes and not worry about it other than that.

I'm not completely craftless. I brought my knitting. I'm working on a Judith sweater and finally started on one of the sleeves.

Hope you're well and enjoying KCW!

Life Is Good

Katie — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:35:44 -0400

At least that was what I was going to title my post last night.

After all, I had just finished a run (Just completed week 7 of couch to 5k. Woo hoo.) with this gorgeous scenery . . .

(Okay well - picture it in April - not July - only almost that gorgeous)

And was having a pleasant evening drinking wine and finally crafting . . .

Then I remembered about Boston. Sadly, life is not good for everyone.

I stopped watching the news when my husband was in the army. It seemed like every story meant he was about to get sent off to some war torn country. But I watched tonight. I was watching when they took the 19 year old in to custody.

It's all so, so sad. We live two hours north of Boston. My mom lives two towns away, and my dad lives in town (part time). We were just there the day before visiting my mom. My daughter was in a dance competition a few towns over. A few weeks ago, we were at Worlds just blocks away from where the bombs went off.

We don't directly know anyone who was impacted, but I recently learned that the sister of the boy who was killed is also an Irish step dancer. She lost a leg. I can't even begin to fathom as a mother and sister what it must be like to lose a son/brother. A leg would seem like nothing in comparison, but that obviously wouldn't be too easy either - for a dancer no less. For all I know she was competing in the same feis we were at that day.

And certainly not to empathize with the bombers, but how could someone turn into that? That's so sad to me, too. My oldest son is not much younger than the guy who they took into custody tonight. The only thing I know for sure about parenting is that it's unpredictable. I hope I'm doing all the right things, but I know I'm making a lot of mistakes, too. I rarely feel like I'm getting through. I can only cling to hope that he will remember everything I've said when it really matters. But he's off playing basketball tonight. In the dark? Really?

Sorry to ramble on. I have so many more fun things to blog about; spring top week, what I made for dinners this week, etc., but it didn't seem right tonight.

Life really is good for me. I'm lucky to have my family healthy, nearby, and intact. Hope you are feeling the same way.

Cookies!

Katie — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:34:07 -0400

Infamous Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookies

While looking for a dessert to make last week, I stumbled across this great list of cookie recipes from iheartnaptime. I showed it to my kitchen helpers, Frank and Addie, and they (well particularly Frank) were inspired to make every recipe in the list. Like I said, Frank is so bored with his broken leg that I think he'd do just about anything, but I loved the idea. It's similar to my Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge - which I swear I will finish someday. I'm really close, but how the heck am I supposed to get motivated to make things like Panetone and 100% whole wheat bread?!

Frank took it one step further and made an index card for each recipe that we will draw out of a basket . . .

to decide which recipe to make next then use to record our thoughts about the cookie.

We've made two of the chocolate chip cookie recipes so far. The card above is for the first one we made - this one. Maggie's right, I probably did cook them a bit too long. Otherwise, they were really, really good.

We were all skeptical about the bittersweet chocolate at first - being more fans of milk chocolate - but it was perfect. I even think I like the recommended salted tops (which we only did on a few - to try). This will definitely be my new go to chocolate chip cookie recipe (like I actually had one before).

The second recipe, this one, was really good, too, but just couldn't hold a candle to the first one. We haven't written up the card yet, but the overall consensus was that it was more cake-y which apparently is not a trait our family likes in a cookie.

Worlds Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Nevertheless, we managed to eat them all.

We've already drawn the next recipe from the basket, and it looks very promising; s'mores cookies.

Care to join us on our cookie adventure?

Dinner

Katie — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:53:16 -0400

You would think that after being a wife and mother for over 18 years, I would have had the whole dinner thing figured out by now, but it's never really been my forte - to say the least.

It's not that I really mind cooking, but I always have other priorities like knitting, sewing, carting the kids around, relaxing, etc.

That and I'm not good at magically creating meals out of nothing without a recipe.

So another big duuh moment - you um need to plan for making dinner. At least I do.

Most of you are probably thinking I'm pretty lucky to choose whether or not to make dinner and are thinking you've had to do that for your family for years. I am lucky. And guilty. I won't spill all my secrets, but it's possible there are some cereal nights, lots of mac and cheese, a few nights where I yell down "you're on your own for dinner", and maybe, just maybe, a few trips through the Mickey D's drive through on the way home from dance class. And I have a really great husband who cooks a lot and is a way better cook than I.

I decided to start small and agreed to start making dinner Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I've managed two weeks in a row! I'm not going to say it's a habit because I know myself, and I know the next project that I feel I absolutely must work on will quickly deter me from this dinner making thing.

But for the record, I want to document what I've made and what we thought of it.

Last Sunday (okay I didn't cook last Sunday - we were just getting back from Worlds in Boston)

Last Monday: Pork tacos and corn salad. I thought the pork was yummy, and the kids ate it but didn't love it. My husband and I really liked the corn salad. The girls just ate the corn and tomatoes. The boys just picked out the corn. Oh yeah, and I had to whip up a batch of my very favorite salsa.

Last Tuesday: Pretzel Chicken and Strawberry Arugula salad. The kids liked the chicken the best of anything we've had so far. Frank's been helping a lot. With a broken leg, I think he's so bored, he'll do anything.

The kids didn't say as much, but I think they thought the salad was a waste of strawberries. I thought it was pretty.

I used goat cheese instead of blue cheese and enjoyed a big helping of the salad at work the next day (although, since I'd already dressed it, it was a big soggy).

Last Wednesday: I was on a role, and we had a lot of leftovers, so I made dinner again even though I hadn't commited to Wednesdays. We made nachos with the leftover pork . . .

and ate the rest of the chicken.

I think we skipped a vegetable. Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Saturday was a bonus night too. Because I really know how to party on Friday nights, I made this pizza dough with some fancy flour I bought at Formaggio Kitchen. It has to "ferment" over night, so we ate it on Saturday. I made this sauce that I've been wanting to try for a while.

I really liked it. I tried it again last night, but it got kind of funky - maybe frozen? - in the fridge. My favorite pizza toppings are carmelized (aka burnt to a crisp) onions

and goat cheese. My husband who's on a sometimes vegan/mostly vegetarian kick just had cheese and regular onion,

and the kids had bacon.

Oh yeah and we had homemade ice cream.

Addie and Frank helped me make it. Frank is helpful. Addie is the kind of help you can do without. I added four crushed up Skor bars (my supermarked didn't have Heath bars - what's up with that?). It might have been three by the time Frank and Addie and I sampled some. Anyway the ice cream was awesome! We had soft serve right out of the ice cream maker for a snack then hard serve for dessert.

This Sunday: This slow cooked barbecue pork with these homemade buns and homemade coleslaw. I made the buns really small - slider size - I divided the dough into 24 pieces.

My husband claimed to like the buns (most wise husbands would always say they like their wives' buns - right?), but really none of it was a big hit. I have lots of leftover pork in the freezer. It doesn't help that my 17-year-old-will-eat-anything-except-tomatoes-and-frosting is out of town on a class trip. Oh wait, I almost forgot about the crash hot potatoes.

Those were definitely the highlight of the meal. I've made them before and highly recommend them. I found some expensive little potatoes at my supermarket that were perfect for this. I can't wait until Farmer's Market season begins again!

This Monday: Sloppy Joes on the leftover homemade buns which I had saved on purpose thanks to my planning. Again, if only my 17 year old had been here. Frank heroically ate two. I pulled a classic parenting move (probably oh so wrong) and made Addie sit at the table until she tried one bite. I remember sitting at my kitchen table as a young girl for what seemed like hours. I'm pretty sure it was fishsticks, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to give in. I don't remember the outcome, but I don't think I ate them. Katie 1, Mom 0. If only we'd had a dog. For a vegetable (back in this century - not in young Katie's 70's), we had this cauliflower recipe. Another one for me to enjoy for lunch snack the next day.

Last night: Baked Potato bar. Frank's idea even though Maggie is the one who loves baked potatoes. Because I don't even know how to bake a potato, I used this recipe which was really good. We had pear sorbet for dessert which was really yummy but kind of just tasted like frozen applesauce.

I couldn't find pear brandy, so I used Applejack. Now I have a lot of that and am going to have to find some cocktails to make.

So I'm off the hook for a few days and enjoying some time puttering around in my newest craft room trying to pick out a shirt to make for the Spring Top Sew Along.

Thanks for following me on my ever-changing obsessions. If you have any great dinner ideas, please, please, please share!

Catching Up

Katie — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:42:47 -0400

Ugh. It's been ages since I last blogged. I hate when I do that! I could just dive right in and start blogging about whatever I'm up to now and pretend the last two months didn't happen, but I'd rather try to catch you all up. And I'd like to have it "on record" for when I forget and want to go back and read it all later.

So here's what we've been up to, since I last posted (almost exactly two months ago!) . . .

My husband and I had a lovely night away in Portsmouth, NH. We had a nice, late dinner at Mombo . . .

and breakfast the next morning at The Friendly Toast. Both great, but if I had to choose one, it would be The Toast with their funky atmosphere . . .

and homemade, thick Anadama toast with my asparagus and goat cheese scrambled eggs.

Frank broke his leg skiing. It was his second time skiing, and he was with my 17 year old son. We weren't even there. We were an hour away at home, so they had to deal with the whole thing by themselves. Boy did I ever feel guilty.

We met them at the hospital as quickly as we could, and Frank is feeling much better. He has a boot now and healing well. I feel like I'm doing okay with this being the first broken bone in 47 collective years of parenting.

My mom, sister, and I have had several (okay 2) shopping excursions in Kittery and dined both times at the When Pigs Fly restaurant. I love that place.

My mom and I found matching coats . . .

How cool are we? For the record, we were most definitely NOT shopping at that store in the background.

Oh yeah, and I got a new job. I'm still working at the same company, but I'm in a totally different role and department. I'm loving it so far and am just a bit worried it's too good to be true. I'm able to be a bit creative in my job as a developer (instead of managing developers) which I didn't realize I'd missed until I started doing it again. I liken it to living in Maine - you have to go away and come back to realize how much you love it (although I really do question that every February and March). I felt a little bit like I was going backwards in my career and giving up on being a manger (which I really think I was not bad at), but I now realize how silly that was. I'm a thousand times less stressed out and can actually leave work at work and have room in my head to think about other things rather than obsess and worry about work.

My older daughter had lots of Irish Step Dancing events in March. 'Tis the season. Then just last week, I took her to the World Irish Dance Championships in Boston.

I thought it was going to be crazy - like regionals times ten - but it was actually really well organized. Even though we spent the better part of 3 1/2 days there, it didn't seem so bad. We had two days off in the middle, so we went shopping with my mom (that's what the girls in my family do) one of the days and the other day, I went on a bit of a foodie excursion in Cambridge/Boston visiting the famous Flour and picked up some gorgeous bread . . .

and Formaggio Kitchen and bought some fancy flour to make my own bread (or pizza dough as it turns out), and couldn't pass up these gorgeous macarons . . .

In the midst of it all, we decided to do a major rearranging of the house, so everything is a total mess, but yesterday, I finally got my craft room back in order. I feel like a new person! We still have a long way to go. Only one of the kids currently has a room that's not complete chaos.

I really haven't been all that inspired creatively, but since I last posted, I did make my sister one of Noodlehead's Open-Wide Pouches for her birthday. Of course, I had to make one for myself, too while I was at it, or as I told myself, to learn from any mistakes.

I didn't even take time to take a proper photo. I was going to try to edit one, but why not just let you see my craft room in it's true state?!

I've been knitting a bit. I made my sister a Dogwood hat for her birthday and Frank an Insulate hat. (He's a Dr. Who fan. I like how the pattern is pretty subtle.) I'm working on a Judith sweater for myself.

I just finished the body, now on to the sleeves.

I've been kind of in to cooking lately, but more on that another day.

My husband and I started the Couch to 5K program and are actually in our 6th week. I'm quite proud of us considering I've started this about a dozen other times without making it past week 1.

I ordered some seeds. I'm hoping to garden again this year. Last year, I just knew I wouldn't have time, and the year before, I was in Australia during four of the big gardening weeks. I've ordered from Seed Savers Exchange in the past but decided to go with more local Fedco this year. I'm anxiously awaiting for them to arrive in the mail now, so I can start the tomatoes inside.

I'm sure I'm missing some things, but I think that mostly covers it.

I feel like I can take a breath now and think about sewing. I'm hoping to make a top for Spring Top Sew along, and I definitely want to make some things for Kids Clothing Week (except I think I might be out of town that week. Ugh. Maybe I can bring my sewing machine.)

Hope you're all well. Thanks for still reading after all this time.

They Were Right!

Katie — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 21:04:26 -0500

The weathermen (people) are so often wrong - overpredicting the latest catastrophe - this time they were definitely right. In my husband's expert (considered so after 6 hours of shoveling/snowblowing) opinion, we got about 32 inches of snow.

Everyone was very happy to have a snow day on Friday. They'd been predicting one since Monday, so the kids and my husband would have been pretty disappointed if there hadn't been one even though there really wasn't that much snow on Friday morning. See?

Today, it's a different story. It's hard to do the amount of snow justice in photos, but here's what it looked like around noon today (when the storm wasn't even finished).

That's the top of our fence!

I don't usually get snow days, but I even got a call from my boss encouraging me to work from home. I gladly obliged. It was quite nice to move my sewing machine aside for my laptop and work away watching the snow fall outside my window listening to the voices of my family doing their things. It was lovely not having to go anywhere and knowing the next day was Saturday, so even if we were snowed in, there was nothing to worry about.

I took advantage of being home in the daylight hours to photograph a couple of recent finishes.

I bought this duffel bag pattern from Studio Cheri on Esty ages ago. I made one for my sister probably over two years ago. I'm surprised I didn't post about it on the blog, but I can't find anything about it. It was kind of pain to make, but I was happy with how it came out. I had originally planned to make one for me right then, but some other project must have called.

Now that I'm trying to go to the gym more regularly, I had a good reason to make one for myself. I bought the fabric over the summer. I think this Amy Butler print was the first fabric I saw on Etsy where I thought to myself, "there must be more to this fabric-buying thing than Jo-Ann".

This time around, it didn't seem quite as hard to make. Having several more years of sewing experience under my belt probably helped.

With that done, I needed a way to keep my shampoo from leaking everywhere into my new bag. I had already had that experience with the temporary bag I was using. I had some laminated cotton left from this project which I thought would be perfect for a drawstring bag to hold my leaky things.

(I just used the laminate on the inside and used regular quilting cotton on the outside.)

I knew I could figure out how to make a drawstring bag, but I also knew there were probably tons of tutorials out there on the internet - and why reinvent the wheel? I set to googling, and I'm glad I did because I found this great tutorial that has an interesting technique that saves you from boxing 8 individual corners. I definitely haven't perfected the technique. It's not as neat as I would like, but it's really quick, and the bag stands up really nicely. I added about 2 inches to the height of the bag in her tutorial, but the circumference was perfect for my shampoo, conditioner, and face wash.

Now that I have all the accessories, my visits to the Y have been less frequent than I would like. So far this month, I've gone swimming once and to Yoga once - each costing me $37.5o by my logic. My excuses are that I had to travel to New Jersey last week and couldn't get out of my driveway this morning.

I'm planning to go to Yoga tomorrow morning, but the swimming outlook is pretty bleak. I'm leaving for Memphis tomorrow afternoon. I'll mostly be working, but does anyone have any suggestions for good restaurants? good fabric shops? yarn shops? must-visit-tourist spots?

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, hope you're unharmed by Winter Storm Nemo if you were in it's path.

Selfish, selfish, selfish

Katie — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:04:09 -0500

I've been doing some selfish sewing lately, and I must say it feels great. Addie never likes what I sew for her anymore. So far, I've been happy with what I've made. No whining and moaning from myself to myself that I don't like this or that aspect of whatever I made.

The only thing I've photographed so far is my Tova top.

(Okay, still very scary to include photos of my on my blog. Sheesh, how many chins can you count? How flat can my hair get. My excuse - I wear this hat all. the. time.)

I've been wanting/meaning to make this for years.

I had this green shot cotton that I had bought at Alewive's to make this dress for Addie. It was the only fabric I had enough of to make a "wearable muslin" for the Tova top.

I don't often wear green, but I think it looks okay. I do love the drape of shot cotton, and it's usually cheaper than voile or lawn and especially Liberty, so it was definitely a good place to start. I'm headed toward Portsmouth, NH this weekend, so I may pick up some more at Portsmouth Fabric Company. They have a great selection of colors.

I made the XL, but I think I might have been able to get away with the Large. I also have the pattern for The Schoolhouse Tunic which I think is quite similar. I might make that next instead.

And speaking of selfish, I went for my first ever (in 41 years!) bra fitting last night. I wasn't too far off in my size - but still off. I splurged and bought a $58 bra. Crazy for me, but I love it. Have you ever tried to make your own? Very Purple Person makes quite a few, and every time I read one of her posts, I'm very tempted.

And not so much in the selfish department, but still leaving me feeling like a jerk, I had to fire someone today. Actually my HR guy did the talking, but it was still me. I actually liked the guy as did my coworkers, so I feel like crap and hate that I can't stop thinking about it on my Friday night.

And I've been selfishly swimming at the YMCA 3 days a week when I should be helping get the kids ready in the morning. I'm definitely the least bothered by this one.

And in a note to my future selfish, lazy self . . .

Note that you (self) went to the Y at 5:30 on a January morning to swim when it was below zero. If you can swim under those conditions, there is no possible excuse you could come up with to skip! See?

Okay, done talking to myself. Lest you think I'm crazy, the pool IS indoors.

As a family, we just rejoined the Y. With 6 of us, we should definitely get our money's worth, but in the past, we've gone years with the automatic draft drafting from our bank account without setting foot in the facility. I want to be careful not to make that mistake again, so I've been recalcating the math every time I go.

It's normally $75/month for our family - really not too bad. We joined later on in the month, so it was pro-rated to $50. The kids and I played racquetball 3 times, and I swam 8 times for a total of 22,200 yards or 12 1/3 miles. So all in all, we went to the Y 11 times costing us about $4.50 each time. I'm pretty happy with that. I just really wanted to make sure it didn't cost me $75 per swim.

Now, I'm selfishly working on this bracelet after just spending a boatload on supplies for it.

Geez, I really am selfish. And I'm going to talk to myself again - don't forget to blog about date night, duffel bag, and shampoo bag.

Thanks for listening to me ramble. Have a great weekend!

Christmas Catch Up

Katie — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:22:25 -0500

Can you believe Christmas was just under three weeks ago? It seems like ages ago to me, so before it gets even further in the past, I wanted to share the last few things I made for Christmas.

A solid, half-square triangle pillow for my grandmother who we all call Gommy:

I bought a little plastic measuring cup set at Crate & Barrel years ago just because I loved the colors so much; red, orange, yellow, green. That was my inspiration for the colors in this pillow.

A little lunch set for my mother who is retiring at the end of this year. Duuh. Oh well, I told her maybe she could use it for picnics.

I made the bag over the summer (and blogged about it here). I added the napkin, napkin ring, and mug rug all of which I made at the very last minute. I bought a nice little glass container for little snacks and threw in a mug I made when I was taking pottery years ago.

I had visions of making all the kids some kind of matchy-matchy Christmas-y things, but I only got as far as this tie for Frank to match Addie's dress. It was fun to make. I used this tutorial.

Oh and one more funny thing about Christmas then I'll shut up about it for a few months. Addie and I were in the craft room - me crafting away, she doing her normal Addie-puttering. We were listening to Christmas carols - specifically, "The Holly & the Ivy". When the singer got to the part that says, "And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ", Addie exlaimed, "Wow, I never knew Jesus had a last name". Cracked me up.

And in other random news - not Christmas-related, my oldest turn 17 a few days ago.

Yep. 17. He likes sushi, so we went out for sushi for his birthday dinner and had Monkey Bread for dessert. He doesn't like cake - detests frosting with a passion.

The fact that he's 17 now makes me feel old. I know it's cliche, but the time really goes fast - at least in hindsight. One minute there is no end in sight to diapers and being enprisoned by lack of babysitters, and the next minute he's the same age my husband and I were when we first started dating. Scary.

Anyway, my newly-minted 17 year old is an intense Atlanta Falcons fan, so needless to say, there were some pretty stressful moments in our household yesterday.

I rejoined the YMCA the other day and started swimming again. It's too cold and messy to walk outside anymore, so I had to do something. I swam 1800 yards, and it felt great while I was doing it - not so much the next few days as soreness set in, but I'm excited to go for the second time tomorrow morning. I have to pack up tonight, so I have no excuse to skip out of it tomorrow.

Hope you're all having a good week so far. Thanks for all of your help with my Ravelry paralysis.

Ravelry Paralysis

Katie — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:11:27 -0500

I was a knitter before I was a sewer. I was just as obsessed with knitting a few years ago as I am with sewing now. My fabric stash is probably bigger than my yarn stash which is a tangled mess of random skeins that wouldn't make much more than a hat. It makes me a bit sad to look at it and gives me a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that my fabric stash could someday go the same way when I find my next obsession.

I still knit occasionally especially when my sister-in-law drags me into fancy New Jersey yarn shops. (Kidding. Has anyone ever had to drag you into a yarn or fabric shop?) I needed a winter hat, and new yarn is always better than tangled old yarn, so I bought a gorgeous skein of Madeleine Tosh Vintage in a beautiful silver-y gray color called Silver Fox from this shop.

The relative speed at which you can complete a sewn garment has totally ruined me for knitting. I keep starting things and not finishing them. I like to knit until I get to the interesting part - cables, lace - whatever - then I'm ready to move on. But I finally finished something!

As scary as it is to put pictures of myself on my blog, here's my finished Dogwood Hat.

Great pattern that fits perfectly.

I had just enough yarn leftover to also make a pair of fingerless gloves from this pattern.

Well almost. The top ribbing on the second glove is about 2 rows too short.

So my two completions and the awesome Tosh yarn motivated me to try to knit myself a whole sweater, but enter the Ravelry Paralysis.

I have spent hours and hours on Ravelry trying to figure out what to make.

Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love Ravelry, but I can't stop browsing and make up my darn mind. Have you been there? Done that?

I'm determined to use some Mission Falls 1824 yarn which isn't really the right color for me and is a bit too bulky for the patterns I like, but I want to prove to myself I can actually finish a sweater before I invest in any more yarn.

But then again, wouldn't I be much more likely to finish it if I loved the yarn? (Okay that's just rationalization for yarn shopping.)

I think I have it narrowed down to:

Vinelle

February Lady Sweater - Over 12,000 people can't be wrong, right?

Tea Leaves Cardigan - I already started this one once. Actually I finished it, but i made a mess of it trying to do it partly on my knitting machine and partly not. I was so disgusted I think I gave it to GoodWill. I should have unraveled it for the yarn.

This Cia sweater is high on my list for when I give myself permission to purchase new yarn.

What do you think? Are you a knitter and a sewer? How do you balance the two? Have you made any of these sweaters? What did you think?

Happy weekend!

Back to School

Katie — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:37:27 -0500

Everyone was pretty grumpy last night anticipating going back to school today. I just woke up my oldest who has to leave for school first. I have one more glorious day off, but everyone else has to face reality today.

I just spent the last hour lazing around in bed reviewing my blog posts and photos from last year on my iPad. It turns out that we had basically the same day on 1/1/12 as we did yesterday with just a few slight variations. I hadn't remembered until I read last year's blog post. I guess we really are creatures of habit.

This year, I made monkey bread (vs. last year's popovers).

(Recipe at the end of the post.)

No fresh squeezed o.j. We haven't started receiving our Christmas oranges yet. I muddled through with a mimosa (or two) with store-bought grapefruit juice.

After that, we left the kids at home (turns out at least 3/4 of them went back to sleep) to search for our 2013 datebook. This year, like last year, we bought a family one, but I also bought a little Moleskine-sized one for my purse. I live and breathe by my Outlook calendar, but I'm thinking that this year I might like to have something more personal and portable and tangible.

Then we went to the movies to see "Lincoln" (vs. last year's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". Can't believe that was a whole year ago!)

Then we came home and sat by our Christmas tree and spent the next several hours doing some hard core planning for 2013. Neither of us are really planners by nature, but I have to say it feels really good once it's done. We enjoyed doing our mini trips so much last year that we planned a bunch more for this year. We have weekends planned (and hotels booked!) for January, February, March, May, June, and October. I have the school vacations, camp dates, feis dates, high school open house dates all written down in my new calendar. Of course, there's still all the every day stuff, but it feels good to have the big things blocked off.

We even have a January date night planned. Woo hoo.

Best of luck to you as you get back into your post holiday routine this week.

Here's my easy monkey bread recipe:

Ingredients:

3 tubes refrigerator biscuits

2 t cinnamon

1 1/2 cup sugar (approx)

1 stick butter

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a bundt pan or 9 x 13 baking dish. In a small bowl, mix 1 t cinnamon with 1/2 C sugar. Cut each biscuit into four equal parts. Roll those into balls and roll them in the cinnamon sugar. Put all the balls into the baking dish.

Put any remaining cinnamon sugar into a 1C measuring cup. Add the remaining 1 t of cinnamon and enough sugar to fill the cup. Melt the stick of butter, stir in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Spread that over the dough balls.

Bake for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy!